My Favorite O’Toole
It’s not a record that anyone is dying to beat: Peter O’Toole’s eight Oscar nominations for acting, without a single win. Even his honorary Oscar of 2003 doesn’t quite remedy the impact of those snubs. O’Toole, who died over the weekend at 81, got his octet of Best Actor nominations for Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982), and Venus (2006). He certainly lost to some all-time heavy hitters: Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972), and Robert De Niro in Raging Bull (1980). And there was no fighting the seeming inevitability of Rex Harrison’s win for My Fair Lady (1964) and clearly no way to topple sentimental favorite John Wayne in True Grit (1969). The Oscar that seemed destined to be O’Toole’s was the one he eventually lost to Cliff Robertson for Charly (1968). As The Lion in Winter‘s Henry II (the same character he had played in Becket), O’Toole gave a robustly theatrical performance, filling this showy role with the kind of power and magnetism that wins Oscars. It was inarguably wrong to award Robertson’s unimpressive turn (in the Oscar-bait role of a mentally-challenged fellow) in a very bad movie. With O’Toole unfairly slighted, and he and Oscar missing their perfectly aligned moment, they simply never got their groove back.
Actually I would have liked to see that 1968 Oscar go to un-nominated Anthony Perkins for Pretty Poison. However, if I were to play Oscar god, I would hand O’Toole the 1982 prize for his performance in Richard Benjamin’s My Favorite Year, a seemingly slight comedy that offered the actor one of the richest opportunities of his career. (Nothing against Oscar’s admirable choice—Ben Kingsley as Gandhi—but I’d still go with O’Toole.) Set in 1954, My Favorite Year is a clever, well-constructed, and delightfully nostalgic comedy that uses the Golden Age of Television as its background, specifically a behind-the-scenes account of a fictionalized Your Show of Shows-type sketch-comedy show (with Joseph Bologna doing a bang-up version of Sid Caesar). The fish out of water in this fast-paced NYC milieu is O’Toole’s Alan Swann, an Errol Flynn-ish matinee idol—star of pictures like Captain from Tortuga—now past his prime. He is the guest star on this week’s program, and Mark Linn-Baker, the show’s youngest writer, is assigned to be O’Toole’s keeper, which mostly means trying to keep him sober. Of course, despite the challenges ahead, a friendship between them will eventually take hold.
O’Toole is simply sensational playing comedy, remarkably adept at the more slapstick requirements, while inflecting his lines with a pricelessly sharp wit. He also manages to be extremely touching within the comic confines, exposing the man who has made such a regretful mess of his life. His genuine sadness and private fears are plainly visible, whenever he weakens his guard. The actor and the role challenge each other, each proving to be expansive enough to accommodate a three-dimensional portrait of a movie star, mixing laughs and melancholy, grandeur and its broken-down flip side. (Much of the character’s enduring pain derives from his estrangement from his twelve-year-old daughter.) Perhaps like many a great star, Swann is prone to being both a nightmare and a source of wonder. His more lucid moments reveal intelligence, even wisdom. O’Toole’s bravado, unpredictability, and occasional staccato line readings remind me of Charles Laughton at his absolute best. This is a tour de force performance of a falling star not quite down for the count, and it ultimately ranks with the screen’s more insightful and credible portraits of stardom, in all its fluctuations.
One of the film’s high points is O’Toole’s visit to Linn-Baker’s family in Brooklyn, featuring delicious Lainie Kazan as his garish, outspoken mother. While we take pleasure in the family’s affectionately rendered excesses, O’Toole cannily plays the scene without any condescension, displaying honest warmth and comfort in the family’s presence. As O’Toole adopts a respectful demeanor, it’s Linn-Baker who is appropriately mortified (such as when his aunt shows up in her wedding dress). Without a trace of superiority or haughtiness, O’Toole further humanizes Swann, and it’s becoming easier and easier to truly like this guy.
Another peak moment comes when O’Toole learns, just before airtime, that the show is performed “live,” which leads to his most memorable line, when he shouts, “I’m not an actor, I’m a movie star!” But he’ll find unexpected redemption on this silly TV program, not just fulfilling his contractual responsibilities but actually living up to his heroic image. This romantic notion—a star living up to his onscreen persona—comes through even stronger, if more subtlely, in a lovely earlier sequence in a restaurant. At a man’s request, O’Toole approaches the guy’s wife and asks her to dance. The occasion is the couple’s 40th wedding anniversary. (The woman is Titanic‘s Gloria Stuart.) As Alan Swann himself glides her away, giving her a never-to-be-forgotten thrill, he is using the full force of his stardom to make fantasy come true. It’s a gift he carries effortlessly, something ever at his disposal. O’Toole plays the scene beautifully, so keenly yet quietly aware of a movie star’s enviable ability to make people happy. This restaurant scene, and My Favorite Year in its entirety, is a celebration of movie-star magic. The reason that it works so marvelously is the singular movie-star magic of Peter O’Toole.
