The Elephant to Hollywood

5 Hello, Alfie

There’s precious little to spend your money on in the Drakensberg mountains and I got back to London with my £4,000 earnings almost intact. Now was my chance to put things right. I went straight up to Sheffield to see Dominique. She was eight years old and mad about horses according to her grandmother, Claire, (that was obviously not something she’d inherited from me) and for the first time I felt I could do something for her. The pony I bought her from the proceeds of Zulu turned out to be the first step in what would prove to be a very satisfying career for Dominique, one I have been very proud to watch her succeed in.

Then there was Mum. She was still living in the prefab with Stanley but he was out all day at work and she was lonely without my father. My solution was to suggest she move to the flat in Brixton that Pat and I had had when we were first married. The house was owned by family and there were other people her own age all around her; it was safe and she had good company.

£4,000 seemed an enormous sum to me and I was so keen to see that everyone I cared for and who had supported me – friends and family – shared in my good fortune that I went through it very quickly. Dennis Selinger helped me to get an accountant and persuaded me to open a bank account, but the net result was that I ended up with an overdraft of £1,000.

Meanwhile, the final touches were being put to Zulu. I knew that there was no chance I would get another film until it came out, but I had been given a seven-year contract by Joe Levine, the President of Embassy Pictures and I was confident that he would hold to his side of the bargain. The problem with my contract was that it was entirely one-sided: they could renege on it whenever they wanted; I was stuck with it. Nonetheless when I was summoned to Joe’s office I bowled along, pretty certain that everything would be fine. Joe Levine was straight out of central casting, everybody’s idea of a movie producer: short, fat and with a big cigar. ‘Siddown, Michael,’ he said when I came in. ‘You know I love you, doncha?’ I nodded, stomach plummeting. I could tell where this might be going. ‘I said to you, Michael, I said: “Michael, you’ll be dripping with diamonds.” Didn’t I?’ I nodded again. He had said that – and I had seen Mrs Levine so I knew he knew all about diamonds. ‘Well, I still believe that’s gonna happen –’ he paused and I held my breath – ‘just not with Embassy Pictures.’ I breathed out. I had gone very dizzy. Time for another performance. I was getting very good at nonchalance. ‘Didn’t you like me in Zulu?’ I asked. ‘Loved you, Michael,’ Joe said warmly. ‘But there’s one thing I gotta tell you.’ He seemed to be bracing himself. ‘I know you’re not, but you gotta face the fact that you look like a queer on screen.’ I sat there dumbfounded. Me? Queer? ‘I know you’re not,’ Joe said again hastily, ‘but there’s a lot of queer stars out there who look butch, and that’s fine – but you’re the other way round and it’s the wrong way round. You’ll never be a romantic lead.’ I got up. ‘Thanks, Joe,’ I said, and left. I found out later that he’d given my contract to James Booth.

To my surprise, Dennis was not fazed by this. As ever, he used the opportunity to get me some work that would enhance my reputation and extend my range. In my one and only classical role I played Horatio to Christopher Plummer’s Hamlet in a film for television. I’d had no dramatic training and had always felt Shakespeare was not for me, but I soon found myself bound up with the story and I decided that if my on-screen appearance was going to be an issue, then I would use it to bring out all Horatio’s ambiguous sexuality. It was a great experience and an opportunity to play alongside my old friend Robert Shaw – and to meet a new one, Donald Sutherland, who was playing Fortinbras. I’m too naturalistic an actor for iambic pentameter but I felt safe in playing Horatio, because although it’s a good part, it’s not the lead.

