Above
you will see my dear friend, Aubrey Morris, who died last Wednesday.
I knew Aubrey since around 1984 when we made a film together. Ten
years later, when I was moving to Los Angeles his brother, Woolf,
also an actor, told me to look him up and gave me his phone number in
LA.
He
was 89 on June 1st – he was born the exact day as Marilyn
Monroe – and I tried to call him but his voice mail was all I was
greeted with.
So
I left a message wishing him happy birthday and tried a few times
since then with the same response.
I
took loads of photographs of him over the years, as I did for a few
actors, but I had to download the above from the Internet – whoever
put that up didn't have a very good scanner but I like it.
We
would meet each Thursday for breakfast in Hugo's on Santa Monica
Boulevard and did so for some time till they changed the décor and
from then on it wasn't the same.
So
I would visit him from time to time in his apartment in West
Hollywood where I would be treated to little speeches from
Shakespeare that he'd remembered from his vast repertoire that he'd
appeared in over the years.
Here
he is in one of his most famous roles in Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork
Orange.
I
always remember one of his scenes in the film where he visits Malcolm
McDowell in hospital; he reaches over to the next bed for a glass of
water, not seeing it has false teeth in the bottom, and
doesn't notice till most of the water has been swallowed.
I
have been away for a few days so this is the first chance I have had
to write this; on Wednesday evening I dreamt I had returned to LA and
went around to see Aubrey but he wasn't in; on Thursday evening
another dream about trying to get in to his apartment and then on
Friday I received an email telling me he had died.
I
don't believe in any of that stuff but it makes you think doesn't it?
Oh
well, Aubrey, Rest In Peace; hope you got my birthday wishes.
Here
he is with Ian McShane in a TV series called Disraeli.
No comments:
Post a Comment