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[Narrator] Well now what about this Peter O'Toole story?
Let's hear the beginning of it.
I was born in Ireland and brought up in Yorkshire
and I was evacuated to Gainsborough, worked on a newspaper,
went to the Navy, went to RADA and became an actor.
Well, that's one kind of story,
now tell us the real story.
[uplifting classical music]
And he came back and said,
I want you out of this house in two hours.
So really, I had to pack and leave because he,
I thought I must go now because he said I can go.
But it was, it was quick, you know, it was,
and I had to speak to the children,
he wrote out a script for me.
I had to tell them, which wasn't true.
And I just had to leave.
* How was I to know *
* That this was always only just *
* A little game to you *
* All the time I thought you gave your heart *
* I thought that I would do the same for you *
* Tell the truth I think I should have seen it *
* Coming from a mile away *
* When the words you say are *
* Baby, I'm a fool who thinks it's cool *
* To fall in love *
* If I gave a thought to fascination *
* I would know it wasn't right to care *
* Logic doesn't seem to mind to die *
* I'm fascinated by a love affair *
* Still my heart would benefit *
* From a little tenderness *
* From time to time *
* But never mind, 'cause *
* Baby I'm a fool *
* Who thinks it's cool *
* To fall in love *
* Hmmm *
* Hmm Hmm Hmmm *
He was the most extraordinary man I ever knew.
It was phenomenal, because of Peter.
Whatever he did, comedy, tragedy, farce, he could do it.
And Peter O'Toole, which was a wonderful experience.
This handsome, kind of wolf-like creature.
I miss him terribly because he was just
such fun to be around.
When I did the screen test, he was phenomenal.
Peter would come in and assert his dominance,
insisting on pissing in their, in their basin,
in their dressing room.
He was full of fun.
He was just, he had such stature,
he had such elegance, you know?
I've only worked with one other actor
who's given me that much freedom to play.
And excuse all the other wonderful people
I've worked with, I learned more working with Peter
than in the rest of my career.
Yeah, he was quite a remark, well, he was a genius.
There's the way he speaks,
which is often over-articulated.
* Hey your eyes of dawning *
* Hey your eyes are open *
* Baby your eyes are smoking *
* So please don't send me away *
* You locked me up *
* You said I'm hypnotised *
* Whenever you look my way *
* It's like dynamite *
[O'Toole] I was brought up in a place called Hunslet,
which is a remarkable place.
It's about four square miles of rabbit warrens.
One up, one down houses,
which were built very rapidly
and rather badly by the copper bosses
in the Industrial Revolution.
And the people who lived there initially
were from the Green Belt of Yorkshire. the Dales,
who moved in and overnight became engineers
and string makers and Yorkshire Relish sauce makers,
you know, the whole schmear.
And they, they lived on Yorkshire pudding,
which was then hard tack.
When the war started,
much to my intense delight, schools were closed.
And I was then six, and I was sent down to Gainsborough
and I was sort of in farms and things.
And I came out to Leeds when I was 12,
and I went to a school for my first time, really.
I went for two years or just under,
and left joyfully whistling,
'cause I really couldn't bear school.
I mean, they couldn't teach me anything
that I wanted to know.
I've got the kind of mind that
rejects anything that I don't want to know.
And it was no, what they could teach me
I could get out of books, anyway.
And did, and have done.
I went to the Yorkshire Evening News
and I asked if they'd take me on,
gave wrong ages and all that terrible nonsense,
which I'd read that someone else had done,
so I did it, and they accepted me.
Great tea maker, runner, inquests, coroner's courts.
But the most fun I ever had was
in the photographer's department.
In fact, it's the only thing I enjoyed.
And I finished up as Assistant Art Editor on the paper.
I mean, His Majesty was desperate for my services
at one point, and I had to nip into the Navy.
I don't think he was too grateful.
I was very perverse, I must admit.
The Navy!
Lovely, thank you, very nice.
No, I wasn't, I couldn't do it.
And I used to play civilian all the time, you know,
referring to the funnels as chimneys.
The two years in the Navy are a total blank.
It's, I've rejected it.
I've hypnotised myself,
I've amputated the Navy from my mind.
But you see, this is about becoming an actor,
as I say, I was, I was born a ham.
One is, I mean, nothing else I could do.
So I thought, well, the best thing to do
is to go to a school for a while.
'Cause I still had a,
this ghastly Irish Yorkshire accent
I thought should be ironed out.
So I thought I'd go to school,
but which one I hadn't the faintest idea.
Went to RADA and became an actor.
Back in the 50s, so O'Toole was in the same acting class
as Albert Finney, who was offered "Lawrence" before him,
Alan Bates, Brian Bedford, Richard Briers,
and Richard Briers, who I knew well,
said back then when O'Toole was only in his early twenties,
the other students would call him "Sir".
There was already this sense that there was
something exceptional about this guy.
And I said to Richard, well what was it?
What did you see in Peter O'Toole
when he was 22 years old at the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, down from Yorkshire,
but 100% Irishman, what was it?
And he said, well, he was just, he was electric, love.
It was as simple as that.
O'Toole was bloody electric.
So his reputation as a stage actor was pretty strong,
particularly from Bristol, when he went to Bristol,
and he played up, he played the "Hamlet" in Bristol.
And a lot of people who saw him there,
people like, there was an actor
I knew called John Phillips,
I think was in that with him,
and he said there was nothing like him.
That when he walked on the stage in that time,
there was nothing like him.
I saw O'Toole at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre
and he was playing Jimmy Porter in John Osborne's.
tremendous play, revolutionary play of its time,
and I'd never seen anything like it,
and he inspired me to be an actor.
He was one of the most dangerous actors I've ever seen.
He was quite brilliant on stage, like an electric light.
He developed in the most wonderful way.
This is the bedrock of his career, really.
He went there as a boy and out of RADA,
not with a good reputation at all,
not not having done well at RADA.
And he played tiny parts, walk-ons for a year, 18 months,
and he really worked hard.
And he finally was playing the leading parts
by the time he'd finished.
So his training was immaculate,
he did everything by the book.
And he learned how to work,
and he learned how to do well,
and he became a star at Bristol,
his fame was all over the theatre.
We all talked about Peter O'Toole at Bristol.
That conveys somewhat of the Bristol days.
On stage, he was mesmerising.
He could do any accent.
He was doing, "Waiting for Godot" at one rehearsal
and I was allowed in to watch.
This man was overpoweringly tense, spellbindingly powerful.
Everyone dwarfed, disappeared,
when he appeared on stage.
He was like a, he was like a wolf, foxy or a wolf,
like there was something, he was a canine.
He's been described as a wolf.
Well, he had that look about him,
that sort of hungry kind of thing he did.
[jaunty music]
Well, we met on a pavement, the very first time.
I went to Goodge Street for lunch one day,
which was an unusual thing,
'cause we, we didn't have any money, any of us.
It was outside the Spaghetti House,
where I was a student at RADA,
And O'Toole was a, was a leading young,
tearaway leading man at Bristol Old Vic.
And his fame had arrived back at RADA
and I was very impressed, 'cause there he was,
I came out of lunch and there he was with a few friends,
and I was with friends,
they knew each other and they introduced us.
And he looked to me like that character in Pinocchio,
you know, the, was it a wolf or a,
there was a man who led the children astray,
I haven't seen the film for a very long time,
and he looked like that to me.
Kind of wolf-like creature
in a green jacket and curly hair.
And we were introduced and we passed a few pleasantries
and off I went back to be a student,
and he went off to Bristol Old Vic.
And, and I thought,
as I was walking back, I thought,
"Well, I'll marry him one day, I suppose".
And I thought no more about it,
I didn't meet him again for three years.
And we did in fact marry in five years time.
I just remember my grandmother, Mamgee,
she lived in South Wales most of her life.
She said, she said, when my parents were getting married,
she said she did have reservations because she'd seen,
you know, she said, "Oh, the marriages
between the Irish and the Welsh,
it's like oil and water,
they never mix".
When we got married, he still had brown,
black, curly hair, and he looked completely different.
He looked very Irish, you know.
People gave him a really bad time in the press,
and his friends, about the nose, which was so ridiculous.
And his nose had been broken in a match with the rugby,
Swedish police, that his submarine
had docked somewhere in Sweden,
and they'd played a rugby match
and he'd been kicked in the nose.
