Word: crawford
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Better Lemmon. For such reckless abandon Crawford pays a price. In Black Comedy to date, he has suffered a whiplash neck, a gashed and infected back, four ankle sprains, eight torn ligaments, and splinters in all ten fingers. The other night, while fastening the neck brace he has to wear between performances, he was asked why he didn't put out a little less or stay home and play his favorite sport of Monopoly. Crawford, aghast at such an unprofessional thought, replied: "I wouldn't give up those laughs for anything. My injuries are pleasure bumps...
...pleasure is mutual. New York Times Critic Walter Kerr wrote: "He deserves a Tony, if not the Nobel, for expertise in a special nose-bashing category." Richard Lester, who directed the Beatles' movies and three of Crawford's, last year called him "England's answer to Jack Lemmon." Last week Lester corrected himself, saying that "Michael is no one but himself now, and I think he'll be one of the great, great stars." Veteran British Actor Peter Bull, who is featured with him in Black Comedy, says: "There is no limit to what...
...Crawford, like so many of his British colleagues, was launched by radio acting and repertory. The family* was not theatrical. His father, a World War II pilot, was killed six months before...
Theaters of Action. The first payoff was a chance to audition for the U.S. film, The War Lover. He was given 24 hours to acquire an American accent, spent the night steeping himself in an album by a comic named Woody Woodbury. The jokes, recalls Crawford, were awful, but his accent was bang-on and he got the part. Next came his West End debut in the comedy Come Blow
Eventually, Crawford would like to try straight drama again. "But I enjoy working," he says, "more than starving." (He has one child, a second on the way.) Within ten years he fancies himself out of acting and into directing and producing. Dick Lester already considers Crawford such a natural that he let him direct his own scenes in A Funny Thing. But reading the papers last week, Michael fretted about a possible delay in his plans. "If I go home," he mused, "I may be shipped off to Israel. If I stay here, I'd go to Viet...