Apparently he does. He has assured us that German invasion or domination are not a threat, and while one may agree with him that invasion isn’t (for the moment, anyway; they haven’t got the muscle yet, for one thing), domination may be another matter. Who needs to invade, when they can win the long struggle two generations after the war by dominating, politically and economically, a Europe into which Britain has been tamely absorbed? It is happening, and the German Foreign Minister is intent on securing more votes in the European Council of Ministers than Britain (or France or Italy for that matter) on account of Germany’s size. After which, no doubt, he will have no further territorial (sorry, political) claims to make.
But then, I’m just a bloody dinosaur, living in the past, unable to understand that humanity (and expediency) demand that we forget that past, and pretend the Nazi era was just a glitch in German history, and couldn’t possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, ever happen again, because we’re all friends and good Europeans nowadays, and the last thing any modern German wants is to get his own back, and let’s have another rousing chorus of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.
Yes, I’m a Mainwaring, a blimp, a chauvinist or whatever, quite out of step with the joyous fraternal Europe of today. I know I’m very wrong and reactionary and pessimistic—but the trouble is that I remember (as Mr Wilson cannot), the thunder, hour after ghastly hour, of the blitz that almost abolished Clydebank, and the horror of hearing the news of Lidice and Oradour, and the sickening spectacle of those ghastly emaciated wretches stumbling out of Belsen, and knowing what it was like to live in a country besieged, and hear in imagination the tramp of jack-boots on our streets, and know we were in the most mortal peril we had ever faced, and that if we failed or even faltered or ran out of luck we would be a Nazi—no, a German slave-state. That is what the Germans wanted and did their damnedest to do to us—not just Hitler, the Germans. Is it wrong to keep it in mind?
What prompted Mr Wilson’s article was the German Ambassador’s anxiety about what he saw as a British obsession with 1939—45. Well, considering that Germany caused the greatest mass slaughter in human history in those years, and wreaked carnage on us, and committed the most abominable crimes, it would be no wonder if we were obsessed. But the word is ridiculously strong, and the Ambassador’s complaint seems to me to reflect a wondrously Teutonic insensitivity, rather as though the son of a convicted rapist and killer should wonder what the victim’s family have got to beef about. But as I’ve already made clear, it is not only the last war that colours our view, but a perfectly rational feeling that Germany, whatever her statesmen and our Europhiles may say, has shown by her history that she is not a country to be trusted. And if I am prejudiced (which I am not, but post-judiced), it may be because I can still hear the words:
“Our countries are friends now; we can never fight each other again.”
They were spoken in my presence by a member of the Hitler Youth when he visited our school on a goodwill exchange in 1935. The tragic irony is that he may have spoken them with complete sincerity.
“Oh, grow up!” was Mr Wilson’s reaction to my Mainwaringish reservations about Germany. My difficulty is that, unlike him, I did grow up, but in my time, not his, and I want my grandchildren to grow up in theirs. I believe they have a better chance of doing that if Germany is carefully watched, kept within bounds, and above all not allowed the least influence in our affairs. To put it mildly, they haven’t earned the privilege. A dominant Germany is not, and never has been, a safe thing for the peace of the world, and we would do well to remember that—and reflect on the thought that came to me on the night the Berlin Wall came down, and all the politicians and pundits and media cheer-leaders threw up their sweaty nightcaps: I know one man who’d have exulted tonight, and his name was Adolf Hitler.
It’s too late for me and my generation to grow up; our government cannot hope to “educate” us into what Mr Wilson called “a different perspective on things”. We know too much, and are hardly to be instructed by second-rate politicians who have still (we can only hope) to reach maturity.
Nor, I have to say, by A. N. Wilson. He does not see Germany as a potential menace, but thinks the most obvious threat to our civilisation is “creeping Americanism.” Well, I don’t care for McDonalds or the US Constitution or the Jerry Springer show or cheeseburgers (whatever they are) myself, and I do try to make allowances for the youthful folly of columnists, but there are limits to my tolerance.
