EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a tribute by Halton author Ron Base following last week’s passing of screen legend Donald Sutherland, whom he had developed a friendship with over the years as a movie critic.
Devastated to learn of Donald Sutherland’s death at the age of 88, I thought back to the first time we met…
I’d no sooner sat down with him at Toronto’s Windsor Arms Hotel than he invited me to come to Rome. He was on his way there to play Casanova for Federico Fellini. He thought I should meet Federico. He loved Federico. I came away from the interview loving Donald Sutherland. I started planning my trip to Rome with my new pal.
Well, not quite…
Not surprisingly, I didn’t get to Rome and I didn’t meet Fellini. But over the years I encountered Donald in a lot of different places: Toronto (many times), Montreal, Vancouver, even China. I could never quite tell if Donald’s brand of friendship was real — except for once, I never saw him in anything but a movie setting — but whatever it was, it was entrancing. Donald did not talk to you; he seduced you.
A rarity among movie stars — and Donald in his heyday was a movie star — he demanded to know all about you, your thoughts on movies, on politics, life. He drew you in, confided in you. When you were with him, you were the only person in his world. He might not have looked like anyone’s idea of Casanova (Fellini being the exception), but when it came to playing the seducer, Donald was typecast.
His enthusiasm was endlessly infectious, and it made room for everyone and everything. He worked with a mischievous glint in his eye, a crafty smile on his narrow face, that irresistibly sonorous voice. How real was any of it? Who knows? But I liked to think that in the moment, it was.
His real true love was reserved for his partner, Quebec actress Francine Racette. They were together for over fifty years. Whenever I spoke to him about her, his voice would drop, his eyes would become misty and the eloquence of his love for her took hold.
His other true love — loves is more accurate — was for the many (many!) directors with whom he worked. I once kidded him suggesting he never met a director he didn’t love. He didn’t disagree. In addition to Fellini, he loved Nicholas Roeg who directed Donald and Julie Christie in Don’t Look Now — he named one of his sons after him. He loved John Schlesinger who guided him through the disastrous Day of the Locust.
He even loved Canadian filmmaker Phil Borsos who directed Bethune: The Making of a Hero, the troubled film/ CBC mini-series in which Donald played Norman Bethune, the Canadian surgeon who became a hero to the Communist Chinese.
While I never got to Rome with Donald, I did go to China where he was filming at remote Yan’an in northeast China. Conditions were miserable. Everyone was complaining and fighting. Money was running short. The Chinese had provided few of the services they had promised. The food was inedible. Phil Borsos, who should have been leading the troops, stomped around continually throwing hissy fits.
Donald, by contrast, kept his cool. I never heard him complain. He never raised his voice. He was always present, always on time, calmly putting up with all sorts of nonsense without any of the usual movie star perks, focused resolutely on his role — with a mustache and his head shaved Donald looked remarkably like Bethune.
My dear friend Alan Markfield was the unit photographer on the Bethune set. Donald proceeded to sweep the two of us up in his embrace. We loved him. We were happily seduced — the seducer, seducing. Who could hold out?
I never could.
