Remembering Peter O'Toole, Part II: Decline and Renewal

Mad, bad and dangerous to know

Part One

The 1970s saw Peter O'Toole's career unraveling. Now one of the world's biggest stars, O'Toole could choose his parts - yet his film roles, at least, were generally forgettable and unrewarding. During this time, he became better known as a raucous hell raiser than an actor.

The decade started, at least, on a high note with Peter Medak's The Ruling Class (1972). Peter Barnes' surreal play ruthlessly satirizes Britain's political establishment. O'Toole plays Jack, 14th Earl of Gurney, who succeeds after his father dies in an embarrassing accident. Jack is a schizophrenic who thinks he's Jesus Christ, and his relatives scheme to either cure or disinherit him. They succeed all too well: Jack goes from a loopy, loving Christ figure to a very proper English aristocrat indeed - Jack the Ripper.

O'Toole had seen Barnes' play during its 1968 stage run and quickly bought the film rights. Director Peter Medak badly wanted to adapt it, but O'Toole needed some persuading. By Medak's account, he won the star over by joining him on an epic pub crawl through London. O'Toole showed his devotion to the project by forfeiting his entire salary, choosing instead an oversized paycheck for Man of La Mancha.

The Ruling Class rivals Lawrence as O'Toole's best performance. Barnes' surreal set pieces force O'Toole to give an exceedingly physical performance: belting out Verdi, dancing a cakewalk, hopping on and off a makeshift crucifix, "levitating" a bench. O'Toole does even better burbling absurd aphorisms, as when he declares his love for Grace Shelley "from the bottom of my soul to the tip of my penis." There's no room for subtlety here; O'Toole devours scenery in a hammy, outsized, almost operatic performance. And it's utterly glorious.

O'Toole flawlessly transitions to psychotic killer in the second half. Defeated by the "Electric Christ" and browbeaten by his peers, he takes their perorations about greed, hunting and sexual licentiousness to their illogical conclusion. Jack's rants about capital punishment and fornication strike listeners as very sound indeed - though to us, he's ranting just as he'd done before, psychoses welling up from an inner pool of madness. O'Toole walks a careful tightrope in these scenes between absurd caricature and bone-chilling psychopath. And sometimes he's both at once.

Sadly, The Ruling Class marks a bright spot in a dismal period. Murphy's War (1971) is another trip to the Lawrence/Lord Jim obsessed hero well, and not a particularly rewarding one. Man of La Mancha (1972) was a colossal flop, proving O'Toole out of his depth in musicals. Even diehard fans are better off forgetting Rosebud (1975) and the notorious Caligula (1979). ("What is a knight of the realm doing in a porno movie?" he asked John Gielgud.) Even a rare worthwhile role, like his fine Lord Chelmsford in Zulu Dawn (1979), drew little attention.

Besides The Ruling Class, O'Toole's best role from this period is Clive Donner's made-for-TV Rogue Male (1976). Based on Geoffrey Householder's 1939 novel (which earlier inspired Fritz Lang's Man Hunt), O'Toole plays an English aristocrat obsessed with assassinating Adolf Hitler - dovetailing nicely with O'Toole's own fascination with the Nazi dictator. Not that many have seen it: Rogue Male spent years languishing in obscurity, remaining hard to see even today.

O'Toole gained more notoriety for uncouth off-screen behavior: marathon benders, showing up drunk on sets, sniping at costars and directors. One notorious incident occurred during the filming of Rosebud. As a prank, Kenneth Tynan sent O'Toole a letter claiming the IRA planned to blow up his hotel. Tynan's joke was in decidedly bad taste, which doesn't excuse his victim's reaction. O'Toole tracked Tynan down and, along with two toughs, beat the critic within an inch of his life.

Such antics brought more than bad publicity. O'Toole discovered that he suffered from diabetes and stomach cancer, losing his pancreas and part of his stomach. In 1979, his marriage to Sian Phillips dissolved in considerable acrimony and mutual infidelity. And an increasing number of producers, viewing O'Toole as an unstable drunk and "box office poison," refused to employ him. Robert Sellers notes that by the late '70s "O'Toole was fast becoming a parody of himself: a caricature faded film star."

Nadir: O'Toole in Caligula

At this point, O'Toole could have followed peers Richard Burton and Oliver Reed into ignominy, accepting roles in awful films for money. But O'Toole successfully reinvented himself. Restricted by health if nothing else, he restricted his drinking to discreet tippling rather than roaring benders. His booze-ravaged voice, once a melodic lilt, settled into a sumptuous velvet growl. Best of all, O'Toole again started receiving roles worthy of his talent.