It’s no use, I’ve got to say it: “You stupid boy!”
* The holding of a referendum more than a year after entry was a cynical fraud, and not only because it was preceded by a massive campaign to ensure a “yes” vote. The claim that this was a fair procedure was rather like pretending that there is no difference between giving a man on shore a free choice of getting into a boat or remaining on land, and forcing him aboard, rowing him out to sea, and then asking him if he wants to get out or not.
It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if, in 1972, Her Majesty the Queen had taken the unprecedented step of refusing to sign the original Bill into law. The howls of its supporters would have been deafening at this breach of Parliament’s sacred rights, and a constitutional crisis would have arisen—a crisis which would certainly have seen Heath’s government broken, because however unconstitutional the royal refusal, it would have commanded overwhelming support in the country, and we would have seen the welcome spectacle of Parliament, which in the 1640s had to defend the people against the throne, being in the 1970s defeated by the Throne’s intervention to protect the people against Parliament’s abuse of power. A nice point which would not have been lost on King Charles I and Cromwell—and would, incidentally, have guaranteed the future of the monarchy for generations to come.
* Nor was a word said when the Communist pasts of German ministers were revealed.
INTERLUDE
Act of Settlement
CONTRARY TO FASHIONABLE, ill-considered opinion, the Act of Settlement, which in effect bars Roman Catholics from the throne, must be retained.
On the face of it the Act is discriminatory, unfair, archaic, bigoted, wicked, and all the other epithets its opponents can throw at it, and the case for removal seems obvious. There is, however, one excellent and over-riding reason for keeping the Act: the British monarch must never be subservient, spiritually or otherwise, to a foreigner, usually an Italian though at present a Pole.
It is that simple. I know little of Roman Catholic doctrine, and am not in sympathy with what I understand of Catholic beliefs and practices, but since I’m not in sympathy with anyone else’s religious beliefs either, I hope I may be acquitted of partisanship. But I confess I find it difficult to accept the plea for toleration from a Church whose intolerance is a byword.
If a Catholic wishes to reign in Britain, he or she must somehow discover (possibly with Jesuitical assistance) a means whereby he or she continues in his or her faith, but at the same time ceases to recognise the Pope’s superiority. (I think we’ve been here before, in Henry VIII’s time, but that’s by the way.) If such spiritual agility is impossible for a devout Catholic aspirant to the throne, then forget it.
SHOOTING SCRIPT 4
“Not a Bad Bismarck, Was I?”
I WORKED ON FIVE FILMS with Oliver Reed, but I didn’t get to know him well. We weren’t just of different generations, but of different worlds, and had little in common beyond our work. Yet with the possible exceptions of George C. Scott and Edward Fox, he was the most rewarding actor I ever wrote for, and one of the best. He is remembered chiefly as what is called, usually with admiration, a hell-raiser—though why anyone should admire a loud-mouthed, violent, drunken nuisance (which is all a hell-raiser is) I can’t imagine. Oliver may have been all of that; I have seen him make an immortal ass of himself on television, and had well-documented accounts of his excesses from mutual acquaintances, but of his legendary aggression I had no personal experience. Eccentric behaviou
r, yes, but violence, no. And he could be, and often was, a perfect gentleman.
I can’t recall my first sight of him on film, but I know he struck me as one of the ugliest men I’d ever seen, and when he was cast as Athos, with top billing in that astoundingly starry Musketeer cast, I was disappointed, especially as Heston had been mentioned for the part, before his inspired casting as Richelieu. My disappointment turned to alarm when I heard that during shooting in Spain Oliver had been arrested after a hotel brawl and dragged to the slammer by five policemen, roaring: “Leave me alone! I’m Athos of The Three Musketeers! I don’t want any problems!” He escaped prosecution, but it was a worrying beginning.
However, doubt and disappointment didn’t last five seconds after I had heard his first lines when the showing of the rough-cut took place at Twickenham. He had to say, with facetious sarcasm, that the gash on his arm was not a wound, but small-pox, and when the sycophantic surgeon agreed, to retort: “Don’t pretend you would know one from the other, or that it would make any difference to your treatment if you did.”
