On the Second Day of Christmas…
Today’s 12 Blogs of Christmas episode was going to be called The Ghosts of Christmas Past, and be about some of my past Christmases, with speculation appended on possible larger ideas one might derive from them. But then this happened, so we’ll do that other thing tomorrow:
Peter O’ Toole 1933 – 2013
Peter O’Toole died yesterday. He was 82 and had a good run. It’s almost fitting he should die this close to Christmas, because, though I’ve loved him in many things, he will first and foremost always be The Lion in Winter to me.
The staff of Entertainment Weekly, writing in syndicate, one must suppose, had this to say about him: “…arguably the most strikingly charismatic, most eerily handsome, most preternaturally gifted actor of his acting generation…” I think that’s accurate and not overly stated.
He’ll always be remembered most for his incandescent role as TE Lawrence, in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, and this is appropriate, as much as it’s appropriate to remember any storyteller for a single work. Like the character Lawrence, Peter O’Toole made a conscious choice not to be ordinary. According to Gay Talese in his 1963 Esquire portrait of O’Toole, at 18 the man wrote the following declaration in his notebook: “I do not choose to be a common man…it is my right to be uncommon—if I can…I seek opportunity—not security…I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed… to refuse to barter incentive for a dole… I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopias…” I don’t think it can be argued he didn’t live his credo.
But it’s The Lion in Winter that will always stand out for me as the best of his many parts. And since it’s, among so many other things, a Christmas film, and since this is a Christmas Blog, it’s appropriate to spend the lion’s share (pun intended, I suppose) of our time on this particular work.
It’s a wonderful movie, directed by Anthony Harvey and produced by Joseph E Levine. It was written by James Goldman, adapted from his own play. Released in 1968, it’s full of high drama and low comedy, and so well written I ache to be able to form words so simply, but with such dexterity. When I so often talk about my wishes to write about clever, well-spoken people, rather than the stumbling idiots that infest most of our adventure fiction, this film, this story lies at the precise center of my gravity.
In was an expertly cast film, with Anthony Hopkin’s first film role, early appearances by Timothy Dalton and Nigel Terry. And it had Katharine Hepburn, who overpowers most roles she takes, but was pitch perfect in this, ruling every scene she was in – except when Peter O’Toole was on screen. “Larger than life,” is appellation too commonly used, but here it’s the least one can say. O’Toole played it big, mighty in fact, but also sly, and calculating, and then broken in the face of revelations too terrible to receive.
Rumor has it he was drunk during most of the filming.
Here’s some of what co-star Anthony Hopkins had to say about working with Peter O’Toole on the film: “But the one powerful person I’ll never forget is O’Toole, because he was something special. He was unique. Extraordinary. Still is, I think, a real acting genius.”
In another interview, Hopkins was asked specifically about their hard drinking days, adding, “We weren’t close friends but we had a few drinks together. Peter in those days — he could start a fight. There’d always be a bit of trouble around him, like Oliver Reed and people like that. Big drinkers but they were great talents and they burnt the candle at both ends and some of them didn’t make it through.
“They died, like Burton died relatively young, but that’s the way he decided to live. And I think, ‘Good for you, if that’s what you wanted.’ But it changed my life when I did stop. I’m one of the fortunate ones.”
And while his hard drinking would almost kill him, albeit indirectly – his stomach cancer in the 70’s was misdiagnosed as a result of alcoholic excess, and not treated immediately – it didn’t prevent him from giving the greatest of performances, which coincided with his hardest drinking days. I won’t speculate on any cause and effect here.
The Lion in Winter takes place in Christmas of 1183, at King Henry the Second’s (O’Toole) primary residence in Chinon, Anjou, on the European continent. It’s a tale of intrigue amongst his sons, alternately aided and undermined, in wily succession, by their mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Hepburn). His sons plot to see which one will be king, after the old lion dies. It’s family politics writ large, complete with meddling neighbors, but relatable to anyone who’s ever had to travel home for Christmas and relearn how to navigate the jungle intricacies of family affairs and statecraft.
It’s one of my favorite Christmas stories, where Christmas is used as a bludgeon, just one of many weapons employed in an extended backroom brawl of medieval royalty. It shows all of human vanity, spite and cynicism, without itself being a cynical story. I won’t spoil. I won’t tell you why (because perhaps I still don’t know), but it’s actually uplifting. Maybe it’s because, if Henry can eventually forgive these reptiles he’s spawned, then we can find the will to forgive our own this Christmas. Who can say?
It’s worth watching, which I will do once again, later this evening.
And, by all gods, above and below, it’s got Peter O’Toole in it, at the absolute pinnacle of his powers.
He was mighty in his sins and his melancholies, dead drunk through many of his better performances. He had a double phallic for a name and seemed to want to earn that questionable distinction in the way he treated the many women in his life. He wrecked so many cars they took his license away, and wrecked a few lives, license for which no one has ever found a way to confiscate. But, in return, he gave us Lawrence and Alan Swann. He gave us Mr. Chips and the enigmatic director in The Stunt Man. He gave us the one Henry II who condemned Beckett to death, and then gave us the same character again, in the autumn of his years, a true Lion in Winter.
Goodbye Mr. O’Toole. I appreciated you much in life, and will miss you.
Merry Christmas.
