Word: guerney
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Jack Guerney, (Peter O'Toole), the 13th Earl of Guerney has just come into his inheritance by his father's fatal eccentricity. (The old man accidentally hung himself to death in a cocktail hour habit of stringing himself up by the neck in ballerina regalia.) But Jack is a paranoid schizophrenic who believes he is the God of Love, a charming and loveable idiot who can't stop raving about goodness and love. (Jack's explanation for his divine identity is this: "When I pray to Him, I find I'm talking to myself...
...unmitigated success. The humor is first class, the infusion of vaudeville routine ("Varsity Rag," "Blue Heaven") into this comedy of manners and madness is truly masterful, and the acting is on all sides superb. (Alister Sim is torturously funny as the horrified Bishop presiding over Jack's marriage.) The Guerney family is a living breathing caricature of the "creme de menthe" of society, and O'Toole defies description. He plays insanity at perfect pitch with absolute command of its range--from light hearted nonsense to the brink of hysteria and beyond...
...most elegant Victorian dress. (We're in the 1950s, so if this seems a little odd, we can chalk it up to that tolerated margin.) Actually, Jack has come to believe that the year is 1888, the year of Jack the Ripper--the year of Jack Guerney, whose trick is to study given circumstance and manipulate it to fit with the new delusion...