“You meet a better class of person in pubs.”
Oliver Reed was known for playing burly Luddites, onscreen and off. Reed’s first notable roles were in British horror movies produced by Hammer Films, including The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) and The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), but his signature performance was as Bill Sikes in Oliver! (1968), directed by Carol Reed (his uncle). He frequently collaborated with Ken Russell; see roles in The Devils (1971), Tommy (1975), and his nude wrestling turn in Women in Love (1969). Beginning in the 1970s, Reed would star as Athos in three movies based on Alexandre Dumas’s Three Musketeers novels and return to horror in 1979 with David Cronenberg’s The Brood. He was largely relegated to straight-to-video releases by the 1980s, with the notable exception of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). Reed died at a bar in Malta while shooting Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000).
OLIVER REED WAS WHAT you might call a “four-quadrant” drunk. Which is to say, whether you were male or female, under twenty-five or over, he would never fail to offend. A brawler, prankster, and unapologetic chauvinist (with a lifelong devotion to exposing his penis), Reed’s besotted lunacy put him in a league of his own. Not surprisingly, it also helped sabotage any chance he ever had (and he had numerous) of becoming a Hollywood star. Too drunk for Hollywood? As a matter of fact, yes.
In the late 1960s, Reed was rumored to be the next James Bond, the replacement for Sean Connery. But for “unknown” reasons, the part went to George Lazenby, an Australian whom Reed shortly thereafter attacked in a restaurant—slapping the MI6 agent in the face, then wrestling him to the ground amidst several servings of custard. In the early 1970s, Steve McQueen came to London with an interest in casting Reed in a major Hollywood production. Out on the town, Reed got so bombed he threw up on McQueen, splattering the superstar’s jeans and shoes and forcing McQueen to spend the rest of the night reeking of puke. Once again, the role went to somebody else. In the mid-1970s, in yet another display of his capacity for poor decision making, Reed reportedly passed up the role of Quint in Spielberg’s Jaws. The part went to Robert Shaw instead, himself an impressive drinker, though somewhat less apocalyptic. It wasn’t until the late 1990s, cast as Proximo the slave trader in that massive tentpole Gladiator, that Reed would again find himself within striking distance of international recognition. Sadly, in the final act of self-sabotage, he died during filming on the island of Malta, this while arm wrestling Royal Navy sailors in a pub, smashed on rum and his much-beloved whiskey. He was only sixty-one.
Still, as biographer Robert Sellers makes very clear, Reed’s was a career worth noting, both on the silver screen and on the bar stool—a life filled with drunken antics that ranged from the violent to the humorous to the surreal. Focusing first on the violence, there were the typical fisticuffs: punch-ups with local toughs and sober citizens, the constables often called in. Sometimes things got a little out of hand, as on the night a West End heckler broke a glass on Reed’s face that left him with thirty-six stitches and puckered scars for the next year. Naturally, there was the barroom arm wrestling, too, up until the day he died, as well as a game of head butting that was Reed’s own invention. Simple enough, opponents were to continue to butt heads until one of them either backed down or buckled. But the roughneck stuff aside, what seems most curious was Reed’s ever-increasing appetite for medieval weapons.
In the late 1960s, Reed was rumored to be the next James Bond, the replacement for Sean Connery. But for unknown reasons, the part went to George Lazenby, an Australian whom Reed shortly thereafter attacked in a pub—slapping the MI6 agent in the face, then wrestling him to the ground.
Even before he bought a fifty-two-bedroom country estate, Broome Hall, Reed had begun collecting broadswords, pikes, battle axes, and the like. Not a dangerous hobby in and of itself, but probably unwise for an angry young man so given over to drink. After enough booze, the monster inside would awaken. Like the time Reed lined up half a dozen drunken mates on his front lawn, armed them with antique weapons, and led an assault on the local police station. Or the night he forced a six-foot sword upon director (and enfant terrible) Ken Russell and insisted on dueling. Reed was not satisfied until Russell had cut open Reed’s shirt, causing blood to pour down his chest. It was a passion that carried over into his film work. Cast as Athos in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers, foregoing rehearsal, Reed would launch into sword fighting with such a frightening zeal that the terrified stunt team was reduced to drawing lots as to who would be matched up against him. There seemed to be no limit. While filming the Who’s Tommy (Reed in the role of Uncle Frank), the actor quite naturally found a kindred spirit in legendary drummer Keith Moon, the two of them becoming running mates until Moon’s untimely death a few year’s later. Along with the orgies (the term seems almost too quaint), the television sets thrown out of windows, and the hotel wallpaper attacked with forks, there would be the odd duel at Broome Hall, this with double-edged swords. Moon even upped the ante with a new game: Reed was to run around the fields outside his estate, while Moon tried to run him down with his car.
