R.I.P. Peter O’Toole
The British actor Peter O’Toole has died at the age of 81.
(Eighty-one is starting to seem very young to me.)
O’Toole packed a heap of living—and carousing—into one life. He was an always-fascinating and unique actor. Eyes of startling blue, with a penetrating intelligence and sense of playfulness. You always sensed there was much more going on there than could be expressed in mere words. I agree with Mark Steyn that O’Toole was “one of the few actors I was happy to watch in any role.”
R.I.P.
O’Toole’s My Favorite Year ranks up there as one of my all-time favorite movies (right alongside Rosalind Russell’s Auntie Mame)
I agree, 81 is not old. As far as I am concerned no one is old.
Hmm … something ate my first comment.
Peter O’Toole also had a bit part in a Robin Williams movie – Club Paradise, which was only mediocrely funny, but the handful of scenes that Robin Williams and Peter O’Toole did together were hysterical. I’d recommend fast-forwarding through all the rest of the movie and just watching those scenes.
And My Favorite Year is one of my all-time favorites as well. He was fantastic in it, and funny as hell.
O’Toole’s death stirs some emotions for me. Since I am three months shy of 81, it is a reminder that my time is also running out.
I always enjoyed his films, but also enjoyed the tales of his carousing – as in those days I was a bit of a carouser myself. Both he and Richard Burton were somewhat inspirational figures for me on that score. Maybe it assuaged my guilt somewhat to know these talented men were also celebrated for their fondness for partying.
Remembering him and the movies that were made in the 60s, 70s, and 80s (when I actually saw quite a few of them) brings a sense of melancholia. Why the heck can’t they make movies like those anymore? Yes, I know it’s a different time, and movies are mostly aimed at the under 40 crowd. But why doesn’t Hollyweird understand that they could have a positive influence on society if they made pictures that gave us deeper insights into the human condition and motivated people to be better than they are. Today’s movies, IMHO, are chaotic mixes of frenetic action meant to stir up our senses of fear, envy, and lust. Hardly uplifting or enlightening.
May Peter O’Toole, actor, carouser, and raconteur extraordinaire, RIP.
J.J.,
Premature congratulations on 81 and may you see many many more. Keep a good thought. I know of several individuals who are in their mid-90s and several of them are still capable of driving safely.
“one of the few actors I was happy to watch in any role.”
Oh so true – and not something that could be said of many actors; so, it is quite a compliment.
I agree with T – “My Favorite Year” was wonderful. It offered an entertaining window into live television variety shows of the fifties like Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows”.
Woody Allen’s “Radio Days” provides the same sort of window into live radio variety and game shows in the forties.
Both very funny with very poignant moments delivered by great actors. They would make a good Netflix double bill
T: “I know of several individuals who are in their mid-90s and several of them are still capable of driving safely.”
‘Tis a fate to be wished for. Especially the driving part. When you can no longer drive, the walls come a closing in. Fortunately, I can still drive. 🙂
R.I.P. at the Big Party with old comrades in the sky, Peter. God, what a talent. David Lean: Sir, what a brilliant casting choice. What a discovery!!
J.J.: Beautiful eulogy, Sir. Peter and his buddies at the saloon(all of whom preceeded him)had some very, very ribald times.
I was surprised he could live so long without any blood in his alcohol system. He and Burton reportedly stayed drunk the for the entire shooting of Becket. But he was a great actor who could perform a starring role or a bit part with equal facility. Requeiscat in Pace.
If you mosey on over to Don Surber’s Daily Scorecard and scroll down to #5 on his list, you’ll see a fitting tribute to Peter O’Toole.
http://donsurber.blogspot.com/2013/12/daily-scoreboard-december-16-2013.html#more
O’Toole was in so many great films…. The Ruling Class is one of my favorite weird comedies.
Though it is said that “Lawrence of Arabia” is loosely based on T. E Lawrence’s writings, from what I know of Lawrence you could have casted any better. He was Lawrence, even looked like him.
The Lion in Winter is such a joy to watch. O’Toole and Hepburn playing off one another?
Who could ask for more?
His is the only actor’s autograph I have. I went to see him in Pygmalion in New York. June, 1987.
He may have Said he was going to sober up in 1975, but he didn’t. . . .
