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Return to ListingBehaving Badly. The Life of Richard Harris 1930-2002 (excerpts)
During the final weeks of production another set of actors and technicians moved on to the Elstree lot. The Rebel would be Tony Hancock's first feature film since his elevation to Britain's best loved radio and television comic actor. Hired as a one-line extra for a Paris café scene was another young actor still to deliver his breakthrough performance - Oliver Reed.
Late one afternoon when shooting on both films had finished Oliver Reed went in search of his old friend Ronald Fraser, who was starring in The Long and the Short and the Tall. Knocking on the door to Fraser's dressing room, Reed physically jumped as the door was wrenched open. "What do you want?" spat an obviously irritated Richard Harris.
"Is Ronnie Fraser at home?" asked Reed.
"Yes, he is," said Harris.
Reed leaped backwards once again - this time to avoid the slamming door making contact with the end of his nose. "I didn't hold a grudge against him for that," Reed admitted. "After all, I was a nobody and he was a big star." ................ To his surprise Harris had survived the 1960s. To those he had blustered or bullied or fought with he had clawed his way into a select list of obnoxious talents: Oliver Reed, Albert Finney, Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. Years later, and in a more sober time, he tried to explain: "What that group of actors had was a fine madness, a lyrical madness. We lived our lives with that madness and it was transmitted into our work. We had smiles on our faces and a sense that the world was mad. We weren't afraid to be different. So we were always dangerous. Dangerous to meet in the street, in a restaurant, and dangerous to see on stage or in a film." ................ "Harris!" the voice hissed menacingly. "The next time I see you I'm going to kick the shit out of you and I'm going to stamp on your face and break both your arms."
"Where are you?" demanded Richard Harris.
"El Pedrino's."
"Don't move."
Harris arrived at the Los Angeles bar a few minutes later. "Do I start with you?" he asked the muscle-bound bodyguard standing at his master's shoulder. "Or do I begin with Oliver?"
"Me." The man waved away his advancing minder and slowly stood up.
Gasps of recognition rippled through the lounge. In the silence Richard Harris and Oliver Reed glared at each other nose to nose. Ego to ego.
"Drink?"
"Don't mind if I do."
After more than ten years of mischievous pranks and manufactured animosity it was only the second time the two actors had met. With the handshakes and backslapping over, they settled down to some serious drinking. "Sober, he was a great guy" recalled Oliver Reed. "Drunk, he was even better."
Since their brief Elstree encounter in 1960, Harris had been increasingly aware of the Wimbledon-born star's growing reputation, both as an actor and a hellraiser. But, while reading newspaper accounts of his own dimly remembered exploits, he considered Reed's antics 'childish and boring'. Nor was Reed a particularly dangerous professional rival: he picked up three leading roles only after Harris had turned them down. And unlike the Irishman, whose formative years were spent at drama school and as one of Joan Littlewood's 'little eggs', Reed had deliberately shunned the theatre. He remains one of the few film stars never to have given a single stage performance.
In 1969 Reed delivered a masterful and groundbreaking performance - opposite Alan Bates and the future Labour MP Glenda Jackson - in Ken Russell's adaptation of Women in Love. Amid the excess of praise and platitudes, Harris impishly sent Reed a pair of crutches - one inscribed 'Ken Russell', the other 'Glenda Jackson'.
By the early 1970s, Harris found himself more than a little irritated by Reed's self-proclamations. With his patriotism at its blustering height, Reed had taken to calling himself "Mr England", and claimed to be "the biggest star this country has got". This time, Harris posted Reed a copy of his recently published poems, I, In the Membership of My Days. On the flyleaf he wrote, "To Oliver - Mr England. Since you have not yet attained superstar status and salary and therefore cannot afford to buy this book, here is a free copy. Richard - Mr Ireland." And on the endpaper Harris added, "You are the only person I know who would go out of his way to claim an affinity with a bankrupt nation."
The slim volume would remain one of the Reed's lifelong treasures. For several years he would treat his houseguests to an after-dinner Harris poem. "Isn't that marvellous?" he would pronounce. "Isn't that fucking beautiful?"
At first the taunting was nothing more than a private joke but it soon became a crucial part of both actors' publicity machine. "Harris often made outrageous statements about me to reporters," explained Reed. "But we were both sensible and professional enough to know they were manufactured entirely for the benefit of the press." And it would continue for years to come.
In 1975 Reed made the western The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday with the fast-ailing alcoholic Lee Marvin. He made sure Harris got a mention: "Lee Marvin is the roughest, toughest movie star in the business - and the hardest drinker. He'd make Richard Harris look like a half-pint of stale Guinness and Dean Martin a wet Martini." The chance of another sideswipe came two years later, while Reed was making The Prince and the Pauper. One of Reed's co-stars - with whom he was orchestrating another well-publicised personality clash - was Raquel Welch. A telegram arrived at Harris's London home inviting the Irishman to take over a sex scene with Welch - "providing your wig doesn't fall off."
