Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (14 page)

I have rather a name as a practical joker … but thankfully as someone who can take a joke as well, as seen here when I was presented with a rubber octopus during a dining scene in
Octopussy
.

When I was in repertory theatre at The Intimate in Palmers Green, I once pushed hard on what I thought was a sticky door only to realize it was in fact a pull-door, and took down the entire set. On another occasion I was in a play called
While Parents Sleep
by Anthony Kimmins (the West End production of which starred Jack Hawkins) and in one scene I’m in a drawing room, having a bit of a fumble with a girl, when suddenly the lights come on and we both leap up to stand behind the settee as Lady Cattering enters. She, in turn, had some dialogue about forgiveness and I then had to bow my head down to her.

In rehearsal I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I bowed and banged my head on the settee?’ The ensuing silence gave me my answer – no, it would not be!

Come the first night, I bowed down, and quite inadvertently hit my head on the said settee, ending up on my knees having almost passed out. The audience thought it was hilarious, of course.

Actors have all encountered stubborn doors, sets that wobble and stage revolves that just won’t revolve, but there are also the technical bloopers such as phones not ringing on cue, gunshots sounding seconds after the actor has already fallen to the floor and doorbells that never ring, leaving the poor terrified soul awaiting his or her cue into having to ad lib. ‘Oh! Is that Aunt Agatha at the door? I’m sure I heard her car pull up just now.’

And what about the props that don’t behave as they ought to? Such as the time in a provincial tour of
The Importance of Being Earnest
when one character was supposed to pour
tea for another, but the handle dropped off the teapot. Or maybe a trap door opens when it shouldn’t, as happened in the Broadway production of
Fiddler on the Roof
, in which Nancy Opel broke her elbow.

Depending on the actor, they may prefer to ignore any mishap and continue, or perhaps admit something has gone wrong and let the audiences in on the gag, which can often add to the audience’s pleasure as they feel they’ve then been part of something that doesn’t ordinarily occur.

For example, in her 2013 record-breaking run of
The Audience
at the Gielgud Theatre in London’s glittering West End, Dame Helen Mirren made more headlines for her performance offstage – namely outside the stage door. Some friends of mine were in the audience on the fateful day. With the first half of the production beleaguered by lighting problems, the interval couldn’t come quick enough for the cast. When the interval curtain went down, Dame Helen took the opportunity to apologize to the audience for the technical glitches, which, she told them, were being ironed out, but she also added that she had been incredibly mindful of the noise outside too, which no doubt spoiled the first act for patrons.

She went on to explain that the drumming parade, moving through Soho to promote a gay music festival, had decided to stop outside the stage door for a full eight minutes. While supporting the cause, she didn’t feel it fair that they made so much noise during a performance and added, ‘I told the band to “shut the f*** up” as people had paid “a lot of f***ing money to watch the show” and that they were “f***ing ruining it”.’

One onlooker was later heard to say, ‘It was strange to see this little woman in tiara and pearls shouting like that.
It’s not the behaviour you’d expect from the Queen.’

Dame Helen received a round of applause, and went on to offer the drumming band free tickets to see the show.

Michael Simkins was starring in a touring production of
Dial M for Murder
and with the murderer revealed in the final scene the curtain was supposed to drop – end of play. However, on one particular evening the stagehand pulled the wrong lever and instead of dropping the tabs, activated the sprinkler system. Thinking on his feet, Michael’s co-star, who had just left the stage, popped his head back through to help save the scene and said, ‘And you ought to get that leaky roof fixed too!’

Then, of course, there was
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in June 2013, and a night the great glass elevator stopped working, leaving Douglas Hodge’s Willy Wonka and the child actor playing Charlie stranded above the audience. Within ten minutes they were rescued and the performance continued, with an apology to all from the manager. Mind you, that wasn’t quite as serious as in a Californian production of
Aladdin
I read about, in which a magical flying carpet tipped off the actors and left them hanging by their safety harnesses.

Wardrobe malfunctions also play their part, as in the case of Maureen Lipman in
Candida
in which she had opened the play and her skirt fell off, leaving her standing in only a slip while her co-star leapt to her defence, continuing to deliver their dialogue all the while.

It’s no wonder that actors corpse with laughter, and when one is set off you can guarantee the rest will follow – all trying extremely hard to keep straight faces.

Perhaps the ultimate stage cock-up was at the Wood Green Empire in 1918 when Chinese magician Chung Ling Soo (or William Ellsworth Robinson, to give him his birth name) was performing his popular bullet-catching trick. A gunpowder flash, used in a second chamber of his revolver, which produced the illusion of the gun being fired, actually ignited the bullet in the main chamber, causing the magician to be shot in the chest. Having never before spoken English on stage while adopting his Chinese persona, Chung Ling Soo was heard to say, ‘Something has happened. Lower the curtain.’ ... I’m afraid it was curtains for him and no
encore
for the audience.