So it, nothing was added to the nose,
but it went sideways at the bottom,
and lighting men had a terrible problem
with this curvature of the nose.
So all they ever did,
'cause I was there at the time,
was straighten it and put it back straight.
And you would've thought that he'd had major surgery,
you know, the way people went on about it,
it was really bad, the way to they treated him,
and he was very, very mortified about that,
but he didn't complain.
He said, "Well, when I was doing
"The Day they Robbed the Bank of England",
I said, you know, 'I want a car'".
They said, oh no, no, Mr. O'Toole,
this is your first film, your first big film, no car.
Oh, how am I supposed to get there?
Well, there's public transport, you know, you'll be fine.
First day of filming, he didn't turn up.
Where's Peter? Where's Mr. O'Toole?
Not there.
They rang, "Where are you?"
He said, "Well, where's the car?"
He said, "No car, no me".
And that was it.
So from then on, he always got his car.
[dramatic music]
Well, "Lawrence of Arabia" came along
after he'd had a misstep in his career, actually.
Things did not go well for him after
"The Long and the Short and the Tall".
The movies that he made were not successful,
though it was wonderful to be paid a little bit of money.
We had a talk about it and, and I said,
"Look, I think you should go back to basics
and start again in the theatre if you can".
So he said yes, and Stratford came up,
"Merchant of Venice" and "Taming of the Shrew"
and "Troilus and Cressida".
So I thought, we both thought,
this would be a wonderful thing for him.
And we went back and it was a wonderful thing for him,
he was a magnificent Shylock
and he was a wonderful Petruchio.
And Peggy Ashcroft adored him in that particular season.
They were doing "Taming of the Shrew",
and she didn't know how to do the business.
"Sit here, Peggy",
"Stand there, Peggy",
"Put your leg there, Peggy",
"Kick there, I won't fall down".
So, that's what the comedy,
it's circus, it's slapstick.
"Come here, Peggy, come here".
And he taught her all the movements of the whole play.
They still have those movements at Stratford.
They still have them in the curriculum.
They refer to O'Toole's movements
for "The Taming of the Shrew".
And then Peggy adored him for his greatness and talent.
When he had made one film that was kind of okay
for his new business manager, who happened to be
an American film producer,
and he, it was "The Day They Robbed the Bank of England".
And he played an Englishman, a very clipped officer.
And that was the film that David Lean saw.
An assistant of David Lean spotted O'Toole in
"The Day they Robbed the Bank of England"
and got David Lean to see it,
and then took David Lean up to Stratford to see him play
either Petruchio or Shylock,
and he said "He's the man".
And David wanted him for "Lawrence",
and Sam Spiegel did not want him at all,
'cause he'd just finished doing a film,
I think with Monty Clift,
and he'd had enough of the drinkers,
he didn't want another one. [laughs]
This has three keys, so I'm told,
each kept by a different official
on the person, as it were.
There had apparently been a meeting with Sam Spiegel
and Peter O'Toole previously about something else,
and O'Toole had referred to him as Mrs. Spiegel,
which rankled with Sam Spiegel,
who didn't think that was funny at all,
and was very much against it.
And I think David Lean, rumour has it,
had to fight a bit to get O'Toole
into playing Lawrence because
Spiegel was not very pleased.
Also, he knew of a reputation of being a wild boy.
'Cause Albert was gonna play it, you know,
Well, it's very interesting about Albert, and,
you know Albert and Peter were at drama school together.
So in the end, David prevailed.
But the film helped a lot, helped enormously.
It was huge, it was absolutely huge.
Every, it was undeniable.
We all knew that we were in the presence of, of stardom.
And David Lean, probably his finest picture.
I think that's where he was so sharp.
He knew how he wanted to look.
It's called the, Stanislavsky calls it "The Mask".
Where you, you know, you put on the clothes,
or you put on this, and suddenly
you become the part.
And I think O'Toole did that.
I don't know, so I can't say it precisely,
but I suspect that's it, he knew how to look,
he knew how to shape himself.
What Peter did was he found the core of the man.
That was the great thing,
I mean, I'll never forget that performance.
I think it's one of the truly great
film performances, actually, I really do.
What is your name?
My name is for my friends.
None of my friends is a murderer.
My name is for my friends
and none of my friends are murderers.
You know, I mean I was just, it was electric, doing that.
And he had this kind of,
there was something about Peter, he had this,
in that role, he had this sort of
thwarted spirituality about him.
He looked sensational.
He had this wonderful ability.
He was, he was also a great actor,
and he was mesmeric on screen.
Two large glasses of lemonade.
In "Lawrence of Arabia", Peter O'Toole speaks slow,
and you feel that he doesn't speak much,
but when he asks, when he walks into that club,
for "Two glasses of lemonade".
It's for him.
It's for him, it's for him.
You think, well you can't say "It's for him"
any slower than that,
but frankly, the "It's for him"
has underneath it hand grenades, mines,
a minefield of, you feel as though he's gonna reach across
and pull that barman the other side of the bar.
And that and that sense, you know,
O'Toole's performances of,
and maybe it seems a bit clichéd,
but this sort of contained rage.
Not a club boy at all,
all that stuff when he goes to the Officer's Mess,
it was clearly, he did all of that,
and that's all Peter.
That's all of him, you know,
I mean Lean, of course, director, was brilliant.
And then the wonderful thing when
he has the dagger and he sees his own image
and he does that incredible, his vanity.
And then he gets shot and he goes, "Good, good, good",
you know, I mean, yeah, it's a great, great performance,
it's a really great performance.
The quietest of pieces in something like "Lawrence",
to use that as an example,
that the sense of an inner turbulence
that either, I dunno,
maybe he's just the greatest actor in the world
and he could flick it on,
or he opened up his own access to something truly,
yeah, turbulent is the impression I have.
And it made you feel uneasy.
His performances made you feel unsettled,
and it made you generally feel that he was dangerous.
And in the presence of an O'Toole performance,
what you were aware of was that
the unexpected was possible at any time.
Never seen a man killed with a sword before.
Why don't you take a picture?
It was in his contract that I would fly out every month.
Well, I couldn't fly out every month,
it was impossible over two years.
So I used to, sort of, put the time together
and go and live there in the desert.
And David was such a perfectionist,
he would look through his, whatever you look through,
you know, and say, "No, not quite right, we'll wait a bit",
wait a bit, he could wait a day, he could wait two days,
he could wait a week.
But then he, he liked to become,
to break actors down completely
and then rebuild them completely
so that he was responsible for them
and he would be wonderful to them.
Well, I can't see anyone breaking Peter, [chuckles]
I think anyone trying to break Peter
would just, he'd go the other way.
And one day he tried that with O'Toole,
it was the day they, that O'Toole sang
"The Man Who Robbed the Bank at Monte Carlo",
it was a long tracking shot,
and they started first thing in the morning,
127 degrees, no shade,
O'Toole in khaki up to there with a hat and everything,
and he would sing the song and ride along, very slowly,
until he was out of shot.
And David just said, "Mm, another one".
And they did it all day.
The crew were dropping 'cause there was no shade,
it was intolerably hot.
I was miles away, sitting on a box,
watching in horror, you know, at this,
and I realised this was the day
that Lean was going to break Peter down
and he was going to build him up again.
And I looked and I thought, this is never gonna happen,
he's not gonna break down, he's not gonna do it.
So, and he didn't.
I don't know why a man like David Lean
or any other man or any other woman for that,
has this, this desire to break people down.
Lean wouldn't break him down
'cause he wouldn't put up with that English bollocks.
That's what, you know, his Celtic soul
would not put up with that English imperialism.
So I suspect that was a real clash of wills.
If a director knows what he's about, then do 50 takes.
And someone like John Huston would do two takes,
or David Lean would do 25.
* I'm the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. *
It was a wonderful, wonderful period in our lives.
We'd not been getting along very well before that.
And the birth of my first daughter seemed to
trigger off something horrible in him.
I don't know, it was some huge crisis,
although he was the one that was keen to have a child.
It, he wasn't ready for it at all, he wasn't prepared.
So he was insistent that life should go on
exactly the same as when we didn't have a child.
Well, that is very, very difficult.
