Richard Harris' Big Four

[stuart.uk]

I think Richard Harris admitted he was diaspointed he didn't make many good films. In fact I think there was only four of them he was proud off

This Sporting Life, a film about a Rugby League player, who lodged with widowed mother Rachel Roberts.

Camelot is a musical IMO dosen't get the credit it deserves with Harris as King Arthur. possibly younger people who know him from Harry Potter won't realise Richard was a great singer, who had a hit with Macarthur Park. In Camelot he sang many songs, most noteably IMO How To Handle A Woman.

Cromwell again is a film IMO doesn't get the credit it deserves. Harris is brilliant as Oliver Cromwell as was Alec Guiness as Charles 2nd

The Field is a film I talk about in another thread The Field And The Quiet Man comparing the similarities of both films, even though one is a very dark drama, the other a comedy.

If I've negleted to mention other great Richard Harris films I apologise

[mrsl]

Hi Stuart:

Oddly, Harris never made any impact on me whatever. In the first place I always confuse him with Peter O'Toole, another non entity for me. Some actors stand out and you can't wait to see them in another movie, but I never felt that with either Richard or Peter. It's not because they're British either, because I like Michael Caine, and several others of their era, so I can't really pinpoint a reason.

Anne

[charliechaplinfan]

Anne, I don't get Richard Harris either, I love plenty from his era. To me one of the best is Alan Bates, he never gets the credit he deserves.

My husband loves Cromwell the film, it annoys me, maybe it's the subject matter but the way Richard Harris plays him, I can't have any sympathy with his cause, I don't have sympathy with the King either. Confused is what I feel overall.

[moira finnie]

Hi Stuart,
I always had the feeling that Cromwell was edited heavily, but the basic story was a terrific one. Though Richard Harris did the best he could playing one of history's worst abusers of terror in the name of his concept of God, Alec Guinness had my entire sympathy as Charles I, (and I'm hardly such a royalist, especially of that dynasty). Do you think that someone behind the camera or in some production office truncated the film with some heavy-handed editing?

Camelot to me will always be Richard Burton, because that is who I grew up listening sing the score on record. I don't think Harris' characterization of Arthur was vivid or individual enough to make one forget Burton. This Sporting Life is very good, but I do have some difficulty with the author, David Storey's attitudes toward women in general. The Field, as Klondike pointed out in the thread about that film, is too heartbreaking to see more than once--even though I can appreciate the performances. It is doubly painful to watch since that movie mirrors much of my family's background, (though, thank goodness, they had a lot more humor, imagination and the good luck to leave Ireland).

I also think back on the time when a faux hip, bandana clad Richard Harris used to pop up on The Tonight Show or something and sing MacArthur Park and I blush to think that a song with lyrics about a melting cake in the rain was considered so profound at one time! I'm sure I've probably offended some aficionados of composer Jimmy Webb now, and I guess I should say that whole album of Harris' was played endlessly by my elder sisters as well.

I did enjoy Harris in his later performances when he seemed to have cleaned up his act and stopped worrying too much about his ego.

By his own admission, Richard Harris may have squandered many of his opportunities by his recalcitrance and his off-camera pursuit of pleasure, (and who's to say he was wrong to do so?). However, there is a beautifully done television movie that he did for Hallmark Hall of Fame in this country called The Snow Goose (1971) that I've never forgotten.

Based on a delicate story by Paul Gallico about a withdrawn artist in the marshland of Essex, and his relationship with a young woman and a wounded bird that brings them together just before WWII, it touches on the love of the earth, the unexpected love that grew between two very different, equally lonely people and for life itself. I hope that you've had a chance to see it sometime.

[MikeBSG]

For the record, I think he was the best Dumbledore. (I have never really liked Michael Gambon in anything, and while I grudgingly think he has improved as Dumbledore, it has taken him a long way to get there.)

Also, Harris was good as the fraudulent gunfighter in "Unforgiven."

I remember one episode of "The Goodies" in which Bill Oddie declares that he is fed up with moviemaking and is going to go drown his sorrows, and one of the others tells him to stop going Richard Harris on us.

[ChiO]

When I think of Richard Harris, I think of the last movie I saw at a drive-in with my parents: A MAN CALLED HORSE.

[stuart.uk]

I enjoyed Man In The Wilderness