Not the easiest line for an actor to manage, as I’d known when I wrote it; Oliver rasped it out at speed with splendid throwaway contempt, and I felt that surge of delight that comes when you hear your words spoken far better than you thought they could be. (Good actors can send a writer out of the cinema convinced that he’s a genius.)
I knew then that Lester had found the perfect Athos, and when I met Reed for the first time I thanked him for the way he’d handled those opening lines. Roy Kinnear, typically, couldn’t resist adding: “He means the rest of your lines weren’t so hot,” but Oliver just smiled and said: “Thanks for the opportunity.”
I did my best to give him the opportunity again in later films because it was such a pleasure to hear and watch him at work. He could always be relied on to give lines full value (and often more than they were worth), and he was blessed with that rare quality that is beyond mere acting: style. He had it by the bucket; Flynn and Fairbanks never swept a cloak or threw out a challenge with greater panache. On the Parkinson show he got his interviewer to deliver a “Musketeer line”, and very well Parkinson did it; he had the best exemplar in the business.
When you know whom you’re writing for, you obviously try to play to his strength. Olly had remarkable breath control, and frequently I deliberately gave him quite long passages rising to a crescendo, because he did them so well. He didn’t always care for this; on one occasion, faced with a tirade, he complained to Dick Fleischer about “George adjective Fraser’s adjective dialogue” being “too adjective much.”
“Then don’t say it,” said cunning Fleischer, knowing that such a remark is about the most deflating thing an actor can hear, especially an actor without formal training. Oliver snarled—and once in front of the camera, said the speech perfectly.
He had the most menacing whisper in the business, and, unlike many whispers, it was always audible; he would vary it with sudden, unexpected roars, and took a special delight in pejoratives and insults which he could spit out—I recall him on location in Spain, bellowing with laughter as he rehearsed, with immense gusto, a line which he had to fling at Bob Todd (he of Benny Hill fame): “Take your damned summons and soak it in wine and choke on it, you time-serving pimp!” He brought the same energy to his action sequences, and I often felt a pang for the extras and stuntmen who got in his way when he was really motoring. He met his match on Royal Flash, in which he had to trade punches with Henry Cooper, who was playing John Gully, a champion of the Napoleonic era,* to Oliver’s Bismarck. I wasn’t present, but I understand that Oliver got ambitious until Cooper gave him what is technically known as “a sweetener”, to calm him down.
That movie was the only film made from one of my Flashman books. Dick Lester directed my script, with Malcolm McDowell in the lead, Britt Ekland as the heroine, and Alan Bates as Oliver’s assistant villain—the first time they had appeared together, I believe, since their notorious nude fight in Ken Russell’s Women in Love. The supporting case included Alastair Sim in his penultimate film, and a number of minor players who have since become very big names, among them David Jason and, in a lovely two-minute cameo as a London policeman, Bob Hoskins.
It wasn’t a box-office success, but Oliver was one of the best things in it, and was, as I discovered later, unusually proud of his performance—when we met again in Budapest he hailed me with a cry of “Not a bad Bismarck, was I?” and I still have a card bearing his sketch of a rapier and plumed hat labelled “Ath” and a top hat and moustache captioned “Bis”, signed “Olly Reed”. He sent it to me in Hollywood when he was working on Sting II and I on Octopussy, and it’s a remarkably neat piece of work, considering that he did it, according to the messenger who brought it to me, in an advanced state of inebriation.
As I have already recounted, Hungary, where much of Prince and Pauper was shot, saw Oliver at his spectacular worst, brawling, boozing, being ejected from hotels and threatened with deportation, and wading the Danube by night. I have to say that it also saw him at his best, patient and cheerful during long and difficult days on set, a model diner in the hotel restaurant, at his most charming when I introduced him to Kathy, and showing no more than mild suspicion as he sat in the corner of the bar watching Fleischer and me conferring—the sight of writer and director together seems to unsettle actors, who probably think no good can come of it.
