Introduction to an Irish Individualist
Eugene Archer. New York Times September 30, 1962; II 7:1

Peter O'Toole is a 6-foot-3-inch, blond, green-eyed Irishman whose unfamiliar features will soon be flashing across a wide, wide screen for the better part of four hours. In a gamble that paying customers will like what they see, the managers of Broadway's Criterion Theater have decided to charge $4.80 for a look--a record ceiling for regular weekend performances of a motion picture.

The showcase for young O'Toole's budding talents is "Lawrence of Arabia," a $12,000,000 production guided by Sam Spiegel and David Lean, the team responsible for "The Bridge on the River Kwai," and written by the "Man for All Seasons playwright, Robert Bolt. The little-known Irish actor is supported by such eminent performers as Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Jose Ferrer, Claude Rains and Arthur Kennedy. The emphasis however, is entirely upon O'Toole. In the title role, he appears not only in almost every scene of the film, but in 95 percent of its 230-minute length--a role he describes as "probably the largest ever played by an actor in a film."

Good Bet

This sort of gambling is growing increasingly rare in the star-centered film industry today, but it is nothing new to O'Toole.

"My father is a bookie," he remarked the other day in a modulated Irish brogue. "He does very well at it." To a Spiegel spokesman's hurried interjection that bookmaking is a more respectable profession in the British Isles than it is here, he promptly countered, "It wasn't legal when my father did it." Peter Seamus O'Toole was making it clear that he is a man who speaks his mind.

After 29 eventful years of fitful schooling, extensive traveling, a hitch in the Royal Navy and a full apprenticeship in the British theater, it is evident that he has a mind to speak. His conversation is flavored with a professional actor's references to the theatrical repertoire of Shakespeare, Shaw and O'Casey, but he likes to refer to himself as a rebel and an adventurer. His two-year location jaunt with "Lawrence" was one such adventure, and so, for different reasons, was his recent publicity tour of New York.

The preceding night he had been subjected to his first encounter with American martinis. "I'm a whisky drinker like every good Irishman," he observed with obvious relish, "and I thought I was drinking lemonade. It was a memorable experience."

His slightly bloodshot eyes nevertheless sparkled with enthusiasm for the limited part of America he had been able to see. "I like cities," he said. "I don't like fresh air. I'm a sort of air-conditioned Bedouin."

He has a similar enthusiasm for American actors, "If they could get their tongues our of their mouths. They have a natural vitality that is far more exciting than our over-disciplined British manner. What I really want to do is establish a repertory theater with Kermit Bloomgarden, combining British and American actors--people like Anne Bancroft, Zero Mostel, George C. Scott. We'd do a season of comedy classics from Congreve to Coward, and work for a common vocal approach."

Quick Change

O'Toole scoffs at the idea of himself as a ruggedly handsome leading man. He considers himself a character actor. Accordingly, in his next film he will play the old clown in "Waiting for Godot." He is so eager to undertake the project, he said, that he is producing it himself, with Samuel Beckett, the author, as the probable director.

After that, he may play the king to Richard Burton's "Becket," in Hal Wallis' film-- "I love the Anouilh play"--or, if negotiations proceed as he hopes, the Henry Higgins role in "My Fair Lady." "I've turned down 'The Cardinal'--it's an exciting script, but I'm wrong for it," he explained. "Richard Brooks asked me to do 'Lord Jim,' but when I asked to see the script, he said I should 'trust him,' so that was the end of that."

If O'Toole is being particular at this stage of his career, his associates on "Lawrence" are convinced that his confidence is justified. Already, in his relatively brief background, he has scored notable stage successes in such varied roles as the uncouth soldier in "The Long and the Short and the Tall," Hamlet and Shylock. His previous film appearances, in small roles in "Kidnapped," "The Day They Robbed the Bank of England," and "the Savage Innocents," were less than spectacular, but so few people saw them that he prefers to forget they were made--as he would like to forget his London stage debut, in an ill-fated musical that required him to play a man of 63 and sing for the first time in English, "Oh, My Papa."

At the moment, he is remodeling a house in Hampstead-- "a good deal more expensive than I can afford"--to accommodate his 2-year-old daughter and his actress wife ("Her name is Sian Phillips--that's Welsh for Siobhan.") After spending two years searching for the identity of the legendary Lawrence (He spent his life in a quest for the truth about himself," he cogently explained, "and when he finally found out what is was, it was terrifying"), he is ready to devote a little time to searching for his own.