michael_gothard_archive | Entries tagged with harold chapman

"La vallée" was filmed in Papua New Guinea.

For an insight into the mind behind the film, see the interview with Director Barbet Schroeder on this site dedicated to "La vallée."

"The Valley ... fuses fiction and documentary with improvised dialogue. Made with just a crew of just 13, this road movie by land rover, horseback and on foot, set to Pink Floyd’s shimmering psychedelia, is very much of the period – and one in which the director gets to unleash his thoughts about ‘finding one-self’ in a post-hippy era."
Full review

Valley Obscured by Clouds cast and crew

The entire cast and crew of La vallée: Michael is on the far right.
Photo is from this site.

According to Gerry Cullen, who became friends with Michael Gothard while working as an extra on "Arthur of the Britons" in 1972:

"Michael had finished working on that when I first met him ... He talked about the film quite a bit to me as to how he felt very good about that film.

It was years later before I had had a chance to see it and once I did I could see why, I think the storyline and the character he played fit his view of life, a sense of risks and adventure, willing to do what it takes to find out what it is all about. It’s just my thought but I think that was what kept him feeling most alive.

It was a time of discovery for people willing to travel to really delve into a culture and take risks. I think "La Vallee" expresses that for Michael, and he liked that film very much."

Harold Chapman also spoke to Michael about ‘La vallée.’ He says: "In a recent film [released in July 1972 in France] which I was a bit puzzled over, and wanted him to explain, he was more or less playing himself, a man of VERY few words. He was leading a small band of hippies on a trek in a tropical landscape situation in search of something or other which I couldn't quite understand.

Mike explained this as, 'we were asking questions, seeking answers, and only found more questions'. Which I thought summed up the movie to me."

Michael’s former girlfriend N.B., who first met him in 1984, says:

'He didn’t like watching himself. I never got him to show me any movie he had worked in. From what he told me, I think he liked the film “Up the Junction” and “Arthur of the Britons.” And the French one, “La vallée.”

He wasn’t very good at learning new languages. He was o.k. with a bit of French (since he had lived in Paris for a year), but he rarely said anything in French and if so, he had a hard time to get the pronunciation right.'

IMDB entry

Most of these memories were recounted by Harold Chapman, the photographer who took photos in and around the Beat Hotel during the 1960s. Harold's earlier memories of Michael and the Beat Hotel are here.

"I ran into a friend of Mike’s in Paris, who told me about a tiny café Mike had bought in a seedy part of London which was very rough, and asked, would I like to visit Mike in London?¹

This friend of his was a journalist working on a local paper in the area where the café was. His name was also Chapman, absolutely no relation whatsoever of mine. He told me that Mike was quite upset, as the police were constantly raiding the café, but never finding anything: just sheer harassment, I imagined. Chapman the journalist wrote an article about this in the local paper. The harassment then ceased.

Mike had explained to me that the café barely made a living, because the only people that came in there were a rough crowd of young delinquents, engaged in all sorts of nasty activities, such as collecting protection money from small shopkeepers, small robberies, muggings and the like. The previous owner had sold up because he didn't like the tough customers who had taken over the café! He could have got it for peanuts. Any other customers had long since been driven away by police harassment.

Naïve as I was, I thought that that would be a wonderful opportunity to take pictures of these characters. So, moving into the café and sleeping on a couple of tables at night, I helped out during the day serving behind the bar.

This area was a war damage/slum clearance site; the cafe was more or less a dump. As far as I can remember, there was no flat or anything above it, and Mike certainly did not live on the premises. When he went home, I simply cleaned up, tidied up, and slept on a couple of tables pushed together. It was very small.

I explored a tiny cellar below the cafe which was, as I saw it, a disused gambling den with a couple of small tables for playing cards. It could be that when the café opened up again, the police thought the cellar was being used as an illegal gambling den, but certainly nothing was going on while I was there.

I had my camera round my neck all the time, so that everybody would get used to it, and I should, once I had gained their confidence, be able to take photos of them.

I can clearly remember them; a small gang. They definitely were not teddy boys, mods, rockers, greasers, and certainly not punks as that was still sometime away.

There was probably a floating group of about six to ten young teenagers, scruffy, uneducated, and dressed in neutral clothes ... just the typical grey working-class clothing of the time. They were all white, with short back and sides haircuts or "crew-cuts" but not skinheads. They were certainly not in any way Mods or any other sub-group. They were just what was called roughly at the time 'layabouts'.

The leader of all this was quite tall and older, also wearing grey clothes, and he was the one who everybody followed, as I saw it.

They were always trying to wind him [Michael] and me up, with a whole lot of silly tricks, such as heating up soup spoons by placing them on a heater, putting them in the soup bowl, and saying, 'the soup is cold, heat it up again', hoping we'd pick up the hot spoon and burn our fingers, which no doubt would have delighted them no end.

However, both he, and I, were quite observant, and used to pick the soup spoon out with a tea towel and replace it with a new one.

