The Great Michael Caine
Star of the greatest film ever made (The Man Who Would Be King*) son of a charwoman and a fishmarket porter, Korean War combat vet, self-made man and still one of the hardest working actors in Hollywood, Michael Caine slams Labour’s love of taxes. via Iain Martin at UK Telegraph:
“The Government has taken tax up to 50 per cent, and if it goes to 51 I will be back in America,” he said at the weekend. “We’ve got 3.5 million layabouts on benefits, and I’m 76, getting up at 6am to go to work to keep them. Let’s get everybody back to work so we can save a couple of billion and cut tax, not keep sticking it up.”
You can just hear him saying it. In his best roles, after all, Michael Caine basically played himself.
Martin remarks:
Hear, hear. If Sir Michael didn’t have one already, I would say: give that man a knighthood. Other wealthy types have also denounced the 50p tax hike; although it is highly debatable whether the thought of Lord Lloyd-Webber fleeing the UK strengthens or weakens the case of those fighting the increase. But it is the intervention of the star of Zulu, The Italian Job and Hannah and Her Sisters that should remind us what is really at stake here, as the Labour movement slips back into its default mode of waging class war.
Yesterday, the Government unveiled its latest suicidal proposals, this time to force public bodies to sign up to reducing inequality. As if they won’t have enough to deal with in a recession, now they must become agents of Labour’s obsession with social engineering.
That’s the other news out of Blighty, where Labour’s answer to economic crisis is an “equality” initiative now up for debate that singles out the white guys for special treatment much the way affirmative action does. The Scotsman:
The bill is intended to improve opportunities for female, disabled and ethnic minority employees with obligations that are likely to include forcing companies to carry out regular audits into the gender and ethnic background of their staff. It is understood the audit, which will apply to companies employing more than 250 people, will also include reporting salary differences between male and female staff, although this is not expected to be made compulsory until after 2013.
The bill is also likely to dictate that firms discriminate in favour of a woman, disabled person or an applicant from an ethnically diverse background where companies have to choose between two equally qualified candidates.
So, fair’s fair? Never mind what business it is of the government who private companies hire. Just wait till the government gets involved in determining who’s more equally qualified than who, and who deserves more pay than who.
OK, deep handicapping thought for the day: In the Lefty Olympics, who wins. The British team, Labourites who completely ignore economic crisis to push social engineering initiatives? Or Team America, the Dems who push billions in pork and call it economic stimulus. Don’t be hasty, Sir Michael, in your choice of domiciles.
I dunno about you, I’m going to the movies:Alfie, , Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, A Bridge Too Far, Battle of Britain, The Cider House Rules, Educating Rita, Quills, The Quiet American, The Eagle Has Landed, Get Carter, Play Dirty, Too Late the Hero, The Dark Knight. And of course there’s his important role as Austin Powers’ father in Goldmember. We could do this all day …
Not always the leading man but always leading. Just ask Daniel Dravot, whom he led into and out of far Kafiristan, seen below in the greatest film ever made.*
Here’s a great one. The Last Valley. Michael Caine, as a wary and war-weary but still ruthless mercenary captain in the Thirty Years War, butts heads with refugee do-gooder Omar Sharif in a remote Alpine Valley as yet untouched by plague and war.
* You can prefer The Godfather if you like. Then there’s Apocalypse Now. All good. Even if they did lack a certain … Michael Caineitude.
About his Korean combat experience with the Royal Fusiliers, by the way, I heard a weird interview on Howard Stern a few years ago, Michael Caine talking about being verbally assaulted by Stuttering John. Caine told the interviewer, not Stern, that it reminded him of Korea, how the Chinese would strip down to their skivvies and sneak over to knife the Brits in their fighting positions at night. He said you could smell the intense stink of fear on them, and that’s exactly what he smelled on Stuttering John.
This site reports Caine’s first role was a bit part in “A Hill in Korea,” titled in the US as “Hell in Korea,” in which he both acted and served as a technical advisor. Amazon regretably doesn’t have it. It also features an early performance by Robert Shaw.
