Oliver Reed: Profile in Drinking Courage

In the pantheon of history’s heroically great drinkers, there is a special place reserved for the British actor Oliver Reed.

Reed’s alcohol consumption was truly staggering, and the free-wheeling lifestyle that accompanied his pursuit of drink is legendary. And while there are many notable boozehounds, Oliver Reed is a truly unique individual.

There are manly men, gentlemanly men, ladies men, intellectual men, brawny men, men of leisure, and men of sport, and Reed sits in the center of the Venn Diagram, encapsulating them all. He was a leading man, a character actor, an army veteran, a boxer, and—above all else—a legendary souse.

He was born in Southwest London in 1938. His father was a successful sports journalist, and Reed grew up as a child of privilege. He claimed his first memories were of watching the dogfights in the sky during the Battle of Britain in World War II. Being an upper-class child meant that Reed could comfortably ride out the war in the relative safety of his family’s countryside home as air sirens blared and people were forced into shelters throughout major English cities.

Reed grew physically to become a mountain of a man and was always a child of formidable size and strength. No one dared bully him, and he was a rebel from the start. When he’d get into trouble at school, and his headmaster would smack him on his hands with a cane as punishment, the obstinate Reed would reply drily, “That didn’t hurt.” One such occurrence made Oliver a legend at his school. His headmaster hit him so severely that Reed’s fingers “swelled up like sausages.” To which, again, the defiant Oliver replied, “That didn’t hurt, either.” When the headmaster took the cane to Reed’s backside, Reed finally conceded, “That hurt, sir. That hurt like bloody hell.”

Oliver did a stint in the Royal Army Medical Corps, then became a boxer, a bouncer, and a taxi driver. Reed then found his way to working in movies, first as an extra in the film The Square Peg (1958) and television episodes of The Invisible Man (1958), The Four Just Men (1959), and The Third Man.

He kicked around show business for a few years, getting more roles that became increasingly larger. Reed eventually caught the eye of director Terence Fisher, who was known for making horror movies for the famous Hammer Films studio, and he was cast in his first leading role, starring in 1961’s The Curse of the Werewolf. Reed found himself in the stable of actors used by Hammer and followed up the Werewolf role with five more movies for the film company.

Reed then hooked up with legendary directors Michael Winner and Ken Russell, and his star began to rise. During this time, Reed co-starred with another film and drinking legend, Orson Welles, in 1967’s I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname.

It was his role as Bill Sikes in the 1968 Academy Award Best Picture winner Oliver! that launched him to the next level. Lauded for portraying one of the most terrifying characters in cinematic history, Reed now had his choice of leading man roles. He was in comedies, dramas, romantic films, and even musicals. At the time of his passing, Reed had 122 film and television credits to his name. He was eloquent and had a marvelous speaking voice. He was nominated for BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild awards. He was a box-office draw, a ladies’ man, a fine actor, and also a bat-shit crazy drunk.

Reed took special pride in being able to drink anyone under the table, and he never backed down from a challenge. He invented a drink that he called “Gunk,” which consisted of filling an ice bucket with a little bit of every drink from every bottle in whatever bar he was currently sitting. Sounds, um, delicious. He famously drank 126 pints in a 24-hour sitting and celebrated this Herculean accomplishment by performing a horizontal handstand atop the bar. In the famous photograph of Reed celebrating this feat, his sweaty face shines with a beautiful combination of sheer lunacy and childlike exuberance.

And while his drinking never impacted his work on set, it once famously cost him a high-profile part in a film with an American superstar. Reed lost a role in a Steve McQueen film because he threw up on the American actor at a nightclub during a “legendary pub crawl.”

During the filming of The Sellout, when Reed learned how much room service drinks cost, he ordered boxes of wine and spirits shipped to his hotel room and turned his suite into a glorified pub.

He followed that up by starring with fellow notorious drunkard Lee Marvin in the movie The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday. Filming on location in Durango, Mexico, the pair found themselves in a cantina where Reed and Marvin went toe-to-toe in a bourbon-drinking contest that resulted in Marvin collapsing to the floor after reprimanding the Mariachi band for supposedly playing their instruments wrong.