Some of our great contemporary filmmakers,
Scorsese and Spielberg and those sort of figures,
the very famous directors of the last 30 or 40 years,
all rate "Lawrence" as one of the great movies
of the 20th century, one of the very, very best.
He got paid £19,000 for doing "Lawrence".
And Jules advised him to take it,
because he said it'll be worth it.
And it clearly was, of course, because the next,
then he went into the big paycheck.
He did it for very, he was the lowest paid actor on the,
on the whole picture, I would think.
It didn't change him fundamentally, no.
He was exactly the same O'Toole
that he'd been before, you know,
at home, he was just the same.
And he didn't really buy into the stardom business,
for instance, he would never travel with an entourage.
You know, everybody, every movie star like Harris or Burton,
they had people, you know, secretaries,
hairdressers, people who fixed things.
O'Toole, never.
He would travel with a stunt man,
usually made friends with the stunt man
and they would shack up together.
And that was his team, as it were.
And that's remained so all the time I knew him.
And I think he deeply respected David Lean,
perhaps more than almost any other director,
and later turned down "Dr. Zhivago",
which rankled with Lean,
but O'Toole said, "It didn't speak to me,
it didn't say anything.
I couldn't get my head into this character".
In later years they became friends again,
and he was with Lean when Lean passed away.
I don't think there can be people like him anymore.
I mean, it used to, I remember doing a film years ago,
the first film I did virtually with,
which Kenneth Branagh directed.
And I remember we were sitting around at the time saying,
no one is ever going to tell stories about us
in 50 years' time.
"Oh, and do you remember that was the time
that Ken Branagh dropped his teaspoon?".
I mean that's about all that happens.
We are so bloody ordinary, our generation,
compared to that remarkable group of people
who were not only just more daring as actors and performers,
who were more, more sort of prepared to,
to strip themselves of any dignity
and to throw themselves into a role,
and yet annoyingly retain that sexiness
and that extraordinary charisma.
But they also lived a life that was richer
and more careless.
We were in Arles one day,
and I used to go to a little restaurant up the hill there,
[laughs] quite simply to avoid the bar,
because when we got together it was chaos.
And I sneaking in one night and he was being helped out.
He was fine, he wasn't too drunk, but he was, you know,
he liked to drink and so on.
But next day on set, I'd never seen
a blistering performance, a great performance,
and nothing seemed to affect him.
And he was, he had tremendous recovery in him,
because he was dedicated and he was focused.
And we Celts have been buggered for so long.
We really have, we've been treated so badly.
I mean, the Irish, don't get me started.
I mean, we were treated like shit,
I mean, and, and that's a thing that, it's in our DNA.
We carry this sense of defeat, we have to get over it.
But it's a tough one.
But that's what's so extraordinary about that,
that the Irish have learned,
that it's about how do I deal with control?
I'll get pissed, 'cause I don't wanna be
controlled by anybody, I'll just get pissed.
I'll, I'll drink.
And Richard had it, Peter had it.
Albert never had it, you know.
Donal McCann had it.
Donal McCann was one of the great actors,
really another great actor.
He had it, and it, it destroyed him.
And that's, that's a historical thing
that's happened again and again
and again and again and again.
And I think Peter was walking a tightrope
through all of that in order to be
the classical actor that I think he really wanted to be,
and he certainly was and certainly could be.
Because I find when I play it,
and I don't want to talk about it, really,
I am most moved in the play with the ghost.
Because the ghost is the key to that play.
I've often felt that the best actor in the company
ought play it, and the up-and-comer
ought to be Hamlet, you know.
And people like O'Toole, I think,
and Welles always brought to any kind of story,
any sort of genre story, including a revenge story,
including their dalliances with
something like "Hamlet", this complexity.
I was playing Laertes, he was Hamlet,
our relationship was purely professional to start with,
and then we, we became friends.
I was in awe of him, I admired him.
He had the pzazz that I didn't have.
I can't tell you what pleasure it was to me
to hear that from Peter O'Toole,
because people always talk about
what Hamlet is, as though he were a universal man,
or as though he were a figure in a 19th century novel.
I mean as a young actor, I'd never seen anything like it.
I just thought, this man is amazing.
And I remember seeing the "Hamlet",
the dress rehearsal of "Hamlet",
which was pretty chaotic actually.
Sure, I think he's perfectly capable of murder.
What he's not capable of is performing
a lead role in a revenge tragedy.
I remember when we rehearsed
the fight scene, for instance, in "Hamlet",
an Olympic swordsman teaching us this routine.
And then one day Peter said to me,
"Look, let's go up to the rehearsal room
and work out another routine,
because the routine he's given us isn't gutsy enough,
you know, it's not spectacular, not swashbuckling enough".
So we went up to the rehearsal room,
and worked out a much more swash and buckle.
But then we opened the show and it got reasonable reviews,
but not spectacularly good reviews.
And Peter, who'd been on the waggon all through rehearsals,
he'd been such a good boy,
because it wasn't hailed as the great, the great "Hamlet",
he went back on the booze a bit.
And so sometimes, not always,
but often, when we got to the duel at the end of the show,
he would wink at me across the stage,
which meant, "Fight for your life tonight, Sam,
because I'm not sticking to any routine".
And he used to swish at the front row, you know, and,
but it ended up with him getting hurt,
because I cut his finger and he had a scar on it for life.
And every time we met, he would do that to me to remind me.
I mean, after "Lawrence of Arabia",
he goes back on the stage to be in Brecht's "Baal",
he does "Ride a Cock Horse" on stage,
with Siân Phillips at the Piccadilly Theatre,
the David Mercer play.
So he constantly goes back to the stage after,
and I think he admired actors,
this is why he didn't like the Peter Halls
and the John Bartons of the Royal Shakespeare Company,
because that was the director's theatre running the company.
And with Keep Films he can well, a, keep all the money,
that's what what it was about, as a joke.
Jules Buck, Jules and Joyce Buck became
very important figures in our lives, obviously.
And we used to love to listen to Jules
talking about Hollywood.
He was, he knew the great days of Hollywood
and he'd worked there all his life.
One night we were there for dinner
at Jules and Joyce's lovely new house in Belgravia,
and I fell asleep, of course, on the couch, eventually,
round about four in the morning.
And I woke and they said,
"We formed a company, a film company, Keep Films".
But he can have greater influence
on which material will he pick.
This is why we have "The Ruling Class",
"Country Dance", "The Lion in Winter",
is all the choices of things that he wants to make.
We were four directors, George Buck and his wife
and myself and O'Toole.
He was an American producer.
You know, he was, he was a nice man.
They fell out in the end, but that was after I'd left.
[church bells tolling]
I remember Richard Burton, he was around all the time.
I remember having to step over his drunken corpse
to get my school bags in the morning,
creeping around with, the record player
would still be playing at the end.
Remember?
When they'd just go, tch-ch, tch-ch,
there'd be that sound and the air in the sitting room
would be full of smoke from the cigarettes
and dead people all over the floor, snoring.
Produced all of this, produced "Becket" as well.
He got Burton and the whole cast together.
Yeah, it was quite a remarkable,
well, he was a genius.
[dramatic music]
[Film Narrator] It happened in Canterbury, England,
eight centuries ago.
A story is ageless as time itself.
The immortal story of a man called Becket
who earned a king's most trusted friendship.
Business, My Lord.
[Film Narrator] Who shared his most intimate secrets.
[laughs] I must say, I adore my French possessions,
they're certainly worth recapturing.
Then I saw "Becket" just after "Lawrence of Arabia",
I hadn't, still hadn't met him.
And that was another extraordinary performance.
The end of it, of that film is extraordinary,
he and Burton together, wonderful performance, wonderful.
And I think that's what O'Toole did,
that he hit the ceiling, bam!
And he did it.
I would've gone to war
with all England's might behind me
and even against England's interest, to defend you, Thomas.
I would've given away my life, laughingly, for you.
Only I loved you and you didn't love me.
[dramatic music]
That's the difference.
And again, beautifully shot,
Peter Glenville, an actor's director.
And you can see Burton
holding back a lot in his performance.
Gentlemen, it is a supreme irony that the worldly Becket,
the profligate and libertine,
could find himself standing here at this moment.
The two of them going out there,
and he's sometimes again, almost electrifying in energy.
