Oriental Safari with 'Lord Jim' O'Toole
Howard Thompson. New York Times, March 22, 1964; II 11:1

"After 'Lord Jim'," said Peter O'Toole of his new movie, "the kids on my street are finally going to call me a real actor. In this one, I work like a son-of-a-gun--pulling a jinriksha, sliding down ropes and even stoking on a boat we used in Hong Kong--the only coal-run boat left in the Far East."

The actor was relaxing here in his hotel suite during a convenient stop-over for the "Becket" premiere after seven grueling weeks of Oriental exteriors for the screen version of Joseph Conrad's classic novel. The ambitious Columbia project, an eight-year dream of scenarist-director Richard Brooks, is one of the most far-flung and exotic-sounding in years, already stretching form Hong Kong harbor to the lush jungles of Cambodia with three months of studio work now set for London's Shepperton Studios.

West Meets East

Hong Kong, with its sampan-cluttered waterfront, is a not uncommon movie locale these jet-propelled days. But none of the 100 actors and technicians, according to Mr. O'Toole, were prepared for the colorful, first-hand impact of work at the site of the centuries-old temple of Angkor Wat, near Siemreap, Cambodia, where, with government clearance, the movie visitors recreated the author's mythical village of Patusan. To the astonishment of helpful jungle natives, who provided the movies population, the film folk added schoolhouses, well stocked shops, an assembly hall, a stockade, a tribal palace and bamboo-stilted straw huts along the mile-square moat enclosing the ancient temple.

Braving 120-degree heat, continually dodging scorpions and poisonous spiders, the "Lord Jim" visitors had brief, contrasting sanctuary in their nearby living quarters, the newly built Auberge des Temples, with air-conditioned rooms, French cuisine and white-clad native servants. As elephants splashed and trumpeted in the lily-padded waters of the temple moat, carpenters erected the "new" village of Patusan, where Mr. O'Toole and such colleagues as Curt Jurgens, Eli Wallach, Jack Hawkins, Paul Lukas, Akim Tamiroff, and the Israeli actress, Dahlia Lavi.

"We wasted very little time," mused O'Toole. "We couldn't with the monsoon season approaching. Back at Shepperton we'll match all our interiors. There'll be an 'inside' storm at sea--an impossibility in the jungle, of course," he added, smiling. "the ship itself will be completely constructed, also a courtroom, for one key sequence."

Present Indicative

Off screen, the Irish-born stage actor, who won global movie fame overnight as "Lawrence of Arabia," seems a bit less lean. Glasses lend an unexpected, scholarly air to his blond good looks. During this question-and-answer session, his manner was patient and a trifle wary, his speech salted with erudition, two fine, unprintable jokes and a keen knowledge of show business ways, Shakespeare to Shepperton.

"The script is the original book with the usual, recurring Conrad theme," he explained. "The godling who falls from grace, needs a second chance, seeks and finds absolution inevitably in his own death.

"This is a career change I welcome," he added. " 'Jim' is entirely inarticulate. He speaks like a bucket down a well. He's an actor's perfect hero to work at--a daydreamer, with a normal, dull parson's-son background."

Asked to compare techniques of three major directors in a row, O'Toole said, "It's impossible." He waited, then continued. "David Lean ("Lawrence") is precise, rather finicky--he's the technician. Peter Glenville ("Becket")--well, his background and mine are very much alike--stage, films. Brooks is the writer turned director--tough, punchy, vulnerable. Very American. There's one thing, though, they do have in common. I was lucky enough to hit all three of them when they were making the pictures of their lives."

Never again, the actor vowed, would he spend two years making a film as was the case with "Lawrence," originally set for five months. "It became more than a career," he recalled tonelessly. "It was a way of life. Weeks without a single line of dialogue. that accounts for my later idiotic frenzy to catch up. I did three plays in a row in London, including the best and worst received 'Hamlet' in history."

Mr. O'Toole, his actress wife, Sian Phillips, and their two young children live in Hampstead, 'the highest point in London, comparable to Montparnasse in Paris." No long-term Hollywood contracts for him, he said emphatically. Bids came even before "Lawrence."

Easy Does It

What about present plans? "Nothing's definite. But I see by today's paper that I'm up for 'Dylan.' It's news to me, too. Now why the hell would they want to use a skinny, 6-foot-3 Irishman for a 5-foot-five lump of a Welshman? And the guy not even cold yet. I can tell you who'd be perfect for him--Burton!" he said of his "Becket" co-star. "He has the poetry--everything. And last week I read where I was going to play Chopin, with my 'sensitive features.' Then the week before that somebody had me starring in 'The Bible' with Maria Callas."

O'Toole's wide mouth curved sardonically. "Besides, I'm getting too old." How old? "Thirty-two." That was old? "Ah, but don't forget--I started acting at seventeen."