The reason Omar Sharif finds a place among the greats of cinema history, sheer talent and looks apart, is because he allowed audiences the rare opportunity of witnessing the birthing of a star. The only aspect of a life otherwise full and lived large that his fans will regret is the fewer and fewer movies he made, preferring instead the world of chance in Monaco, and bridge, his passion.
The scene in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is unarguably the most famous introductory shot in filmdom. A black speck on the horizon of an empty expanse of yellow sand grows into a silhouette; an outline becomes a mirage that shimmers and turns into flesh and bone swathed in black. A 70-mm arrival. Till then, the barren desert landscapes, in Westerns mostly, had been dominated by cowboys riding off into the sunset after the fighting was done — a la Alan Ladd in Shane — or more artistically employed by directors like John Ford in The Searchers to convey futility, loneliness, the stories of lone men against the rest. But then came 1962, and there he was, Omar Sharif, riding into his sunrise.
The single rifle shot he fired from atop his camel was heard around the world. No one in the history of cinema had a more spectacular introduction to Hollywood, not least because of David Lean’s direction of that scene, with the stark difference between the sand and Sharif’s black robes as pronounced as those between the soon-to-collide worlds of the Arab rider and the man he was about to meet. The worldwide recognition that followed Lawrence of Arabia was deserved. He had pitted his talent against those of Alec Guinness. Playing second fiddle to Peter O’Toole giving the performance of his life took nothing away. O’Toole himself was a few films old then. And there was the always formidable presence of Anthony Quinn. Sharif once said he had been picked for his looks: “They chose me (for Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia) because I spoke English, had black hair, black eyes and a moustache. It was luck.” It was in the eyes, coal-black and flashing intensely, in defiance and contempt mostly, and in pain and blood-lust apparent in the glittering in O’Toole’s eyes.
But Sharif’s most memorable role would be as Yuri Zhivago from Boris Pasternak’s Nobel-winning novel Dr Zhivago. Here, again, David Lean would use those eyes, and that famous gap-toothed smile, to give the world the physician-poet doomed from the start by love. A soft, thick accent helped him in that. It is a haunting performance but, strangely, not one that won him an Oscar nomination for best actor. The film, however, won five out of 10 nominations and remains among the highest-grossing movies ever. An Oscar was never to be. A lifetime achievement award for a man so full of talent would be in order.
Born Michel Demitri Chalhoub on April 10, 1932, he converted from the Melkite Greek Catholic Church to Islam to marry Egyptian actress Faten Hamama and became Omar Sharif. He was Egyptian at heart and fame in Hollywood never did compensate for being away. Returning to Cairo in the late stages of his life, he settled into the role of family patriarch. In a interview he once described how he would insist that his family gather round him once a year in Cairo.
His career faded after a few good movies — who can forget him as the villain John Colorado in Mackenna’s Gold? — but the fame endured. He was a high-roller at the casinos. It is said he once lost millions in a game of bridge, a card game in which he was among the top 10 in the world. Much after his marriage ended, he was quoted as saying he had never loved again. But there was an affair with Barbra Streisand on the sets of Funny Girl that created a storm in Egypt because of the actress’ support for Israel during the Six-Day War.
Omar Sharif was never really a hero in the Hollywood sense of the word. He was a star. But to at least two gener-ations in the developing world, he was just that: A hero. The words added later to Lara’s Theme became the love song Somewhere, My Love for the generation of the Sixties and early Seventies. An anecdote recounted to this writer reveals the grace that embodied his personality. An Indian ambassador found himself seated beside Sharif at a film festival in a European capital and, bursting to say something to a man he had always admired, finally blurted out: “Thy mother mated with a scorpion!” Sharif smiled in a lost manner. The outburst must have caused him considerable consternation because it belonged to Anthony Quinn, his co-star in Lawrence of Arabia.
Dying on celluloid is a fine art. Love and a revolution killed him with far too much melodrama in Dr Zhivago. In The Night of the Generals, O’Toole got to shoot him. But it is the man lying gut-shot in The Far Pavilions that I remember. “To mourn,” says a dying Omar Sharif, “is to question the wisdom of God.” His was a life that is to be applauded.
