![]() ![]() “Arse-licker” was her favourite epithet for such folk she decided belonged in this category nor was Peter spared this epithet when from time to time she felt it necessary to warn him of the traps into which his good manners and good nature might propel him.Īlthough in the past Peter had never underrated his talents, he had been constantly tormented by self-doubt, plagued by indecisions and by the clear recognition of his faults and shortcomings. She would have dismissed such a quality in herself contemptuously as servile and abasing, as arse- licking. For one thing, she was not hampered by humility - spiritual or otherwise. Peter found Eletha’s view of himself and the world refreshingly different from his own. All through the shooting of The Legend of Lylah Clare Eletha remained with Peter, a seeming shadow in the background, yet, in fact, always by his side. She left her child with her mother, Miss Bertha, and together she and Peter took off for California. She told him she would go with him anytime, anyplace, anywhere in the world. He asked her if she would go with him to Hollywood. When Peter returned to Jamaica, Eletha was waiting for him, unshakeable in her loyalty. She just wanted to be able to tell her girlfriends that she was sleeping with a movie star.”Įletha recalled for journalist Helen Lawrenson that she would weave a powerful spell around him and keep him with her always and always keep him safe. In many ways she was a real star-struck kid. “Eletha always let Peter know loud and clear that she was different from all the other women, those bad women chasing after him who just wanted jewels and pretty clothes and money and photographs taken of them together to further their careers, and that she wanted nothing of him but himself and that he owed her nothing. It was only after he had settled down with Eletha in 1968 that he felt liberated enough to announce in The New York Times that he was illegitimate. ” Eletha was illegitimate and proud of it.“I’m illegitimate, my mother is illegitimate, my father is illegitimate and my son is illegitimate,” she was to say later to Peter’s friends and family, with seeming defiance. “She was rough-cut,” recalls the Jamaican journalist Doug Campbell who had known her for many years, “Eletha was always rough-cut. Said Peter of her approvingly, “She’s a true primitive.”Įletha was also very much an “Up yours!” person. She was a bundle of energy with an explosive voice and conversed as someone remarked, “ at the top of her lungs”, in a sing-song Jamaican accent. In any case, by 1965 they were acquainted and by 1966, when Eletha was twenty-two a Possibly this gave him a feeling of continuity as he had met his former wives on beaches. Not as an actress, but as a person she's usually in a state of high tension, but that will unwind after she's made a few more films.According to Peter, he first met Eletha on the beach in St Anne’s Bay where he used to swim. What about Julie Christie, his leading lady in "Far From the Madding Crowd"? I played opposite Kim Novak, who was very good to work with, very smooth in front of the cameras." "It's sort of a gothic horror story about Hollywood, done tongue in cheek. "I don't know how to describe it," he said. His next film is "The Legend of Lylah Claire," directed by Robert Aldrich. But I'm afraid it wasn't very successful. Summer," which "was most interesting to make," Finch said, " Melina Mercouri and Romy Schneider were in it, and Jules Dassin of course is a fascinating director. Among his recent ones: "The Pumpkin Eater," "Judith," " Flight of the Phoenix" and "10:30 p.m. ![]() John Schlesinger (the director) was very wise to frame all of his scenes with those beautifully photographed landscapes it gives the movie an open, natural pace."įinch, who lives in Jamaica, divides his year between acting and painting and has recently limited himself to one or two films a year. I was afraid they'd try to speed it up and lose the flavor. "It was a very deliberate sort of Victorian novel. "My own original impression was that Hardy's book wouldn't make a very good movie," Finch said. In recent British films like "No Love for Johnnie" (1961) and "The Girl with Green Eyes" (1964) he has played similar characters: handsome, masculine, outwardly a gentleman, but with a hidden streak of cruelty and conceit. The Boldwood role is a typical one for Finch, who often plays a very refined tough guy. The parts of a film should be in proportion to the whole, and a long film pasted together out of quick little scenes makes me dizzy." It doesn't dash around at a breakneck clip like so many of these long roadshow pictures. "I imagine people will have a difference of opinion about this movie," he said.
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