And then also the vulnerability.
Get out, the pair of you!
I'm actually bored with the sight of you!
'Cause I'm bored with my whole family, he can have you.
It was very gritty, it was very dark.
And all of the Hollywood tinsel, if I may,
no disrespect to Hollywood,
but it was polished away,
so we could see the real characters.
And I think Peter, on that film, said "No drinking".
Him and Burton had to come up to an agreement and say,
"Look, no drinking, let's get through this".
[dramatic music]
[Film Narrator] The story of Becket is recorded here,
right up to the last, brutal, bloody act.
[crowd shouting and cheering]
A curse and a blessing, the alcohol and all that stuff.
That's a big blessing and a curse as well, it'll kill you.
Or it'll make you survive and it gives you
the drive and the danger to move on,
gives you a sort of false courage.
And for a while, it works.
And then you get to a point when,
it'll take you down. [chuckles]
And I think that's what happens to many people,
you know, no one's perfect.
But what was extraordinary about him
was that he was that magic person.
He had that muscle inside him,
which was part of his drinking and his passion.
I would label Peter as a man who enjoyed having a drink.
He really liked it, and he had a good time drinking.
That's how I would label him.
I would never have, I wouldn't have said he was an alcoholic
because he could, I mean, he apparently could stop.
He did stop through most of "Lion in Winter"
because of what Kate had said to him.
There's a story of the, of the pub in Dublin
where he and Peter Finch buy the bar,
because the barman wants to close up and they say,
"Come on we've gotta stay, gotta drink more.
Well, how much?
We'll buy the bar off you", they said, [laughing]
buy it, and then the next day they rush over
to try and get that check back.
It was a generation that had grown up
at the very end of the war,
Peter used to say, he used to say, you know,
"As soon as the war ended,
we just thought, we are gonna have fun now!
And of course there was rationing for another 15 years,
but we could drink".
And he said, that's why our generation drank in public
and in pubs and in the open
because it was something to celebrate.
And it was a, a pub, an act.
He said, "Your generation, you go and you drink
in private bars and in private clubs and at home,
you're ashamed, aren't you?"
And was so right.
I mean, yeah, he, he'd say in the middle of the day,
"Oh, it was an easy day".
There were maybe not a lot of dialogue,
"Let's have a bottle of shampoo!"
He'd call champagne "shampoo",
so he'd call up for a bottle of,
but it wasn't because he was sitting there thinking,
"Oh God, I've gotta have a drink, I've gotta have a drink".
He could take it or leave it as he wanted to.
Boozing like that, and the thing was
that going out with Peter,
I would always finish up tiddly,
not drunk, but quite tiddly.
I think he was a tormented man.
Yeah, he was that.
I didn't know him that well in those post years.
But whenever I saw him, I remembered
what a great tempestuous man he was.
He had packed up drinking
because of an operation he'd had,
and he wasn't on, he stopped taking cocaine and stuff,
which I think had ruined most of his nose.
But he was quite a character.
Crazy, yeah.
And when he stopped drinking as much in the 70s,
he did become a bit of a cokehead,
which is quite surprising for his generation. [laughs]
Dear oh dear, as if he needed it, I mean,
good lord, but then who am I to speak?
So he didn't live like a rockstar in his private life,
but yes, in his public life he had to a bit, you know,
people would be too disappointed.
I think it's that he never really felt alive
unless he was on a tightrope.
And that's what made his theatre acting so exciting,
was that, this sense that it could fail at any minute,
that he was pushing it and that it was an adventure
and he wanted you all to be a part of that adventure.
And that's quite hard for other actors to cope with,
because how do they live up to that?
Peter O'Toole, going out with a friend of his,
having a few drinks and going to the theatre
and saying to him, "This should be interesting,
this is where I come on".
All right?
It's funny,
I'd heard that 50 years ago,
attributed to Wilfrid Lawson,
and some old actor said it could even have been Edmund Kean,
like in 1800s or something.
[energetic pop music]
So the agent gave me the script and said,
"There's a good part for you in this film".
O'Toole's manager sort of saw it and said,
"What is this?"
And I said, "Well, it's this film
they think I'd be right for,"
and I was to play Capucine's part in it.
And, and he said, "Could I have a look at it?"
And he had a look at it and I didn't hear
anything about it for a few weeks until I discovered
that O'Toole was going to make it
and Capucine was going to play her part. [laughs]
Love scene 2A, take 4,
Peter Sellers, Peter O'Toole, Capucine.
[clapper board clacks]
Action!
[people calling out]
Hello, good morning!
[Capucine grunts]
Hello!
[Capucine calls out]
Can't you knock?
Knock? But I'm in dire need!
So am I.
What do you think I am, human?
Bring it up at the next group analysis meeting.
Something like that.
Not, not now!
[door clicking]
[Director] Cut, cut!
Print it!
[gentle accordion music]
"How to Steal a Million".
Ah, tall and slender Audrey Hepburn, beautiful.
Tall and slender, beautiful Peter O'Toole.
And they're great together.
A heist.
A heist?
Oh, you mean a burglary?
What's the score, baby?
The Cellini Venus.
Working with Audrey Hepburn,
the chemistry is perfect, it's a gentle comedy
directed by William Wyler who did "Ben Hur".
Why not?
Henry?
Madam?
Did you ever love me?
No.
Good.
That will make this pleasanter.
[dramatic music]
And "Lion in Winter", "Lion in Winter"
it's a great, great movie,
and it's a wonderful performance.
And the chemistry between them both is just amazing.
Hepburn is wonderful and iconic, as is Peter.
And he, he just blossomed on film.
The thing about Peter was that on stage,
his personality was big, and theater-filling,
in films, with the camera able to get there,
he could pull it all back, all back,
and still be sensationally powerful.
I taught you prancing, lamb,
and lute and flute.
[laughs] That's marvellous.
It's absolutely me.
In "Lion in Winter", he didn't overact,
but he was big, I mean, he he filled that space.
I don't have to fight to win.
Take all your want, this county, that one,
you won't keep it long.
What kind of courage have you got?
One night on the dress room door,
knock on the door, it's Peter O'Toole. [laughs]
And he'd done a few little tipples,
and he was wearing his green cap, green Irish jacket,
and he said, "I want you to do a film test".
so I did the scene.
"It's alright", he said, "ah, do that improvisation
I've heard about".
So I gave some improvisation,
which had shocked people, I guess.
He said, "Right, you've got the part".
So they sent me the script,
and I read the script, and I thought,
"If I don't get this part, I'm gonna kill myself".
[chuckles] It was such a, such an extraordinary script.
Where have you been all night?
Making us an entourage.
What for?
We're off to Rome to see the Pope.
He's excommunicated you again?
No, he's going to set me free.
I'm having Eleanor annulled.
The nation will be shocked to learn
our marriage wasn't consummated.
And Peter was there, and I met him
and "How do you do?"
and all of that, nice man, et cetera.
He said, "Well let's do a little scene from "Country Dance".
He said, "Let's do a little of that".
I said, "Oh, that's gonna be easy,
because I'm doing it every night".
So we started into the scene,
and he said, "Stop, stop, stop!"
I thought, "Oh God, what's going on?"
He said, "I don't believe a fucking word you're saying".
And I, I froze.
I thought, "Oh God, I've blown this".
You know, there's no way I'm gonna get this part.
You mean it?
Shall I kneel?
It's not another trick?
The bridal party's drilling on the cobblestones.
I thought this, if I get this part,
this is gonna be the thrill of my life.
Would you like a formal declaration?
There, my finest angle, it's on all the coins.
He was really a force to be reckoned with.
And I really don't remember very much else
about anything except him.
And then with Katharine Hepburn,
who was a legend at that time as a film actress.
Execute him.
They're assassins, aren't they?
It was called presence.
And he always had that dangerous quality
and that's what made him the great star that he was.
If you want to know my plans, just to ask me.
Conquer China, sack the Vatican, or take the veil.
I'm not among the ones who give a damn.
It's theatricality is probably the thing
that drew it back from the Oscars.
You don't?
Dear God, the pleasure I still get
from goading you.
He was quite extraordinary.
Yes, he controlled that whole film.
And Spencer Tracy just died and Katharine Hepburn,
he got her out of retirement,
she didn't wanna work anymore.
