Lord Jim, The Perils of Peter O'Toole In Filming A Classic
LIFE, January 22, 1964

A violent storm in a Far Eastern sea lashes a ship, and a young seaman--portrayed by Peter O'Toole--struggles against two attackers: the elements and his own conscience. Finally, in a moment of panic, he leaps to safety, thereby disgracing himself. He becomes a drifter, wandering through the exotic Orient, searching for his honor. This is the story of Lord Jim, a classic novel by Joseph Conrad, now turned into a $10 million movie which provides a grueling workout for its star. For one who actually detests the great outdoors and whose idea of high adventure is "carrying a pint of bitters from one smoke-filled room to another," O'Toole does get himself into the darndest situations. His first major picture, Lawrence of Arabia, had him riding a camel for nine months on the blazing deserts of Jordan. "Almost went out of my flaming mind," he says. But compared to what he was to go through while filming Lord Jim many of his Lawrence troubles seemed like a holiday in Brighton.

Cobras, seasickness and an angry prince

Upon competition of his two years' work on Lawrence of Arabia, O'Toole had hurried back to London, vowing never to go near a camel again. There, in the city he regards as the most civilized in the world, the only perils he faced were the sword thrusts of a few critics who took offense at his Hamlet in the National Theatre. But during the play's run, adventure called in the form of a starting date for the starring role in Lord Jim.

On closing night he stayed up drinking until dawn and then raced out to the airport. Aching from 18 inoculations against tropical diseases, he caught the plane to Hong Kong, where the first location shooting was to take place. "The next bloody day," he says, "I'm in a blazing small boat, wearing a funny hat and paddling like a man possessed." In his six weeks there, O'Toole acquired an intense hatred for Hong Kong, which he called "Manchester with slanted eyes," and proceeded to make his displeasure known. Staying in a sedate hotel, O'Toole horrified the management by personally pulling a riksha and it's coolie driver into the elegant main lobby at 2 a.m. and buying the fellow a drink.

Then the company moved on to Cambodia. For all the anti-
Western ferment in the Southeast Asia country, producer-director Richard Brooks had managed to get permission to shoot location scenes in jungles and around the ancient temple ruins of Angkor Wat. To accommodate his large cast and crew, Brooks had to spend $600,000 to add a 47-room wing onto a little hotel near the location.

"That hotel!" rages O'Toole. "More expensive than Claridge's! Ten flaming quid a night [$28] and a poxy room at that. Nicest thing you could say about the food was that it was grotesque." Soon everyone was set upon by dysentery, giant stinging insects and prickly heat rash that made clothing unbearable. Then cam the snakes, which seemed to have a particular curiosity about show business. Walking down the middle of a jungle road, O'Toole came face to face with a huge black cobra.

"They say no snake can travel faster than a scared human," he recalls, "but I ain't so sure. The snake went like hell, but luckily away from me." Another cobra slithered onto the set and dropped to the floor of the makeshift ladies' rest room. As screeching pandemonium broke out, a grip rushed to the rescue, killing the snake and stretching it out to its awesome seven-foot length. Then, an almost identical cobra appeared, eluded its chasers and presumably lurked in the shadows through the night's jittery shooting. One feminine member of the crew discovered two snakes curled up inside the commode--but did not linger to figure out what kind they were. Of particular dread was a snake called the "two-step." "It bites you, you take two steps," explains O'Toole, "and then you die. One day there was a nasty cop around and he had one curled around his foot. Flaming lovely discretion shown by the snake. It didn't bite the guy, so justice isn't total."

Almost as annoying as the snakes were the Cambodian officials, many of whom seemed to think the movie company had come just for the privilege of paying bribes. One day Crown Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia's pro-Peking ruler, showed up. "He started yelling the usual anti-British crud," says O'Toole. "I walked up to him and said, 'I couldn't agree with you more. I'm Irish meself.'"

What bothered O'Toole the most were the shipboard scenes. He had warned the director, "I was in the Royal Navy two years and I was seasick every day we were at sea." Lord Jim went to sea for eight days and O'Toole was seasick every day. "He'd rush to the side of the ship and heave, then go before the camera as if nothing had happened," says Brooks. "In eight days he must have tried every known medical and nonmedical remedy. Nothing worked."

A mysterious Frenchman appeared on the location one day and darkly advised Brooks to get his company out of Cambodia by March 12. Unlike Caesar, who paid no heed to the soothsayer, Brooks for some reason believed the man. With O'Toole's concurrence, the work schedule was doubled and the daily shooting went on from noon until nearly dawn. The scheduled 12 weeks was thus cut to nine and the company left the country on March 3. One week later the U.S. and British embassies were attacked by mobs (O'Toole is convinced that some of the trouble-makers had worked in the film as extras.) Prince Sihanouk took to the national radio to denounce the movie company as "Western imperialist invaders."

"If I live to be a thousand," says O'Toole, "I want nothing like Cambodia again. It was a bloody nightmare. I really hated it there. How much so you can judge by the fact that after six months in the Orient I hadn't picked up a single work there, whereas after nine months in the desert on Lawrence I was speaking Arabic pretty well."