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And Now Peter O'toole.

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sp1814 | 18:18 Sun 15th Dec 2013 | News
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...raise a glass - he was a total geezer in Lawrence Of Arabia.
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that is sad news, one of my favourite actors, a class act.
watch his give a masterclass in the Lion in Winter with Katherine Hepburn,
i saw him on stage in Jeffrey Barnard is unwell, a wonderful performance, the story of another notorious hellraiser, who was one of Fleets street great characters.
RIP - hopefully, the TV schedules will be shifted for Lawrence of Arabia over Xmas - heaps better than some of the crap that's planned
better to watch The Lion in Winter, its a stunning film with two marvellous actors, he is towering in it.
And Beckett too
Great film and great performances by him and burton
another great film, he was a wonderful actor, raconteur, and you don't see any actors around like this any more.
Noel Coward remarked after seeing the film that if they had made O'Toole any prettier it would have to be retitled "Florence of Arabia". But the epic provided the cornerstone for a career that has seen O'Toole make close to 80 films.
emmie - "i saw him on stage in Jeffrey Barnard is unwell, a wonderful performance, the story of another notorious hellraiser ..."

I think you'll find that the soubriet 'hell raiser' is reserved for actors of a certain status, with set behaviour patterns incuding, but not restricted to - drinking industrial amounts of alcohol, shouting a lot, falling over, fighting, and being poured into taxis by willing young ladies.

Mr Barnard was simply a piss-head - albeit an articulate and midly entertaining one, but a piss-head none-the-less, and therefore part of a far less exclusive cadre - drunken Fleet Street sots, who were ten a penny.
My Favourite Year is available in full on youtube, if you're willing to pay £2.50:



andy...well said.
there were lots of Fleet St drunks, andy, but not many who wrote as well as Bernard.

I think that's why people like O'Toole are praised for their excesses while those like Lindsay Lohan are despised: it's not the excesses themselves, it's whether the people concerned can still keep doing their job well. Whether they seem to be in or out of control.
jno - I think it's a matter of media - and therefore cultural perception.

In the 1960's, when Harris, Burton, O'Toole et al were 'hell raising', the remnants of the post-war attitudes were still in place. A man who behaved like a 'real man' was to be admired and feted, even though their behaviour was obnoxious and offensive, it was seen as acceptable because of who they were, and the lifestyle they represented.

Fast forward forty years, and times have changed considerably.

Far more people are famous for being famous, rather than for any discerable ability or talent, and their inability to handle fame leads to bad life and career choices, and the newly prurient media casting shame around like confetti.

We get the celebrities - and the press - we deserve, so although Ms Lohan is every bit as much of a 'hell raiser' as the predecessors in her proffession, she is doomed to be labelled as a lush diva, with the remains of her shattered career disapearing behind her at an ever increading rate.

The notion of 'fame' in modern parlance is to be avoided at all costs.

As one wise man comented ' "Fame is like a barbed wire treadmill - you have to know exactly how to run on it, or it will cut you to pieces."
i knew Jeff Barnard, so do know what he was, hell raiser, drunk, womaniser, you name it,
emmie - like a man in orthopaedic shoes, I stand corrected.

You can understand my initial disbelief at the use of thi achaic label - JB hardly seems to fit in with Harris, Reed et al.
he was a very handsome man in his younger days, before the hard drink really kicked in, his way with the ladies was legendary, and he wasn't a hack, but a very solid writer. I was one of the conquests, bit too young, but i did get to know him. Finding him once face down in his lunch, not liquid either.

i like this, in many ways these two men were very similar. Except O'Toole managed at least to live on.

JB
But at his best, or for that matter at his worst, he could be one of the most amusing men in London. He was a first-rate mimic and a brilliant improviser - he and John Le Mesurier used to extemporise an endless duologue between two cliché-bound pub bores that was pure Pinter. He always put down his success with women to his ability to amuse (others put it down to his matinée idol good looks as a young man). This was considerable. As Graham Lord put it: "He had a lot of wives, four of them his own."
i must apologise, that was a total misprint and i am deeply embarrassed

i wasn't a conquest,

crikey i was most definitely too young.... and he was crocked a fair bit of the time by then
emmie - I am intrigued as to how you managed to misprint being one of JB's conquests. Do please elaborate ...
i put was when it should have been wasn't, not exactly a misprint, more a typo
as i said he was quite old by then, and a bit raddled for my tastes.

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