Wednesday, December 18, 2013

"I'm. . . JACK." R.I.P. Peter O'Toole.



So much has been written about the estimable, irreplaceable Peter O'Toole since his passing a few days ago that I have very little of importance to add to the general mourning. However, I do want to sing the praises of my favorites among his performances.

To me, O'Toole will always be Jack, the mad 13th Earl of Gurney in Peter Medak's THE RULING CLASS. O'Toole is the film's backbone--the core of its vicious skewering of England's decadent aristocracy. His performance is theatrical in the best ways--perfectly larger-than-life, from his spirited rendition of "My Blue Heaven" while Jack is blissfully under the impression that he's Jesus Christ, to the icy Victorian puritan that Jack transforms into once he has achieved--ahem--sanity.

O'Toole's take on Errol Flynn in Richard Benjamin's MY FAVORITE YEAR is a comic highlight of '80s cinema. Once again, his expansive acting in the role of aging, boozing Hollywood swashbuckler Alan Swann works beautifully, particularly in the context of the film, where he is nearly always performing opposite his foil, a starstruck everyman (Mark Linn-Baker) who becomes Swann's caretaker. The actor's dinner with his keeper's utterly stunned family is a highlight. "What's that piquant-tasting dish?" Swann asks his hosts. "Parrot!" replies the chef. (May Routh, the costume designer on MY FAVORITE YEAR, has graciously allowed me to run two previously unpublished behind-the-scenes photos of O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker lighting-up in costume during the shoot.)

O'Toole's impersonation of John Huston was renowned and beloved, and he memorably had the opportunity to "play" Huston in "Banshee," an episode of "The Ray Bradbury Theater." Based on Bradbury's turbulent experiences in Ireland while writing MOBY DICK with Huston, O'Toole as the Huston surrogate and Charles Martin Smith as Bradbury's stand-in are bedeviled by a banshee--in this case, a vengeful spirit representing all of the used-and-discarded lovers that O'Toole's womanizing director had gone through. It was one of the series highlights.

Though O'Toole is rightfully revered for LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE LION IN WINTER, ad infinitum, my favorite of his dramatic performances is in Anatole Litvak's unfairly maligned and much-neglected THE NIGHT OF THE GENERALS. O'Toole's Nazi General Tanz is as unnerving a sociopath as has ever tortured a prisoner-of-war in a World War II melodrama. Tanz is in the Goebbels and Himmler mold--a psychopath for whom the War and the Third Reich represents the ultimate opportunity to commit mass murder with impunity. . . or so he thinks. The highlight of the film finds Tanz being escorted around Paris by his driver (Tom Courtenay), where, during his tour, he has a near psychotic fit while staring at a Van Gogh. A complete OCD case, Tanz detests uncleanliness--he berates one of his troops for his filthy fingernails, shrieking "You look like you just exhumed your grandmother with your bare hands!" It is an impeccable performance, but when did O'Toole ever give less?


Sunday, December 8, 2013

How Barry White Became the Walrus of Love

The question arose last night: How did an immense, sweaty walrus like Barry White become an erotic sensation among housewives everywhere? Someone offered the answer: "Because they're sitting on the sub-woofer."