The Elephant to Hollywood (9 page)

When Peter went off to make
Lawrence of Arabia
– the film that would rocket him to stardom – I took over his part in
The Long and the Short and the Tall
on tour. Playing one of the leads in a really good play with a talented cast (the other was the exceptional Frank Finlay) was just what I needed to give me my confidence back and I returned to London after four months travelling the country certain, once again, that I was on the right path. When I got back I moved in to a shared house in Harley Street with ten other guys, including a young actor called Terence Stamp – a fellow Cockney, like me – whom I had met on tour. I’d taken Terry under my wing and initiated him into some of the secrets of a happy touring life, including how to grab the best room in the boarding house and the rather more specialised significance of the Ivor Novello show
The Dancing Years
. This show was almost always on tour somewhere in the country and if you coincided with it, your luck was in. Set in Ruritania, it featured a large cast of village maidens and village lads and was known in the trade as
The Dancing Queers
as the village lads always seemed to be gay. This left a crowd of village maidens at something of a loss – although not for long if Terry and I were in town.

Unfortunately there was one lesson I didn’t teach Terry, which is never to reveal a friend’s whereabouts. I was in bed one morning in Harley Street sleeping off a hangover when I was roughly shaken awake. Two big men in ill-fitting suits loomed over me. ‘Maurice Joseph Micklewhite?’ It had been a long time since anyone had called me that; it must be serious. ‘You are under arrest for the non-payment of maintenance to Patricia and Dominique Micklewhite.’ ‘How did you know where I was?’ I asked as they escorted me to Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court. ‘A Mr Stamp was very helpful,’ one of them replied enigmatically. If I got out of this mess, I vowed, Terry would be sorted out.

In fact, the policemen were surprisingly sympathetic. They could see I had no money, and they could see I was hungry and they treated me to a real English breakfast on the way. It was the best meal I’d had for months. When I got to the cells, however, reality struck. I was put in with a man who, I assumed, was a psychopath because he just sat staring at me intently until he was taken up to the court. All around me was the sound of nutters and drunks yelling and swearing and sobbing and occasionally letting rip with monumental farts. This was it, I said to myself. I am never,
eve
r going to get myself in a situation like this again.

As I sat there, feeling sorry for myself, a warder shouted: ‘Who wants the last bit of cake?’ He was drowned out by the nutters and drunks all clamouring. I wasn’t going to demean myself further, so I just sat quietly and then I heard the warder outside my cell. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I see you in
Dixon of Dock Green
the other night?’ ‘Yes,’ I said and waited for him to take the piss out of me for it. Instead he opened the little window and pushed a plate with the last slice of cake through it and went off without another word.

When I finally got to the courtroom, Pat and her lawyer were there. We had been divorced for some time by now and I hadn’t seen her for several years. She looked good – expensively dressed in a fur coat and impeccably made-up. I, on the other hand, looked terrible. It wasn’t just the hangover – my clothes were shabby and crumpled where I’d slept in them. But I had nothing to lose and as I looked round the court I realised that this was just another audience.
Dixon of Dock Green
had gone down well with the warders downstairs, so I launched into an impassioned plea to be allowed to go free so I could take up my (non-existent) part in the next episode. Most of those present were fans of the programme because I sensed a slight defrosting of the atmosphere and I warmed to my theme. I had only got through about half of my speech when I realised that the magistrate was shouting, ‘Shut up!’ It was the third time he’d tried to stop me. I paused for breath and he leapt in. ‘How much do you have in your pockets, young man?’ I turned them out: three pounds ten shillings. ‘Then that is what you shall pay each week in maintenance,’ he said. ‘And if I see you back here again for this offence, I will send you to prison.’ No chance, I thought. As I left the court I risked a smile at Pat. To my surprise, she smiled back. I only saw her a few times after that, with our daughter Dominique. We remained on friendly terms but eventually she disappeared from my life altogether and she died of cancer in 1977.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that court case in 1960 marked the lowest point of my life. Things could only get better – and they did. I began to pick up some more TV work and for the first time had a more or less steady income. Terence Stamp (I’d forgiven him for being so helpful to the police) and I moved out of Harley Street into a small mews house behind Harrods. Although work was coming in more steadily for both of us, Terry and I agreed that if one of us were ‘resting’ (that great actors’ euphemism), the other would cover the rent. It was a great location but a little on the cramped side – there was only one bedroom, which caused us a few problems with our active love lives. We came to a deal: the first one to strike lucky got the bed – the other poor sap had to heave bedclothes and mattress into the sitting room and wait. We got surprisingly deft at manoeuvring the bedding – down to five seconds flat – but then we both had quite a bit of practice . . .

1961 began well with a TV play,
Ring of Truth
, followed by a two-week run of a play called
Why the Chicken?
(don’t ask – I did and was none the wiser) written by John McGrath, a theatre and TV director who had become a good friend, and directed by Lionel Bart, also by now a friend. That was good, but I was very disappointed not to get the part of Bill Sykes when Lionel Bart went on to do
Oliver
. I thought it was made for me and it would have been good steady work at a time when that was hard to come by. But it just goes to show, you never know how things are going to work out. I can see now it was a blessing in disguise: the show ran for six years and was still running the day I drove past the theatre in my Rolls Royce, after a triumphant success not only in Britain but also in America with
Alfie
. I shuddered as I passed the billboard: that actor had been up there in lights since 1961. I’d have missed out on so much.