So he cast her, he managed to cast her.
And I think he may have come in for some criticism,
but he encouraged us,
and that's what I will never forget about him.
Beautiful.
Don't know how I did it.
[curtain swishes]
No! It wasn't like that!
But it was.
But at the same time, you know,
in terms of O'Toole, Hepburn, of course,
and John Barry for the score,
brilliant score, that got the Oscar,
one of three of the five nominations.
So it did get recognised.
And she was pretty formidable as well,
but also, like O'Toole, a great egalitarian.
They knew the crew's names,
she was always wonderful with the crew.
And there's the family there,
Timothy Dalton, John Castle, Nigel Terry,
Katharine Hepburn and O'Toole.
and I had a little, little speech too,
an angry speech, and I did it and I had no fear.
The arrogance of youth.
I'll have the Aquitaine
and Alais and the crown.
I'll not give up one to get the other.
I won't trade off Alais or the
Aquitaine to that walking pustule!
And he came over, and he said, "That's it!"
He gave me such encouragement, he said
"That's, that's Richard the Lionheart".
What's wrong?
You're Richard, aren't you?
But you're Henry.
Kate would not have any visitors on the set at all
from outside unless they had something to do with the film,
because she said they're bringing
the wrong energy onto the set,
they're not part of the family.
She wouldn't have it.
Did your father sleep with me or didn't he?
But they both said, if you want to come on and watch,
well I did, I wanted to watch,
'cause I knew I could learn a lot.
Ask for something.
Eleanor, we're past it,
-years past. -Test me, name an act.
There isn't one!
About my fornication with your father.
Yes, there is, you can expire.
You first, old man.
I only hope I'm there to watch.
You're so afraid of dying, you're so scared of it.
And there was this one scene that
O'Toole has with Katharine Hepburn,
where she's goading him and teasing him
and taunting him and everything else,
and it's just driving him completely mad.
I loved your father's body, he was beautiful.
-It never happened. -I can see his body now,
shall I describe it?
-Eleanor, I hope you die! -His arms were rough,
-with scars here. -No!
I can feel his arms.
The scene was so intense,
I mean it was just, it was so raw.
And when it was over and there's "Cut!",
Peter turned around to side of the bed and vomited.
For my first film to be the film with him,
a great star like that was, you know,
that was a red letter day for me.
Oh, he hated working with me, he hated it.
If someone gave me a part,
so I got, I got a part at "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" because
I was in Paris when the student revolution was on.
And I got stranded with the director and he said,
"You know, you'd be perfect for the, the actress
in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips".
And I said, "Oh, would I?"
And he said, "Yes, come down to the studio".
So I went to the studio and he said,
"Yeah, yeah, you've got it", he said,
"that's it, you do it".
I said, "Wonderful!"
I went home and I didn't say anything to O'Toole,
'cause we were also the producers.
And then one day he found out and he was furious.
He said, "No, you've got to sack her".
They said, "But she's got a contact".
He said, "I don't care,
I don't want to work with her".
He didn't tell me that, but they said there's a problem.
I said, "Well look, if it's a problem, then let it go,
that's all right".
And they said, "No, no, it won't be that bad, just come".
So I went to work and he wouldn't speak to me
and he wouldn't rehearse with me.
Three times you've made me laugh.
And only this morning I really did think
I'd never laugh again.
I suppose it's your being a school master.
I fail to see what's so laughable about that.
Well,
Of course he's very tall, and I'm, I'm sort of petite,
but that didn't seem to bother him.
And he was lovely and generous
right from the first moment I met him.
He wasn't sort of like the great actor, or, you know,
I know when we were doing "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" in Italy,
he used to have every morning a Fernet Branca.
He had to have it every morning to cope with the hangover.
[upbeat music]
* Step on up, the question is how *
* I can feel it but you know I don't... *
She well, had been George Jamieson in the Navy,
and she was the most beautiful girl, I mean,
she was just, she was tall and statuesque, and gorgeous.
And she had a very deep voice and she dressed beautifully.
She became a top model and she worked at the club
of transvestites in Paris,
a very famous one where the girls were so beautiful.
And April turned up in Spain at one point,
and that was where she met Omar and O'Toole.
O'Toole knew she was George Jamieson.
April Ashley, one of the very first transgender,
but I think she was visiting the, she was in,
they were shooting "Lawrence of Arabia"
and Peter set her up with Omar Sharif,
and Omar Sharif got quite a long way with her,
was very entranced, and then when he discovered
he chased Peter with a knife
round and round the hotel, he was furious.
There's a place called Lebeaux.
We were drinking Vinyac.
[laughs] I dunno what the hell we were drinking,
we were drinking something.
Oh, I was with them, it was the three boys and Peter,
and we were all out and drinking,
and they were, they were drinking.
And he got into an argument with Nigel Stock,
and Nigel had been in the Chindits
in Malaya, during the war with Colonel Wingate.
He was stalwart, whatever he was, a military man.
But he was very proud of his army background,
'cause he'd seen a lot of action.
And O'Toole started needling him.
And Peter, frankly, you know, I don't think,
no surprise, secret, he was very left wing.
So, you know, army, all of that, that establishment stuff,
he didn't like any of it.
And plus, he was Irish.
And I can't remember the words he used,
but he used something that really got Nigel.
And he started to goad Nigel about Wingate.
And there was a big fight, a big threat of a fight.
I thought, "What are we into?"
But the two stuntmen that were with him, grabbed him back.
But O'Toole like to provoke, he was a provocateur,
he was, he loved to provoke you, get the best outta you.
Both O'Toole and Brando, what you learn at drama school,
the first thing, is to do animal impressions,
and learn to take away all the inhibitions we have,
to be naked as an actor and express, yeah.
And I think they had this innately,
almost childlike quality of curiosity about life.
Ruling class is astonishing film. I absolutely love that.
[O'Toole growls and screams]
[voice echoes]
"The Ruling Class" is an astonishing film,
I absolutely love that.
He plays an English aristocrat
who thinks he's Jesus Christ,
but I mean, really thinks it, he lives it.
And he's a beautiful Jesus,
I mean in a Holman Hunt, sort of auburn-haired kind of,
almost blonde, and just his family are brilliant as well.
And there's sexual depredation,
there's all kinds of weird things.
He allowed me to play and be free and to do things,
and I thought, "Oh my God, this is such a huge part,
this is going to be just lovely to work with".
Darling, I'm waiting.
[jaunty music]
[bicycle bell tinkles]
Why, it's ridiculous! It's not dignified!
Dignity has nothing to do with divinity.
O no, not here, not now!
A bike? You're mad.
Don't be frightened.
I'm not frightened.
I just didn't expect to see my husband
riding a three-wheeled bike on his wedding night.
It's the only way to travel.
I think Peter was used to getting perks
with his leading ladies, and I was with the director,
so I wasn't interested in, you know, part.
So I didn't, and we didn't.
And I think he went into a big snitch about it.
Come to me.
[romantic music]
Because he never looked at me in the eyes again.
Every scene that we did was on an angle
so we could pretend he was looking at me, but he wasn't.
Eventually I dragged Peter
to see "Ruling Class", the play.
I think it was at Cambridge theatre in London, to matinee.
And we went in, but Jules Buck and Peter O'Toole,
Jules Buck was Peter's agent, manager, producer,
father-confessor everything,
anyhow, and to matinee because he was already doing
"Country Dance" in Ireland with Susanna York and all that.
Anyhow, so he had only little time,
so we see the play.
And before the play finished, Peter leaned over,
I just bought this fucking play for you
to direct it and it's my gift to you.
And he basically gave me the film.
I think he's incredibly good in "The Ruling Class"
because again, he's dangerous.
He plays this wacky guy, I mean he was really,
I mean I saw the stage version of that
and it wasn't nearly as good as what Peter did.
And Peter also had great supporting actors,
and Harry Andrews, you know, I mean all of them were great.
He was, you know, he had incredible, he had great taste.
And Alistair Sim as the bishop,
is one of the funniest things you will ever see in history.
And it's no accident that he played these roles
that were very close to him,
slightly debauched, over the hill,
lunatics, in some cases.
And "Ruling Class" is a lunatic,
it's close to the edge of normal,
of, you know, normal behaviour.