Impressions: curtain rises on the market with Eliza Doolittle and her flowers. And, just behind the column there, is one burning blue eye — watching her. I said to my actress friend, “Amazing: all you can see is one eye, and he still draws you to look at him.”
Peter doing the “teacup roll”: a vaudeville trick where you almost drop your teacup, but roll over and rise to your feet still holding it and without spilling a drop. (This scared the crap out of the audience, because we knew he was “half-seas over” by his elongated timing and exorbitant pauses. Peter was triumphant: as if to say, “You thought I would fall, but I DIDN’T!”)
At the intermission: the ladies’ room attendant admitted to my friend and me that Mr. O’Toole’s understudy had stepped in for him eight times, in a six-month run. One of the other audience members asked her, “Is Mr. O’Toole feeling well?” and the attendant, embarrassed, said he’d “had the flu.” She said to Kit and me, “When the understudy is on, we get out of the theater a half-hour sooner.”
Afterwards, at the stage door (my bold actress friend talked me into going to get his autograph): he came out and signed autographs for us. He was even taller than I thought, and quite thin. He looked older than his years, and his color wasn’t good — his alcoholism had taken a heavy toll, which you never see from across the footlights. There was a slight spot on his lapel. His amazing blue eyes swept over our heads with the remoteness of a lighthouse beam, never making contact.
John Simon wrote a review of the show, and alluded sideways to the state of the star.
Kit, when she bought the tickets (weeks in advance), had asked the box office guy bluntly, “Is Mr. O’Toole sober? I don’t want to see his understudy!” The guy replied, “Well, he signed a contract with the Shuberts saying he had an ironclad guarantee that he has to be there for every performance.” She told me later, “For any actor to miss eight performances over the course of a short run is terrible, and for sure his drinking is taking him out.”
So, yeah. Fantastic performer, stunningly handsome, and he had the disease of alcoholism. Seeing him onstage, I was struck by how fantastic his timing was — the effect of the drink was to stretch everything aaaaaalmost to the breaking point, and Just when you couldn’t stand it, he’d continue. I came away with the impression of a magnificent talent struggling under a heavy burden, and just managing to keep its feet.
We were worn out after the show: you were so in sympathy with him, you found yourself Willing him to get through it. But what a tragedy that he had to struggle so with the booze, make light of it though he may.
He was a fine writer, too: check out his autobiography.
I just reread the Playbill interview with O’Toole: he was 54 that year, younger than I am now.
I’m glad I got to see him that once. He was one of the great ones.
We were worn out after the show: you were so in sympathy with him…
Perfectly said, Beverly, and I think that was also pretty much how I felt just watching him in a movie. He seemed to put it all out there, almost too much so.
For a taste of what he was like on stage, there’s a video of a full play he was in posted on YouTube here. It was in 1999, so he wasn’t in his prime, but he still packed a wallop.
Peter O’Toole dead?! . . . Damn. Just hate it when another of our great icons of who we are elapses. I’d been wondering how he was doing recently and marveling at how long he’d been getting on.
Oh. And loved someone’s mention of David Lean as well. Another of my personal favorites. If not my favorite.
Now there went a star! I still think Lawrence is the best movie of the past 50 years, and while it has an exceptional cast(maybe the best ever?), it wouldn’t have had such an impact without O’Toole’s electrifying performance.He became an overnight superstar.It’s a real shame he didn’t win the Oscar that year, but H’Wood was into one of its periodic self reverential moralizing modes, and Gregory Peck HAD to win just so they could all say “Right On!”.
O’Toole burst onto the film world with a thunderclap.Just how can anyone be expected to top that role? Obits bemoaned his erratic career, but has his Lawrence performance been topped by anyone since?
}}} Now there went a star! I still think Lawrence is the best movie of the past 50 years,
LOL, funny how different people view the same thing — I’ve always found LoA to be a boring, insipid excuse of a movie, and a tremendous waste of talent and time. My Favorite Year is, by my lights, inarguably O’Toole’s best film, perhaps because in many ways he’s playing himself.
I’m unusual, though… I also consider My Fair Lady to utterly suck… and can offer a lot of objective criteria for why that is so. The 1930s Pygmalion, with Leslie Howard, is far and away the best version of Shaw’s story on film to date.
To each their own, though. T’would be a boring place if we all liked the same things, wouldn’t it?