For me, O'Toole has been in my life for as long as I can remember. Lawrence of Arabia has been my favorite movie since I was 12. And a lot of that credit goes to the thrilling performance from O'Toole. And my love of Lawrence led directly to my first big lesson on how the Oscars aren't fair. I knew Lawrence had won 7 Oscars, including all the biggies, but when I looked on the list, I did not see O'Toole's name. Despite my ardent protests, my dad assured me that it was not a typo and that O'Toole had indeed lost the Oscar.
You see, in my child's mind, it was inconceivable that he could lose that Oscar. That performance is riveting in every detail. it is sheer electricity on-screen and I had never seen anything like it (nor have I since). How is it possible that he had lost?! Because that is the Oscars, folks.
In fact, O'Toole's career was a checklist of Oscar unluckiness. He had the misfortune of almost always going up against someone who was guaranteed to win. For those who are curious, here is the tally:
1. Lawrence of Arabia - lost to Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. Look, that is a great performance in a great film, but O'Toole was better. That said, there was no way Peck was losing that Oscar.
2. Becket - lost to Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. There is no way Rex Harrison was losing that Oscar .
3. The Lion in Winter - this the one he should have won. Cliff Robertson won for Charly, which is was a fine film, but I'm not sure how Robertson won this. He did embark on a great publicity campaign and there also may have been some voter fatigue from so many European actors winning Oscars in the 1960s. Either way, this is the one that got away.
4. Goodbye, Mr. Chips - lost to John Wayne in True Grit. There was no way John Wayne was losing that Oscar - not after almost a half century in Hollywood without a win.
5. Ruling Class - lost to Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Brando is not losing that Oscar.
6. The Stunt Man - lost to Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull. DeNiro is not losing that Oscar.
7. My Favorite Year - lost to Ben Kingsley in Gandhi. You really think Kingsley was going to lose that Oscar?
8. Venus - lost to Forrest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland. Whitaker is not going to lose that Oscar.
What bad luck! That is 8 nominations without a win, which is the record for acting. He was awarded an Honorary Oscar in 2003, which he tried to reject because he said he was still in the game and "wanted to win the bugger outright." But I think that was Hollywood's way of trying to undo their mistake and award him for a terrific body of work.
But let's move on. Why dwell on disappointments when we should be applauding his work. I wanted to make a quick list of the top five O'Toole performances for me. His body of work includes a lot of class, but also a lot of junk (the late 1980s was not a good decade for him!), but if you could only see him acting in five movies, these are the five. Please note that I don't think these are his best five films; just his top five performances. I've also included the scene that I think showcases what he does best in these films. Counting down!!!
5. Venus - What a great role to have at the end of one's career! O'Toole plays a dirty old actor named Maurice reduced to playing aged aristocrats or corpses, and who becomes infatuated with a young woman named Jessie (Jodie Whitaker). While moments are hilarious, this really is not a heartwarming film. But Maurice is a daring and bold role for any actor to take, and O'Toole brought 50 years of hellraising baggage to the part. The killer scene is when he visits his ex-wife (Vanessa Redgrave) and admits to what a shallow and horrible husband he had been - but still with a touch of class and humor. Only O'Toole could pull that off!
4. What's New Pussycat? This is not a great film. I'm not even sure if this is a good one, but boy, is it fun and absolutely insane! This was one of those crazy sex farces from the 1960s, and featured a sterling cast that included Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress and Woody Allen in his film debut. This movie is ridiculous, makes no sense, and I love every second of it. If Lawrence is the movie that revealed O'Toole the actor to me, then this was the movie that showed me the Hellraiser. I got a sense that in real life, he was very much like boozy womanizer Michael James. And that guy would be a lot of fun to hang out with! I would probably not survive the evening, but it would be a lot of fun! For a standout O'Toole moment, either check out the drunken spin on Cyrano de Bergerac or his reaction to Paula Prentiss' poetry ("Who Killed Charlie Parker! You did! You Rat!")
3. The Stunt Man. Another film that is not everyone's cup of tea. Some people love it, some are appalled by its strangeness. I am mixed myself. There is a lot to love about this crazy movie, but there are too many problems for me to fully embrace it. That said, O'Toole is insanely good as a maniacal film director Eli Cross, who may be trying to kill his new stunt man. He hovers over the whole movie - literally, since his director's chair is mounted on a giant crane - like some sort of crazed movie god passing judgment on all the mere mortals beneath him. He is both terrifying and charming. The highlight scene is when the Assistant Director yells, "cut" on set before Eli Cross I ready to end the scene. The fast-paced, clipped display of venom that spews out of O'Toole's mouth for the next 30 seconds is the type of performance that should be taught in film school.
2. The Lion in Winter. As the embattled king Henry II, O'Toole is brilliant. The movie follows Henry as he tries to deal with his remarkably dysfunctional family while arguing politics with his rival, the new king of France. Sounds a bit boring? Try again. Though technically a drama, this movie is actually very funny, with remarkably clever dialogue and memorable characters. And O'Toole is terrific, stealing the movie from a great cast that also includes Katherine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton. He not only went head-to-head with the steely titan Hepburn, he eclipsed her (though she did win a well-deserved Oscar). The best scene in the movie is when Henry has finally had enough of his rebellious children and muses on how his epitaph will read when he eventually dies, "but Henry had no sons. He had no sons." The pain and the rage are palpable and raw. It's a great moment in a great film.
1. Lawrence of Arabia. Was there any doubt? My favorite performance in my favorite film. David Lean put O'Toole through the ringer in this movie. It is nearly a four hour movie and O'Toole is in nearly every scene, and has to run an emotional range from idealistic young officer to a man utterly crushed by political backstabbing and his own demons. The last time I saw Lawrence, I realized there was something remarkable that I had never seen before. Usually characters with God Complexes are villains, and usually they keep their illusions of grandeur right until the moment the hero kills them. But in Lawrence, our hero has the God Complex, and his illusions are shattered, he has to live with the fact that he was wrong. How do you deal with that? It's an interesting question to ask in the middle of a massive World War I epic. There was a heroic ideal that Lawrence thought he embodied, and that everyone else still believes him to be, and deep down, he knows he just doesn't cut it. And by the end of the film, you can see that building pressure just destroying him. Lawrence is about a lot of things, but it is also about the destruction of a human being, and O'Toole just nails every beat. I've never seen anything like it before or since. And I don't know if I can pick a best scene. In my younger days, I would have chosen the iconic encounter with Sharif Ali at the well. Now, I lean more towards the film's more complex second half, and the massacre of the Turkish army, specifically. When he stares down Sharif on the battlefield with that brutal tonic of barbaric insanity and shame in his eyes, it is truly terrifying.
So those are my top five. There are a lot of moments that could have been in here - his Priam in Troy, his art critic in Ratatouille, his charming thief in How to Steal a Million (my parents first date!), his insane aristocrat in The Ruling Class - heck, even his scientist in the otherwise atrocious Phantoms. There are a lot of fond memories of watching him on-screen.
On second thought, I am going to take back that opening sentence on my blog. A great light has not gone out. This light will never go out. Through his performances, O'Toole will always shine.
