Public Places: My Life in the Theater, with Peter O'Toole, and Beyond

Sian Phillips is a great actress who managed to shine on stage, at the Old Vic or on one stage or another in London's West End but off-stage lived for years in the shadow of Peter O'Toole. This is a fast read but a cautionary tale. Phillips always accepted second position to the more flamboyant personality of O'Toole and he wouldn't have it any other way. Phillip's finally comes to understand the error of her ways...as O'Toole's wife she was too accommodating, too forgiving and ultimately received none of those considerations in return.

After this book, one feels Sian Phillips deserves an award just for surviving her marriage to O'Toole (the man and an era of carouser-talent-industry it symbolized), with her sanity, talent, and will to trudge on INTACT. You have to admire a woman who sees O'Toole's bullying (among more redeeming acts) as valuable training for OTHER bullies in her professional life. Between a tone of "I had The Life" and purge sessions by an anorexic depressive, Phillips opts for the Sensible Survivor tradition of celeb bios. The underlying theme is a willing but unhappy submissive to a talented but Jekyll-Hyde husband, and the tough sell of female, married professional in 60s England. On a larger scale, this outlines the operations of a modest but robust creative force (Keep Films run by Jules Buck/O'Toole families) in 60s-70s, during the waning studio system and before the advent of 80s high-concept blockbuster swamped out the maverick, artsy tirades of the 70s.

Having seen her perform in Pal Joey in London and again in My Old Lady in Hollywood, I was quite interested to read her story. I was not disappointed. The book tells HER story, not the story of O'Toole and others. For the lady who wanted gossip, I suggest getting the scandal sheets at your local super market when you check out.The book covers not only her stage career and O'Toole relationship, but her thoughts and feelings about both and many other aspects over about a 40 year period.It is an intimate commentary on what she was going through from day, week, month and year onward.For the comment that O'Toole wrote a good book... that is rubbish. He can't hold a candle to her as a writer. His "style" is awful. A poor man's James Joyce! And Joyce was bad enough himself.

I loved reading this book. Sian Phillips took me places I wouldn't dream of venturing. One ride with O'Toole as driver and I would have said, "Enough already!" But she seems to adore a daring life -- and it takes her places. I was thrilled to go along, sinking ever deeper into my armchair. I'm reading to others at a Christmas party for booklovers the sequence that starts with her arrival in Cambodia in a "little girl" Mary Quant outfit that enrages her husband through the Hong Kong roaming in a neighborhood too dangerous for the police to enter.