In the late 1960s, Richard Harris took a break from filming and chartered a private jet.
His actor and his entourage traveled to Hamburg to visit a brothel, then went on a day trip to Ireland, spending an afternoon at one of Harris’ favorite pubs.
They weren’t cool at the moment of the excursion. This was documented by a photographer sent for the ride.
Their antics are told in Adrian Sibley’s new feature-length documentary Ghost of Richard Harrishad its world premiere at this week’s Venice International Film Festival.
The most surprising thing about this particular episode is that it was nothing out of the ordinary for the Limerick-born star. At that stage of , that was what Harris had done.
His various paramours may prove it. Sibley’s documentary hints at the actor having a brief affair with Princess Margaret, a rumor he himself has never confirmed.
“Richard was Errol Flynn’s ‘swordsman,’ but he wasn’t the kind of person to be attacked by #MeToo. was brave enough to
“Even though he conquered the fortress of Windsor Castle aboard the Queen’s Sister, he felt it would be like the Irish raising the flag…of the fact that he didn’t reveal it.” I like the nobility.”
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Richard Harris. Photo: Camera Press/Alan Davidson
It’s an interesting, if not lewd, insight into Harris’ love life, but the story about Princess Margaret highlights why modern audiences are so confused about the actor who died in 2002.
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There are other movies and books about Harris.Documentary directed by Brian Reddin a man named harris (2020) and Michael Feeney Curran’s 2014 biography both sought to unravel the mystery behind the man. But the question remains: What did he stand for?
Younger viewers remember Harris best for two notable late screen performances as Marcus Aurelius opposite Ridley Scott’s Russell Crowe’s Maximus. Gladiator (2000), and as Dumbledore in the early Harry Potter films.
I don’t immediately think I’ll see Harris in a wholesome Hogwarts universe, but Harris’ granddaughter loves J.K. Rowling’s books, and Harris knew of the blockbuster franchise when she saw it.
Some see him alongside Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, and Oliver Reed. They were one of a rogue gallery of jaded and once glorious ’60s movie stars notorious for drinking, getting into fights, and behaving badly just like them. It was for their performance.
Harris had a parallel career as a pop crooner (enjoying a Top 10 hit with the 1968 ballad). MacArthur Park) and as a poet.
At the height of his fame, he took time off from his film acting duties to work as a bartender at his friend Malachy McCourt’s pub in New York.
“Harris Abandoned, unfathomable, and apparently never taking money from customers,” McCourt wrote in his memoirs.
The pub owner was appalled to hear from “cheerful and rather inebriated older women” that the lovely young bartender had refused to pay for a bottle of Dom Pérignon.
However, Harris counted every free drink he handed out and left McCourt a check to cover them when he left work.
Anecdotes like that make Harris look a little silly – a poppinjay who didn’t take himself too seriously.
British public funders, including the British Film Institute, have refused to help Ghost of Richard Harris Because (Sibley believes), he felt the actors were “barbaric and sexist” and relics of another era.
His mixture of kindness, compassion, violence and even cruelty is astonishing.
Those funders say there was a time Harris early in his film career, when the film came closest to Marlon Brando outside the United States in the rawness and savage intensity of his acting. I forgot.
in the shining Observer Review of Lindsay Anderson’s 1963 film this sports lifeCritic Penelope Gilliat wrote:
She called it a “tremendous” film that took “fist-like blows” and rhapsodized on Harris’ “greatness”.
There is an obvious irony in her words, in that Harris was proud to be Irish, but she was right. Harris excelled in her role, which earned her Best Actor at Cannes.
He plays rugby league pro Frank Machin and gives an impassioned performance as a buxom, macho northerner who is ashamed of his soft and vulnerable side.
In the film, Machin has a villainous and devastating relationship with landlord Mrs. Hammond (Rachel Roberts).
But a real romance flourished between director Anderson and his star, Harris, and he was hooked.
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Richard Harris and his wife, Elizabeth Rhys Williams, April 1965. Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In his diary, Anderson said of his lead role, “His mixture of kindness and compassion and violence and even brutality is amazing.
He later told film historian Brian McFarlane that Harris was “very ambitious” but “in many ways an unsure, awkward actor, but ideally cast.” .
