It was the early hours of the morning at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 and Gracie Otto was partying into the night at a big celebrity soirée. The actress-model and daughter of Australian acting luminary Barry Otto spotted an older gentleman with a walking stick holding court among a crowd of stars and glitterati and she was immediately intrigued.
“I offered to get him a drink and he asked for my phone number. Next day he invited me to dinner and I thought ‘Why not?'”, she says in a statement.
“And so began a fortnight of festival parties and dinners with the ‘who’s who’ of Cannes. I had no idea who he was except he had been a London theatre producer before I was born.
“What intrigued me more was how this gentle and sweet man wanted to go out night after night and party. He was 74, I was 22, and I couldn’t keep up with him!”
The more Otto learned about this man, Michael White, the more she wanted to know.
Michael White with Jack Nicholson in the 1970s.
A creative, risk-taking theatre and film producer, White is something of a show-biz legend who helped to shape London’s cultural scene in the swinging 60s and 70s. He brought risqué productions to the stage and screen, from Oh! Calcutta! to The Rocky Horror to Monty Python’s The Holy Grail. He introduced British audiences to the work of Yoko Ono, Merce Cunningham, Pina Bausch.
He moves within a circle of cultural icons, counting Anna Wintour, Kate Moss, John Waters, Barry Humphries and Yoko Ono among his closes friends.
He was a notorious playboy, gambler, bon vivant, eccentric friend of the rich and famous and now, in his late seventies, he still enjoys partying.
“At his flat he showed me hundreds of photos taken throughout his life with everyone from British theatre and Hollywood film worlds to Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother! For once in my life I was speechless,” Otto says.
“I remember saying that somebody should make a documentary about his extraordinary life and he just shook his head. Then I said I could do it …”
Gracie Otto with her famous father, Barry Otto.
A short while later, White told Otto he was selling his memorabilia at Sotheby’s.
“I borrowed a camera, bought a ticket on frequent flyer points and filmed the auction; a scene I knew would be integral to his story.
“This was followed by two years as a one-woman film crew – earning quick money to travel to wherever Michael was in the world to observe him and grab an interview whenever I could.”
The result is Otto’s feature-length directing debut with the documentary The Last Impresario which opens in Australian cinemas 26 June, 2014.
Otto now joins the ranks of Australian artists who can thank White for boosting their careers, along with Greta Scacchi, Rachel Ward, Naomi Watts, Meryl Tankard and Barry Humphries.
White has a huge archive of photographs, “a forerunner of today’s iPhone generation.”
“[T]his story is important for my generation to understand how theatre developed, how censorship laws were challenged, who was prepared to take risks and force radical change and also to learn about the highs and lows of an impresario producer’s life,” Otto says.
White is “[t]he most famous man you’ve never heard of [but] hopefully for not much longer. We want the world to share the story of Michael White – The Last Impresario.”