We actors aren’t infallible. Alas, we are only human, as I’m reminded when I read through the obituary columns. It’s really quite worrying to see names I know in there, especially of people who are younger than me. Occasionally an actor, who, let’s face it, spends much of the working day on stage or set, is reported as having croaked it during a performance and the writer will add, as though hugely consoling, ‘he’d have liked to know he died on stage doing what he loved best’. Erm, that’s not really very comforting, I assure you!

No one made a career out of things going wrong quite like Tommy Cooper – it was his whole act – though, of course, to be such a bad magician meant he was actually remarkably good at magic. But when he collapsed on stage, live on British TV, the audience laughed hysterically, thinking it was all part of the show.

Similarly, when Eric Morecambe suffered a heart attack after a show in Yorkshire in the late 1960s it wasn’t perhaps treated as seriously as it would have been if he hadn’t been a comedian. Having returned to his hotel he suffered terrible
pains in his upper arm and, recognizing the danger signs, decided to drive himself to hospital, but as the pain spread to his chest, he became unable to continue the journey. Thankfully he was rescued by a passer-by who took him to hospital where, with Eric lying on a trolley waiting to go into the operating theatre, a nurse appeared with a pen and piece of paper and said, ‘Before you go, would you mind giving me your autograph?’

Thankfully, Eric didn’t ‘go’ anywhere that night, and dined out on the story for years afterwards. Sadly, he died after appearing in a Q&A session at a theatre in Tewkesbury, collapsing in the wings after a standing ovation.

Sid James also passed away at a theatre, but he did it on stage at the Sunderland Empire in front of a packed auditorium. Theatre manager Roy Todds phoned
The Mating Game
’s producer, Bill Robertson, to tell him the shocking news, ‘Sid James has just died in Sunderland!’

‘Don’t worry,’ replied Bill. ‘Everybody dies in Sunderland.’

Frank Sinatra, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster, leaving for location filming of
From Here to Eternity
in the early 1950s. Burt Lancaster was a wonderful actor but boy did he have a terrible temper at times!

CHAPTER 4

On-set Tales

I
’
VE BEEN FORTUNATE TO WORK WITH SOME WONDERFUL
actors – and I’ve also heard some wonderful stories about some actors I’ve not worked with!

Although I had a smattering of colloquial Italian, I never really understood the call sheets on my 1962 epic
The Rape of the Sabines
. The film was also known as
Romulus and the Sabines
, and I had the pleasure of playing the role of our hero, Romulus. Though based at studios in Rome, we went off on various random locations too, and I got into the routine of just turning up at the studio and being ready to go wherever we were needed. One day we headed north, at least I think it was north because you could never really hear anything the driver was saying because of incessant chatter coming from the crew on board the bus.

At the first location stop I had a scene with the lovely Italian actress Scilla Gabel, before we then moved up high
into a mountain range, where I remember there was a beautiful limpid blue pool, fed by a little stream, which in turn flowed down from the top of the mountain. It was very picturesque, and easy to see why the location manager had suggested it.

All the extras – women who had been kidnapped by the Romans, under my character’s command – began bathing quite merrily and swimming around the pool. One in particular, a former Miss Austria, created quite a bit of interest among the crew in her wet top – they gazed at her with what can best be described as primitive lust and longing. A couple of minutes later the assistant director
shouted, ‘OK! Now we’ll shoot the South American version.’

The Rape of the Sabines
was memorable, but perhaps for all the wrong reasons … Romulus is seen here with screen parents Rosanna Schiaffino as Venus and Jean Marais as Mars.

I didn’t remember ever reading anything about filming other versions of scenes in my contract, so asked what was happening.

‘Don’t worry,’ I was told. ‘You’re not in it. Just go and take a seat.’

So, that’s what I did.

Suddenly all the ladies started taking off their tops – thus creating even greater interest among the crew, so much so that some of them actually stopped chatting. But what we didn’t know was that, high up in the mountain, there was some sort of reservoir, from which, when a switch was thrown, a mini, ice-cold, Niagara rushed down into our limpid pool, making it a raging torrent. The women started screaming and the gallant crew gathered by the pool side, to help pull them out – with the exception of Miss Austria, whose bust was acting as a rather splendid buoyancy aid, carrying her fast across to the far side of the pool.

With them all being good Catholics, I can’t quite imagine which South American country would have ordered the slightly more risqué version of our film but I do know that it wasn’t only this production that had ‘alternative’ scenes filmed. My (later) producing partner Bob Baker made a number of movies in the UK long before he brought
The Saint
to TV screens. One of them,
Jack the Ripper
, was shot at Shepperton Studios on a ‘closed set’ – and with good reason. The scene involved a theatre’s backstage dressing room, and all the young actresses were in there busy putting on their make-up, dressed only in petticoats and bras, while preparing for curtain up. That was considered lurid enough for the UK censors of the 1950s, but when the scene was in the bag the assistant director, matter-of-factly, called, ‘OK, cut! Clothes off for the continental version now!’