I remember Mike saying, they all came from the high rise concrete flats that were being built to replace the rotting housing, a lot of it war-damaged, but this was a slum clearance area anyway. I remember one day, one of them rushed in, very dramatically, shouting, 'Put this away, Mike,' and handed him a jemmy, and rushed out. Mike quickly hid it, and never made reference to it again, and nor did I.

He always kept his cool and remained quite impassive and was un-provocable, but the atmosphere in the café was permanently tense and almost about to burst into a café wrecking spree, so I never was able to take the picture.

After about a week of this, I went out to get something from the car that I had parked out there. Scrawled on the dusty windscreen was ‘YOUR FACE NEXT’, and one tyre had been badly slashed. I decided to heed the warning and left, there and then, and returned to Paris.

I can quite clearly understand why he wouldn't talk [to girlfriend N.B.] about his past. He must have got himself together somehow, and completely changed his lifestyle, and could do all those amazing things later on; it's quite clear that he would have never had that cafe later on in life.

This, as far as I can remember, was in the so-called beatnik era. I cannot remember the name [of the café], but the juke box was endlessly playing ‘Hit the Road, Jack’, which is all I really remember that could date it.²"

Perhaps it is this period in his life that Michael was contemplating, when he said, in a TV Times interview in 1973: “Most of us are channeled into various functions, for better or for worse. This is how things are constructed, but you always get the odd one who slips through, who doesn't fit too well. I mean, people either find something they like doing or they end up gangsters or just plain bums. It comes down to that, doesn't it?”

Michael's former girlfriend from that period, 'Jazz', remembers: "I’d go to his café in Kentish Town, 96 Torriano Avenue, NW5. They were a mixed bunch there, mainly teenagers, who, in retrospect, were perhaps a bit deprived. Michael made soup and sandwiches, tea and coffee for them, if my memory serves me right."

More of Jazz's memories are here

¹ Michael must have been running this café during 1961 - 62.

² “Hit the Road, Jack” first came out in 1960.

Photographer Harold Chapman very kindly supplied these memories to this archive.

At the Beat Hotel

In the book, ‘The Beat Hotel’, written by Barry Miles, there is just about one line about me ... 'In the attic there was a man who never spoke to anyone for two years.' That is how Allen Ginsberg saw me.

I have no idea what room Mike was living in, in the Beat Hotel, which is strange, but then I led my own bizarre lifestyle and I could have well been working only at night, wandering the streets of Paris documenting tiny cafes, etc. I did not know Dan Bush, [Michael's friend and room-mate] although I do know that there was an American in the hotel called Dan.
( Read more... )

In London

I ran into a friend of Mike’s in Paris, who told me about a tiny cafe Mike had bought in a seedy part of London which was very rough, and would I like to visit Mike in London ...

Mike had explained to me that the cafe barely made a living, because the only people that came in there were a rough crowd of young delinquents, engaged in all sorts of nasty activities, such as collecting protection money from small shopkeepers, small robberies, muggings and the like ... Naive as I was, I thought that that would be a wonderful opportunity to take pictures of these characters.
( Read more... )

On acting

Mike was a man of few words, and was often quite tense and depressed. His early films seemed to express his moods. He always seemed to be himself in any movie or TV show that I ever saw.

There was a large gap until I met him again after I had seen his movie, 'La vallee.'

‘La vallée’

In a recent film [‘La vallée’, released in July 1972 in France] which I was a bit puzzled over, and wanted him to explain, he was more or less playing himself, a man of VERY few words. He was leading a small band of hippies on a trek in a tropical landscape situation in search of something or other which I couldn't quite understand.

Mike explained this as, 'we were asking questions, seeking answers, and only found more questions'. Which I thought summed up the movie to me.

Harold’s wife Claire, on the pronunciation of Michael’s surname

From you and [belsizepark] we learned that his surname was Gothard and not Goddard, so Harold must have remembered Michael's name as the more usual (at least in the UK, I think) surname of Goddard.

Michael Gothard at The Beat Hotel, 1960/61 by Harold Chapman

Photos by Harold Chapman.
©TopFoto/Harold Chapman.

Harold Chapman: "I had run across him by chance and we sat in the Café St-Michel just round the corner from the Beat Hotel, discussing this and that. It is a one-off picture as I always carry my camera with me in case I see something that I wish to photograph, and this was while we were sitting at the table and he was relaxed and thinking and everything fell into place ... I used the photo in my book, The Beat Hotel, and only made one print. That has been lost for nearly thirty years and I have been selling off my archival prints for some time and only found it after an extensive search."

Harold later found three more prints, reproduced here, by his kind permission.

MG in cafe 3 edit

Michael left Haverstock Comprehensive School in Summer 1957.

He seems not to have done National Service, though this wasn't phased out until around 1960.

I asked Sean McCormick, whose uncle, Dan Bush, knew Michael in the 1960s: "Do you happen to know why Michael didn't do National Service? Was he considered unfit, or did he go to the Continent to avoid it?"

Sean replied: “Europe, I believe.”

Some of what Sean has told me was learned from Michael himself, and some of it came via Dan Bush.

