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In his 60 years on Earth, Richard Harris has been written off as a hopeless case more than once. An actor of unquestionable gifts, he's widely regarded as someone who squandered his career in riotous bouts of drinking and a slew of rotten movies.
So when he announced plans to return to the stage in a serious drama after 26 years, bringing Pirandello's madman Henry IV to the West End after out-of-town tryouts, the gossip vultures gathered in waiting.
Word from out of town gave them plenty to salivate over. From the start, "Henry IV" was a troubled production; Harris, inevitably, was at the epicenter of the tempest.
As a self-styled amateur Pirandello scholar, he held strong views on how the play should be mounted, which did not mesh with those around him.
Leading lady Sarah Miles quit in a glare of publicity, but that was only part of it. By the time of her withdrawal, three directors and two designers had already departed from the production, and the cast was working with a third translation of the text. Richard Harris, it appeared, was living up to a well-established reputation as a hell-raiser.
"I had approval of everything, including the set," says Harris. "But meetings between me and the designer which were supposed to take place never did. There were various submissions of design ideas that I never received."
When Harris finally saw the set and rejected it, he was told it could not be changed before the tour opened.
"There came a moment when we had to make decisions-painful decisions," recalls Harris. "Finally, when we were playing Guildford (a commuter town southwest of London), I told the producer, Duncan Weldon, `That's it. It's over. This production won't last. It's not good enough for the West End. It's insulting to Pirandello. I'm only doing this because I love the play, not because I need the job.' "
Harris would now produce the play himself, changing it as he wanted. Weldon quickly calculated it needed an extra 200,000 to upgrade "Henry IV" to Harris' specifications.
"He then said he would like to go along with me, and he'd put up the extra money," says Harris. "He was so honorable about it that I thought I'd...