You wouldn't want to live with that character.
Happy to watch them for 100 minutes,
but you wouldn't want to go on holiday with them.
I wanted to apologise
for not being at my son's christening,
[baby whimpers]
The little devil stole the show.
Must be sure before I make my first public appearance.
He never directed a question to me
and he just redid the scenes, you know, and he left.
Important to leave the right impression.
Ignoring me, he was making it very clear
that he hadn't got his toy, he wanted his plaything,
and he hadn't got one.
Re-re-re-re relax, don't!
Overall impression of superiority, and volatile,
farts! Whoredoms! Bloody network!
That performance in "The Ruling Class",
which I think was a very brave choice, you know,
it's a dangerous character, unpleasant character,
the tone of the movie goes all over the place.
But he does that fantastic
soft shoe shuffle dance number in there,
and then he turns into Jack the Ripper.
It's, you know, pretty extraordinary.
[laughs] Lover.
The sword of the Lord is filled with blood.
There was something, I don't know what it was about Peter,
but there was something where,
I'll say it, but it was something,
there was sometimes in the middle of performance,
he'd just say, "Fuck it" and went, "Okay, fuck it",
and then go off on something.
I mean, still like, electric as an actor,
but he had that sort of, kind of consistent inconsistency,
but he was unpredictable.
And that's of course what made him great,
'cause he was really very unpredictable.
Stanislavsky always said with actors,
they need plasticity, the great teacher said.
O'Toole had that quality, he's like treble-jointed.
He could bend his arms here and
make his eyes move there, and so forth.
[Crowd] * Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around, *
* Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around *
* I hear the word of the Lord! *
Now you also see the tension between
a fellow with great intelligence, great charisma,
who is, if not trapped, at least he's the bearer
of this weird body that doesn't seem to want it to do
all the things he wants to do.
So you sometimes see the rage about his bloody limbs
are not in the, in the way he wants them to, sort of work.
But for us, of course it's, it's fascinating.
And he, he seemed to begin to realise,
"Oh no, this is gold".
All of this, all of this mixture,
nobody's got this mixture.
[laughs] He's so impressive, Your Ladyship, isn't he?
For a few bob, we raced across the suspension bridge
into Leigh Woods, then back again over the suspension bridge
and then up into Clifton.
And we came across two professors,
Professor Joseph and Professor Murray,
Legends!
They would come and lecture at the school,
and they were crying their eyes out.
And O'Toole said, "What's the matter?" said O'Toole.
"We've just been to see Sir John Gielgud
in 'The Seven Ages of Man', he's amazing.
Yes, a phenomenal grasp of the verse, huh?
You must go and see it", and they walked off.
And O'Toole said to me, "It's amazing, isn't it?
They're so enamoured of Sir John, they failed to realise
that both you and I are bollock naked".
[O'Toole laughing]
I was invited to speak at Spike Milligan's Memorial
at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, off Trafalgar Square in London.
There was some, oh, Sykes and, and Eddie Izzard and,
and Peter with his son Lorcan.
Now bear in mind, this is a church,
and it's getting more and more crowded
as actual guests who are not speaking
turn up for the proper hour.
And he starts to tell me, he says,
"You know, there's such shit," he said, "such shit".
He said, "Did you know, who's that awful old fraud?
That dreadful man?
Tolkien! Tolkien!
You know him, he wanted me to play a fucking wizard.
A wizard!
I don't wanna play a fucking wizard.
And they said, you'll love the script.
I said, I won't love it 'cause I won't read it".
He said, "And one day this boy comes around on a motorbike
and he's got these scripts".
He said, "What are you doing?"
He said, "Well, I'm told that I have to give you
the scripts and and wait here,
and that when you've read them,
you'll so love them".
And Peter said,
"I'm not gonna fucking read them,
by the way, they're blue, why're are they on blue paper?"
And the boy biker said, "Well, I think it's
so you don't photocopy them."
"Photocopy them!
Why would I photocopy them?
Pompous cunt!"
And this, this was ringing around the church. [laughs]
And then he said, with a fabulous wave of the hand, he said,
"Anyway, I think they've offered it to Ian,
he'll be brilliant".
And I remember my father being like,
"This is all fucking gobbledygook
and I'm not gonna spend four years in fucking New Zealand,
and this is all nonsense", et cetera.
So it was, it was quite a funny moment.
Oh, Peter was born in Leeds
to Patrick and Constance in 1932.
Well, he wasn't, [laughs] I don't believe he was Irish,
I mean, I would, it never occurred to me
that he was actually Irish,
he just had an Irish name.
Well, because he was so frightfully British.
I mean, it was an accent he'd acquired.
I think his accent would've been made in RADA,
because it wasn't the RADA voice.
I mean, there's never been a RADA voice,
but they definitely did teach you to speak
standard English clearly and loudly.
He was very proud of the name O'Toole.
And he was very happy with the fact
that his father had been a bookmaker and was from Ireland.
I think it started when he became famous.
It didn't start before, he didn't, I mean,
everyone knew he came from Leeds
and it was when he made his name
in "The Long and the Short and the Tall"
and then "Lawrence of Arabia" happened.
But, you know, the minute he became successful,
obviously the press starts to make stories.
And somehow, I don't know how it became known
that he was born in Ireland.
My father never claimed to be born in Ireland
because he wasn't, he was born in Leeds,
as the records show.
He was born in Leeds in an Irish ghetto
to an Irish father in an immigrant city.
So he was Irish through and through.
Well, he certainly regarded himself as Irish, didn't he?
And he was, he was, he was Celtic of personality,
it would seem, a lover of the romance
and the Celtic twilight and the poets.
I have never revealed his life before he met me,
although he did slowly and painfully confide in me
bit by bit over the years.
And I've never been able to repeat any of that
because it's his business.
I don't think he understood it even.
But I imagine, like you, that it was a traumatic childhood.
I don't know if Siân feels the same,
but that's what I've certainly felt coming off him.
That there was this real conflict that,
that had never been resolved,
between his roots and his Anglophile element.
He had a bully of a father.
Yes, he did, he did.
His father said, "Jump off the mantelpiece".
And he had no trust, you know, he didn't know
what was gonna happen to him.
[mournful music]
He said, I've got to have a place in Ireland.
So, I was delighted.
And we found a place in Renvyle, on the clifftop,
and that fell through for some reason.
And we found a place somewhere else, and that fell through.
And then suddenly somebody said,
"There's a little place going on the Sky road".
And I didn't know what the Sky road was,
so we said we'd buy it.
So we bought it and then we went to look at it
and it was lovely.
It was a little cottage with a lot of land.
It's, I think, about 70 acres of land
and a little forest and a little beach.
And it was just lovely.
One of the earliest memories of mine is
being with him in Clifton and Connemara in Ireland
and him walking me to the sea,
and putting me into the cold water
and giving myself a wild experience of nature.
To actually walk out onto a stage
in front of 1,000 people, you have to be a bit crazy.
So the kind of wild guys, they weren't real,
except O'Toole, he was the real McCoy.
He was wild, he was dangerous.
He could fight, he had imagination.
So I did this film and when I arrived in Ireland,
Lee J Thompson directing, the film "Country Dance",
and when I got there, there's O'Toole in a ditch,
and he'd got manacles marks bleeding on each arm,
he'd been fighting the police all night
and they'd had him in cells.
When O'Toole saw me arrive on the set,
"Ah, ya big boy! God!"
He charged at me and I had to kind of do a cross-buttock,
bring him down, onto his back, and pin him down.
And Lee J Thompson thought, "What, who in hell
have I bloody employed?
He's worse than O'Toole!"
And we had a little clash over now and again, [laughs]
I was in a restaurant in Carcassonne,
we wrapping up the film, and he came in,
and he wanted to start trouble.
I mean, without making, the Welsh and all that,
"You devious Welshman!"
And I suddenly, I'd had a couple, I said "Come on!
Let's go outside and fight, right?"
Went outside the back, I was gonna deck him.
I said, "Give us a kiss". [laughs]
And before we started filming,
dear Boris Sagal and his lady companion,
well, Boris decided that they should have a readthrough,
just Peter O'Toole and Peter Strauss,
and they would do it calmly,
just go through the script and so on.
Peter O'Toole arrived absolutely dead punctual on time,
but Boris and his lady were a little alarmed
that he did not have a script with him.
