RIIVES o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-05-17 published
Journalist roared through life 'like a movie star with charisma'
Globe-trotting reporter, who for three decades rubbed shoulders
with the rich and famous, lived a life that was the antithesis
of his United Church, strait-laced Toronto upbringing
By Brian VALLEE,
Special to The Globe and Mail, Page S12
Toronto -- Paul
KING was a swashbuckling Canadian journalist,
author, artist and consummate raconteur who roared through life
with an unquenchable curiosity and joy of the moment.
"He was like a movie star - brimming with charisma; trailing
cigarette smoke as he lunged ever forward; talking out of the
corner of his mouth in a raspy commanding drawl - right out of
a 1930s newspaper movie," said Ron
BASE, his long-time friend,
fellow author and screenwriter. "He was unique, wonderful, irreplaceable
and a helluva fine writer."
The life he led was the antithesis of the strait-laced religious
family (his father was a United Church minister) in which he
was brought up. After graduating from Toronto's Central Tech
high school, his first job was as a window dresser at Simpson's
department store. Soon bored, he went with a couple of Friends
to Miami and then to Nassau in the Bahamas where in 1955 he began
working as a lifeguard at the British Colonial Hotel. It was
his "softest job ever."
Most guests simply basked in the sun. Very few swam. Only one
guest concerned him - a water skier who went out only when there
were monstrous breakers which he attacked like a halfback. "It's
fantastic exercise," he told Mr.
KING with broad grin.
"He's mad," complained Mr.
KING to another guest, who laughed.
"No, he's not," the guest said, "he's Britain's top race-car
driver, Sterling Moss."
One morning, Mr.
KING was on lifeguard duty when his boss told
him the beach had been privately reserved by honeymooners, actress
Debbie Reynolds and crooner Eddie Fisher. "Debbie was sunning
on a lounge chair and some guy was combing Eddie's hair," Mr.
KING
said. "I dozed off until I heard Debbie screaming hysterically.
She was pointing frantically at Eddie, arms flailing, a few yards
out in the water. I reached him in seconds. He panicked, pushed
me down and kicked my ear. I was gulping water, so I grabbed
him by the groin and squeezed. Then I felt the sandy bottom and
dragged him out. They left later that day without a word of thanks."
Mr. KING returned to Toronto and began studying journalism at
Ryerson Polytechnic, now a university. In the summer of 1958,
he worked as an intern at The Vancouver Sun. His high-school
sweetheart, Ivi
RIIVES, followed him there and they were married
before he returned to Ryerson and graduated with honours in 1959.
The Vancouver paper had liked what it saw and hired him as its
entertainment editor and columnist. In his new job, he was enjoying
the first half hour of the musical Oklahoma at Stanley Park's
Theatre Under the Stars when a noticeably bald man sat down beside
him and started humming along. When he began to sing the words,
Mr. KING complained.
"Oh God, I'm sorry," the man murmured.
"I finally snapped when I heard 'Poooor Jud is daid,' coming
both from the stage and the seat beside me," Mr.
KING would write
years later.
"Would you please shut up," he hissed.
After that, the man remained silent until the end of the performance.
"I apologize," he said putting on his cap.
Mr. KING stared at him. He knew the voice and, with the cap on,
he knew the face. He'd been sitting beside Bing Crosby without
a toupee.
"I feel like I just told Fred Astaire to get off a dance floor,"
he offered by way of an apology. Mr. Crosby whooped with glee.
Perhaps his biggest scoop for The Sun was the death of Errol
Flynn. The famed Hollywood actor had arrived in Vancouver in
October of 1959 to sell his yacht to a local stock promoter.
Mr. KING met them at a nightclub known for its ties to the mob.
Mr. Flynn, then 50 and notorious for three statutory rape trials,
was with his 16-year-old girlfriend. "Booze had bloated his once-handsome
face, but the radiant smile remained," Mr.
KING wrote.