He was also on his best behaviour at the big party in Budapest, moderately elevated as the evening wore on, but not unpleasantly so, merely inviting passers-by to feel his biceps, airing what sounded like fluent French to a female hotel guest, reminding me again what a splendidly square-headed Bismarck he had been, that he was thirty-eight and fighting fit, and suddenly waxing confidential with dark hints that they (the press, the public, the gremlins?) seemed to think that he was over the hill and would be lucky to get the part of bloody Santa Claus next Christmas outside bloody Harrods.
“Just you wait—let ’em go to bloody Harrods next Christmas, get hold of bleeding Santa and whip off his beard, and what’ll they find?” Explosive shout of laughter. “Bloody Steve McQueen!”
I gathered then that there was no love lost between him and McQueen, and this was confirmed by McQueen when I worked with him some months later on Taipan. There was a part which I thought Oliver would be right for, but Steve frowned and wrinkled his nose. “Ferdinand the Bull,” he said. “You know why they call him that? Because he’s always being put on his ass.” Pause. “Matter of fact, I almost put him on his ass once myself.”
The idea of McQueen, who was fairly slight in build and of no more than middle height, putting that hulking mass of muscle* on any part of its anatomy, was not worthy of comment, so I didn’t. I have since been told that the reason for their mutual dislike was that Oliver had thrown up over Steve during a meeting in London, which might account for it, but I suspect that even if Oliver’s internal economy had been under control they would still have been poles apart, the quiet, plain-spoken, pretty egotistical American, and the ebullient, beautifully accented Englishman. Thinking of them together, I have no difficulty understanding the events of 1776.
I had left Budapest before Oliver’s final fall from grace, when he arrived on the set in a highly alcoholic condition, falling down and rolling on the floor. Fleischer was adamant that he would never work with him again, but knowing Dick I rather think he would have relented if the occasion had ever arisen.
Olly was not the only actor on Prince and Pauper with a drink problem. George C. Scott’s appetite for the sauce was well known, and when he was cast as the Ruffler I received a hurried instruction to rewrite one of his scenes—this, I discovered later, was to ensure that he and Oliver would not be called on to perform together; some risks are just too great to run.
Ten years passed before I saw Oliver again—in the flesh, anyway. I watched him falling off couches and performing an ape-like dance on TV chat shows, and felt anger at the creeps who plainly had invit
ed him to appear in the hope that he would make an idiot of himself. And then The Return of the Musketeers brought us together again, and on the Spanish locations he was back in his old uproariously good-natured form, bellowing with laughter as he was yanked up to dizzy heights and down again on a mobile platform, enacting a brawl in which he hurled stuntmen about with rare abandon, and giving his lines all the force and energy of old. Off the set he was quieter and more placid than I had known him; perhaps a happy marriage and middle age were having their effect.
We had dinner one night at Pierre Spengler’s house, with Billy Connolly and Pamela Stephenson (and their new baby in a cot hard by), and afterwards Oliver and I talked away in a corner—about Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson, of which apparently he owned the rights (and supposed gloomily that I would be too expensive to write him a screenplay; I assured him that for friends I gave a discount), and Alf Gover’s cricket school, which he had attended, and what might have been if Jack Cardiff had succeeded in getting Farnol’s Jade of Destiny off the ground, and what was it like living on the Isle of Man—he was then on Guernsey, and feeling restless—and much else that I’ve forgotten; he was on his best behaviour again, entirely on the wagon, he assured me.
He declined a cigarette, saying he didn’t smoke, and when I reminded him that he’d smoked between takes while seated in the stocks at Sopron, he said: “Sure it wasn’t a joint?” That I couldn’t tell him, but somehow our talk veered from the fatal potential of tobacco to the subject of death, on which we had a spirited argument, he taking exception to my fatalistic attitude. “Rage, rage against the fading of the light” was Olly’s style—but then, it would be, wouldn’t it?