Of course now, the world of movies and theatre is much more fluid and people go back and forth. In my day the theatre was training for the movies; now big movie stars will do theatre, because they haven’t done it before. And it can be strikingly successful: I was astonished by Jude Law’s Hamlet, which I think is one of the best I’ve ever seen in my life, but he’s certainly not doing it for financial reasons. As for me, I learnt what I could in the theatre and I wouldn’t want to do it any more. I may not want to do it myself, but I go to the theatre a lot and I love what’s going on these days, not just the standard of acting, which is fabulous, but the quality of the productions in plays and musicals alike. I saw Chorus Line years ago and loved it, but the new production I saw in New York recently is amazing, and the new Andrew Lloyd Webber show – Love Never Dies – which was not a hit with the critics, is one of the best visual spectacles I’ve seen. The way I see it is that the theatre was a woman I loved who treated me like shit and the movies turned out to be a mistress I could do anything with – as I was just about to find out…

Back from location in Denmark, things were building up for the premiere of Zulu. Jack Hawkins, who played the missionary Otto Witt in the film, had been interviewed for the advance publicity. ‘Watch out for a new actor called Michael Caine,’ he advised, which was good of him. I got another star rating the next day from the writer Edna O’Brien who was doing an article on the five most attractive men in London – one a day. I was Mr Friday. I felt like cutting it out and sending it to Joe Levine.

As the premiere neared I had to decide which girl to take. There were plenty of candidates but no one special, and then it dawned on me that I should take Mum. I rushed over to Brixton and was very taken aback when she refused point blank. ‘Why not?’ I demanded. I was hurt. After all, it was she who had kept me going all these years and I wanted her to see me in my moment of triumph. But there was no persuading her, so eventually I gave up and promised to come back the next day to tell her all about it.

I turned my attention to what to wear. The director Bryan Forbes had introduced me to Doug Hayward, a brilliant tailor, one of the key figures in the Sixties fashion world and someone who would become a lifelong friend. I knew I’d need an evening suit for the premiere, but I also knew that I couldn’t afford one, so I went to Doug and did a deal. He and I were the same size, so I bought one of his superb suits for half price with the agreement that we would share it. Since we only had the one suit between us, Doug couldn’t come to the Zulu premiere – and in fact until my next film when I could finally afford my own suit, we were never seen together at posh events.

Most of the evening went by in a complete blur but what I do remember is that when I emerged from the Rolls Royce I’d hired, girl on my arm, the crowds cheered and the flash bulbs went off and as the smoke cleared and I made my way up the red carpet I saw a familiar face in the crowd. There was my mum, in her old hat, being held back by a burly copper, trying to catch a glimpse of her own son. I’ve never forgotten that moment, and I never will.

The moment Zulu was released, things started to happen. I was sitting with Terry Stamp having dinner one night in the Pickwick Club, one of the new trendy restaurants that popped up all over the place in the sixties. I liked it – for a start you didn’t have to wear a tie, which was one of the rules English restaurants used to enforce at that time to keep the likes of me out. This particular evening, Harry Salzman who, with Cubby Broccoli, was responsible for the James Bond movies, came in with his family. Just as Terry and I were finishing dinner, he sent a note asking me to have a quick coffee with him. I went over and sat down. They had just come from seeing Zulu. ‘We all think,’ said Harry, ‘that you’re going to be a big star.’ I thanked them. Joe Levine’s opinion was beginning to feel like a minority one. Then Harry changed tack abruptly. ‘Have you read Len Deighton’s Ipcress File?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. And it was true – I really was in the middle of it right then. ‘Good,’ said Harry. ‘Would you like to star in the movie I’m going to make of it?’ ‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘Would you like a seven-year contract?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Would you like to have lunch with me at Les Ambassadeurs tomorrow?’ Unsurprisingly, the answer was again – and unoriginally – ‘Yes!’

I staggered back to my table in a daze. ‘What was that all about?’ asked Terry. ‘I’ve got a starring role in a movie and a seven-year contract,’ I said, still not believing what I was saying. ‘But you’ve only been gone two minutes!’ said Terry. I looked down at the remains of my supper, now congealing on my plate. Had I really heard right? Just then, the waiter came over with a bottle of champagne. He opened it and poured Terry and me a glass and as I looked over at Harry to thank him, he and the rest of his party toasted me. ‘Congratulations!’ ‘Thank you,’ I said, just to prove that my vocabulary was more extensive than ‘yes’. When the time came to pay the bill, I decided to treat Terry, who had always been so generous to me. But Harry Salzman had already paid. ‘Thank you,’ I said again to him as we passed his table on the way out of the restaurant. Harry smiled. ‘And tomorrow,’ he said, ‘wear a tie.’