When the actor said he felt ill, Mr.
KING steered him through
a side exit and into an alley. "He gagged up his booze and then
groaned, 'Christ mate, I'm getting old.' "
They parted ways and agreed to meet the next day. Later, the
stock promoter called to say they had stopped somewhere for a
nightcap and that he should rejoin them. He dutifully arrived
only to see an ambulance. Mr. Flynn was dead, felled by heart
and liver disease.
In 1960, Paul and Ivi
KING decided to leave Canada for Japan.
"We just went," Ms.
KING said. "We didn't have jobs. We wanted
to see Japan before it changed too much." They would stay for
almost four years. Mr.
KING worked, simultaneously, as a film
critic and columnist for the Mainichi Daily News; chief English-language
copywriter for an advertising agency; and as co-producer of a
popular television show.
Tall, charming and Hollywood-handsome, Mr.
KING often attracted
women. He and Ms.
KING were soon having marital problems and
she left Japan to work in Hong Kong. Mr.
KING followed soon after.
It was there in Kowloon's bars and nightclubs that he would meet
and drink many nights away with a cast of characters that included
crooks, cops, musicians, exotic dancers and actors such as William
Holden, Albert Finney and Peter O'Toole.
"I stayed in Hong Kong and worked there and Paul went on to Switzerland
where we had Friends," Ms.
KING said. "He was going there to
write but, of course, he did not publish a book. He had more
fun than anything else."
It was 1964, and he found himself reporting from the set of the
movie Doctor Zhivago on the outskirts of Madrid. It was there
under a full moon in a deserted massive plaza created for the
movie that he interviewed Alec Guinness. Dressed in a commissar's
uniform and fur hat, the actor had been enjoying the solitude
and seemed unhappy with the intrusion.
"Why aren't you starring in movies any more?"
"What?" a startled Mr. Guinness asked.
Mr. KING told him how he had loved the old British comedies in
which the actor had starred, citing The Ladykillers, The Lavender
Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit. Since then, he said,
Mr. Guinness had played superb character roles in Bridge on the
River Kwai, A Passage to India, Lawrence of Arabia and then Zhivago,
but they weren't starring roles.
Mr. Guinness laughed when he realized the later movies were all
directed by David Lean. "He gave me my first big role in Great
Expectations and I've taken every part he's offered ever since.
It's all his fault."
After that, the actor chatted happily for the next hour.
The next day a frazzled publicist cornered Mr.
KING and told
him he had been banned from the set for telling Mr. Guinness
that he was no longer a star. Attending a party a day or two
later, Mr.
KING fled to the balcony when Mr. Lean entered the
apartment. He found Mr. Guinness on the balcony admiring the
moon.
"Beautiful isn't it," he said.
"I'm not speaking to you," Mr.
KING said. "You twisted my words."
Mr. Guinness chuckled. "Yes I did. I wanted to get David's goat."
"Well you succeeded. He banned me from the set."
"Oh my, my. We must do something about that."
Taking him by the arm, Mr. Guinness led him back to the party.
Mr. Lean glowered at them. "David," Mr. Guinness said, "I have
a confession."
Hearing what had actually been said, Mr. Lean agreed to allow
Mr. KING back on the set provided he stay out of his line of
sight.
By 1965, Mr.
KING was in London where he worked for a time for
the Daily Mail. There was a reconciliation of sorts with his
wife and she followed him to Rome when he took a job with a talent
agency. "It ended up being a lot of night life," she said. "So
I left him there."
His job was to look after movie stars such as Clint Eastwood,
Eva Marie Saint, James Garner, Yves Montand and Rita Hayworth.
"There are a lot of stories about Clint Eastwood that I can probably
never tell," he once said.
For his part, he was romantically involved with Ms. Hayworth
who was in Rome filming The Rover with Anthony Quinn.
The actor lived in a villa an hour outside Rome and when he invited
Ms.
Hayworth to a party, she asked Mr.
