Death of a gladiator

Oliver Reed
Born: February 13, 1938
London, England
Died: May 2, 1999,
Valletta, Malta

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"I have to see Gladiator." There was no debate allowed. The film had just opened a couple of days earlier, and it was the first night I’d had free since. My boyfriend could either come along, or not.

In the theater, my eyes opened wide as the monstrous screen illuminated Ridley Scott’s latest directorial endeavor. I was immediately caught up in the excitement of blood, death and special effects, but, still, I found a part of myself waiting. The little girl inside longed for the entrance of an ongoing fascination, and my mind wandered back to summer vacation.

Last July, I was on holiday on Malta, an island about 90 miles south of Sicily. It’s touched by so many cultures and civilizations that linguists can’t crack the origin of the language, and archaeologists aren’t sure who built the oldest manmade structures on earth, now ruins. It’s the same timeless land in which Scott decided to film Gladiator, a movie that deals with a group of men gathered from many countries to fight to the death as entertainment, and trained by Proximo, portrayed by British actor Oliver Reed.

"I have to go to the pub." No debate allowed. Just after my boyfriend and I had decided to go to Malta, we found a tiny blurb about Reed’s death. He’d had a heart attack in a pub in Valletta, Malta and died on his way to assistance. He was on the island because of the filming of Gladiator.

Not until well into the film did Reed appear as Proximo, time-ravaged but still charging onto the screen like a bull. His intimidating eyes triggered a montage of Reed scenes, from the tormented young man ripped apart by inner turmoil in the classic Hammer film Curse of the Werewolf, to Oliver’s most terrifying Bill Sykes of all time. As a girl, I knew how Sykes’ girlfriend Nancy felt, madly in love with his raw and rugged good looks, frightened of his seething undercurrent of rage, ready to blow at any moment.

We’d tried several times to visit the pub, but every night it was closed. We peeked into the dark window at the front, and I wondered how a larger-than-life musketeer could hang out in such a tiny place. On our last day, we just had to give it one more try before we got on the boat that afternoon; I’d die if we didn’t get in.

Thank God it was open! I asked the bartender why the pub was closed every night. He replied, "So I can go to the pub and drink," as a matter of fact. Warren, a young Maltese with a round, pleasant face, was the man who poured the last drinks Reed ever swallowed. I asked him about that day.

"Did he have a good time?" I had to know.

"Oh, yes." Reed had a drinking and arm-wrestling contest with six British sailors, and won, living up to his off-screen, hard-drinking reputation. An English woman told me Reed belonged to a notorious group known as the Piss Artists (getting "pissed" is British slang for getting drunk), including the likes of Lee Marvin, Peter O’Toole, etc. It seemed we weren’t the only fans paying tribute to Ollie that day. The woman was with a group of Brits gathered in front of a cheesy promotional poster for Reed’s film, The Trap.

Just to the left of them was Reed’s favorite drinking spot on the end of the bench. I sat in that spot, hoping to somehow touch something lost to mortality, and my boyfriend took a tourist’s snapshot of me there, Reed’s sweatshirt tacked on the wall overhead. In the photograph, the sweatshirt looks far too small to be worn by a trainer of gladiators. Reed’s wife Josephine had sent the shirt to the pub, along with a letter of thanks, tacked up on the wall as well. She was there that day, after the sailors had left defeated. Her husband rested his head on her lap and had a heart attack.

"Win the crowd and win your freedom," Proximo says to Maximus, his gladiatorial apprentice. It makes me wonder: Is gladiating really so different from acting? Proximo even admitted that he was an entertainer. The pub was full of entertained, won-over fans, celebrating the life of a man who intensely celebrated life.

Somehow, it seemed appropriate that we traveled from a final farewell toast for Reed to the top of Mt. Etna, an active volcano in Sicily with a seething undercurrent of rage, ready to blow at any moment.

Good-bye Ollie.

"We mere mortals are but shadows and dust." Proximo, Gladiator.

Anita Schmaltz writes about the arts for the Metro Times.