The night was yet young so Terry and I went on to Ad Lib, a new club owned by the American art dealer Oscar Lerman (who was married to Jackie Collins) and run by the brilliant Johnny Gold, who was to become – and remain – one of my closest friends. Ad Lib was the best disco I had ever seen and that night was the beginning of my ‘night life’ (which I only gave up ten years ago). And even here it felt as if extraordinary things were happening. As we moved onto the dance floor we saw all the Beatles and all the Rolling Stones were out there with us. I don’t think it ever happened again.

Lunch at Les Amabassadeurs was a somewhat different occasion. I did wear a tie, and it was incredibly posh. In fact I was the only unknown in the whole place. Harry ordered champagne and caviar (‘It’s only the high life for you from now on, Michael!’) and I lapsed into silence; I was completely out of my depth. Harry cast me a sudden glance. A smile broke out over his features. ‘I wonder what the rich people are doing today?’ he said. I laughed and relaxed. It was the beginning of a very different life.

Even with a contract under my belt and money in my bank account I still felt that I was in the middle of a dream I would one day soon wake up from. Just in case, I stuck close to Harry Salzman and before long found myself invited to his family house – more like a mansion in fact – every Sunday for good food and even better conversation. Although we always had a great time, Harry also used these gatherings professionally and it was here that a lot of the decisions about Ipcress were made. Harry had made it quite clear that he wasn’t looking for James Bond as his central character. The whole point about Len Deighton’s anti-hero was that he was deeply ordinary – so ordinary he could always be underestimated. Deighton had never given him a name and that was our first challenge. ‘We need something dull,’ said Harry. There was a long silence while we all pondered. ‘Harry’s a dull name,’ I ventured brightly. The silence became very chilly indeed. Harry Salzman gave me a level glance. The room held its collective breath. Harry started to laugh. We all laughed with him. ‘You’re right!’ he said. ‘My real name,’ he said, turning to me, ‘is Herschel. Now for the surname.’ When I had stopped shaking I tuned into the rest of the discussion, but decided to avoid any more clever suggestions. Nothing seemed to be right. Harry, as always, had the last word. ‘I met a dull man once called Palmer,’ he said. And Harry Palmer I became.

Harry was always working, always thinking. I’m shortsighted and I’ve always worn glasses. Over dinner one Sunday I noticed Harry staring at me. ‘You know what to do with your glasses,’ he observed. ‘I wear them because I need them,’ I pointed out a bit defensively. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s good. Let’s have Harry Palmer wear them, too. You’ll make them look good.’ He was right again and he’d also laid to rest a worry I’d had – which was, at the time, a bit presumptuous, to say the least. My mate Sean Connery was vastly successful as James Bond but he’d said to me a few times recently that he feared being typecast and so identified with the character that he’d never get another part again. If Ipcress took off and there were sequels (I told you this was presumptuous!), I wanted the glasses to be the character, not me. If Harry Palmer wore glasses, then Michael Caine could hide behind them and emerge if the opportunity presented itself – which it did…

Even with this level of advance preparation, things didn’t go entirely smoothly. On the first day of shooting I was picked up by a chauffeur and settled back in luxury to be driven to Pinewood Studios, on the western outskirts of London. ‘You the star of this film?’ the driver asked. I said I was. ‘Biggest piece of shit I’ve ever read,’ he announced. Not a good start. It wasn’t about to get much better. When I walked on to the set for the first rehearsal, the director, Sidney Furie, asked me for a match. I handed him one, he put the script on the floor and set it alight. We all stood round in silence watching as it burned into ashes. ‘That’s what I think of that,’ said Sidney. We all shuffled our feet and mumbled a bit. ‘Now,’ Sidney said to me. ‘Can I borrow your script?’ I handed it over. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s get to work.’

