We were sitting there talking and drinking beer, and someone said, Oh, look who walked in. It was Professor Tolkien and I nearly fell off my chair.
Christopher Lee, who gives twisted wizard Saruman the full weight of his basso menace, was unique among the cast and crew that would sprawl over the luscious islands of New Zealand. He was the only person who had actually met Tolkien. Forty-five years previously, he had gathered with some friends in Oxford, who decided to head out to The Eagle And Child (famously Tolkiens local). And in he walked.
I didnt even know he was alive, Lee recounts with the verve of a man who has dined out on the anecdote for the last two years. He was a benign-looking man, smoking a pipe, an English countryman with earth under his feet. He was a genius, a man of incredible intellectual knowledge. And he knew somebody in our group. My friend said, Oh, professor, professor, and he came over. Each one of us, I knelt of course, said, How do you do? and I just said, How
Ho
Ho. I just couldnt believe it. Ill never forget it.
