Tom Courtenay’s deathbed kiss for Finney, co-star he held in awe
THEY were two of the great, trailblazing, working-class film stars of the 1960s. And Sir Tom Courtenay’s friendship with Albert Finney survived right to the end.
In a touching tribute yesterday after Finney’s death, Sir Tom recalled their final meeting some four weeks ago at The Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
Finney’s wife Penny had warned Courtenay beforehand: ‘Well look, this is it, because they are not giving him any more treatment.’
The 81-year-old said: ‘I went up and saw him in his room to say goodbye and he knew it was to say goodbye too. So it wasn’t easy.
‘He couldn’t move very well but his voice was still powerful. He was tired but he was with it. I kissed him on the forehead.
‘We didn’t know what to say, not much to say really. The last thing he said to me was “Have a good time in India”,’ referring to a holiday Courtenay had planned.
Although aware of each other’s careers, the pair only became friends in the early 1980s. Courtenay said: ‘He was a huge part of my life but we didn’t become friends until we worked together on the film of The Dresser and then it was love, no question, on both sides.
‘ He said he’d missed a f ew laughs. He used to find me funny, not that I was trying to be – he just thought I was a bit odd, I think.’
Sir Tom, star of Billy Liar and Doctor Zhivago, said a mischievous Finney would often tease him about the awe in which he held him. Salford-born Finney had led the way as the first workingclass star in Saturday Night And Sunday Morning in 1960, before winning international fame in 1963’s Tom Jones.
Fellow Northerner Sir Tom said: ‘He was massive. He dominated it really. He was the first one. He was such a massive figure. I was terribly in awe of him at the time.
‘Years later, when we were friends and having dinner, I’d say “Do you know, I used to be in awe of him?”, and he loved to say, “He still is.”
‘We are very different but something worked, something about the two of us that people seemed to enjoy.’
Finney, who died aged 82 from a chest infection on Thursday, famously turned down a knighthood. In an interview with Mishal Husain on yesterday’s edition of the Today programme on Radio 4, Sir Tom said it was a measure of the man that he did not begrudge his friend the same honour.
He said: ‘When he found I was accepting mine, he didn’t deride me. In fact after the ceremony he took us – my sister, my brotherin-law and my wife Isobel – to lunch at The Ritz. It just wasn’t for him.
‘I just said I’d wanted to do it in honour of my father who worked on the fish dock in Hull because I thought that was quite a stretch, and he respected that.’
Sir Tom laughed in agreement at the suggestion that his friend was a ‘born flirt’ with a colourful love life, but said it was his work as an actor that would endure.
He added: ‘He didn’t need any tricks as an actor. There are plenty who learn a whole bunch of tricks so the audience will look at them. But he didn’t have to.
‘He just came on with a bit of sunshine and people looked at him.
‘ The description of him I am fondest of is something that Alec Guinness said to me a million years ago. Albert, he said, is like a shiny English apple.
‘Not a very accurate description but I like the feel of it.’