It was a stormy beginning and it didn’t get much easier. A lot of the dialogue in the movie is ad-libbed – especially by me – and although it was great fun, it was pretty stressful. Sid and Harry Salzman argued all the time about everything and tempers became so frayed that one day Sid walked off the set. We were on location in a rundown area of Shepherds Bush in west London when Sid had finally had enough – and he ran down the road and jumped on a number 12 bus. ‘Get in the car!’ Harry Salzman screamed at me, and the two of us leapt into his Rolls Royce and took off in pursuit. It must have been an extraordinary moment for the other passengers as a huge Roller pulled up alongside their bus and this fat man leant out of the window shouting, ‘Get off the fucking bus!’ The conductor stopped the bus at the next stop, Harry and I got on and by the time we’d got to Marble Arch (four-pence) we’d persuaded Sidney to come back and finish the film.

In the end The Ipcress File was one of the best movies Sidney Furie – who would later become a friend and neighbour in Beverly Hills – ever made. It was certainly the most commercially successful. It still ran into the old movie executive problem, though. After the first rushes we got a cable from Hollywood. ‘Dump Caine’s spectacles and make the girl cook the meal – he is coming across as a homosexual.’ This is not the exact message – I’ve cleaned it up a bit – but the implication is clear enough. We had deliberately gone anti-Bond and as well as the glasses, we’d decided that Harry Palmer should be a cook, which was admittedly risky stuff in Britain in 1964, but we made it work. So when Harry goes shopping in a supermarket and pushes his trolley round, it turns into a fight with the trolleys as weapons. And when Harry seduces the girl, he doesn’t wine and dine her in a fancy restaurant, he takes her home and cooks her dinner – making an omelette by breaking two eggs at once in one hand. (I could see how seductive this would be, but I never mastered it and so in the movie it is writer – and fantastic cook – Len Deighton’s hand you see doing the trick.) And as for the glasses, when the girl (played by Sue Lloyd) asks if I always wear them, I reply, ‘I only take them off in bed,’ and she reaches over and takes them off. It’s now classed as one of the great moments of movie seduction, so I’m glad we stuck to our guns.

My next major film role would finally nail the idea that I looked gay on screen once and for all: Alfie is one of cinema’s great womanisers. I wasn’t first choice for the part; the director, Lewis Gilbert, wanted Terence Stamp, who’d played Alfie in Bill Naughton’s stage version, and I spent three hours trying to persuade him to do it. But Terry had taken the play to Broadway where it had flopped and wasn’t keen to repeat the experience. Thank God.

Apart from stepping in the dog shit on day one of the filming, I found Alfie a surprisingly straightforward movie to make. I was growing in confidence with every new role and I found Lewis Gilbert – who came from a similar background to me – great to work with. Unlike some directors, he actually worked with his cast and took their opinions into account, even asking me who we might cast as the middle-aged married woman Alfie seduces. I immediately thought of Vivien Merchant, with whom I’d appeared in Harold Pinter’s The Room at the Royal Court. She was a brilliant stage actress, but she’d never appeared in a film before and Lewis wanted her to do a screen test, which she refused to do. It looked as if that was that, but Lewis took a chance on my judgement and we cast her anyway. She turned out to be a huge success and was eventually nominated for an Oscar. Lewis and I also came up with a way to have Alfie address the audience without making it seem as if he was delivering a long declamatory speech: I spoke instead as if I was talking just to one person, so the audience felt as if they were an intimate friend of the character.

In spite of all Lewis’s encouragement, however, and my gut feeling that things were going well, I still refused to see any of the rushes. I could now well afford a new pair of shoes, but I still didn’t want to be sick all over them. It’s not about being competitive with other actors; my competition has always been me. My only question is: can I be better than I was the last time? I’m not just self-critical, I’m a nightmare! And with rushes, I’d learnt from my experience with Zulu that if you see them you’ll just screw up the next day’s shooting worrying about yesterday’s. It’s a lesson in life – don’t look back, you’ll trip over.

