Great Yarmouth

Peter O'Toole died at the weekend. The old boozer had managed to outlive all his drinking companions by a good few years.  At his best he was a great actor.  But often his performances were compromised by the booze.  He made his reputation in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 But for me, his great performance was in Becket — the 1964 film based on Jean Anouilh's play.  In this he played King Henry II opposite Richard Burton's Becket.  The producers of this film hesitated in bringing two heroic drinkers together in one film while expecting to finish making it.  It seems that there were some spectacular drinking sessions in local pubs near the studios where the film was made, but it was made and on budget.  The film sticks in my mind because of when and where I saw it.  It was my "where were you when Kennedy died" moment.

It was February 1965 or 1966, in the days when I worked for The APV Company and I went up to Great Yarmouth with one of the sales guys to discuss a project with Birds Eye Foods.  Do they still have a factory there?  In those days, before the M25 getting up into East Anglia was quite a performance.  The first Dartford Tunnel had opened but getting to it was a struggle.  The normal journey took drivers via the Blackwall Tunnel — still a single bore with bends under the river that caused constant traffic jams as lorries struggled into the middle of the road to avoid hitting the tunnel walls.  Then it was onto the A13 into Essex and north to Great Yarmouth. It was a slow journey and we went up the day before our meeting to ensure we could arrive on-time.  The weather was terrible.  It was raining and a cold wind blasted the East Coast.  Have you ever been to Great Yarmouth in February?  It is a hellish, desolate, Godforsaken place.  We booked into a typical holiday hotel on the promenade, a place memorable for the quantity rather than the quality of its rooms.  How many people it would cater for in summer, I have no idea. In winter the number of guests was in single figures.  We had some tea and buns in the guest lounge — a large room sparsely decorated but full of a mixed collection of rather uncomfortable armchairs.  What shall we do this evening, we wondered?  The hotel bar was empty and depressing.  Nearby, a cinema was showing Becket with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.  So we decided we would have a meal — in a Chinese restaurant — and then go to watch the film.  It was a large cinema but on this mid-week night, there were few patrons.  We sat in the middle of the stalls in a sea of emptiness.  Did no one want to see this film?  Was the entrance fee — about 2/6d — too much?  Was the weather to awful for people to turn out to a cinema in mid-week?  I have no idea.  But the cinema audience was never a distraction; it was virtually invisible.  But it was a magnificent film and, in spite of the miserly heating and feeling chilly, I enjoyed every minute.  I still believe it to be one of the great films that I have seen.  

The film is not historically accurate — blame that on Anouilh — and the relationship between the two principals is theatre rather than history.  But the acting is generally superb and convincing.

The memories of this film do nothing in my mind for the image of Great Yarmouth.  I have never been there since and my memory is of a ghost town, one that epitomizes desolation, tragedy and a place never to be visited voluntarily.  I am sure this image is misleading — but, at times I am not completely sure.

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