Two Shocking Things About Peter O’Toole
I know we’re supposed to be all-reverential about Peter O’Toole now that he’s gone to the Great Irish Pub in the Sky. But the actor himself was drunkenly irreverent for most of his life, so that gives permission to the rest of us. So, two things. One: when O’Toole got his honorary Oscar a few years back, a friend of mine was behind him in the loo queue. Some obviously drugged-up Hollywood underling, as he passed the Great Man, muttered how Pete was the biggest actor/loser in history. Replied O’Toole: “Piss off, before I piss on you!” Two: In one of his lively letters to Dick Cavett, Groucho Marx once marveled that “Peter O’Toole is a double phallic pun.” Indeed it is.