Cliff Goodwin, Behaving Badly The Life of Richard Harris 1930-2002, Virgin Books, 2003
Late one afternoon when shooting on both films had finished Oliver Reed went in search of his old friend Ronald Fraser, who was starring in The Long and the Short and the Tall. Knocking on the door to Fraser's dressing room, Reed physically jumped as the door was wrenched open. "What do you want?" spat an obviously irritated Richard Harris.
"Is Ronnie Fraser at home?" asked Reed.
"Yes, he is," said Harris.
Reed leaped backwards once again - this time to avoid the slamming door making contact with the end of his nose. "I didn't hold a grudge against him for that," Reed admitted. "After all, I was a nobody and he was a big star." ................ To his surprise Harris had survived the 1960s. To those he had blustered or bullied or fought with he had clawed his way into a select list of obnoxious talents: Oliver Reed, Albert Finney, Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. Years later, and in a more sober time, he tried to explain: "What that group of actors had was a fine madness, a lyrical madness. We lived our lives with that madness and it was transmitted into our work. We had smiles on our faces and a sense that the world was mad. We weren't afraid to be different. So we were always dangerous. Dangerous to meet in the street, in a restaurant, and dangerous to see on stage or in a film." ................ "Harris!" the voice hissed menacingly. "The next time I see you I'm going to kick the shit out of you and I'm going to stamp on your face and break both your arms."
"Where are you?" demanded Richard Harris.
"El Pedrino's."
"Don't move."
Harris arrived at the Los Angeles bar a few minutes later. "Do I start with you?" he asked the muscle-bound bodyguard standing at his master's shoulder. "Or do I begin with Oliver?"
"Me." The man waved away his advancing minder and slowly stood up.
Gasps of recognition rippled through the lounge. In the silence Richard Harris and Oliver Reed glared at each other nose to nose. Ego to ego.
"Drink?"
"Don't mind if I do."
After more than ten years of mischievous pranks and manufactured animosity it was only the second time the two actors had met. With the handshakes and backslapping over, they settled down to some serious drinking. "Sober, he was a great guy" recalled Oliver Reed. "Drunk, he was even better."
Since their brief Elstree encounter in 1960, Harris had been increasingly aware of the Wimbledon-born star's growing reputation, both as an actor and a hellraiser. But, while reading newspaper accounts of his own dimly remembered exploits, he considered Reed's antics 'childish and boring'. Nor was Reed a particularly dangerous professional rival: he picked up three leading roles only after Harris had turned them down. And unlike the Irishman, whose formative years were spent at drama school and as one of Joan Littlewood's 'little eggs', Reed had deliberately shunned the theatre. He remains one of the few film stars never to have given a single stage performance.
In 1969 Reed delivered a masterful and groundbreaking performance - opposite Alan Bates and the future Labour MP Glenda Jackson - in Ken Russell's adaptation of Women in Love. Amid the excess of praise and platitudes, Harris impishly sent Reed a pair of crutches - one inscribed 'Ken Russell', the other 'Glenda Jackson'.
By the early 1970s, Harris found himself more than a little irritated by Reed's self-proclamations. With his patriotism at its blustering height, Reed had taken to calling himself "Mr England", and claimed to be "the biggest star this country has got". This time, Harris posted Reed a copy of his recently published poems, I, In the Membership of My Days. On the flyleaf he wrote, "To Oliver - Mr England. Since you have not yet attained superstar status and salary and therefore cannot afford to buy this book, here is a free copy. Richard - Mr Ireland." And on the endpaper Harris added, "You are the only person I know who would go out of his way to claim an affinity with a bankrupt nation."
The slim volume would remain one of the Reed's lifelong treasures. For several years he would treat his houseguests to an after-dinner Harris poem. "Isn't that marvellous?" he would pronounce. "Isn't that fucking beautiful?"
At first the taunting was nothing more than a private joke but it soon became a crucial part of both actors' publicity machine. "Harris often made outrageous statements about me to reporters," explained Reed. "But we were both sensible and professional enough to know they were manufactured entirely for the benefit of the press." And it would continue for years to come.
In 1975 Reed made the western The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday with the fast-ailing alcoholic Lee Marvin. He made sure Harris got a mention: "Lee Marvin is the roughest, toughest movie star in the business - and the hardest drinker. He'd make Richard Harris look like a half-pint of stale Guinness and Dean Martin a wet Martini." The chance of another sideswipe came two years later, while Reed was making The Prince and the Pauper. One of Reed's co-stars - with whom he was orchestrating another well-publicised personality clash - was Raquel Welch. A telegram arrived at Harris's London home inviting the Irishman to take over a sex scene with Welch - "providing your wig doesn't fall off."
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