David Storey, the son of a Welsh miner, was a squad member of Leeds Rugby League Club for five years in the mid-1950s, the earnings from which he put towards his further education at Slade College of Fine Art. He was the side’s regular half-back and it could be said that no rugby league player combined such aesthetic interest with the rough-and-tumble of sporting activity. He also put his experience on the field to good use, writing a novel entitled This Sporting Life, which was published in 1960.
The book is set in a nameless town in the north of England and the central character, Arthur Machin, is a young working-class man employed in a factory as a lathe worker, who sees playing rugby league for his local professional team as a means to escape his boring, poorly paid job and as a path to a more affluent lifestyle. The narrative traces his journey from his first outing on trial until his body begins to fail him in a match ten years later.
Following the success of adapted films from similar working-class arenas such as Room at the Top and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning it was inevitable that This Sporting Life would reach the screen. After its publication it attracted the attention of Lindsay Anderson, an Oscar award-winning documentary film-maker and leader of the radical Free Cinema movement. He took it to Woodfall, a production company run by film director Tony Richardson and playwright John Osborne. They turned it down with the idea that they might make it themselves, but were outbid for the rights by the Rank organisation. Rank offered it to Karol Reisz, who had had a big success with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Reisz was not interested but saw it as an opportunity to introduce his friend Anderson into feature film, and Reisz would act in the production as a mentor. After visiting the shooting location of The Guns of Navarone he became convinced that Richard Harris, even though he had only a small part in that film, would be ideal to play the lead in This Sporting Life.
It was the first feature film to be directed by Anderson. The screenplay, adapted by Storey, sets the location as Wakefield, a mining town in Yorkshire, and follows the story of Frank Machin (changed from Arthur), a bitter young coal miner who impresses the captain of a local rugby league team during a nightclub altercation. During a trial for a place on the team, his aggressive playing style convinces the owner Gerald Weaver, played by Alan Badel, and he signs him as a loose forward wearing the number 13 shirt.
The cast of characters in this journey include: the other working-class players; the rich businessmen who own the club, Weaver and Slomer; a probably homosexual loner Johnston, who gets Machin his initial break; and the player’s landlady Mrs Hammond (Rachel Roberts), whose husband has died in Weaver’s factory, apparently by suicide. Machin has a sexual relationship with her in an effort to break away from his image of himself as a masculine beast on the rugby pitch. But the relationship is fraught by his inability to articulate his desire and her resistance to the worst aspects of his character, which become a mirror of his brutality on the pitch. Set against a landscape of factories, mines and wretched houses occupied by desperate workers, the story makes for an intense and depressing scenario, brilliantly expressed.
At the time that Harris was offered the leading role in This Sporting Life, the family business was on its last legs. It is said that Harris’s father was blissfully unaware of the situation, but this is unlikely, rather - like many others in his position - there would be a mixture of denial and hope that something might turn up to transform the firm’s financial circumstances. At this stage, Rank had taken over the Harris Mills production and distribution. All that was left of the once thriving family enterprise was the mill building. And it was the errant son Richard who, despite his difficult relationship with his father, saved the day by providing the cash to enable his father to hold on to the mill building, thus leaving him some small vestige of self-respect. He told local journalist Gerry Hannan: ‘When I bought the building, I swore I would keep it, come hell or high water, until time wore away the Harris name over the door. It was a monument to my father and brothers and my forebears and the work they did. And by God, I did keep it.’ He was true to his word and did not sell it for another two decades.
Lindsay Anderson and Harris were a perfect match - both rebellious, anti-establishment and cynical about the film business in general and Hollywood in particular. They got on very well in the many debates that naturally accompany the development of the script, which goes through many drafts as a result of the collaborative effort, including contributions from the director and the leading actor.
Harris originally pointed out that the script had abandoned the flashback structure of the novel and this was taken on board; the main character’s first name was also changed from Arthur to Frank.
All were hugely serious about the work in hand and sometimes the intensity led to the odd clash between Harris and Anderson who, the actor claimed, wanted him to invest an enormous emotional aspect to the performance, which Harris felt was a bit too much. He avoided meeting David Storey until late on in the process, but they also hit it off. In the preparation for the film, all the major creative figures were singing from the same hymn sheet, and so, when it came to shooting, the script was in perfect shape.