Richard Rush gave O'Toole his fifth Oscar nomination with the The Stunt Man (1980). Rush lobbied for O'Toole to play director Eli Ross, even when the studio insisted on a more bankable star. "The character of the director was of course one that I immediately projected onto...and I desperately wanted O'Toole to play it," Rush said later. O'Toole needed little convincing; he'd enjoyed Rush's Freebie and the Bean (1974) and was eager to work with him. After reading the script, O'Toole reportedly told Rush "Unless you let me do your film, I will kill you."

O'Toole's Eli Cross amalgamates every obsessed director O'Toole ever worked with, David Lean particularly. He torments Steve Railsback's fugitive-turned-stuntman with megalomaniac rants ("If God could do the things we do, he'd be a happy man!") and murderous stunts. Completely obsessed by his work, Cross views harboring a fugitive as a minor inconvenience if it helps finish his film. He surveys the set from a camera crane, an enigmatic creator comfortable in his absolute power of imagination. And pity the lowly assistant who tampers in his domain...

My Favorite Year (1982) proves an even better showcase. Compared to Stunt Man's acid satire it's a gentle, bathetic work, longing for the magic that only movies can bring. Richard Benjamin's film focuses on a '50s TV show modeled on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. O'Toole plays washed-up matinee idol Alan Swann, ostensibly based on Errol Flynn, but drawing heavily on O'Toole himself. It's hard to avoid autobiographical assumptions when Benjamin uses clips from Lord Jim and The Great Catherine as Swann's own vehicles.

Alan Swann became O'Toole's signature role as much as Lawrence or Henry II. Compared to Jack and Eli Cross he's more straightforwardly comic. O'Toole has great fun whether boozing in a hotel room, lashing out at producers or ferrying Mark Linn-Baker's frazzled young producer around New York. He gets big laughs showing off something that's "for ladies only" and his frantic breakdown before the final show. "I'm not an actor - I'm a movie star!" he bellows in the movie's most famous scene.

As in Lawrence, O'Toole matches flamboyance with measured gestures. One beautiful scene has Swann mournfully watching his daughter play; his wordless stare speaks volumes. Regret and self-loathing underpin the silly hijinks. Swann's screen image is a lie he can't escape - he's trapped by an idea of being a hero, even as he makes no pretense as such. Hence his pained reaction to Linn-Baker's last act scorn, or his gallant dance with an aged fan. Hence, also, his decision to go on with the show, routing the goons menacing Joseph Bologna's show boss. Year closes on the perfect image of Swann celebrating his victory: fantasy made flesh, if only for one glorious moment.

O'Toole complemented these cinematic triumphs with stage and small screen roles. He won accolades as a Roman General in ABC's miniseries Masada and voiced Sherlock Holmes in a popular animated series. While his 1980 Macbeth earned negative notices (one critic sniffed "he delivers every line...as if addressing an audience of deaf Eskimos"), O'Toole successfully reprised his role as Tanner in Man and Superman and made a superb Henry Higgins in a 1987 Pygmalion. In 1989 he starred in Keith Waterhouse's Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, playing a famous Spectator columnist. It became O'Toole's best stage role since Shylock: he'd reprise it in 1999 and star in a made-for-TV version.

Another standout role from this period is Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987). O'Toole's role is relatively minor: as Pu Yi's tutor Reginald Johnson, he tries to inject perspective and sanity into the monarch's sheltered life. It marks a graceful transition from star to character actor, able to contribute to films without dominating it. This quiet but powerful performance helped establish O'Toole as an elder statesman of cinema.

O'Toole, once a tyro who often feuded incessantly with fellow actors, had evidently mellowed with age. Richard Rush declared O'Toole "an absolute dream to work with. You couldn't ask for a more perfect working companion." Young actors especially warmed to O'Toole. Vincent Spano, O'Toole's costar in Creator (1985), recounts that O'Toole would spend hours tell[ing him] all these great stories about his childhood, growing up in Ireland."

By the end of the '80s, O'Toole recouped his reputation as one of the greatest working actors. Lawrence of Arabia's 1989 restoration and re-release further cemented his critical standing. Now O'Toole could look forward to his autumn years with hope rather than trepidation.

Continue to Part Three