This site purports to have details of his Korea service:
Maurice (J. Micklewhite, Caine’s real name) and his mates were very soon sent up to the front line, the 38th Parallel dividing north and south Korea where they found themselves stationed on a trench-fortified hill about a mile from the Chinese lines. The Chinese had joined their North Korean brothers in their assault on the south, so this unruly pack of south London kids were now the West’s first line of defence against the encroaching Communist empire.
On his first night of guard duty, Maurice witnessed a Chinese attack on positions to his left. It was immediately apparent that they were not afraid to die and were thus unlikely to be defeated. He settled down to life in a 2-man bunker where rats ran over him in the night. The troops’ R&R was taken in Seoul, then a shanty town of bamboo bars and whore houses, with a 100% rate of gonorrhoea and constant rucks between the different international forces. As the best-educated member of his platoon, “Mick” (as he was known) was treated as a sage, reading and writing letters for his comrades and, because of his refusal to visit prostitutes, becoming an accepted expert on venereal disease, patiently inspecting his friends’ genitalia and delivering a diagnosis that, with a 100% rate of gonorrhoea, really required little expertise.
Maurice’s second tour of duty coincided with a major Chinese offensive. At one point he and his buddy were firing a machine-gun into a solid wall of men. There must have been fatalities. Then, patrolling No Man’s Land at night, his patrol were cut off from their own lines by Chinese soldiers and spent horrible, endless hours in the darkness waiting for the sound of their deadly enemies and the tell-tale scent of the garlic that all the opposing army habitually chewed (for years afterwards, even in Hollywood, the smell of garlic would give Michael Caine the fear).
OK. Maybe Stuttering John smelled like garlic.
Here’s Caine’s own site. No discussion of the Korea business. And if you just can’t get enough, here’s his autobiography:
Topics: Britain, Hollywood, Man Who Would Be King, taxes
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:06 am Comments (4) on Tuesday, April 28, 2009
4 Responses to “The Great Michael Caine”
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April 28th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
The bill is also likely to dictate that firms discriminate in favour of a woman, disabled person or an applicant from an ethnically diverse background where companies have to choose between two equally qualified candidates.
Proof in black and white that in the lefty view, discrimination based on gender, skin color, or disability is A-Okay, as long as it’s against white men. No hypocrisy there, no sirree!
April 28th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
“The Man Who Would Be King” is my favorite movie.
The UK Guardian suspects that he’s conservative, which I’d heard before.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/jan/03/features.zoewilliams
Heh. He did look good in Zulu, as he says in the article.
Re bigotry on the left – I wonder if that is what Eric Holder meant by this country being a nation of cowards?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/18/holder-calls-nation-cowards-race-matters/
Did he mean that there’s lip service, but no sincere effort to change anything? Why had lots of white liberal women advanced to positions of authority over African American candidates? How fragile the coalition is became clear after the election in California when it became a revelation that on many issues, African Americans vote to the right.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96751056
April 29th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Is it possible that this post fails to mention Mr. Caine’s contribution to the Jaws series with his solid performance as Hoagie Newcombe in Jaws – The Revenge?
While viewed as a low point in Mr. Caine’s career, I believe it affirms his deep and uncompromising work ethic. According to IMDB trivia, Mr. Caine, in answer to a question about the movie, replied: “I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.” Also noted is the fact that Mr. Caine could not accept his Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters because he was on set for Jaws – The Revenge.
A true, cinematic yeoman.
May 4th, 2009 at 3:47 am
Comedy gold in those golden locks. And @sydney most astutely notes his work ethic. I do believe Mr. Cain would be at ease holding a “Spread my work ethic, not my wealth” sign at a Tax Day Tea Party. Er… Biscuit and Jam Party? He does remind me of Carey Grant in many ways including that boyishly devilish grin.
While I appreciate your *, I find it unnecessary as The Man Who Would Be King is indeed the greatest movie evah.