Consuming 126 pints in twenty-four hours, brawling with other actors, pub crawling with Steve McQueen, and drinking Lee Marvin under the table was just par for the course for Oliver Reed. But Reed didn’t need to rely on colleagues to get up to trouble. He could handle that quite capably on his own. While on break from filming in Durango, Reed noticed a production assistant and his wife sitting at a table in the restaurant in which Reed was drinking. The actor politely approached and informed the man that he and his wife should head back to their hotel room because “I’m going to smash this fucking place up in ten minutes, and I wouldn’t want you or your lady to get hurt.” The couple left the restaurant as Reed hurled two tables through the windows.

Upset with the lighting in his home, Reed, after an evening of drinking, roamed through his house punching out all of the lightbulbs.

Impatient for the New Year, Reed moved the clock ahead, called it the New Year, and celebrated by firing his shotgun in the air, then shooting the clock to smithereens.

While on location filming The Three Musketeers, Reed challenged everyone in the hotel bar to feats of strength. When no one took him up on his offer, he smashed apart the bar and lobby, which led to his arrest.

His over-imbibing never impacted his work, however. No matter how much he drank the night before, he would turn up to the set each day and handle himself as a complete professional. The movie went on to be a huge box office hit.

What elevated Reed above a common lout, however, is the man was many times a gentleman. Once, while attending a dinner at a fancy London restaurant, Reed became annoyed by fellow actor George Lazenby’s use of foul language in the company of their female companions. “Come off it, George, ladies present,” Reed scolded Lazenby. The James Bond actor ignored Reed’s request to tame his language and continued with the off-color remarks and rudeness. Finally, Reed reached across the table and slapped Lazenby’s face. Moments later, Lazenby retaliated with a sucker punch that led to an all-out brawl between the two thespians.

The fight broken up, Reed realized he needed medical attention for a busted lip. That, and the fact Lazenby went into hiding, prevented Reed from “finishing the job.” Arrested once for brawling in a pub, Reed apologized to the court and sent flowers to all the responding police officers. Granted, this streak of chivalrous, gentlemanly behavior was also interspersed with Reed’s habit of exposing himself in many different situations. So, you know, maybe he wasn’t the classic definition of an English Gentleman.

On the subject of women, Reed could be considered “old-fashioned” if you were being generous and “sexist” if you were being perfectly blunt. He was removed from the set of the British TV panel program After Dark when he showed up drunk and offended feminist writer Kate Millett by telling her, “Give us a kiss, big tits.” On one of his many Tonight Show with Johnny Carson appearances, Reed expounded on his beliefs that a woman’s place was in the kitchen. His fellow guest, actress Shelley Winters, naturally took offense. Reed admonished Winters for being rude and not allowing him to talk. The segment climaxed with Winters, who seemed pretty loaded herself, dumping a glass of bourbon and water on Reed’s head. In his defense, Reed appeared on an ITV chat show in Britain months later and claimed his comments on The Tonight Show were tongue-in-cheek and done to get a rise out of Winters, who was being rude on the set. Reed ended that particular ITV interview by falling off his chair and making his exit by crawling away.

Reed’s charm, outspokenness, and remarkable lifestyle made him a much-in-demand talk show guest on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to numerous memorable appearances. Many times Reed seemed to be drunk, naturally. Whether he truly was or not is up for much debate, with many who knew him claiming he was acting the part. Sort of a British Foster Brook—if Brooks could punch your lights out.

One of Reed’s most bizarre American television appearances was on Late Night with David Letterman in 1987. Reed, bespectacled and heavily grey-bearded, came onstage, yanked Letterman across the set during their handshake, sat down, and launched into an odd Macho Man Randy Savage impersonation during which he—for some reason—challenged Sylvester Stallone (who was not even on the show that night) to a fight. Letterman had trouble making sense of what was going on, and Reed asked, “Lost for words, Mickey?” When Letterman broached the subject of Reed besting Lee Marvin in their Durango drinking contest, Reed replied, “That’s hearsay.” When Letterman continued this line of questioning, a seemingly pissed-off Reed told Letterman that the show-runners knew the topic of drinking was not to be discussed during the interview, “So, let’s cool that one. Get on to a new subject. I love trees and boats.”