Growing up in Limerick, Harris dreamed of playing rugby for Ireland.
He was a promising young player, but his hopes for sporting glory were dashed when he contracted tuberculosis as a boy and was bedridden for months.
Being both an athlete and a sick man in his youth seems typical of an actor who has always been contradictory.
As he used to joke, he was considered “British” when he won an award, but “Irish” when he was arrested after a pub brawl.
He was angry and rebellious, but of fine middle-class origin (once part of a thriving mill family). He was a ferocious, chaotic chancer who became an absolute perfectionist once he believed in the project. He lived for his art but coveted his money and fame.
Harris was a staunch supporter of romantic Irish nationalism and the IRA before being marginalized by group violence, but Ken Hughes’ 1970 biography of a British soldier and politician sees him in a sympathetic way. I never stopped painting Oliver Cromwell.
In his early screen roles, Harris possessed both intense physicality and vulnerability. (As he joked, he was considered “British” when he won an award, but “Irish” when he was arrested after a pub brawl.)
Harris may have made his name in kitchen sink dramas and arthouse films like Michelangelo Antonioni. red desert (1964), but with a young family to support, he soon headed to Hollywood to star in lucrative action films and westerns. Hero of Telemark (1965) and Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee (1965).
then a musical hit Camelot (1967), playing King Arthur opposite Vanessa Redgrave’s Queen Guinevere.
This gave him a level of mainstream success never achieved in Europe. Oddly enough, he took advantage of his growing celebrity by reinventing himself as a pop star.
“The pop scene is not a closed shop. daily mirror (December 28, 1967), he signed a contract to make six albums over three years.
But Harris was a fickle person, prone to falling out with even his closest collaborators.Young songwriter Jimmy Webb MacArthur Park, was furious when Harris withdrew a deal to hand over a Rolls-Royce Phantom V if the song was a hit. Directors often resented him. He drank too much and could have been absurdly selfish. He was also, as he once told a journalist, “a very horny bastard.”
When Feeney Curran, researching his biography, informed him of the animosity that some of his old colleagues had shown toward him, Harris replied, “Fuck you guys.” He enjoyed playing with them. The actor’s screen career is extremely lopsided. received a golden raspberry nod for his terrible acting. ape man tarzan (1981), during its filming, he wandered naked around the jungle set, shocking his co-stars.
Even Sheridan was wary of aspects of his approach to the protagonist role, but was ultimately very moved by him.
But given the chance, Harris could do an amazing job. Some of his best performances came later in his career when detractors had already dismissed him as a thing of the past.He was great in Clint Eastwood’s brutal Western Unacceptable (1992). Harris played British Bob, an aging and very posh gunslinger who lives on past glories humiliated by the town’s sheriff (Gene Hackman).
Although it was a supporting role, Harris brought the same rawness and masochism to the part that he had found as Frank Mattin many years earlier. this sports lifeHe was still excellent at portraying big men whose illusions and anxieties lay bare.
Further redemption is Jim Sheridan’s field (1990). Harris was cast in the lead role after the sudden death of the original actor of choice, Ray McAnally.
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In the Jim Sheridan-directed 1990 film version of John B. Keene’s The Field, Richard Harris played Bull McCabe and Sean Bean played his son Tadg.
Harris had to work hard for the role, and there was considerable skepticism as to whether he could pull it off, but he never softened his approach. I was playing an awkward and stubborn character, and I was determined to be as awkward and stubborn as possible on set.
Nevertheless, his performance as the grizzled veteran Bull McCabe made a presence and earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
This was Harris’ thunderous, bloody King Lear mode, and even Sheridan was wary of aspects of his approach to the role of the protagonist, but was ultimately very impressed with him.
Twenty years after his death, Harris remains a subject of fascination and bewilderment. All things considered, you might think his story would end badly, but it really doesn’t. He did not die forgotten, impoverished, or regretted. However, he did not fully satisfy himself. However, it would be a mistake to think that he wasted his career. The wildness and recklessness with which he approached life off screen is exactly what made him such a compelling presence in his best movie roles. As his fellow actor Joe Lynch told Feeny Curran, “He was so cocky that you allowed him everything.”
The Ghost of Richard Harris will premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on September 4th.