Rachel Roberts was given the leading female role of the widow Mrs Hammond. She was a highly accomplished performer, a prize-winner at RADA with a solid background in theatre. The British Film Academy had named her Best Actress for her part in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Her path to the film had been somewhat complicated by her affair with Rex Harrison, who was very much against her being involved in what seemed to him to be a rather grim and grotty project. Harrison had told Anderson that if he was the last film director in the world, he wouldn’t work with him. The sentiment was entirely mutual.
Roberts was not only talented but forthright and would stop in mid-flight if she felt something wasn’t quite right. There was a certain sadness in her face and demeanour, which fitted the part like a glove. Harris took to her immediately and would amazingly defer to her authority in rehearsal and shooting. There was an instant and powerful rapport between them, obvious to all. Anderson was also in awe of her and felt that his choice of leading actors was probably the most inspired casting he ever did.
Harris was also intent on getting himself into the physical shape necessary to convince the audience that Machin could hack it in the professional rugby league ranks. He trained with a team in Richmond, ran in the mornings and bulked himself up with weight training. He was helped by screenwriter David Storey, who had played rugby league with Leeds for four seasons. This was invaluable, as the game was as much a mystery then as it is now for anyone like Harris steeped in the tradition of rugby union. As well as physique there was a whole ethos to be absorbed by the actor, and Storey provided that. All who were involved in the production recognised a powerful chemistry at play, which was the responsibility of the director to control.
In an article by Robert Sellers, author of Hellraisers, in the Guardian in 2009, Storey told of the decision to cast Harris in the lead role and its aftermath:
We chose Richard because of his emotional volatility. His enthusiasm was total, he was completely committed, verging on the edge of insanity in some respects and that became infused in the film itself. On the first day of filming in Wakefield, the local rugby league team congregated on the pitch while Harris prepared in his caravan. He was spending ages on his make-up. Then when he came out and saw all the rugby players standing on the other end of the pitch saying, ‘Oh look at this flower coming out,’ he just took one look at them and ran down the whole pitch towards them.
As he ran he got faster and faster until they suddenly realised with horror he was going to run right into them, which he eventually did. It was that initial gesture of total physical commitment, almost indifference and carelessness that caught the players’ imagination and they really took to him in a major way.
Despite the actor’s grasp of the physical demands of the role, the character was more complicated, not just by the dint of circumstance but also psychologically. Machin’s public persona and masculinity is contrasted with a private striving for a sensitivity that he tries to find in the relationship with Mrs Hammond. It makes nonsense of his materialistic-based philosophy: ‘You see something and you get it. It’s as simple as that.’
The bleak, northern landscape of the film, the depressing human atmosphere, not alleviated but added to by the sporting element, as polluted and corrupt as the men who effectively ran the town and the crushing sado-masochistic relationship between Machin and Mrs Hammond, provided a powerful celluloid cocktail, but not for the faint-hearted or an audience seeking an escape from grim reality in a weekend trip to the cinema. Nonetheless, the expectation was that it would match, if not exceed, the success of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, the first of the new-wave hits and directed by Karl Reisz, who though he had turned down the same job on this film provided huge support to first-time feature-film director Anderson.
During the pre-production Harris was offered a big part in the upcoming Hollywood production of The Fall of the Roman Empire, produced by Samuel Bronston with Anthony Mann on board as director, and Sophia Loren, Stephen Boyd and Alec Guinness already attached. The Irish actor was assigned the part of Commodus, the deranged son of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He accepted and asked his agent to work out the financial deal.
The fee negotiated was $200,000, a massive amount of money compared to the £25,000 he had got for This Sporting Life. After some of his best scenes had hit the cutting-room floor of Mutiny on the Bounty, Harris and his agent insisted that there be no dissolution of the character part he was taking on by script changes. This was a bit of a gamble in a business in which the script, not to mention the finished film, is subjected to continual alteration. The bigger the budget, the more changes that would be insisted on by producers nervous about the prospect of not recouping the huge financial outlay at the box office. The fact that many of the changes could be counterproductive to the ambition was beside the point. That was how things were done in Hollywood, and for the creative people it was a matter of swallowing pride if they were going to take the money.
