Articles/Interviews
Return to ListingCOULD OLIVER REED TAKE A GIRL LIKE YOU?
LET me introduce you. Take two cushions and put them on the floor. Lie down on them with your back propped against a bed (a sofa will do). You should be wearing a loose, Biba-type dress or mini-skirt. Now tilt your head back slightly and close your eyes.
A strong left hand, recently tanned in Barbados, is confidently following the curves down the right side of your body and along your leg to the knee where it pauses, considers, and then reverses direction, keeping a close, slightly rasping contact with your stocking tights. You are in the middle of an experimental kiss, but as you feel the hand slide halfway up your thigh to a certain, invisible point of no return, you say "No" rather more sharply than you meant to, and open your eyes.
HIS face moves back about ten inches, where you can see it in close-up. It looms over you, a bit larger than life, not a little menacing. Your eyes settle first on the scars, not ugly but very prominent, printed on the left cheek by a broken bottle in a dimly remembered pub brawl. Then the lips, wide, overfull, set uncompromisingly above a broad and muscular jaw. The face is dark, imposing rather than handsome and saved from being sinister by the round, appealing blue eyes under a thatch of frosted black hair. The blue eyes, surprised, glance down at your hand, which rests on his like a leaf on a stone.
"Why there?" he asks.
"Because that's where I know I can still say No," you say.
"You mean if I went further you would say Yes ?"
"I don't know," you whisper.
The blue eyes open even wider.
"You're a virgin!" Then:
"Haven't they heard of the Pill where you come from?"
"Yes, they have. They make you fat . . . and it's nothing to do with that. It's me that's the virgin."
"But why ? You like kissing and then, just when I'm desperate for it... er, for you ..."
"No, it. You were right first time . . . desperate for it. Well, I'm not it. I'm me." A pause while he recovers, then:
"Listen, that's what I meant. You'd like it... I know you'd like it."
"I know."
"Then what the hell's stopping you? Nobody cares about virginity any more. Even when Mr. Right does show up, he won't care either."
"He probably won't. But it's all I've got to give." WHAT happens after that is up to you and your imagination. In the film Take a Girl Like You he gives up and drives Hayley Mills home. In real life, that would be a most unlikely ending but then, in real life, I'm afraid, you'd e very lucky to get Oliver Reed into that situation at all. The real Oliver Reed's real wife in Wimbledon would take a poor view of finding you, however virginal, in a heavy bed-sitter seduction scene with her husband. Nevertheless, after several glasses of Pope's Newcastle '64 in the Shepperton Studio restaurant, Oliver agreed to play. "It's a very long scene. There's one six-and-a-half minute take. I don't think I'd take that much time." His mouth curved into a perfect half-moon grin, an astonishing grin which completely changes the landscape of his features, like spring after a hard winter. A powerful secret weapon, obviously, and the sort of equipment you need to be a star who can bring girls crumpling at your feet in under six minutes. WITH thirty films under his belt, one for every year of his life, Oliver Reed is a star, a fact which is coming across to more people as 1969 winds on. His progress has been unusual. Where most stars come up from small parts in big pictures, Reed has always played the big part in small pictures. As the pictures grew bigger and took more money, so did Oliver, until today he doesn't even have to ask for more. It's heaped on his plate. "I like the bread I'm earning now. I'll make no bones about that," he says. "I've spent enough time at Finch's and the Queen's Elm hoping that not too many friends would come in. I don't like refusing people drinks and it meant the spaghetti ration would go down." "Actors who turn to films - and most of them do because that's where the football pool money is - have not forgotten the days when it was art for art's sake and 'Let's have a cup of coffee and a ham roll and talk about Brecht.'" THE attraction of Oliver, which brings you to the box office and puts him the right side of the breadline, seems to be largely due to an aura of physical danger about him. He spent a fair amount of his youth throwing people out of places and being thrown out himself. A multitude of schools sensed the animal in Oliver and expelled him, and a bouncer's job at a Soho strip club helped him to get his own back later. Then a spell of fairground boxing polished his style, and nine horror films for Hammer, "which people are not slow to remember", versed him in more spectacular forms of violence. OLIVER REED is really a throw-back to the days when the sexes grappled rather than grooved. "I think women always like to court danger, but today they've lumbered themselves with an image of a man they've created. They get hold of him and say, 'You look fantastic in that pink flowered shirt with your blue trousers, and do put your cream tie on and backcomb your hair and wear that big, wide leather belt because it's so butch, and wear some Cuban heels because they look groovy too, and put some silver buckles on,' and when they've got the fellow doing everything they want and he's upstairs trying to decide whether he should wear the pink shirt or the blue shirt, the silver buckles or the gold ones, or he's visiting his tailor or having his shirts hand-made . . . well, the bird's practically got to give herself away to someone like me because there's nothing else to do. And I've got time because I dress in an Army Surplus store." No, Honey, I think you can be quite sure that Oliver Reed won't give up and drive you home.
