Peter O’Toole

(Preamble: David Lean’s strikingly exotic wife, Leela, told me that David had decided to cast me in his forthcoming film Lawrence of Arabia. “And it wasn’t because of my sifarish. David never listens to anyone’ssifarish”, she stuttered.

A few days later my agent, Brian Mellor rang me up to say that he had received a firm offer. I learned that it was a small part. I was disinclined to accept it, but Brian told me not to be silly. He took me out to lunch at the ‘Ivy,’ and said, “Look here, you have made your mark on the theatrical world of London, but now you need international exposure. You mustn’t turn down this offer.” Working with a director of the stature of David Lean, he stressed, would be highly beneficent for my career. Brian was more than an agent; he was a friend.)

I was flown to the camp, set up by the ‘Lawrence’ unit in Akaba, six weeks before filming started, in order to learn to ride a camel. Peter, who arrived before me, had already begun his training.

Akaba was a small military outpost of the Jordanian monarchy. The unit had installed two rows of tents not far from the sea. I was taken to mine. An Arab, dressed in a shirt and slacks, brought my luggage. I was told that he was going to be my ‘batman’. Peter was out somewhere riding his camel.

My batman, Gameel, stayed in the tent, ostensibly to help me unpack but, really, to size me up. He was a garrulous Palestinian who had been recruited in the unit, he claimed, because “I speak English very good.” In my first encounter with him he tried to sell me a Rolex watch “for five bounds, very small price” but didn’t succeed.

Late in the afternoon, I was sitting in my open tent, brooding over the forthcoming ordeal, when Peter walked in with a welcoming smile. He was accompanied by his trainer, a burly ex-army captain whom he sometimes called Jock. “O that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that check,” he boomed in the manner of the late Robert Atkins. The news that I had been cast as Romeo by the Royal Shakespeare Company had obviously reached him.

It was quite a surprise to see him. He had changed completely. He looked taller than when I had seen him on the stage in The long And Short And The Tall. Gone was his long, Cyrano-esque nose. He now had a most refined and chiselled nose giving him the looks of a matinee idol.

The next day he invited me to his well-furnished tent to go through our lines. We did so in between small talk. Around mid-day I suggested that it was time for a cold beer. He looked at his trainer, who had been present throughout the session as if to say ‘What are we to do?’ The trainer said he would see if he could organise something. He returned after a while bringing me a bottle of cold lager. “Go ahead”, Peter said. “What about you?” I asked. He stroked his chin thoughtfully before saying, “I don’t think I feel like it.”

I was taken aback. I had heard many tales about his drinking capacity. It was rumoured in the ‘Buxton’ that he could outdrink anyone. I felt a bit guilty sipping the liquid offered to me.

The catering people, attached to the unit, had installed a large tent which served as a mess. We dined there. David Lean and his Indian wife, Leela, sometimes joined us for dinner. The crew, the technicians and the administrative staff were served with beer, or wine if the Leans were present. Throughout our stay in Akaba, I never saw Peter take any of the stuff in the mess. His trainer, who shadowed him like a bodyguard, had apparently been instructed to see to it that he kept to his vow to remain on the wagon.

A barbed wire fence separated Akaba from Elat, the Israeli seaside resort. You could see plump ladies swimming or sunbathing on the sand. Peter would sometimes scan the scene through his field glasses. If he ever spotted a ‘tasty chick’, as he put it, he would lend his glasses to me to share the view. But that was before Sian, (his wife) arrived.

Camel riding is a bizarre business and very painful. For the first two days Peter and I took the same route with our trainers behind us. We were told not to use our reins and try to feel being one with the camel. We had to ride two hours in the morning and two in the late afternoon. After two or three days we were sent on different routes.

My trainer, a slim, lithe, leather-faced Bedouin, named Qais, rode his camel with the ease and grace of a hawk in flight. He could only speak Bedouin Arabic so I tried to understand his instructions through gestures. After a week, all I learned was how to trot — and a few Arabic phrases. Peter was already claiming that he was about to acquire the knack of galloping.

By now there were blisters all over my bum. The Jordanian doctor, who covered my cheeks with thick wads of plaster, told me to rest for a few days. I didn’t. I was meant to be Lawrence’s guide, and his mentor as a camel rider; I had to be twice as good as Lawrence. I went ahead with my practice and paid dearly for it, but that is another story.

 * * * * *

The dialogue coach, Hugh Miller, with his patrician looks, was everybody’s idea of a kindly uncle. He was engaged primarily to assist Peter with his diction. He had been on the faculty of RADA and when he was informed that I, too, had been to RADA he was courteous enough to allow me to be present when he conducted his initial sessions with Peter. Peter read out his lines and Hugh Miller interrupted him only when he felt that Peter was not inflecting the right word.

I was sitting next to ‘uncle’ Hugh at dinner one evening — Peter wasn’t around — and I asked him if Peter’s speech was far-removed from that of T.E. Lawrence. “mmm… No,” he said “I wouldn’t say that, but he tends to flatten his vowels now and then, and we are trying to sort that out.”

Peter worked assiduously with his coach. After dinner, other people either played cards or exchanged smutty stories but Peter would sit with his coach in his tent and be engrossed in the script. It was evident that he was more than determined to spend every ounce of his energy in building up “Aurance”.

