{"id":148672,"date":"2015-06-23T15:31:32","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T15:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/06\/23\/peter-remembers-christopher-lee\/"},"modified":"2015-06-23T15:31:32","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T15:31:32","slug":"peter-remembers-christopher-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/06\/23\/peter-remembers-christopher-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Remembers Christopher Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"

petersbeagle<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Christopher Lee was the tallest actor I ever knew.<\/p>\n

He was also, by far, the most literate. \u00a0When we first met, in a Los Angeles studio where he was recording his lines as King Haggard inThe Last Unicorn, <\/i>he had just recorded Haggard\u2019s speech about his first sight of unicorns, and I mentioned that it was probably my favorite speech in the book. \u00a0He immediately wanted to know, \u201cWell, did I do it properly? \u00a0We can always redo it right here.\u201d \u00a0Of course, he\u2019d handled the lines perfectly \u2013 but writers, and writers\u2019 opinions about their work, mattered intensely to Christopher.<\/p>\n

That same afternoon, we discovered that between the two of us we we could call to mind just about all the lines of G.K. Chesterton\u2019s poem, \u201cThe Rolling English Road.\u201d \u00a0We also discovered a mutual need to hit the men\u2019s room, and my son Dan \u2013 in his mid-teens at the time \u2013 still has a very clear memory of Christopher simultaneously peeing while declaiming, in That Voice, which no one could ever keep from imitating after fifteen minutes with him:<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore the Roman came to Rye, or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambled round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I leave it to the reader to imagine That Voice in the tiled acoustics of a Hollywood bathroom.<\/p>\n

We met a second time in Munich, where The Last Unicorn <\/i>was being dubbed into German. \u00a0Most of my memories of that time, and of Chris Lee, have to do with books and authors. \u00a0He had known both J.R.R. Tolkien and a writer who mattered more to me, T. H. White. \u00a0We had a long ongoing argument in Munich about a chapter of The Sword In The Stone<\/i> that appears in the English edition of the book, but not in the American one. \u00a0He turned out to be right. \u00a0He usually was.<\/p>\n

He never failed to mention The Last Unicorn<\/i> as one of his very favorite books, and as one of the movies he was most proud of having made. \u00a0Indeed, he left my whopperjawed \u2013 as Mark Twain would have put it \u2013 when we were being interviewed together on Austrian television, and he announced, \u201cOh, yes, I simply couldn\u2019t resist a chance to play King Haggard one more time, even in another language. \u00a0After all \u2013\u201d and he looked straight into the camera \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s the closest they\u2019ll ever<\/i> let me get to playing King Lear.\u201d \u00a0The camera swung toward me to catch my stunned reaction, and Chris looked across the studio at me, and winked.<\/p>\n

But my most vivid memory, chilling as it remains to this day, has to do with the day that I and Michael Chase Walker \u2013 associate producer of The Last Unicorn, <\/i>and the one who really got the film made in the first place \u2013 somehow found our way out to Dachau. \u00a0I can\u2019t now recall how we managed it, considering that neither one of us spoke German, and that you had to take both a subway and a bus to get there from the hotel where the crew were staying. \u00a0But we got there somehow, and spent a good half of the day roaming with other tourists around a legendary concentration camp, peering blindly into the huge crematoriums, but staring with equal horror and fascination at the endless rows of filing cabinets containing every record of every human being who was ever imprisoned, starved, gassed, or simply worked to death in this place. \u00a0Michael and I grew quieter and quieter that afternoon; until, by the time we started back to Munich we weren\u2019t speaking at all. \u00a0I think we both felt that we might say anything in words again.<\/p>\n

The first person we met in the hotel lobby was Christopher. \u00a0He took one look at us and announced, \u201cYou\u2019ve been to Dachau.\u201d \u00a0We nodded without answering. \u00a0Chris strode toward us, looked all the way down from his six-foot, five-inch altitude, lowered his voice and inquired, \u201cStill smells<\/i>, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

With the end of World War II, Christopher, as a member of the Special Forces \u2013 and whose five or six languages included fluent German \u2013 had been assigned to hunt down and interrogate Nazi war crminals, and had been present at the liberation of Dachau. \u00a0And, yes, the smell of death had undoubtedly faded somewhat since 1945, but it was still as real as Michael and me, wandering dazedly between the ovens and the filing system. \u00a0We just didn\u2019t know what it was, but Christopher did. \u00a0And I\u2019d know it again.<\/p>\n

I never saw him again after Munich, though we spoke on the telephone a few times. \u00a0On the last occasion, when I had called to wish him a happy 90th birthday, I remember him assuring me that \u201cif, by the time you come to make your live-action version of your movie, I have passed on, do not let it concern you. \u00a0I have risen from the dead several times. \u00a0I know how it\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n

He worked almost to the last, as the real artists of every kind do: they work to be<\/i> working, because that\u2019s what they do, and they die when they stop. \u00a0I always regarded him as the last of the great 19th-century actors. \u00a0That bravura, larger-than-life style went with him: no modern RADA-trained performer would ever attempt it today, nor should they. \u00a0It would inevitably come out parody, however earnestly meant. <\/p>\n

Yet there was always more to Christopher Lee as an actor than Dracula or the Mummy or Saruman \u2013 or Sherlock Holmes. for that matter, though he was very proud of having played, not only both Holmes and Watson, but Sherlock\u2019s brother Mycroft as well. \u00a0Lord Summerisle of the original The Wicker Man <\/i>\u2013 probably his favorite of his own movies \u2013 is most likely closer to Chris\u2019s dark benignity than any other role he ever inhabited. \u00a0I believe this because Lord Summerisle sings a surprising amount in that movie, and Chris passionately loved singing. \u00a0If there is any such thing as an afterlife or reincarnation, I truly hope \u2013 no, believe \u2013 that Christopher Lee will return as a Wagnerian opera singer. \u00a0If he hadn\u2019t been considered too old, in his 30s, to be accepted for formal vocal training, he might have been \u2013 in his own eyes, at least \u2013 a happier, more fulfilled man. \u00a0But we would have been deeply poorer for it, and never have known.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

petersbeagle: Christopher Lee was the tallest actor I ever knew. He was also, by far, the most literate. \u00a0When we first met, in a Los Angeles studio where he was recording his lines as King Haggard inThe Last Unicorn, he had just recorded Haggard\u2019s speech about his first sight of unicorns, and I mentioned that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Peter Remembers Christopher Lee”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1049,16981,16980,3236,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}