And Boris said, "Peter, we we were going
to do a read through".
And Peter said, "Oh, do I have to read?"
And Boris said, "Well of course, unless you know it all".
And he said, "Well, I hope I do".
And I said, "Do you know it?"
He said, "Well, I hope so".
"Are you sure?"
He said, "Well, we'll see.
Shall we start?"
And he knew all the lines as they went along,
he knew them all.
And his memory was formidable.
His memory was absolutely terrifying.
Once he'd learned something, it was there forever.
And O'Toole said, "No, you've got to know your lines.
If you don't know your lines, you can't even start".
And he said to me once, "It's like learning to dance.
If you don't know the dance steps, you can't go".
Yes, you can improvise, but it all falls apart.
And I think what O'Toole did,
he would examine underneath each line.
And I learned that from him,
and to dig under the text,
dig under it to find new meanings in it.
He could remember poetry that he learned when he was five,
little pantomimes that he might have been in
at school when he was six, every single line.
And you cover the first line,
"Hail Alexander, when do we meet?"
And you say, "Hail Alexander, when do we meet?"
Hail Alexander, when do we meet?
Hail Alexander, when do we meet?"
And then you move it over the next line, and so on,
all through the script.
And they looked at him and said,
"Learn the whole script like that?"
"Yes", he said, "it is a very boring process,
but I mean, you have to know the lines, don't you?"
But there was, yes, there was a sort of
desperation in that sense, I think,
and I know Siân Phillips still speaks of him
with enormous love and affection.
And there was clearly, it was a marriage
that was impossible for her,
and on many occasions.
But you know, he was, as charismatic
as a figure within a family as he was,
as a figure on a stage or on a screen.
He was the love of my life and I was of his, I know.
And we had a wonderful relationship.
You know, it was difficult from time to time as well,
but it was, it was also wonderful.
* If I gave a thought to fascination *
* I would know it wasn't right to care *
* Logic doesn't seem to mind to die *
* I'm fascinated by a love affair. *
* Still my heart would benefit *
* From a little tenderness from time to time *
* But never mind, cause baby I'm a fool *
* Who thinks it's cool to fall in love *
He had been on a bender with,
with a journalist friend of ours,
and they came back and he said,
"I don't feel good".
And he went to bed and, and they diagnosed pancreatitis.
So it was the Royal Free in Hampstead, down the road,
that was able to take him in, an NHS hospital,
and they had all the equipment there,
they told me to expect the worst.
And there was nobody there,
my mother and the children were on holiday,
nobody knew that he was in there,
but the press gradually got hold of it
and they would ring up and, to check the obit.
And one day he opened his eyes and he was better.
And it was against all the odds.
And we went home and he went to bed
and the children came back, my mother came back from holiday
and everything went on as though
it had not happened, almost.
But I had nearly died myself
when I mourned him for four weeks.
I was heartbroken for four weeks.
And he said, "We must go on holiday".
So we went, we could only find, out of season,
one hotel in Italy.
We had the best, we were there for a month
and then out of season there was nobody else there.
And then we were there for another few weeks
'cause we liked it so much, it was wonderful.
And he recovered, and we came back to England,
and I thought, I really did think that our life had turned,
taken a turn for the better somehow,
that we, I felt I was different,
having lived through his death.
And I thought he must feel different as well.
But he didn't, he nearly died,
but he wasn't aware that he'd nearly died.
So to him, he was just better.
So he said, "No, no, no, we'll go on
just as we did before, I'll go away and I'll come back,
you come out with me and settle me in
and then fetch me back".
And I said, "No, I have to be,
I have to travel with you",
'cause he was frail still.
He said, "No, no, no, not at all".
So I'd realised actually that we'd reached
the end of the road.
After this idyllically happy time, this awful time,
and then this wonderful time.
And then it couldn't go back to square one.
So whenever the buzzer went,
it was always a bit of a tense moment.
So the buzzer went, "eeh", and it was,
"Could you please come down to the living room,
we need to have a family talk".
And I knew in my bones what it was.
I'd tried to help my sister by preparing her for it,
but she didn't want to hear it, really.
She was just that bit too young, I think, at the time.
And I said, "But I want to leave,
I want to start my life again".
I don't know [laughs] about the speech
having been written for my mother,
but she did announce that she was leaving.
And she said, "Does anybody have anything to say?"
And of course, Mamgee was there, my, our grandmother.
And she said, "I have plenty to say
and I am not going to say it".
[traffic buzzing]
It is one of the more mighty and vehement
and sublime vehicles
that Shakespeare wrote.
I dragged him onto the stage.
Silence, shock, couldn't believe it.
Terrible. Horror.
They thought they were being conned.
It was sad really, because
he should have been, could have been,
ought to have been a wonderful Macbeth,
but something went wrong, and I think, dare I say it?
I think it was the drink, you know,
there was always drink in the dressing room,
and so when Peter came on,
he thought he was going at the speed of light,
but actually he was going so slowly that "Macbeth",
which is a fairly short play, became endless.
And that's what the critics picked up on.
Speak if your can.
What are you?
All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee,
-Thane of Glamis! -All hail Macbeth,
hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!
All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!
[dramatic music]
On the front page of "The Sun" newspaper,
the most popular tabloid,
the least associated with Shakespeare
of any of our national newspapers,
on the front page the next day the headline was, "Macflop".
On the front page of "The Sun".
If chance will have me king,
why, chance may crown me, without my stir.
And he completed the performance,
which lasts for probably six hours.
And I stayed on the stage after I was dead, as Banquo,
holding onto him, waiting for him to die.
Well, he didn't die.
And he completed the performance, he completed the tour,
he saw the job through.
I said to my dad, the coal miner, my dad,
I have never seen courage like that.
Whatever he did worked,
the only time it didn't work was the "Macbeth".
And I think that was because he wasn't in control.
He was half Scots, half Irish.
So there was a, there was a unity and a conflict
at the same time, you know,
and I think that was what was really,
that was really what his skill was.
But he also had this sort of very,
he could do the British thing very well.
He could do it much better than any of the others.
He could do it much better than Albert,
much better than Tom or Alan,
or even Richard.
He could do that.
Rugby may make more row,
but we'll row, row, row forever,
steady from stroke to bow,
and nothing in life will sever the chain
that is round us now.
O'Toole, in this total way, somehow understands
that it's about a whole period in Hollywood filmmaking,
that that performance is embodying,
as well as a kind of down and dirty
sort of comic ruthlessness about what gets a laugh.
He had a great comic skill as well,
he was a very, his timing was pretty amazing at times.
And that was one of the things that was kind of,
again, compelling about him, really.
* Others may fill our places *
* Dressed in the old light blue *
* We'll recollect our races. *
Winning an Oscar is very much about
what campaign are you running in Hollywood to win this?
And what interviews are you doing, what chat shows?
I don't think he cared about that.
I went to the Oscars twice with him,
once when he was nominated for "Venus",
I think it was 2007, and the other time in 2004
when he was nominated for his, not nominated,
he was given his Lifetime Achievement Award,
which he highly resented to begin with,
and actually turned it down to the Academy
and said, "You know, you're retiring me.
I don't want any of this at all".
And they said, "Well, it's a miscommunication.
We really want you to accept this award".
And after a little bit of debate,
he decided to go for it.
He hated all that, he he called the Oscars,
"The dog and pony show".
And he didn't want to go and he certainly didn't want
an honorary Oscar, which is what he got.
And he objected to that, he wanted to win one outright.
you want to have an Oscar, you have to go to LA,
and you have to do a lot of publicity work,
a lot, you have to campaign for it, you know,
it takes months out of your life.
And he was never prepared to do that.
He wouldn't go, he never went to Hollywood.
And seeing him in "Jeffrey Bernard",
on stage this 16 times, couldn't take my eyes off him,
because you need to follow every move.
Has he forgotten his line now?
Is he just wobbling or no, no, no.
This one man holds the entire 1,100 audience
at the Old Vic in a vice.
But I saw "Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell" many times.
That was fantastic.
Some, I mean really fantastic.
Some people say the greatest comic performance
of the 20th century, and I'd be inclined to agree.
It really was spectacular.
I had highlights as well.
