Taxi!

One of my favorite stories is pure hearsay. A friend of mine told it to me, and he heard it from a friend of his. Yes, it's one of those.

Richard Harris was on Oprah one day, and he was asked to share some memories from his travels with Peter O'Toole on the stages of London. When Harris and O'Toole were younger, they were supernumerary players (spear-carriers, basically) in a London production of Macbeth. The actor playing Macbeth was a holy terror to work with, prone to fits of anger and general diva behavior. Finally, O'Toole had enough. One night, as O'Toole entered as Seyton to deliver one of the more famous set-up lines ("The queen, my Lord, is dead," after which comes the incomparable "Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow..." speech from Macbeth) in all of drama, he decided to throw a change-up. He entered and said:

"The queen, my lord... is just fine! As a matter of fact, she's been asking about you." He then turned to face the audience, raised an index finger and shouted, "Taxi!" and proceeded to walk up the center aisle and out the back of the house.

The other one is from a few years later. Somehow O'Toole had managed to recover his career after the "taxi" incident, and he and Harris were young stage stars working together. At the interval (British for intermission) the two were fond of crossing the back alley outside the theatre in full makeup and costume and tossing back a pint or two at the pub next door. One night they were taking a bit too long in this ritual when an agitated stagehand burst into the pub and announced, "You are on right now!"

Harris rushed back across the alley, through the backstage doors, right out onto the stage, and directly off the front of the proscenium into the lap of a large woman sitting in the front row. Harris got up, dusted himself off and said, "Excuse me, excuse me."

"Oh God!" announced the flummoxed woman. "Harris is drunk!"

"Madam," Harris responded, "if you think that was bad, wait 'til you see O'Toole's entrance."

I love those stories. I have no idea if they are true, and I don't especially care. I certainly don't condone such unprofessionalism in any endeavor, but if one must fail, at least one may do so with style. I'd be interested in finding out if anyone has actually seen that episode of Oprah.