I guess early in your career,
you understudied Peter O'Toole's part
in "The Long and the Short and the Tall", is that right?
Yeah, yeah, we were all unknown actors in the sixties,
and Peter got this lead in this play,
"The Long and the Short and the Tall".
Some of the other people who were in it were
Robert Shaw, Terence Stamp, Richard Harris.
Right.
Which may sound all like a lot of people
who became famous, but a matter of fact,
it was a lot of drunks.
Well that's it.
(laughter)
Now yeah, you guys were serious, serious drinkers.
Yeah. In those days, British actors were all drunks.
We had heroes,
and our heroes were people like Trevor Howard
and people like that.
And so we thought to be a great actor,
you had to be a drunk.
And so we all became drunks. (laughter)
O'Toole, I mean,
O'Toole was a notorious drunk, and so was I.
(crosstalk)
Did you make,
you really made a conscious decision?
I'm just gonna, for the love of my craft,
I'm gonna drink that Jack Daniels.
Yeah. We got the idea in our heads.
You see, I had read that alcohol destroys
inhibition cells in the brain.
And so one of the great enemies of the actor, obviously,
is inhibition.
I mean, when you go to drama school,
they make you do stupid things
just so you make a fool of yourself and you don't care,
like I'm doing now.
Exactly. (laughter)
You see, I don't care. (laughter)
And so we all used to drink to get rid of our inhibitions.
But with O'Toole, I mean, he really drank a lot.
I was his understudy and my job was getting the booze in,
you know?
Uh huh. (laughing)
But it never -
I didn't know that's what an understudy did.
No, I didn't until I got the job.
I'd never been an understudy. I was just a drunk actor.
(laughter)
Then I had to stay sober to count the change,
when I used to go out and buy the booze.
Sure.
Yeah. So it got me off the booze a little bit,
cause I had a job.
(laugher, applause)
But it never destroyed Peter's performance. Never.
We never let it interfere with the performance and tour,
because Peter was brilliant.
He became a massive star overnight in that.
And I took over from him.
He went off to do Lawrence of Arabia.
I took over from him,
and then that helped me along my way as well.
But O'Toole, I remember O'Toole once said,
Saturday night, we finished the show.
There's no show Sunday.
So Saturday night he said,
let's go out and do this and that.
And the next thing I know,
I wake up and it's daylight, and I'm lying next to O'Toole,
both of us fully clothed, in a strange bed.
Maybe he told the press.
Maybe it wasn't your wife. It was him.
(laugher, applause)
I shook him. And he said, what time is it?
And I said, oh, it's a seven o'clock in the evening.
So I said, all right, well we better get home.
You know, it's seven o'clock Sunday evening.
He said, I missed lunch.
And, then this girl came in,
and she said, you know, it's seven o'clock.
And then O'Toole said, wait a minute.
He said, I've done this before.
(laughter)
He said, you don't know this, Michael.
He said to the girl, what day is it?
And she said Monday.
Oh, wow.
The curtain goes up at eight,
and we didn't even know where we were.
And I never found out what happened to Sunday.
(laugher, applause)
And he couldn't tell me.
Wow.
But that was the time.
I get the sense that that was in the early sixties.
Now it's, you know.
You see, we didn't have any drugs.
You see, alcohol was our drugs.
So that's what we used to use
to get rid of all our frustrations and everything.
So we didn't do drugs.
I'm saying, do drugs, like I know what it's all about.
I never had any drugs.
But you know, you can't do drugs and drink alcohol.
At the same time.
But also, you didn't get arrested for doing alcohol,
you know.
But I never saw any drugs in those days in the sixties.
The late sixties, it started, the drug started to come in.
But I was so fond of drink by then, I didn't care.
(laughter)
Well, tell us about, this is a, you're working on a,
for NBC, you've done a program, I guess it's a,
it's about...
It's a special.
It's the relationship of Stalin and Churchill
and Roosevelt in the war.
And really the way the whole of Europe was carved up
after the war and the way they ran the war.
I play Stalin, and Bob Hopkins plays Churchill,
and John Lithgow plays Roosevelt.
Okay.
And Ed Begley Jr. plays his assistant Harry Hopkins.
Now, this is, I guess we have a clip.
Do we need to know anything for this clip?
This is, I think that basically to describe it
is just to give you an example of the sort -
All the dialog in this,
there's no dialog written by the writer.
All of it is absolutely true dialog taken from transcripts,
recordings and shorthand notes.
Of what Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill
were really saying. (crosstalk)
And this is a typical example
of the way that Stalin would threaten in a nice way
when he wasn't getting his own way.
All right. Let's take a look at this clip.
The prime minister arises late in the morning,
don't you, Winston?
Yes.
And then works hard until mid-afternoon.
Sleeps before dinner.
And then he's up half the night talking.
(laughing)
What's your schedule?
I work until five in the morning.
So do all my admirals and general.
I sleep until 10 in the morning.
Not so easy a life.
I do it seven days a week.
Small birds better be careful where they sing.
(applause)
That's a good Stalin.
I heard you were playing Stalin,
and I actually saw the clip this afternoon.
It's a great Stalin.
And it's a very, he's a menacing character.
Yeah, he is, very much.
But I know when, when people, I,
people say to me, you know, what are you doing?
I said, I'm doing this thing with Churchill and Stalin.
And they said, who are you playing?
I say Stalin.
And they look at me and they go, yeah, yeah.
(laughter)
Who's playing Churchill?
And I said, Bob Hopkins.
And the next question is always, is it a comedy?
(laughter)
Because if you look at me, you don't say,
we've got to cast, Stalin, find Michael Caine.
We can't do it without him.
(laugher)
He's a ringer for Stalin.
Stalin was five feet two with black hair and brown eyes.
I'm six feet two with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Well, have they ever thought about
doing it as a comedy with music and...?
They will. They will.
That's next season on CBS.
All right, well, listen.
(laugher)
Oh, ho, he's getting them in.
He's getting them in.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Listen, that actually looks good.
People should look for that.
It's World War Two.
When Lions Roared is on Tuesday, May 19th
from eight to 10, and part two airs Wednesday, May 20th.
It was really great talking to you.
It was really nice to meet you.
Lovely talking to you. We've never met before.
No, we haven't. It was nice to see you.
(cheering, applause)
Michael Caine, everybody.