I remember going to the theatre one night
and Jeff was actually there, Jeffrey,
he was still alive at the time
and he was absolutely drunk out of his mind,
and he was at the bar refusing to leave.
And the bar staff didn't know what to do
'cause the curtain was going up.
And so I was telling my dad about this
and he said, "Oh, what they should have
just put a velvet rope around him and charged tickets".
[Woman] Couldn't you have telephoned?
[Man] Now, if I put you in a cab,
will you promise not to fall out the other door?
[Woman] You only get out of life what you put into it.
[Man] Fancy a spot of cat racing, Jeff?
You're a mean, alcoholic diabetic prick.
And?
You make me sick!
But you're never snide
and you never hurt and you wouldn't wanna win
on a doctored beast, and anyway,
the least of your pleasures resides in paltry measures.
So God, great joker God, please guard this great Bernard,
let him be known for the prince of men he is.
A master, at taking out of himself, and us, the piss.
[audience clapping]
He knew this was the last,
this was the one of the greatest parts
you could ever have in theatre.
And he knew it was his.
The people who'd taken over from him knew it was his.
They couldn't manage it.
It was Peter's and lots of people have played it since.
But nah, it was Peter's part and he knew it.
And I think taking it to the old Vic
must have been balm to the soul.
And it was an unofficial farewell to
theatre that he really loved.
I don't have the right to be calling him O'Toole,
except he is a legend, but I saw him in
"Jeffrey Barnard is Unwell",
the story of a Soho literary bohemian drunk
of brilliance and comic kind of delight.
[ironing board clunks]
[audience laugh]
People are always surprised to learn
that I'm a domestic animal.
[audience laughs]
Peter did not have his script with him.
He already knew it by heart.
It was a huge part, he had it down,
I think he had in three weeks' rehearsal,
he maybe had two prompts.
He knew exactly what he was doing
and he spent rehearsals doing something
I've never seen anyone doing.
He was working out, he had to do a lot of
lighting of cigarettes,
lot of smoking of them, stubbing them out.
He had two pour soda into his glass
and find tomato ketchup, and the vodka,
he had to stagger about the stage,
he had to look in things, and he worked everything out,
even to, when do I take a breath in.
Comic timing, including working this,
this now this sort of, almost like a mime's body,
a long stringy Marcel Marceau
of slightly gangly stuff that he could do.
And he became the master of it.
Who the hell do they think washes my glass up
every morning if there's no one else to do it?
[audience laughs]
I cook.
I sow, I reap.
[ironing board clatters]
And there's an egg trick,
there's a trick, a magic trick in the show,
which he did, two runs of it,
that went on forever, months and months and months.
I think the egg trick only went wrong once.
And the egg trick is a strange one, I don't understand,
but it involves a shoe, a biscuit tin lid,
a pint mug, a matchbox and an egg.
You need a good and steady hand, Keith said.
[audience laughs]
Here goes.
One, two.
[shoe cracks]
[audience applauds]
And the idea is you tap with the heel of your shoe,
some bit of this when it's all been set up in a tower
and the egg plops into the glass of water
when you've done it right,
Peter did it right every single night.
Now, I once went to an evening meeting at Windsor,
got absolutely asshole, lost every penny in my pocket
and no idea how to get back to London after the last race.
I was practically the only person left on the racetrack.
And as I stood desolate in the car park,
I suddenly saw this beautiful white Rolls Royce
heading for the gate.
I stood in its path and signalled it to stop.
The owner, suave as any film star said,
Yes, what can I do for you?
I said,
He said, I'm pissed and potless,
please take me to the Dorchester immediately
and buy me a drink.
[audience laughs]
I'd never seen him before, and I've never seen him since,
but he was absolutely charming,
he recognised someone who'd done their bollocks
and was feeling thirsty.
[audience laughs]
His last night, well we were all in tears,
and the audience were, as always, on their feet.
And he turned around and he went,
having taken the curtain call,
he went, and Charlie came on with a tray of glasses,
with champagne, and Peter then proceeded to make a speech.
[audience clapping]
[audience cheering]
And spoke about each one of us and what we had contributed
and how, and how well he thought of us,
I mean, and, and basically wished us luck.
And it was, he gave us a handover like that,
which was so wonderful.
Last week I had an erection.
[audience laughs]
I was so amazed.
I took its photograph.
[audience laughs]
Life after death!
What more do you want?
Go on, Norman!
[audience applauds]
As O'Toole himself described it, at the end,
he said he has been fortunate enough
to have a standing ovation.
But he called this, and I was there when it happened,
a jumping ovation.
He was so fantastic that people didn't just stand up,
when the lights went out at the end,
the whole audience jumped up
because they knew they'd seen something which was,
I would say, sublime.
Oh, I was so proud of him.
I mean, he was just brilliant.
He was marvellous.
And his physical dexterity, you know,
he was, he was a wonderful Falseur, apart from anything,
he could do anything.
And his elegance and his comic effects, and he could,
I just loved everything he did, it was wonderful.
She doesn't belong here, she never did.
I find it most odd.
Odd?
What she says about you, despite your hatred towards me.
Which is?
Nothing.
He made a dried eyed farewell to acting.
But as far as I know, I mean,
there were films coming out with Peter O'Toole,
even after his death that, you know,
so it didn't look like he stopped,
and I wondered, could he ever stop?
[majestic music]
Katherine speaks the truth.
[audience clapping]
I thought, well, see if I can get a script together,
and do this film from some documents,
an ancient diary they had discovered,
and we'd had for years.
To cut a long story short,
the diary seemed to be quite important
and seemed, allegedly, was written by
St. Katherine or Katherine of Sinai.
[stately music]
And so I formed a script from there,
and on a gamble sent it to every actor I could.
Joss Acklin, Peter O'Toole, Steven Burkoff,
Edward Fox, and so on, Brian Blessed and Freddy Jones,
the great, great actors.
And it was just a, a gamble.
And then all the actors came back and said an immediate yes,
which I didn't have the budget for,
and Peter was the last to come back.
Now I'd just assumed that he wouldn't do it
because he'd retired.
And on the notion that he wouldn't do it,
I then sent the script to Herbert Lom,
and said, "Please do this, this film".
And then Peter suddenly, I think it was a phone call
to the studio and it was Peter,
and I said, "Oh, I'm really sorry Peter,
I just assumed you wouldn't be interested,
and I gave the part away".
And then another call came and it was Peter,
and he said, "Well, write me a fucking part".
And I, that was it, so I did.
Peter visits this girl in the prison cell,
and I think it's a lovely performance.
Beautiful, harmless child.
I knew then damnation would follow,
having lived most of my pitiful existence by extremes,
which would sicken the learned heart.
He's a a Roman senator,
he's embarrassed by the wealth that he's lived under.
And I now take my place alongside other greedy,
pitiful souls in Maxentius's great hall of shame.
The absolute embarrassments on his face
with this young girl, he doesn't know
how to approach this young girl.
I wrote you a cowardly letter.
Should you have refused to see me?
Do you wonder where the dead and buried go?
Does it fear you to know nothing of all whereabouts
and including all spirits?
Their ultimate distinction?
And for me it's a very, very moving scene.
Feel more at ease,
in this reckoning of eventual death.
I want to go to the pictures to see something
I don't see in the rest of my life.
Well, I ain't seen Pete O'Toole at the end of my street,
and I'm not seeing him on the telly, I'm seeing him
60 foot across at the Empire Leicester Square,
in parts that that unusual poetic sensibility,
which you know is there,
you read his autobiography
and it's neo- Joyce-ean stream of consciousness that is,
and that completely infuses what you see on screen,
you know, you feel it's a Yates-ean, Joyce-ean,
Wilde-ean kind of Irish braggadaccio,
which is unique.
[Woman] * I wish I was *
* In Carrickfergus *
* Only for nights in Ballygrand *
* I would swim over *
* The deepest ocean *
* My love to find *
* But the sea is wide *
* And I can't swim over *
* I need a light *
* The wings to fly *
* I wish I knew *
* The handsome boatman *
* To ferry me over *
* To my love then die *
* Ah, but in Kilkenny *
* It is reported *
* They have marble stones there *
* That's black as ink *
* With gold and silver *
* I did support her *
* But I'll sing no more *
* Till I get a drink *
[nostalgic music fades]