Goodbye Mr. Chips: Peter O'Toole, Late Stage and Screen Star, Never Quite Won Fame in Musicals

"Certainly it hurts...The trick," says Peter O'Toole's T.E. Lawrence in the actor's most famous role, "is not minding that it hurts." Many arts lovers will be hurting at the news of the popular actor's death, in a London hospital after a long illness, and they will mind very much. But O'Toole, himself, always seemed remarkably unsentimental about his own progress through life. He gave up acting in July 2012, declaring himself "dry-eyed" at the decision, and he was quite happy to satirize his then-decline in 1982's My Favorite Year.

But his work in classics such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Lion in Winter, right through to his superbly etched voice-over as the cantankerous food critic in Pixar's Ratatouille, will guarantee his place among the greats (we'll draw a veil over Supergirl--though one comic book fansite we noticed led with the headline, "Supergirl's Peter O'Toole dies"). He also had an admired stage career, where even his perceived failures--an infamous Macbeth where the idea to get back to the stagey acting style of earlier decades felt flat--achieved a scale that lent them their own grandeur. But his Hamlet and, latterly, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (a brilliant portrayal happily captured for posterity on screen) were but two of many high points.

It is perhaps a surprise that he never achieved the fame for musicals of colleagues such as Richard Burton (one of O'Toole's merry band of drinking friends) and Rex Harrison enjoyed. All that tends to be remembered on that front is his marvellous turn in the title role of Man of La Mancha in the 1972 film. But, in fact, his first West End bow was in a musical comedy called Oh, My Papa! in 1957. Then, in 1969 came the musical of Goodbye Mr. Chips, shortly before La Mancha.

Given that Harrison really only had My Fair Lady and Dr. Doolittle, and Burton only Camelot (and that only on stage, with yet another drinking pal of his and O'Toole's, Richard Harris, playing King Arthur in the movie), it remains a surprise that O'Toole musical star was not thought to be higher.

Of course, had he really worked at the genre, maybe taken on a revival of My Fair Lady (having had a success in this play from which it was drawn, Shaw's Pygmalion) or some such, maybe it would have happened for him. But O'Toole never seemed especially bothered about that. Or very much when it came to acting, in fact. We miss him, though. It would be nice to learn Lawrence's trick.