It was dangerous, but comical, too, which more or less sums up Reed. Because along with the violence, there was humor—like passing out on the baggage carousel at Galway Airport or kidnapping famed producer David Puttnam. At a hotel in Madrid, Reed stole all the goldfish from the dining room pond and hid them in his bathtub. He replaced the school with fish-shaped carrots, then at breakfast made a singular display by diving into the water and eating what the other guests believed to be real fish. What can you say about a man like that?
On a bender in Los Angeles, Reed had a pair of eagle’s claws tattooed on his penis. One can only imagine him waking up to find what he liked to call his “mighty mallet” swaddled in blood-soaked gauze. He went on to have an eagle’s head tattooed on his shoulder. This, according to Sellers, so that when anyone asked why, Reed could tell them, You should see where’s it’s perched.
GUNK IS AN Oliver Reed original and a fitting accompaniment to his equally inventive head-butting game. Which is to say, both are easy to learn and cause a great deal of pain. To create Gunk, Reed would simply ask the bartender for an ice bucket and then ask him to pour every spirit behind the bar into it. Not unlike Ava Gardner’s Mommy’s Little Mixture, Gunk indicates a particular kind of wet-brained idiocy.
And here lies the classic chicken and egg debate. Only a man who has smashed his head into a great many things could come up with such a concoction. Or perhaps, only after drinking such a concoction could you swing your head about with true abandon.
THE VESPER MARTINI has little to do with Oliver Reed, and everything to do with James Bond. But then what if Reed had been Bond? It is hard to imagine. But some say that in 1969 he came quite close. He did after all best Bond (in the form of George Lazenby) that same year in a brawl in London. This all took place during the Sean Connery–Roger Moore transition. Foregoing Reed as Bond was a casting decision that the Guardian would describe as “one of the great missed opportunities of post-war British movie history.”
As it stands, for most of James Bond’s cinematic life, over which a great number of cocktails have been downed, he has almost always ordered a dry vodka martini, shaken, not stirred. A couple of not so small quibbles, like, why dry? The martini calls for vermouth and many feel strongly the wetter the better. And why shaken? It only dilutes it further. While we’re at it—why vodka?
But then Bond is a creature of habit. After all, habit has kept him alive for a very long time. Pierce Brosnan, for one, looked like he actually enjoyed a martini and Roger Moore before him. Sean Connery seemed, well, more of a scotch man. But the truth of it is, while the Vesper martini was not introduced to movie audiences until the 2006 film adaptation of Casino Royale, that novel was Ian Fleming’s first Bond book (1954) and the Vesper was actually the very first cocktail the character Bond ever ordered. It is about the Vesper that he first says “Shake it very well until it’s ice cold.”
On screen, Daniel Craig as Bond (the most Reed-like Bond yet) creates the drink and names it after his one true love, Vesper Lynd. It is her and perhaps sunset, the violet hour (not as much the evening prayers), that the name connotes. Worth mentioning is that in that same film Bond also finds himself tied to a chair naked and hit in the testicles with a heavy knotted rope. This seems very much a scene that Reed would have relished—and maybe even attempted in one configuration or another with Keith Moon. Likely, after drinking a bucket of Gunk (see above).
The cocktail, as written by Fleming: “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?” And here is the translation:
VESPER MARTINI
3 OZ. GIN (PREFERABLY TANQUERAY OR BROKER’S SINCE GORDON’S HAS BEEN REFORMULATED).
1 OZ. VODKA
½ OZ. LILLET BLANC OR COCCHI AMERICANO (KINA LILLET IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE)
LEMON PEEL
Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake well, and then strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon peel.