Our meetings of leisurely conversations were less frequent now. Previously we had chatted about life and literature and actors and the London Theatre. He was fond of holding forth. Chatting is not the right word. He held forth. I was mostly a silent listener. I would offer an opinion now and then, but he remained much too absorbed in whatever he was saying to register it. But I am grateful to him for telling me hilarious stories about Robert Atkins and Wilfred Lawson.

After Sian’s arrival the scene changed. Sian would now invite me to join them at lunch or dinner. It was interesting to note that Peter, who spoke and behaved like an upper-middle class chap, turned into a devil-may-care, flamboyant Irishman in her presence. Whether it was an act he put on for me, or whether he wanted to send up the sophisticated etiquette of Sian, I don’t know. Sian was an actress of no mean standing, but whenever there was talk of a play or a performance, she would offer her opinion guardedly as though she was unsure that what she was saying would meet with Peter’s approval.

We were walking on the sea-front one night. The sea was calm, Apropos of nothing she declaimed, “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage, before the dying of the light.” She spoke the lines beautifully, but then she stopped. “You do it Peter, she said, “You do it so much better…. go on darling” she coaxed Peter. He spoke the poem as Irish blarney. I was in fits. Sian laughed as much as was befitting. She seemed to want to live up to his expectations at every moment. There was something slightly odd about their relationship. It was too well stage-managed. I wasn’t surprised when I learned, some years later, that they had parted.

The debonair French movie-star, Maurice Ronet, landed in Akaba. He had been cast to play Prince Ali in the movie. Ronet spoke English with the kind of French accent every stand-up comic in London loved to do in his act. David Lean was a bit perturbed about it. He asked me and Peter to spend some time with him in the evenings. “See if you can straighten out his speech a bit,” he said.

Scripts in hand, we used to go over his lines in all the scenes in which Prince Ali appeared. Ronet tried, and he tried hard, but could not manage to “straighten out his speech”

Peter got a bit bored with the sessions. He often left me to go through the script with the French star. Maurice Ronet was a highly personable chap, but he was unable to shed his “Bebe…” mannerism.

And so, after a few days when Lean asked us how Ronet was getting on, Peter said, “Ask Zia, he has been conducting most of the lessons. I think he’s a bit poncy.” Maurice Ronet was heart-broken when he learned (not from Lean but from the producer, Sam Spiegel) that he was going to be eased out of the movie.

After weeks of restful life of Akaba, we were moved to an unmapped part of the desert where a tented village had been erected to accommodate the now enlarged unit of the film company. The temperature, in shade, was never under 42 degrees, centigrade.

The nights in the desert were wonderful. It felt lovely to sit and lie on the velvet soft, cool sand, but the first rays of the sun were like pincers piercing the skin. Working from eight in the morning until sunset, or just before, in the gruelling sun, can be tiresome for anyone, but we worked in the open with the ‘brutes’ (five kw lights) focused on our faces. It was nothing short of severe hardship. My skin acquired the colour of dark brown chocolate.

After three weeks of this ordeal Peter and I were sent to Amman to ‘rest and recuperate’ for two days in Amman. Saturated in dust, we arrived at the hotel after a ten hour drive and agreed to meet in the lobby after a long leisurely bath.

Peter did not turn up. I never saw him during that break. I was taken back to the location after three days all by myself. Peter was already there. When I approached him he sang ‘Not a word, not a word, not a word, not a word’. It was rumoured in hush-hush tones that he was ensconced in a secret place with Sam Spiegel’s very attractive secretary.

I shall never forget the first day of shooting which began in the afternoon. ‘Action’ said David Lean. Peter and I riding our camels approach the mark where we had to stop. Peter takes a gulp from his canteen and then offers it to me. I don’t take it. He insists that I do, and I say something like “I am a Bedouin I don’t need it.” “Cut,” shouted Lean. He was obviously not satisfied. “Let’s do it again,” he said tersely. There were seventeen if not nineteen takes. Peter was sweating and so was I. After the first two or three takes Lean didn’t give us any specific directions. “Let’s try it once more” he would say. And we went on until we heard him say. “Alright chaps, that’s a wrap.”

When I went to say Good-bye to David Lean after I had finished my work in the desert, I found him quite relaxed. His face was less stern now. He asked me to sit down. “I think you’d like your work when your see it on the screen,” he said with his winsome smile.

“May I ask you something?” He nodded.

“What was it that I was doing wrong on the first day of the shoot? Please tell me now”.

“Oh,” he chuckled. “It was a bit of a joke. I wanted Peter to realise that filming is going to be a bitch of a nightmare. I just wanted to knock the wind out of his sails.”

* * * * *

The impression of Peter O’Toole that I took back to London was that he was a man totally absorbed in himself, a highly self-centred person. Later on I changed my view. Peter was ambitious, more ambitious than any other actor I had ever come across. His was the kind of ambition that brooks no obstacles. He wanted to pluck the stars and put them in his pocket. He wanted to own the world and that is not a bad thing for a young actor to desire.

Peter O’Toole wanted to dazzle not only the stage but the screen as well — and he did.