Peter O'Toole: RIP
Dec. 16th, 2013 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloFor a major film star he made remarkably few great movies. In a career lasting fifty years there's just the one bona fide classic. That's a little disappointing.
You can't build a great career out of collaborations with second-raters- and O'Toole had a talent- a quite remarkable talent- for avoiding working with the best directors. John Wayne worked with Ford and Hawks, James Stewart worked with Capra, Hitchcock and Mann. O'Toole worked with David Lean- once.
On stage it was the same story. He played Hamlet for Olivier then wandered off. He kept away from the great companies- from the National and the RSC. When he showed up in the West End it was in one-off productions- like his famously absurd Macbeth and the triumphant Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell. He didn't, it seems, like to have to share the limelight.
He was a one of a generation of actors- headed up by Brando and Burton- who rather despised acting. It had something to do- I think- with growing up in wartime and finding it a bit sissy to be fighting with buttoned foils when boys a year or two older had commanded tanks and killed nazis. In the absence of a proper war the manly thing to do was to hang about in bars. They were hugely talented- but compared with the generation that came before- the Oliviers and Gielguds and Guinnesses- and the generation that came after- the McKellens and Gambons- they lacked application.
O'Toole was mesmerising when he bothered to turn up. He was good. Very good. The pity is he could have been the greatest.
You can't build a great career out of collaborations with second-raters- and O'Toole had a talent- a quite remarkable talent- for avoiding working with the best directors. John Wayne worked with Ford and Hawks, James Stewart worked with Capra, Hitchcock and Mann. O'Toole worked with David Lean- once.
On stage it was the same story. He played Hamlet for Olivier then wandered off. He kept away from the great companies- from the National and the RSC. When he showed up in the West End it was in one-off productions- like his famously absurd Macbeth and the triumphant Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell. He didn't, it seems, like to have to share the limelight.
He was a one of a generation of actors- headed up by Brando and Burton- who rather despised acting. It had something to do- I think- with growing up in wartime and finding it a bit sissy to be fighting with buttoned foils when boys a year or two older had commanded tanks and killed nazis. In the absence of a proper war the manly thing to do was to hang about in bars. They were hugely talented- but compared with the generation that came before- the Oliviers and Gielguds and Guinnesses- and the generation that came after- the McKellens and Gambons- they lacked application.
O'Toole was mesmerising when he bothered to turn up. He was good. Very good. The pity is he could have been the greatest.
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Date: 2013-12-16 12:19 pm (UTC)And then there's his work as a comic actor, in THE RULING CLASS, GOODBYE MR CHIPS, HOW TO STEAL A MILLION, and MY FAVORITE YEAR. But comic work just doesn't win awards as much as drama, no matter how good it is.
Still, that IS a rather thin record, considering how good he was.
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Date: 2013-12-16 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-16 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-16 04:25 pm (UTC)Agreed on all three.
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Date: 2013-12-16 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-16 04:58 pm (UTC)I'd like to put in a word for one of his very last movies- Dean Spanley- a small, whimsical piece about a clergyman who turns out to be the reincarnation of a beloved pet. O'Toole is superb.