Novel Eye

I fell in love with Peter O'Toole when I was 10 and he was 49. He was Flavius Silva in Masada and he had already had some rough decades in the bottle behind him. But with my already developed Biseinen sensors, I knew that he was or had once been exquisitely beautiful. Already something of an obsessive, I saw every film I could find that I was allowed to see, good, bad or mediocre. From the near perfect Lawrence of Arabia and Becket, to the fluff of How to Steal a Million to the perfectly dreadful Goodbye Mr. Chips (the musical!). Much was off limits to me and I would wait years to see the cult classics like The Ruling Class or What's New Pussycat. It's hard to describe how stunning he is in Lawrence and the pictures I can find do not do the action justice. Tan, tall and blonde --not my usual MO, but he looks like sculpture in that film. Noel Coward allegedly said, "If he were any prettier in that film, he'd be Florence of Arabia." In glorious technicolor his...