Roger Lewis

The utter vileness of Richard Harris

The actor took pride in brutish behaviour, styling himself ‘the king of infidelity’, and treating wives and girlfriends as his private property

Richard Harris as the worn out rugby player in This Sporting Life (1963)

Brawling, boozing and womanising, those vaunted hell-raisers of the 1960s – Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton and, of course, Richard Harris – were all frightful bores. Because their professional lives involved dressing up and wearing mascara and silly wigs, it was essential for them to show what he-men they were: how hard. Like Stanley Baker (another one), Harris boasted to columnists: ‘I’ve got great contacts with the underworld,’ especially the Krays. He never had anything to say about the artistic merits or meaning of any of his films. His stories were exclusively about his prowess as a bully. Crushing an apple, he typically said to one of his directors: ‘If you don’t get out of this room right now, this is what I’ll do to your skull.’

Joe Jackson’s book is a catalogue of Harris’s ‘screaming matches’ with everybody from producers to chauffeurs. If one of the studio drivers ‘failed to open the car door fast enough’ Harris would start kicking off and creating a scene. He boasted about staring down Marlon Brando and called him ‘a gross, misconceived amateur’. He said to Lindsay Anderson: ‘Stop smiling! You’ll smile when I tell you to.’ He thought he was witty in the extreme, describing Charlton Heston as ‘so square, he must have been born in a cubic womb’. To Kirk Douglas, on being shown his art collection, he said: ‘You know, Kirk, this isn’t a display of taste; it’s a display of wealth. It’s a different thing, you know.’

Harris had a very high opinion of himself, and wrote dire poems with titles such as ‘I, in the Membership of My Days’. As an actor he did one of two things: exaggerated whispering or barks. If he’s good as the worn out rugby player in This Sporting Life (1963) it’s because he didn’t dare attempt any egocentric nonsense with Rachel Roberts.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in