John Boorman dishes on raging Sean Connery, drunken Lee Marvin, prickly Nicol Williamson

John Boorman dishes on raging Sean Connery, drunken Lee Marvin, prickly Nicol Williamson

"A motorcycle cop pulled me over. He fingered his gun and said: 'Do you know you have Lee Marvin on your roof?'"

I was a staff announcer on a radio station years ago and the guy who worked the shift before mine told me that he once interviewed Lee Marvin. The interview was supposed to go a half-hour, and he had prepared enough to stretch it to an hour and a half if Marvin wanted to duck certain subjects or if things didn't go as planned. The interview lasted less than ten minutes, which resulted in a hurried trip down to the wire ticker while a PSA was playing just long enough to allow the announcer time to tear off enough news stories and ball scores to start the 9 o'clock news at 8:40! Marvin was a powerful screen presence, but not because he was a chatty guy. He was an ornery customer who gave terse answers even when sober, and when he'd had a few belts, he became positively taciturn. He'd answer every question with a single word, or maybe just a growl.

Nicol Williamson (IMDb bio) is one of my favorite topics. Playwrights Samuel Beckett and John Osborne said he was "touched by genius" and called him "the greatest actor since Brando," although he could be eccentric and impossible to deal with. Williamson's larger-than-life presence wasn't always as effective on screen as it was on stage, but he still turned in some brilliant film work. Unfortunately, he never seemed to be very happy when he was working, and I hear he was even more morose when he wasn't acting. As the story goes, his daily diet consisted of a bottle of Scotch and four packs of cigarettes, and he seemed to be happiest in seclusion. There were six people at his funeral.

So it goes

Only six people came to honor or remember the man who was widely considered the greatest actor of his generation in the 60s and 70s.

Sic transit gloria mundi