Windthrop

No MC is very complimentary about GB in his book and MC can be cutting about some people and said in an interview that there was some score settling in the book. MC could well have been a technical adviser because he saw action in Korea.

Ref. RH - MC was interviewed in the Sunday Times when he was doing the Harry Palmer revivals and bragged that Harris, Burton and O'Toole were a pack of drunks who squandered it and Bates, Finney and Courtney got it in the neck too. Caine was essentially an argument that he was the only real British star of his era. He has since protested that he was misquoted though when Ross interviewed him when he was 70 MC did the same trick stating that he was the first real male star of the British cinema and that hitherto it was all homosexuals and little schoolboys in tweed suits. He never mentions a certain Scottish actor when he talks like this curiously.

Harris responded the following week in the letters column saying, amongst other things, that MC was a over-fat windbag who had been trivialised by his own wealth.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

batman

Cheers Windy. MC was very scathing about Brando after they met in Paris in the early 70s. Unfortunately the chap who told me about the MC/GB 'feud' is no longer with us so I can't ask him about it. The ITC story was about how GB was 'off' with Steve Forrest during an episode of The Baron. Like many of these stories I expect the truth will never be known. I personally like GB, IMHO another under rated stalwart of UK films.

"Do you know why fattries are called fattries .... it's because they are big and people make things in them."

dremble wedge

Or Stanley Baker, and you'd imagine that he'd have good reason to remember him...

I read somewhere that Caine claimed he turned down the part of Gerald Crich in Women in Love because he wasn't prepared to do the nude wrestling.

Strange that Ken Russell has said on many occasions that there was no nude wrestling in the script until Ollie Reed was cast as Crich and persuaded Russell to go back to the novel and restore the scene (Russell originally set the scene in a river where everyone's modesty would be protected).

A case of wishful thinking perhaps on Caine's part?

DB7

This may be the reason behind Caine's rancor:

John Hodson

God bless Harris, as much as I enjoy Caine, I have to agree with him.

filmjournal.net/john

wadsy

I read Caine,s autobiography ( one of em) years ago & he stated he thought

Anthony Steel was Britain,s first really manly actor, the previous ones being a bit

effete.

What about Stewart Granger!!!!

batman

I always found Steel a bit effete.

Trevor Howard, John Mills - neither of those guys are especially effete either.

That Maxwell Reed bloke was a bit manly as well!

"Do you know why fattries are called fattries .... it's because they are big and people make things in them."

Steve Crook

Can a plank be effete?

Steve

batman

Good point ..... I suppose it depends how you paint it.

"Do you know why fattries are called fattries .... it's because they are big and people make things in them."