‘Why not just wait outside?’ Lewis said to me kindly one day when he was about to go into the screening room with the latest reels. Feeling decidedly queasy, I hung about nervously – and was immensely relieved to hear gales of laughter coming from inside. Maybe, just maybe, this was going to be a hit.

Lewis certainly thought so. We had lunch in that twilight zone in between finishing filming and awaiting news of a release date, and he said to me, ‘You know you’re really very good in this. I think you could be nominated for an Oscar.’ I just sat there dumbly, gaping at him. I’d never imagined that Alfie would have any traction in America whatsoever. Alfie himself spoke in such a heavy Cockney accent that Shelley Winters, my co-star, told me that she hadn’t understood a single thing I’d said to her during the course of the movie and had resorted to just watching my lips to know when to come in on cue. I’d had to lip-synch a clearer version of my lines onto the original take, in case we did get an American release (if you ever see the American version of the film you’ll think I can’t do a Cockney accent, but you will get to hear the closing titles sound track ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’ because Burt Bacharach only wrote it after he saw an American preview), but I hadn’t really thought it was likely to happen. Just shows how much I knew… And Lewis was right. I did get nominated for an Academy Award by the people in my boyhood dreamland, Hollywood. I didn’t go to the ceremony and in the end it was just as well. The Oscar was won by my favourite stage actor (and friend) Paul Scofield in the movie version of my favourite stage play, A Man for All Seasons. I asked his wife later where he was when he heard the news. ‘On the roof of our barn,’ she said, ‘mending it.’ ‘What did he say?’ I persisted. ‘Oh – you know, “Isn’t that nice, dear?”’ I have been nominated many times for an Oscar and won it twice, and whenever I see the tears and tantrums at today’s ceremony, I always think of Paul and smile.

But all this was in the future. I had filmed Ipcress and Alfie back to back, and was first waiting for the release of The Ipcress File and the verdict of the critics. It didn’t look too promising. Harry Salzman and I sneaked out of the low-key premiere to gauge the reaction of the audience and the first man we spoke to told us he thought it was the biggest load of crap he’d ever seen. I was immediately plunged into the depths of gloom and went off and got very drunk. I woke up the next morning with a stinking hangover and, feeling very sick, went off to get the papers.

The first review I read confirmed my worst fears: it was awful. But the next one was good, the one after that was even better and after that the good notices began to pile up so consistently that even I could see that I had made it. I began to cry – not just quietly, but great heaving sobs I couldn’t control. After all this time, after all the knock-backs, the rejections, the struggle – I really was a success. Without quite realising what I was doing, I scrunched up the papers and started throwing them out of the window, howling as I did so. ‘Oi!’ a voice from the street below shouted. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ An old charlady was standing there looking up at me, hands on hips. ‘Come down here and pick these up!’ she shrieked and, then, seeing my tear-stained face staring down at her, ‘You don’t need to cry,’ she said more kindly. ‘It’s time you grew up.’

I took a deep breath and looked around me. She was right: I did need to grow up. I was thirty-two. I had been so focused on work that I hadn’t had a chance to sit back and take stock. I went down to the street and picked up all the paper and vowed that from now on I’d take things a little more calmly.

I couldn’t have got away with sneaking out of the premiere of Alfie as I had at The Ipcress File. This was the real deal. It was held a year later in March 1966 at the Plaza in Piccadilly and was a massive event. It seemed as if anyone who was anyone in the Sixties was there – from all of the Rolling Stones and the Fab Four Beatles to Barbra Streisand and Tippi Hedren, who fainted during the abortion scene and had to be carried out. This time I did take my mum. When I look back, I can see that she hadn’t wanted to go to the Zulu premiere because she was terrified she might make a mistake and screw up my career at such a delicate stage – that was the way she thought. I think it was probably a class thing and she was intimidated by the thought of all those people in evening dress. She was completely devoted to what I was doing – mind you, she wasn’t quite sure what it was – but she trusted me. She hadn’t wanted to go to the premiere, but she still wanted to witness it.

