Customer Reviews
Mine's a large one - By: Hector Parkinson, 01 Oct 2008 
If you used this book as a drinking game, matching drink for drink, you would be dead by page 7.
This entertaining read brings together the four legendary actors, Burton, O'Toole, Harris & Reed. This is not a serious study of their craft, but a drink by drink account of their lives & more outrageous binges. If you have ever felt guilty about drinking too much, then take solacein this.
If I have two tiny criticisms (hence 4 stars instead of 5), you don't quite get the sense of their talent (and sometimes wasted talent). Is it just the force of their personalities that set them apart as actors? What is clear that they all made some very bad movies as well, & the book is nicely balancedin this respect. The other is that the author's style occasionally strays into the `blokey' - when his subjects' anecdotes hardly need any additional commentary. How do you add superlatives to four lives of total boozy surfeit? But these are two small fliesin a quadruple vodka of a read. Thoroughly recommended to all out there. Hic!
great tales - By: variety fan, 25 Sep 2008 these are the ultimate theatrical characters - & this is a great new way to look at them. It darts around at a bit of a pace but then so did they. it is a bit sad to see the damage they did to those around them as well as to themselves. But it's a great record of a wilder age - & shows that booze & britain go back a very long way ....
A good idea needing a better writer - By: Ginger, 24 Sep 2008 
This book is badly let down by the matey style of prose employed by the author. It's as if you were hearing the boastful tales of drunken excesses relayed to youin a bar by a football hooligan, complete with slang & expletives.
But it's a refreshing reminder of the sixties & the way things were then - no sipping skinny lattes for this lot. However some of the accounts stretch your credulity beyond the limit, & were probably incapable of verification the day after, let alone some 40 years later. Some of it is frankly ridiculous & the amounts of booze allegedly sank on occasions would leave the most hardened toperin a hospital with alcohol poisoning.
It's a fair enough concept - switching between the four subjects as you go along, not giving you time to get too bored, but as we move through the book the subjects' antics become increasingly sad & pathetic & you feel like saying for God's sake grow up & move on. Maybe if they hadn't treated their partners & friends so appallingly somebody could have saved them from themselves.
Yes, they all had talent. And yes, they all wasted it. Particularly Burton.
REAL actors - By: stagehand, 30 Aug 2008 
Love this book - instantly readable, full of information, these were real actors living hellishly wonderful lives - not like today's talentless soap stars. Highly recommended.
Excellent Read - By: Mark Regan, 13 Aug 2008 I would suggest that there is nothing earth shatteringin terms of revelations here about any ot the characters involved, but the book is well assembled & interesting to read. I did enjoy reading about these greats of the stage & screen especially when out coming crop of actors & musicians seem to be so very bland. Interesting & amusing book.