Harris, despite his previous experience, was not totally au fait with the rules and, besides, valued integrity, which is not a currency readily recognised by Tinseltown. He and his agent received a redrafted script from the studio, which sent the actor into a rage: ‘Suddenly the character Commodus which I wanted was this revamped celluloid lightweight. I said No, no, no.’
His agent gave the producer an ultimatum - the first script or his actor would withdraw. Bronston was not going to be held to ransom by a relatively unknown Irish actor so he gave the part to a lesser-known Canadian actor, Christopher Plummer. This episode can be viewed from two perspectives. One, Harris and his agent displayed profound naivety and should have taken the money and run. Even if the producer agreed in relation to the script, there could be no guarantee that the part would remain intact after the editing process. Not even a director as established as Anthony Mann would have control over the final cut. Two, it could be said that it was a statement of intent on the actor’s behalf that he valued the integrity of his work more than obedience to the Hollywood mogul - he was not interested in playing the game. His judgement may well have been weakened by the intensity of his commitment to the film in hand, which had no outside interfering agent and a modest budget. But the certainty was, given Harris’s physique, looks and talent, that he would not be a permanent fixture on the small film scene. He would be going to Hollywood, and there he would be required to play by the rules of its iniquitous game, however much he might protest. In that light, and with the benefit of hindsight, losing the part in The Fall of the Roman Empire was a highly expensive mistake, one that upset his bank manager who telephoned to remind the actor of his burgeoning overdraft. Harris said he didn’t tell him how to run his bank so ‘don’t tell me how to run my life’.
This Sporting Life is a remarkable study of working-class angst with a cutting style like no other British feature before it. Despite being lauded on its opening run, it was a commercial flop, prompting the chairman of producing company Rank to declare that he was pulling out of the British new wave of films, kitchen-sink drama, and would never make such a ‘squalid’ film again.
Despite this rather ignorant assessment the film was well received by US critics, including the influential film magazine Variety:
Among the varied sequences which impress are a horrifying quarrel between Harris and Rachel Roberts; a hospital death scene; a poignant interlude at a wedding when Harris approaches the moment of truth; a rowdy Christmas party and a countryside excursion when Harris plays with the widow’s two youngsters.
Harris gives a dominating intelligent performance as the arrogant, blustering, fundamentally simple and insecure footballer.
Critical acclaim was followed by more recognition for Harris in particular, with Oscar and Bafta nominations and the award for Best Actor at the Cannes Festival where, having a few drinks inside him when the victory was announced, he bounded on to the stage. He was handed his award in a plain box by French legend Jeanne Moreau, to which he responded: ‘What’s this?’ ‘Cufflinks’ was the reply. The unsteady victor instead grabbed a nearby bigger trophy and escaped into the night. He returned the prize for Best Animation later, while the cufflinks were sent to him through the post by the committee.
The director Lindsay Anderson, who developed unrequited feelings for unobtainable heterosexual men, wrote in his diary of 22 April 1962 in the first month or so of production: ‘The most striking feature of it all has been the splendour and misery of my work and relationship with Richard.’ He felt that Harris was acting better than ever before in his career but feared that his feelings for the actor, whose combination of physicality, affection and cruelty fascinated him, meant that he lacked detachment as a director.
‘I ought to be calm and detached with him. Instead I am impulsive, affectionate, infinitely susceptible … Harris was so attractive that I found I responded to him with a whole-heartedness that made me tremble.’
Malcolm McDowell was quoted in 2006:
I know he [Anderson] was in love with Richard Harris, the star of Anderson’s first feature This Sporting Life. I am sure it was the same with me, Albert Finney and all the rest. It wasn’t a physical thing. But I suppose he fell in love with his leading men. He would always pick someone who was unobtainable because he was heterosexual.
Gavin Lambert’s memoir, in which he claimed that the director repressed his homosexuality, was seen as a betrayal by other friends.
Storey told author Robert Sellers of the complex interaction between the lead actor and director:
It was a combination of Richard’s Celtic bravado and wildness and Lindsay’s homosexuality, that he never really came to terms with and struggles with throughout his life and in Sporting Life it came to a climax. In the sense that Richard became the epitome of everything that Lindsay desired sexually. It was a masochistic relationship that went over the edge several times.