Letterman replied, “So, it’s true you and Lee Marvin had a tree-climbing contest?” Letterman kept asking about drinking, and Reed countered that he thought he was on an intellectual show. Reed then started talking German, or some form thereof. Going to break, Letterman offered that he felt Reed wanted to knock him out. Reed just smiled and replied, “No, sir. No, sir.”

The second segment was just as strange. Reed was charming and funny—at first. While discussing Reed moving to an English Channel island to become a fisherman, Letterman asks, “Do you go out and fish often?” Reed replied, “No, I wear the boots.” Finally, Reed snaps. He confessed that he was lying about being a fisherman, that he was lying about his boat, that he drank 106 pints, that he “screwed Lee Marvin” at drinking, then said, “We got that over with, and that’s your researcher, jolly good! You going to be bright, now?” The rest of the interview is very contentious and fascinating. Letterman is a combination of bemused and terrified throughout.

Things couldn’t have been too bad because afterward the duo shot a Late Night promo together. Letterman introduces Reed as his “good friend” who has something to say about the evening’s program, to which Reed—while turning away from the camera—says, “Yeah, well, it’s a bloody repeat, so, go to bed.”

While promoting the film Castaway, Reed appeared as a guest on the British talk show Aspel & Company. Reed walked on set carrying a massive pitcher of gin and orange juice and looked blotted out of his mind. He ripped his sports coat off and drunkenly sang with the show’s band, dancing like a pickled monkey. When he sat on the couch, another guest on the show asked Reed, “Why do you drink?” Reed responded, “Because the finest people I have ever met, in my life, are in pubs.”

Film work started drying up a bit, and Reed found himself more of a celebrity than an actor, making most of his appearances on talk shows rather than the screen. Near the end of his life, he was brought onto some talk shows specifically for his drinking. The Word, a sort of MTV-style music/pop/gossip show, put bottles of vodka in his dressing room and secretly filmed him getting hammered. It was basically, “Hey, everyone, look at the drunk!”

Reed spent his remaining years in County Cork in Ireland, trying to live a peaceful life. But the hell-raising drunk was always just under the surface.

A return to film prominence looked likely when Ridley Scott cast him in the film Gladiator. He promised the director not to drink while filming. He got around this by drinking only on the weekends when he wasn’t shooting.

On the 2nd day of May in 1999, while filming in Malta, Reed found himself in an Irish-themed bar occupied by a group of British sailors on shore leave. The navy men challenged Reed to a drinking contest. Not one to shy away from such an offer, Reed accepted. The 61-year-old actor then proceeded to drink eight pints of German lager, a dozen shots of rum, half a bottle of whiskey, and a few shots of Hennessy cognac, all while beating five of the sailors in separate arm-wrestling contests. The bar bill, for Reed alone, came to $590.

Maybe it was the heroic amount of alcohol consumed, maybe it was the strain he put himself under as a man in his 60s engaging in physical competition with robust military men in their 20s, maybe it was seeing that gigantic goddamn bar bill, whatever it was, as the events of the day concluded, Reed collapsed from a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital.

Oliver Reed was one of a kind. A ladies’ man, a leading man, a legendary drunk man. His skills as an actor were only matched by his enthusiasm for alcohol. The latter sometimes eclipsing the former.

He was a complicated man, to say the least. Perhaps fellow actor Michael York, who starred with Reed in The Three Musketeers, summed Oliver up best: “Everyone expected him to be a hell-raiser, and he often obliged. He was brought up in good schools, with good manners. Oliver wasn’t run of the mill. He was like an aristocratic ruffian, a complete contradiction in terms.”

So, have a drink for Ollie. Maybe not his creation, “Gunk,” but a nice German lager, or a dozen shots of rum, or a half bottle of whiskey, or maybe a nice cognac. Just not all at once.

—Joseph M. Boylan