Trivia/Anecdotes

Movies, when released, are always subject to errors in continuity, sound, exposure of microphones, crew and so on.
Movies featuring Oliver Reed are no exception and the following is a continuity error from Gladiator:

When Proximo is talking with the slave dealer and he says "You sold me queer giraffes, I want my money back.", you see him holding a cup with his index finger pointing up. When he takes a sip from the cup his finger is down.

A brief history of hell-raising

BY HENRY CABOT BECK

If Colin Farrell is the best-known reveler in the current crop of celebrities (Russell Crowe apparently having retired into respectability), he is part of a tradition that goes back at least as far as the Roaring Twenties.

In those days, it was John Barrymore, grandfather of Drew, who reigned supreme as Hollywood's (and Broadway's) king carouser. In fact, Barrymore set the bar, so to speak, for all those hard-drinking thesps who followed, including his swashbuckling friend Errol Flynn. According to legend, Flynn and roommate David Niven stole Barrymore's corpse from the morgue for one last party after the Great Profile had gone to the big cocktail lounge in the sky.

The wildest era of decadence was probably the '50s and '60s, when Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and the rest of the Rat Pack cut a swath through Hollywood and Las Vegas.

Across the pond, meanwhile, Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, each Oscar-nominated seven times, led a pack of two-fisted boozers that included Richard Harris and Oliver Reed. Reed died during the making of "Gladiator" (2000), but not before he had challenged Crowe to an old-fashioned scuffle that Crowe apparently dodged by retreating to his trailer.

To your health, gentlemen (and Nick Nolte).

In her autobiography of All of Me, Barbara Windsor recalls an occasion when she made an appearance alongside Oliver Reed...

I COULD SEE OLIVER REED'S HANDS SHAKING. It was not yet ten o'clock on a freezing February morning, but he clearly needed a drink, so someone rushed off and got him two large cans of strong beer. We were outside the Prince Charles Theatre in London's Leicester Square with the great Peter Cushing, ready to put our handprints on a pavement, Hollywood style, and Ollie wanted to steady himself before plunging his enormous mitts into the cement.
Apparently, we had been invited to this 'ceremony' as the 'cream of British films' and I raised a titter when I grinned at Ollie and Peter and quipped: 'They're scraping the barrel a bit, aren't they, with us?' You would have been hard pushed to find three people more different from one another. I'd first met Ollie at Elstree thirty-one years earlier when he was filming The Curse of the Werewolf, and remembered how delightful he was: so handsome, with a gentle nature behind the boisterous hell-raising image. I was thrilled to find he hadn't changed. Like millions of others, I'd admired Peter Cushing for years, but I'd never met him until that morning. I thought him a dear, sweet man. Even though he had only just lost his wife and was grieving desperately, he treated everyone with a lovely old-world charm and courtesy.

When interviewed on The Paul O'Grady Show (ITV), former chat show host Michael Aspel was asked how he dealt with badly behaved guests. His reply inevitably turned to the occasion when he interviewed Oliver Reed:

"Half of the time badly behaved guests are good telly. And you know when Oliver Reed got drunk... I mean I was delighted. People said 'Aspel was furious' ? I was thrilled! You don't expect him to come on and behave like... a Bank Manager; if he had it would be disappointing. But we knew he was sloshed because he'd taken fifteen stops... and a couple of pints of gin and tonic. So when he lurched on I thought 'This is great!'"

In 1975, photographer David Steen had a photoshoot with Oliver Reed - the following is a brief account of the occasion:

This was shot at his pad Broom Hall, near Dorking in Surrey. I arrive there and I want to do a shot. I know him, I've photographed him before. A very large house, 40-50 rooms, 20-30 acres at a guess. I take the picture, I'm happy. The room has four French windows, probably 50 feet long by 30 feet wide. He said, "Right, let's have a drink." He doesn't mean a glass or a bottle, he gets a case of red wine out. Calls up a couple of his cronies. At 10 o'clock that night, he disappears for an hour, suddenly he comes back into the room riding a white horse. Middle of summer, windows are open, and he charges out the window on to the terrace, over the balustrade and off into the countryside.

