The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [23]
I don’t wake up in the night in a sweat reliving this incident, but it does come back to me at moments of difficulty, particularly when someone is looking to attack me or do me down. And I just think – as I did on that Korean hillside – you cannot frighten me, or do anything to me, and if you try I’ll take as much or as many of you with me as I can, even if I lose in the process. If you leave me alone, I’m great – but just don’t start . . .
A Hill in Korea was nothing like the real thing, but no one seemed to be interested in that. George Baker, now better known as Inspector Wexford in the Ruth Rendell mysteries, was sent into battle wearing an officer’s hat and badges to mark him out as the star of the film. I pointed out that he’d have been marked out as a prime target by the snipers in a real war and wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds in a proper advance, but I was ignored. I was ignored, too, when I suggested that the troops should fan out during the advance to maximise their fire coverage. No, they would have to huddle up, I was told, because the camera lens wasn’t wide enough. I was about to venture the opinion that Korea actually looked more like Wales than Portugal, but held my tongue – after all, where would you rather film on location?
Although on the whole Portugal rekindled very few nightmares of Korea, I was faced with one constant reminder of my time on that terrible front line: garlic. The food in the hotel was swimming in oil and garlic, and night after night I would send back my meal until there wasn’t a trace of it left. This infuriated my fellow actor Robert Shaw and one night, after we’d all had a few too many bottles of wine, he’d had enough. ‘Eat your food, you fucking Cockney Philistine! You’ll never have eaten anything as good as this!’ he shouted. I had no idea what a Philistine was, but I understood he had just insulted my mum’s cooking and I leapt across the table and grabbed him by the shirtfront. ‘Who do you think you’re fucking talking to?’ I snarled. All hell broke loose as we lashed out at each other – wine was spilt, food was spilt, the waiters went flying – it was a proper, old-fashioned bar room brawl. Of course, now I know Robert was absolutely right, and I use olive oil and garlic in my cooking all the time – but now and again, off guard, I catch a slight whiff and I’m back there in that rice paddy. You never really forget.
Once home I paid my mother back, moved into a bedsitter and had enough money left over to get to Sheffield to see Dominique, who was now an enchanting one-year-old. Pat had gone back to acting and her parents were raising our daughter – and doing a superb job. Claire and Reg were very welcoming to me and I will always be grateful to them for all they did for Dominique. I felt relieved that they had stepped in to rescue us and promised to visit as often as I could. And on the train back to London I even allowed myself to relax and believe that my problems were over.
Of course, they weren’t. My agent, Jimmy Fraser, saw the finished film of A Hill in Korea and promptly dropped me. To be fair, he’d seemed a bit reluctant to take me on in the first place. ‘You’ve got something, Michael,’ he said when I first visited him in his grand offices on Regent Street. ‘For the life of me I can’t see what it is, and I haven’t a clue how to sell it, but I’ll take you on for a bit and see if it becomes a bit clearer.’ Well, things did seem to have become clearer. If I didn