Michael's childhood friend Baz remembers Michael having very poor eyesight, and says: "The call-up in those days required draftees to have – if not 20-20 vision – good eyesight, that may have to be aided by glasses under certain circumstances, reading and sighting firearms. It is my firm belief Michael did not go to Paris to dodge the draft. I suggest he failed the medical through poor eyesight."

Perhaps draft-dodging just sounded cooler than failing a medical!

From 'X'-Films Interview: 1973 “I was living in Paris for about a year, just bumming around if you like, just drifting about …”

From TV Times: 8 February 1973:

"I left school when I was 17 or 18 with little idea of what I wanted to do. I think this would be true of most people if left to their own devices. Most of us are channeled into various functions, for better or for worse.

This is how things are constructed, but you always get the odd one who slips through, who doesn't fit too well. I mean, people either find something they like doing or they end up gangsters or just plain bums. It comes down to that, doesn't it?"

This seems a strange way for Michael to speak of himself, considering his glittering school career as described by school-friend H. He was a Prefect, then Head Boy, good at sports and academically gifted. Something seems to have happened between 1957 and 1960, to change him from the confident, out-going young man H. knew, to the "man of few words" Harold Chapman remembers from the Paris days.

He tramped around Europe. "I drifted from country to country, washing a lot of dishes, but I ended up spending a lot of time in Paris where everybody goes to find their way.

When I was there, the beat thing was quite new. I lived in an hotel in the Latin Quarter¹ which was full of the beat celebrities of the day: Ginsberg, Burroughs. They were held in considerable awe, but I don't think I ever said more than 'bonjour' to them."

From: Petticoat interview 6 October 1973

Before [he became an actor] he did a variety of odd jobs, working in restaurants, as a house cleaner, building site labourer – even as a model in Paris. He spent a year in Paris, living in the student section, near Boulevard St. Michel.

“Paris has a wonderful communal feeling to it,” he says, “it’s a great place for meeting people, or for just sitting around talking.”

He didn’t feel he was much of a success as a model. “I was as stiff as a board and I couldn’t overcome my sense of the ridiculous. I was a clothes hanger, an object, not a person.”

It is not clear, from the way this article is written, whether the various jobs he tried were on the Continent or in London, either before after he got back home.

Susie Morgan was contacted someone who met Michael:

"One woman, I think from one of the Slavic countries, had known him from before he got into acting, when he was travelling around France ... What I remember was she said he was a very deep thinker, very thoughtful but even then a little troubled."

From Michael's friend from the 1980s, Sean McCormick:

"In 1959 (just out of high school) my dad and his best friend (since they were 12 years old) Dan, hitch-hiked across Europe together, starting in Norway, working on a family farm and eventually ending up in Spain.

There, they decided to part ways ... Dan landed finally in Paris, circa 1960/61 where he shared a flat with another Yank, and a very intense Englishman named Michael Gothard.

Together they scrounged for food, bummed around, and got hooked on jazz and heroin.

After a year or so, Dan went back to the States.

Michael stayed, and I believe the third guy was killed in a drug deal in New York City.

Well, Michael and Dan remained friends and continued to correspond."

Michael Gothard in Paris, circa 1960

Photo courtesy Sean McCormick.

Research by Belsizepark:

"... When I researched published material of the Beat Generation I came across the photographer Harold Chapman who lived at [The Beat Hotel] from 1957 – 1963 when it closed ... He could remember [Michael Gothard] and shared the information that Michael had a café in London."

Harold Chapman's memories of the times he met Michael in Paris and London can be found here here.

On seeing these photos from The Beat Hotel, taken by Harold Chapman, Sean's Uncle Dan (Dan Bush) replied, "Yep, I knew most of these cats..."

An extract from a press book for "Up the Junction" paints a somewhat different picture of Michael's time in Paris:

"After leaving school, Michael went to Paris and studied French culture at the Sorbonne. ... on holiday from University studies in Paris, [he] was persuaded by a friend to take part in a home movie he was producing with a cheap ciné camera. Michael was so good that he took over the lead in the mini-film and so impressed his friend that the latter asked him why he didn’t take acting up professionally. Michael decided to throw up his studies and do just that. He enrolled at the Actors’ Workshop in London – and has never looked back…"

It has been suggested that Michael may have listened in to the courses at the Sorbonne as an "auditeur libre" (non-registered student). He wouldn't have got the degree - just listened to the teaching.

However, it is also possible that the people who wrote the press book felt that "studying at the Sorbonne" was a more acceptable way of describing Michael's activities in Paris than washing dishes, working on building sites, or listening to jazz.

Michael was in London on 21 October 1961, when he was present at his mother's re-marriage. At that time, according to childhood friend Baz, he was working for the Kensington Post as a trainee reporter. Harold Chapman thinks Michael continued to travel between London and Paris, though it is not known for how long; possibly until he began working on 'Herostratus' in 1964, or even longer.

It is not known where he was living when in London. Dan Bush said that when Michael was studying theatre but had not yet landed a film, he was "living in an obscure garret/loft somewhere in the city.”

¹ The legendary "Beat Hotel"