KING to go along. When
they arrived, Mr. Quinn, dressed in a red sweatsuit and sneakers,
met them at the door. The other guests included eight dapper
lawyers and businessmen and their wives or girlfriends. "This
is bizarre," Ms. Hayworth whispered.
Mr. KING said it got really weird when Mr. Quinn clapped his
hands and ordered everyone inside to play bingo around an enormous
dining table. Each guest had to give the host $20 in lira for
a bingo card and corn markers. "We played bingo for 60 excruciating
minutes," Mr.
KING said. "Only Quinn enjoyed himself - barking
out numbers and handing cash to winners."
When one of the guests finally had enough, the host looked crestfallen.
"You don't like bingo?"
That was enough for Ms. Hayworth. "Oh, for God's sake, Tony,"
she said throwing her cache of corn across the table. "This is
stupid."
Mr. Quinn's wife rushed in smiling and said dinner was ready.
"Superb tenderloin was served," Mr.
KING said. "During dessert,
Quinn circled the table with a wicker basket filled with semi-precious
stones. Each guest chose one. It was a lovely gesture. I carried
mine in my pocket for years."
As they left the villa, Ms. Hayworth kissed her co-star on the
cheek. "I'll give you a tip, old buddy," she said. "Next time,
play Parcheesi."
In 1967, Mr.
KING returned to Canada and worked on the television
series Under Attack with Pierre Burton.
The following year, he worked for a time as an entertainment
writer for The Globe and Mail and then became a feature writer
for the magazine The Canadian where he was to stay for seven
years. His and Ms.
KING's only child, Michelle, was born in 1971.
However, the couple separated for good in 1974, but remained
Friends.
In 1975, he became a reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star
and remained there for a decade.
In the late seventies, he met Barbara
FULTON who would be his
lover and companion for the next 30 years. "I loved his zest
for life and living in the moment," she said. "He had an amazing
wit and sense of humour. We laughed and laughed and it never
went away."
In 1985, they packed up and moved to a small Spanish mountain
village. They were gone for more than a year. He had time for
watercolour painting and together they wrote magazine and newspaper
travel stories to survive. "It was idyllic," she said. "Absolutely
fabulous."
They would later travel extensively through Mexico, writing articles
as they went. Later, after returning to Toronto, Mr.
KING wrote
several books for Key Porter, including Cottage Country (1991)
and Mountains of America (1992). He also was ghost writer for
two autobiographies by Ed Mirvish of Honest Ed's department store.
In 1995, he had a brush with cancer. A carcinoid tumour was removed
from his small bowel and doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto
discovered it had spread to his liver.
He thought it was a death sentence, but he underwent treatment
and continued to travel. Each summer, he escaped to the cottage.
"We both loved it," Ms.
FULTON said. "Paul called it his oasis
and last summer was just blissful."
He knew a lot about pain, but on Sunday, May 4, it was excruciatingly
different. They had been eating a quiet dinner in their Toronto
apartment when he began to choke and cough. "A bully has moved
in," he announced through gritted teeth.
When first diagnosed with cancer in 1995, Mr.
KING went to a
doctor for advice about how to die. Afterward, he and Ms.
FULTON
met a friend for a drink in a bar. She was drying her tears
he was stoic. "The doctor said to forget chemo," he said. "All
it does is give you a couple of extra months of sheer misery.
Instead, he said to travel where you want to travel; do the things
you want to do; see the people you want to see; and when the
pain is too much, take morphine until you're done. And that's
what I'm going to do."
And so he did.
He was dead five days after being admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital.
Paul KING was born on December 14, 1935, on Manitoulin Island
in northern Ontario. He died of cancer in Toronto's Mount Sinai
Hospital on May 9, 2008. He was 72. He is survived by his companion,
Barbara Fulton; brother, John; and daughter Michelle. He also
leaves his former wife, Ivi
KING, and granddaughters Finnoula,
Sinead and Bronach.
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