Seraphic Secret

Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Movie fanatic. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Peter O'Toole

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Men don’t get sore if their womenfolk like me on the screen. I’m one of them, they know it, so it’s a compliment to them. If I can do it, they can do it, and they figure it might be fun to go home and make love to their wives. ”
—Clark Gable

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn’t last long.”
—Shelley Winters

 

I would be remiss if I did not link to a splendid Christmas or Chanukah gift. You have my personal guarantee that this item is awesome. 

Also available from the Apple iTunes store.

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Peter O’Toole: Acting With Messianic Determination

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Peter O'Toole works with his co-star on the set of Lawrence of Arabia (1962, dir. David Lean) “[In Lawrence of Arabia,] there was a famous scene of a charge in which my face was described by Time magazine as with a look of ‘messianic determination’ as we charged. …The day of the charge, we were given Moroccan plow camels, who had never had a human being on their hump. We were doing a mile down a shaley hill - 50 camels and 400 horses. It was going to be very dangerous indeed. So I went to the caravan which Omar [Sharif] and I were sharing. As you may know, Omar is a gambling man. He was looking very solemn. He said, 'I’m working up the odds, Peter….whether or not the camel will fall over, or whether I will fall off the camel. The odds on the camel falling over are 6:4 against, but the odds of me falling off the camel are even money.’ I saw the sense of that so I asked, 'What do you intend to do?’ He said, 'I’m going to tie myself onto the camel.'  I thought, well, I don’t really fancy being adhered to a camel. So I said, 'I’m not going to do that, Omar. I’m going to get drunk.’ And Omar said, 'Oh, I’m going to get drunk as well.’ So we got a bottle of brandy and two bottles of milk and we drank the brandy and the milk. And of course by this time we were supremely confident of doing anything. So he was tied to the camel. Off went the rockets - boom! - and of course the camels, out of sheer terror, bolted. And this look of 'messianic determination’ on my face was, in fact, a drunk actor.”

 

Peter O’Toole (1932 – 2013) achieved instant stardom playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. O’Toole received seven further Oscar nominations: Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982) and Venus (2006). O’Toole never won the Oscar. But he’s in great company. Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock were also snubbed by the Academy.

Here, O’Toole gives some great pointers on acting technique. This is the kind of real life experience students of Stanislavsky, Strasberg and Adler never received.

“In Lawrence of Arabia, there was a famous scene of a charge in which my face was described by Time magazine as with a look of ‘messianic determination’ as we charged.

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Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s: Lawrence of Arabia

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Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962.
Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962.

We continue our survey of the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s, click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940s, click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1930s click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1920s click here.

3. Lawrence of Arabia, 1962.

Such a strange movie.

No girl. No big stars. No memorable action sequences. No plot.

And yet Lawrence of Arabia is mesmerizing.

A genuine epic, four hours long, costing an enormous amount of money to produce, Lawrence of Arabia is perhaps the most original portrait of an anti-hero ever filmed.

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“Will No One Rid Me of This Troublesome Tea Party”

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Getting rid of a troublesome priest. Richard Burton as Becket, 1964.
Getting rid of a troublesome priest. Richard Burton as Becket, 1964.

One after the other, Obama’s IRS officials step up and do what government bureaucrats do best: they spin, they obfuscate, they lie, and they cover their rear-ends.  We have been treated to the reality of big government: a mob of lawless bureaucrats drunk on their own power. These men and women, career government pencil pushers, are political hacks who do Obama’s bidding.

And they did it with the greatest vigor during Obama’s reelection campaign.

Of course, Obama doesn’t pick up a phone, call Lois Lerner—try taking the 5th when dealing with the IRS!—and instruct her to kneecap the political opposition. No, that call is probably made by Valerie Jarrett through her underlings.

Obama and his political thugs have learned from Nixon’s mistakes.

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