Things were different at the premiere for Alfie. The party afterwards was in a pub called The Cockney Pride and Mum almost had to be forcibly removed at two in the morning. It was a great night, but best of all was sharing it with the person who had done so much to make it all possible. But my mum was not going to let any of my success go to her head. She still worked as a charlady, getting up at six in the morning to clean people’s houses and no matter how often I told her that I had enough money for her never to work again, she stubbornly refused to give it up. I didn’t know what to do but eventually, I hit on the right solution. ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘what do you think the press would say if they knew you were still scrubbing floors when I was earning all this money? They’d crucify me!’ She saw the sense in that at once. As I said, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for her boys.

In the end, after a very tough start, Mum had a very happy life – although I’m not sure she ever quite understood what I did and she certainly never understood how much I earned. She asked me a few years later, ‘How much do you earn for a film?’ And I said, ‘A million pounds.’ ‘Oh,’ she said and she was quiet for a bit and then she said, ‘How much is that?’ She had no way of computing that sort of money, so I said, ‘It means you don’t have to do anything, Mum, work for anything, or want for anything ever, ever, ever again. So no taking crafty cleaning jobs to be with your mates or I’ll get into trouble with the papers.’ She never let me see how important my success was to her, or how proud she was of what I’d achieved. In fact she hardly mentioned it at all – unless it was to take the piss out of me. But when she died in 1989 her friends and members of our family all told me that she’d spoken of me with tremendous pride. She was just very careful not to let me get too big for my boots.

Meanwhile, there was something she was keeping from me. She’d lost touch with my brother Stanley and she was very upset about it. None of his friends seemed to know where he’d gone and I began to get worried too as all my efforts to trace him failed. I’d almost given up when one day I was in Heal’s, the classy furniture store, ordering a new sofa and I asked to see one they had out the back. Two blokes in overalls heaved it in to the showroom for me and as they manoeuvred it into place, one of them turned in my direction and I saw it was Stanley. I was really shocked to see him looking so shabby and felt terrible that he was working so hard to keep his head above water while I was ordering sofas without a second thought. In the end, it worked out brilliantly. I took care of things for Stanley and as I was about to go away to the Cannes film festival where they were showing The Ipcress File, he moved into my flat to take care of things for me.

It was in Cannes that I finally realised what my life had become. Harry Salzman put me up in a very grand suite at the Carlton Hotel and I revelled in the luxury of it, but as soon as Ipcress was shown I realised that my days of freedom were over. I couldn’t leave the hotel without being mobbed by the press. Sean Connery was also in town and he hated it so much – he couldn’t even get to the hotel dining room in peace – that he left the same day. I wasn’t in quite that league yet, so I stuck it out and went to the reception given by the British Consul. The Beatles were also in the line-up and I was next to John Lennon. After the fiftieth person had shaken our hands and asked who we were and what we did, John and I changed our names – his to Joe Lemon and mine back to Maurice Micklewhite. It didn’t seem to make much difference, but it cheered us up. John and I made a nice little drinking team for the couple of days we were in Cannes and toured the parties together. He was a tough, no-nonsense man and completely indifferent to the glamour of our surroundings. At one party, we found ourselves both needing a pee and all the lavatories occupied. We roamed round some great palace of a house and eventually I found an en suite bathroom upstairs and rushed in. When I’d finished, I came out to find John rather unsteadily peeing out of the bedroom window. ‘John, you’ve got it on the bloody curtains!’ I said. ‘Who cares?’ said John in that unmistakeable voice. ‘They’re rich – fuck ’em!’

If Cannes seemed like impossible glamour, then New York, where I was off to next, was in another league.