It was a great credit to Lindsay’s inner sturdiness and intellectual sobriety that he managed to hold on to what he thought it might achieve for the film, but it nearly broke him. We were offered several films afterwards but I felt that the producer in each case wasn’t powerful enough to control the ferocity of the relationship between Richard and Lindsay. It had become quite obsessional really on both their parts - particularly on Lindsay’s.
Whatever it was that Harris was aware of about Anderson’s sexuality, the creative relationship was hugely productive.
In the acting profession there is a right time and a right part - and this was the case for Harris in This Sporting Life. He had immersed himself in the process of preparing for the role in a manner akin to that promoted by the method school without any of the pretentious nonsense adopted by some of its practitioners.
His efforts and Anderson’s would stand the test of time with reassessments many years later judging This Sporting Life as one of if not the best British film of the 1960s. When a reissue of the film occurred in 2009 the highly respected Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, giving a five-star rating, said that it was Lindsay Anderson’s best film and certainly Richard Harris’s. He adjudged Harris’s performance equal to Marlon Brando’s in A Streetcar Named Desire:
The thirty-three years old Harris is given a light pancake make-up for his interior scenes, presumably to make him look younger and more boyish, but it actually gives his performance a weird expressionistic intensity. The movie takes a muddy boot to class, celebrity, the North, the South and humbug sham-amateurism of English sport (‘I only enjoy it if I get paid a lot for it’). This Sporting Life splendidly anticipates modern Britain; a dour yet thrilling and extraordinary film.
In the same year, also with a five-star rating, Sukhdev Sandhu wrote in the Daily Telegraph:
Watching it today, I’m tempted to see it as one of the strongest films of the period; every frame of which pulsates with drama, class confusion and erotic force. Harris is magnificent in the lead role; a drink toting alpha male who dominated the rugby field but who, with his monkish hair and feminine eyelashes, seems less assured in other settings.
Another late assessment reads: ‘One of the finest British films ever made with an astonishing, raging performance by a young Richard Harris, an equally blistering performance by fellow Oscar nominee Rachel Roberts.’
Almost a quarter of a century later, Harris gave his own self-effacing assessment in the Hot Press interview with Joe Jackson:
The central character in This Sporting Life whom everyone thought they could relate to because he was an ‘ordinary guy’ - the common man - was not that at all. He was extraordinary. He was the embodiment of many heroic qualities that had always been present in literature. The same applies to Room at the Top and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. It was all a con, a beautiful con.
There was a tremendous revolution in Britain then. The old establishment, the upper middle class, was being kicked aside by people like Finney, O’Toole and myself. John Gielgud said it was frightening. But the great deception was that we ruffians were all classically trained actors . There was nothing rebellious about our approach.
The same applies to Clift, Brando and Dean. They were not a new breed of naturalistic actors - they gave highly stylised performances. They painted on their parts with a coat of theatricality that was so special it grabbed us because we don’t want to see the ordinary guy on the screen. There was a glamour to everything Dean and Clift did.
Most of that is true in the sense that the actors mentioned, including Harris, were very well aware of the method they had adopted and the impact of the performance. Nonetheless, they would require some indulgence on the part of their directors to achieve that aim of going from the ordinary to the extraordinary. What Harris fails to mention, and quite understandably, is that they were all in their cinematic prime extraordinary, not just in acting ability but also in looks.
Montgomery Clift with little doubt would come top in that regard and also take the top spot in the area of personal dysfunction. Brando second, Dean third perhaps, though his premature death means he will forever be young and beautiful. Harris possibly fourth, because O’Toole and Finney figured but briefly in that ether and still survive. But Harris underestimates, as would be his wont, the amazing impact and depth of his performance in This Sporting Life.
He not only matched Brando in Streetcar but made Dean look wimpy in Rebel Without a Cause, and comes out on fairly equal terms with East of Eden. One could look at those four films and not have too much doubt about who comes out on top.
Half a century on, this is tremendous vindication for the difficult but extraordinary collaboration between a great and driven actor and a director who, despite his ambivalence in that creative relationship, managed to produce a film of worth, intensity and lasting quality.