Peter O'Toole: RIP

[poliphilo]

For 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.

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I think that's a very telling point about O'Toole's generation of actors. Certainly the three you cite could have done a good deal more with their endowments, if only they'd given a bit more of a push.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Others who should have done more with their talents were Richard Harris and Oliver Reed.