Although I couldn’t see it then (and in fact it would have taken a genius to work it out), the pieces in the jigsaw that led to
Alfie
and stardom were beginning to fall into place. As a result of
Why the Chicken?
(I know, I know . . .), John McGrath cast me in his next TV show,
The Compartment
, a two-handed psychological thriller about two men – a posh git and a Cockney – sharing a railway carriage. Now this really was made for me – the posh git won’t respond to the Cockney’s friendly approach and by the end of the forty-five minutes the Cockney tries to kill him. Perfect – summed up everything I thought about posh gits. Perfect, too, because it was basically a monologue – and on live TV. And perfect, ultimately, because a lot of influential people saw it and realised that I could carry an entire show. But even I hadn’t quite understood the significance of
The Compartment
until a few weeks after the play had been broadcast. Terry Stamp and I were walking down Piccadilly when someone called out to us from the other side of the road. We turned round – and it was Roger Moore. Roger Moore, star of
The Saint
and
Ivanhoe
, the ultimate debonair, suave, English hero. We looked around to see who he was hailing, but he was coming over to us. ‘Are you Michael Caine?’ he asked me. I nodded. ‘I saw you in
The Compartment
,’ he said, ‘and I want to tell you that you’re going to be a big star.’ He shook my hand, smiled and strode on. I just stood there with my mouth open. If Roger Moore said so – perhaps it really might be true.

And Roger was not the only one. Dennis Selinger, the top actors’ agent in Britain, had seen
The Compartment
and taken me on. And Dennis was one of the key pieces in the puzzle. He knew that I was short of money but he was determined that at this point in my career I should appear in the right shows, not ones that merely made money. It was he who steered me towards
Next Time I’ll Sing to You
by James Saunders. It was clearly going to be a hit with the critics, which meant that the pay was terrible, but Dennis could see just what rave notices it was going to get – and he was right. It transferred to the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly, our wages doubled and I finally got the West End at the age of thirty. What’s more, all sorts of influential people came to see the show, including Orson Welles who came backstage to congratulate me, which was a bit overwhelming.  But even more significantly for me, one night, Stanley Baker, the star all those years ago of
A Hill in Korea
, stopped by my dressing room. Stanley was now one of the biggest British film stars and he told me that he was starring in and producing a film called
Zulu
about the 1879 battle of Rorke’s Drift between the British army and the Zulu nation, and they were looking for an actor to play a Cockney corporal. ‘Go and see Cy Endfield in the bar of the Prince of Wales Theatre tomorrow at ten and give it a try,’ he said, and wished me luck.

I’ve always thought that life swings on small, sometimes insignificant incidents and decisions. When I got to the theatre at ten the next morning, Cy Endfield, a round, slow-speaking American director, said he was sorry, but he’d already given the part to my friend James Booth, because he thought he looked more Cockney than I did. I was used to rejection by now, so I just shrugged. ‘That’s OK,’ I lied and turned and began to walk back towards the door. The bar at the Prince of Wales Theatre is very long – and that’s why I became a movie star, because just as I reached the end, Cy called out, ‘Can you do a posh British accent?’ I stopped just before the door and turned round. ‘I was in rep for years,’ I said. ‘I played posh parts many times. There’s no accent I can’t do. That’s easy,’ I said, fingers crossed behind my back. ‘You know,’ said Cy, peering at me down the length of the bar, ‘you don’t look anything like a Cockney. You look like one of those faggy officers. Come back.’ I glanced in the mirror behind the bar. He was right. I was six foot two, slim, with blond curly hair and blue eyes. Jimmy Booth looked like everyone’s idea of a tough Cockney, which he was; I was a very tough Cockney, too, but I didn’t look like it. I came back – and I never looked back. ‘Can you do a screen test with Stanley on Friday morning?’ Cy asked. ‘You’d be playing the part of a snobbish lieutenant, Gonville Bromhead, who thinks he’s superior to everyone, especially Stanley. Do you think you could handle that?’ Perhaps it was also something to do with Cy being an American; he had no inherent British class prejudice that might have made him think a working-class actor couldn’t play an officer on the big screen. I thought back to national service; I thought back to Korea. I was quite confident I could handle that.

I wasn’t so confident by the time Friday came around. I stumbled through the screen test, fluffing my lines, sweating with fear despite all Stanley’s help and Cy’s patience. At last we were done and I stumbled up the steps and set out to spend the weekend getting completely wasted before hearing the result on Monday morning. What I hadn’t bargained on was bumping into Cy Endfield at a party on Saturday night. He seemed to be avoiding my eye. It didn’t look like good news. Nonetheless, while he was still at the party I did my best to remain sober. Just as he was about to go, he finally came over to me. ‘I’ve seen the test,’ he said, ‘and you were appalling.’ I swallowed. It was going to be hard to bounce back from this one. ‘But you’ve got the part,’ he went on. ‘We go to South Africa in three weeks.’ I gaped at him. ‘Why did you give me the part if the test was so bad?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know, Michael,’ he replied. ‘I really don’t know – but I think there’s something there . . .’ He walked away and I threw up all over my shoes.

I had been a private in the army and I had my own experiences of a certain Lieutenant from the Queen’s Royal Regiment to draw on for the characterisation of Gonville Bromhead. The man was, to put it bluntly, a complete arse – very pompous and very posh. He wasn’t a stupid man, he just had the attitude that we were the ‘little people’ who had to be dealt with and he was simply born to rule us. It wasn’t personal on either side, but my encounter with him and others like him certainly fostered my loathing of class prejudice and I was delighted to be able to get my own back.