Just watching Robin & Marion on Film 4. That must have been a helluva party group looking at the cast: Connery, Harris, Elliott & Williamson. Must have been herding cats getting that lot on set! Any other films that spring to mind as being particularly riotous?
Robin & Marion – quite a party set
Anything with Oliver Reed
The Wild Geese? Burton, Harris, Roger Moore
Apparently Harris and O’Toole were on stage together in the West End and used to nip out for a “quick one” during the interval. The stage crew were often sent out to find them while the interval was extended.
Some of these are probably apocryphal.
At the Old Vic in 1954 Richard Burton and John Neville alternated the parts of Othello and Iago. One lunchtime they got plastered and returned to the theatre both playing Iago. Nobody appeared to notice. On another occasion Burton famously sat drunk in the stalls with a friend during a matinée and said, ‘You’ll like this bit. This is where I come on.’ The legendary drunk performer Robert Newton was out drinking with Wilfred Lawson when they suddenly remembered they had a matinee. Lawson staggered on as John of Gaunt with his codpiece around the wrong way. When a murmur went up in the audience he told them, ‘If you think I’m pissed wait till you see the Duke of York!’
Christopher Fowler.
There was a Spitting Image sketch back in the day about Reed and O’Toole which did that rather well; O’Toole loses his todger in a drinking game (‘now I’m Peter Notoole’ etc) Reed takes advantage. And Harry Enfield’s ‘Norbert Smith’ had a ‘Wild Geese/Where Eagles Dare mash-up where they’re all the worse for wear.
The Life of Sir Norbert Smith is absolutely brilliant. I think my favourite bit is the Will Silly film. Peter Goodwright’s Will Hay is spot on. And I wish I could go back and see the Michael Caine gag for the first time again.
I think the best bits* of the Enfield series were the black-and-white films, like Mr. Cholmondley Walker. I got the feeling everyone involved had a real laugh doing them.
* though ‘English For Aliens’ I think was his highpoint.
Oy, @GCU-Grey-Area, no!
Keep your hair on, Daddio!
‘Ah’m just off to kill our kid’s kestrel’.
They’d obviously watched – and loved imho – loads of old films.
The Enfield sketch where the modern football team play in black and white was genius. Wilf ‘Adapted For Speed’ Finney.
I quote from the Life of Sir Norbert Smith quite often, and get away with it because I don’t think anyone I know has ever seen it, despite me repeatedly telling them to do so.
Ditto. I think only one of my mates who is as in to comedy as I am saw it at the time, and thought it a bit meh.
There’s a great biography by Robert Sellers called Hellraisers that covers Burton, O Toole, Reed and Harris. Worth a read…..
Fabulous and disgraceful book. Makes my own moments of drunkenness seem like the mediocre seshes they were.
Even though most of the stories in Hellraisers are embellished/apocryphal/probably downright untrue, this is still a great read. Makes modern actors – imbibing wheatgrass shots in between Bikram yoga sessions – seem rather tame.
There was a mid-70s movie called The Klansman that brought together Lee Marvin and Richard Burton with predictably disastrous results for the on-set catering company’s complimentary drinks trolley.
Good companion book for the Sellars (he also wrote a good bio of O. Reed) is the Hollywood Hellfire Club about the likes of notorious 30s and 40s topers such as WC Fields and assorted Barrymores
The Klansman: “Two pints, prick”
Little Women. That Florence Pugh’s a right minx! 😏