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Laurence Harvey: Director
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In his autobiography Close Up (2004), British actor John Fraser wrote that Harvey was gay and that his long-term lover was his manager James Woolf, who "discovered" Harvey in the 1950s. According to Fraser, "As a teenager, [Harvey] started out living with Hermione Baddeley, a blowsy star of intimate revue more than twice his age. Then he married Margaret Leighton, old enough to be his mother, but a woman of style. When this marriage was over, he married Joan Cohn, widow of Harry Cohn, managing director of Columbia Pictures. Throughout all these career marriages, he still managed to string Jimmy Woolf along."
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Certain film historians are perpetually amazed that the doggedly unappetizing Laurence Harvey became a major film star. In Girl Named Tamiko, Harvey is once more the embittered heel, this time playing a Eurasian photographer who pretends to be in love with numerous American ladies. His only true interest is obtaining American citizenship, something most of his erstwhile amours find out all too late. Harvey's latest prospect is Martha Hyer; his true love... is innocent Japanese girl France Nuyen, the Tamiko of the title. Stuck with a cold fish for a leading man, producers Hal Wallis and Paul Newman and director John Sturges work overtime to get the audience to "pull" for the luckless Ms. Nuyen. A Girl Named Tamiko was one of several early-1960s Paramount films shot on location in the Orient--though certainly not the best of the group.
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Bereft of a choice of better roles, Harvey returned to Britain to make the comedy The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966). His last hurrah was his appearance in the spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic (1968), which he helmed after director Anthony Mann died during shooting. In 1968, in settlement of a dispute with Woodfall Films over the rights to The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Woodfall cast him in their version as a Russian prince. He performed as cast, but was never seen as the Prince in the finished film.[1] The only part of his performance remaining in the final cut is a brief appearance of him in the background of one shot, as an anonymous member of a theater audience.
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Captivated by Harvey, whom he remembered as "a fascinating little thing," the director seized upon the idea she would make a great movie subject. Scott began taping interviews with Harvey. They would form the basis of a script.
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