In his memoir Harley Street doctor Ronald Scott Thorn (a pseudonym) recounts an amusing medical experience told to him by Oliver Reed:

Very recently an old friend of mine, Oliver Reed, came to be examined for the film Christopher Columbus. I told him I was writing a light hearted autobiography and asked him if he had had any amusing medical experiences. He thought a moment and then laughed.
'Yes, I've got one for you. Something that happened to me one night.'
'What was that?' I asked.
Oliver told me that one Christmas Eve in Los Angeles he and a friend made it a champagne evening, to such a degree that Oliver suddenly decided he would like two eagle's claws tattooed on his 'knob' as he put it.
A visit to several of the more orthodox practitioners of the art met with flat refusals. The cab driver came to the rescue.
'I know who'll do it,' he said.
'Then take me there, my good fellow,' said Oliver.
They weaved through the somewhat rough Mexican quarter of the city. The cab stopped and Oliver mounted the stairs where two Koreans, a man and his wife were both tattooists. The man shook his head, but his wife was made of sterner stuff. She led Mr. Reed through a beaded screen and performed the job to satisfaction.
'May I have a look?' I asked him.
'Be my guest.'
Two exquisitely executed claws adorned the end of his member.
When we had stopped laughing, I said, 'I can't put that in my book.'
'Why on earth not?' asked Oliver.
'But surely you don't want everyone who reads the book to know about it?'
'What's it matter about them? All my friends know, naturally.'
'I realize that,' I said, 'but you might change your mind and then sue me for...'
'Don't be so distrustful, Ronnie. You can put it in, I tell you. I'll sign a thing giving you permission here and now if you like.'
'Well,' I said cautiously. 'You'd better think about it. See how it looks written down. I'll send it to you, then if you still don't mind you can give me written permission to publish it.'
'Of course,' he said. 'But there's another bit to the story.' He still had his shirt off for the medical and pointed to his left shoulder. 'You've noticed this because you once mentioned it.'
Over his deltoid was a neatly tattooed eagle's head. I murmured my admiration. Oliver grinned broadly.
'You see, when people say "Why, you've got an Eagle's head on your shoulder," I then reply, "Would you like to see where it's perched?'"

OLIVER REED: A Producer's Tale

"Oliver's actually a very good actor - technically he's superb. I had Ollie and Richard Widmark together on THE SELLOUT in 1974 (which was directed by Peter Collinson), and one evening, he asked a few of us to come and have a drink with him in his hotel. Richard wouldn't go, so the rest of us went up to his suite on the top floor. It was about eight o'clock in the evening and there were six of us, and we were going off afterwards to have something to eat. Ollie had asked for the drinks to be sent up, and when the waiter brought the drinks, he also brought the bill for signing. Ollie saw how much it was and said, 'I'm not paying that!' and I thought - whoops, this is going to be a short evening: one drink and goodbye! But Ollie rang his driver from the bedroom, and fifteen minutes later, in came the driver with eight 'flunkies' behind him, each of whom carried a box. He had gone out and bought eight boxes of booze. And it wasn't just wine; it was spirits - the place was like a pub! When we woke up next morning, still in Ollie's suite, half the boxes were empty and Ollie had drunk as much as the rest of us put together! He hadn't been to sleep. And he went straight onto the set and into make-up - eight o'clock in the morning - stone-cold sober. I don't know how he does it. He is unbelievable." - Tom Sachs, one-time production manager for Hammer, speaking in 1993

"I remember the last thing I did with Oliver Reed. We were having a drink off set and he was talking to a woman about this and that and he just went over the top, she wasn't having anything to do with it and he said to me "you would, wouldn't you?" And I said, "sorry, but I wouldn't," so he picked up his drink, threw it at me and left, he came back ten minutes later and got his dresser to pour a drink over his head in return. That must have been while we were doing THE SCARLET BLADE. I know that he'd get a bit pushy sometimes and they'd tell him to behave himself or else, but I liked him. He's a nice chap. That scene in the jail in CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF was great; he's a very gutsy actor - a real star." - Michael Ripper (to Donald Fearney)

Each week, BBC TV motoring programme Top Gear invites a guest onto the show to race around their racetrack as part of the feature 'Star-in-a-reasonably-priced-car'. When Iranian comedian and actor Omid Djalil guested, presenter Jeremy Clarkson soon turned the conversation to Gladiator and to Oliver Reed...

JC: Oh then there was Gladiator?
OD: Yes.
JC: So you got to work in Oliver Reed's last film
OD: Yeah... yeah...
JC: Was it fun working with him?
OD: A lot of fun. There's a bit where the director said he's got to grab your balls. And he (Oliver Reed) said 'Are you a method actor?'... and I said 'Well, yes'... and he said 'You don't mind if I really grab your balls?'... and he put his hand out and held my balls (gestures with outstretched left hand). And when they said 'Action!'... he held it... and then when they said 'Cut!'... he's still holding onto my balls (audience laughs). And he did his five takes having a cup of tea (gestures sipping tea with right hand while left hand still outstretched) and I just stood there saying 'Yes, Mr. Oliver Reed'

In his TV program entitled Rowland Rivron's TV Drinking Club, host Rowland Rivron chose Oliver Reed's appearance on Aspel & Company as his greatest ever drunken TV moment. He also posthumously awarded Oliver Reed a 'Lifetime Achievement Award' for his various TV appearances.