Ted Simon, Honey, July 1969
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"Because that's where I know I can still say No," you say.
"You mean if I went further you would say Yes ?"
"I don't know," you whisper.
The blue eyes open even wider.
"You're a virgin!" Then:
"Haven't they heard of the Pill where you come from?"
"Yes, they have. They make you fat . . . and it's nothing to do with that. It's me that's the virgin."
"But why ? You like kissing and then, just when I'm desperate for it... er, for you ..."
"No, it. You were right first time . . . desperate for it. Well, I'm not it. I'm me." A pause while he recovers, then:
"Listen, that's what I meant. You'd like it... I know you'd like it."
"I know."
"Then what the hell's stopping you? Nobody cares about virginity any more. Even when Mr. Right does show up, he won't care either."
"He probably won't. But it's all I've got to give." WHAT happens after that is up to you and your imagination. In the film Take a Girl Like You he gives up and drives Hayley Mills home. In real life, that would be a most unlikely ending but then, in real life, I'm afraid, you'd e very lucky to get Oliver Reed into that situation at all. The real Oliver Reed's real wife in Wimbledon would take a poor view of finding you, however virginal, in a heavy bed-sitter seduction scene with her husband. Nevertheless, after several glasses of Pope's Newcastle '64 in the Shepperton Studio restaurant, Oliver agreed to play. "It's a very long scene. There's one six-and-a-half minute take. I don't think I'd take that much time." His mouth curved into a perfect half-moon grin, an astonishing grin which completely changes the landscape of his features, like spring after a hard winter. A powerful secret weapon, obviously, and the sort of equipment you need to be a star who can bring girls crumpling at your feet in under six minutes. WITH thirty films under his belt, one for every year of his life, Oliver Reed is a star, a fact which is coming across to more people as 1969 winds on. His progress has been unusual. Where most stars come up from small parts in big pictures, Reed has always played the big part in small pictures. As the pictures grew bigger and took more money, so did Oliver, until today he doesn't even have to ask for more. It's heaped on his plate. "I like the bread I'm earning now. I'll make no bones about that," he says. "I've spent enough time at Finch's and the Queen's Elm hoping that not too many friends would come in. I don't like refusing people drinks and it meant the spaghetti ration would go down." "Actors who turn to films - and most of them do because that's where the football pool money is - have not forgotten the days when it was art for art's sake and 'Let's have a cup of coffee and a ham roll and talk about Brecht.'" THE attraction of Oliver, which brings you to the box office and puts him the right side of the breadline, seems to be largely due to an aura of physical danger about him. He spent a fair amount of his youth throwing people out of places and being thrown out himself. A multitude of schools sensed the animal in Oliver and expelled him, and a bouncer's job at a Soho strip club helped him to get his own back later. Then a spell of fairground boxing polished his style, and nine horror films for Hammer, "which people are not slow to remember", versed him in more spectacular forms of violence. OLIVER REED is really a throw-back to the days when the sexes grappled rather than grooved. "I think women always like to court danger, but today they've lumbered themselves with an image of a man they've created. They get hold of him and say, 'You look fantastic in that pink flowered shirt with your blue trousers, and do put your cream tie on and backcomb your hair and wear that big, wide leather belt because it's so butch, and wear some Cuban heels because they look groovy too, and put some silver buckles on,' and when they've got the fellow doing everything they want and he's upstairs trying to decide whether he should wear the pink shirt or the blue shirt, the silver buckles or the gold ones, or he's visiting his tailor or having his shirts hand-made . . . well, the bird's practically got to give herself away to someone like me because there's nothing else to do. And I've got time because I dress in an Army Surplus store." No, Honey, I think you can be quite sure that Oliver Reed won't give up and drive you home.