Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (20 page)

Another great actor with a fondness for the bottle was Robert Newton, who was a wonderful Bill Sikes in
Oliver Twist
as well as an unforgettable Long John Silver in
Treasure Island
. Legend has it he once walked the length of the corridors at Denham Studios with his honourable member for Wapping hanging out while under the influence.

Newton had an unfortunate way about him when sloshed, and while making a film with Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle he upset them in a way only Newton could. Later that day he got a call from his agent saying that unless he turned up the next morning sober, on time and apologized, he’d be fired.

At 8.30 a.m., Wilcox and Neagle appeared on set and Newton was nowhere to be seen, but suddenly they heard him coming down from the gantry, rather unsteadily, on a ladder.

‘I am told that I have to apologize to you both for my unseemly behaviour yesterday, well I’d love to but am afraid I cannot.’

With that he walked off the set and out of the picture.

I remember one time when I was in LA with my then wife, Dot Squires, Trevor Howard phoned from the Beverly Hills Hotel and said he was with Newton.

‘Bobby, come here,’ said Trevor. ‘I want you to speak to Dorothy Squires, a great artist!’

Bobby came on the phone and slurred, ‘Madam, I admire all your paintings.’

There’s one more story about Bobby Newton that always makes me smile. He was appearing in a play in London’s West End and towards the end of the run one Saturday night the curtains didn’t rise. The audience was getting more than a little restless when suddenly there was a commotion behind the curtain and a pair of shoes appeared at the base. The audience went quiet, the curtain parted and Bob’s face appeared through it.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen!’ cried the star. ‘The reason this curtain hasn’t risen is because the stage manager has the fucking impertinence to suggest that I am pissed!’

One actor I’ve always admired – in fact I’ve always been a little envious of – is Peter O’Toole, as I would have dearly loved to have played Lawrence of Arabia. I wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good as him mind, and I did get to know him later.

Michael Caine once told me a story of when he was cast to understudy O’Toole in the play
The Long and the Short
and the Tall
at the Royal Court Theatre, in London. One Saturday night after the show O’Toole invited him to a restaurant. Eating a plate of egg and chips was the last thing Michael says he remembered, before he woke up in broad daylight in a strange flat.

‘What time is it?’ he asked O’Toole, holding his aching head in his hands.

‘Never mind what time it is! What fucking
day
is it?’ came the reply from a similarly slumped O’Toole.

It turned out to be five o’clock on Monday afternoon – and the curtain was set to go up at eight. They rushed to the theatre, where the stage manager told them the restaurant owner had been in and had banned them from his establishment – for life. Michael was about to ask what they’d done when O’Toole whispered, ‘Never ask what you did. It’s better not to know ...’

O’Toole was legendary for his boozing and that probably wasn’t helped when in his first film,
Kidnapped
, he starred alongside Australian actor Peter Finch – an even mightier drinker, if that were possible.

Shooting in Ireland, they were refused a drink because it was after closing time, so the stars decided to buy the pub and wrote out a cheque there and then. After an all-night drinking session, and having sobered up a little, they later rushed back to the pub and were mightily relieved the landlord hadn’t cashed the cheque.

By all accounts O’Toole and Finchie remained friends
with the publican and when he died his wife invited them to his funeral. Both men sobbed loudly at the graveside, and an overcome Finchie eventually had to turn away ... only for his face to change from one of sadness to one of confusion as he realized they were at the wrong funeral – their friend was being buried 100 yards away!

I always admired Peter O’Toole; legendary boozer he may have been but he was also a legend in front of the camera and a good dancer by the looks of things.

Richard Harris had a fairly well-earned reputation as a hell-raiser – he certainly lived life to the maximum, that’s for sure. I first became aware of his ‘personality’ when I was making
The Saint
at Elstree. Harris was over at Pinewood shooting a film called
The Heroes of Telemark
with Kirk Douglas.

The director, Anthony Mann, had originally been signed to direct
Spartacus
some years earlier but he and Kirk Douglas didn’t get on, and so Mann was replaced by Stanley Kubrick. Mann had also previously worked with Richard Harris and they didn’t get along too well either, so bringing them all together wasn’t perhaps the best of ideas.

Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris were very jealous of each other and were constantly arguing about who the ‘star’ was. I remember my friend, publicist John Willis, telling me that their demands became increasingly ridiculous – to the point of seriously affecting the production. For instance, Harris rolled up at the studio one day with a tape measure, measured Douglas’s trailer and then announced he was going home – apparently it was a few inches bigger than his – leaving the cast and crew with nothing to do until a longer trailer was found and brought to the studio. On another occasion, Kirk Douglas fired his chauffeur after an argument and Richard Harris immediately turned round and hired him.

Doris Spriggs – who went on to become my personal assistant for twenty-nine years – worked on
Heroes
in the production department and told me that they were nearly run out of town when they were filming on location in Norway at a lovely old Norwegian church. The church had survived the worst ravages of World War II, only to be burned to the ground by the English film crew when an arc light overheated after being left on overnight. Compounding matters further, all the extras marched through the town dressed in full Nazi uniform thinking nothing of the effect it might have on the elderly inhabitants, who were convinced the Reich had risen once more.

Things got worse between the two stars when they moved on location to Rome, and one evening attended a film premiere there. Earlier in the day, the British papers ran a story about all the childish behaviour and petty rivalry between them, and Harris was understandably furious. When he saw John Willis in the foyer of the cinema, he pushed everyone else out of the way and demanded to know who leaked the story. John said nothing so Harris threatened to hit him, and would have done had they not been pulled apart.

But then, ironically, on the last day of shooting back at Pinewood, both Douglas and Harris were in the corridor walking towards each other – a bit like the scene from
High Noon
– and John Willis found himself right in between them. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ John said to me. ‘As they met, they shook each other’s hands like they were old friends and walked off to their dressing rooms!’

In the late 1960s, Richard Harris divorced his wife Elizabeth, and afterwards Elizabeth sent him a bird in a silver cage, with the message, ‘Here’s one bird that will
never get away.’ In turn, he sent her an antique cowbell saying: ‘Wherever you go, I’ll now be able to hear you.’

I always try to help out an old friend where I can, and such was the occasion when Rex Harrison called me one day to ask a favour. Rex was starring in a play in Oxford in 1969 and couldn’t therefore attend the London premiere of
Staircase
– a film he had made with Richard Burton – so he asked if I would escort his then wife, Rachel Roberts. I agreed and duly arrived at the Connaught Hotel, where she was staying, and called up to her room to say I was ready with the car.

‘Come up to the room, darling,’ said Rachel.

Conscious of time, I went upstairs and found the door open, and there inside stood Rachel in her petticoat – one breast hanging below her brassiere and the other above – with another lady in the room, sipping champagne.

‘Come in and have a drink, darling!’

‘No, no, Rachel, I’ll wait in the bar,’ I said, making a hasty escape from what I thought might turn into a sticky situation. After what seemed like an age, she came down, I leapt up and bounded across to the door.

‘Time for another drink?’ she asked.

‘We really ought to go, Rachel.’

‘Nonsense! There’s always time for another drink, darling,’ she said, dragging me back to the bar.

Eventually we got away from the hotel and drove to the premiere. When we pulled into Haymarket, where the premiere was being held, a whole hoard of photographers converged around the car as I opened the door for Rachel to step out.

Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts – there were always fireworks when these two were involved.

‘Here, get a picture of my boyfriend!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll make you famous, Roger!’

I rather hurriedly pushed my inebriated friend into the theatre, just as she screamed, in her strong Welsh lilt, ‘Are they ’ere?’ She wasn’t referring to the Royal party, which, in this case, was Princess Margaret, but rather to the Burtons – Richard and Elizabeth were due to attend.

‘No,’ I said, as I hushed her from screaming further and pushed her through to our seats in the dress circle. After a few minutes, Richard and Elizabeth arrived and the Grenadier Guards started playing music. At almost the same moment, Princess Margaret arrived at her seat and, before I could restrain her, Rachel shouted, ‘I’ve got to say hello to my Richard!’ and, with that, clambered over everybody, including Her Royal Highness, much to Burton’s great embarrassment.