A priest on both sides of the camera

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(October 13, 1999) -- The Rev. William J. O'Malley remembers his most challenging day as an actor.

Yes, I said "actor." O'Malley was the most prominent of three real-life priests who had roles in The Exorcist, William Friedkin's just-reissued classic tale of demonic possession.

O'Malley was one of several Jesuits who were advisors for the film; but he'd also long been interested in the theater, and eventually got a substantial supporting role in the film.

He's "Father Dyer," and is shown playing the piano at the party, giving advice to his beleaguered best friend, Father Karras (Jason Miller), and administering last rites following the sacrificial death at the end of the movie.

And that's the scene that was giving him trouble, as they filmed at night on the streets of Georgetown.

"Friedkin said I was doing it by the numbers," O'Malley remembers.

"I didn't understand because take after take I was giving last rites to my best friend," O'Malley says. Apparently the director didn't see the emotion O'Malley was feeling.

"He said, 'Bill, do you trust me?' You always trust someone until they ask you, so I said yes, and he belted me right across the mouth. Then we shot the scene.

"When you see my hand shaking as I bless him, it's no acting. I was shaking."

And now, with the new cut's extended ending, O'Malley gets a bit more screen time in the epilogue with the late Lee J. Cobb. "I think this ending is much more upbeat," O'Malley says.

Perhaps typically, O'Malley has a spiritual rationale for the new ending.

"The director at the time didn't have an understanding of the resurrection, the idea of rebirth. This version is really the writer's cut. (Writer William Peter Blatty is a Jesuit-trained Georgetown graduate.)

"The new ending shows that life goes on. I previously looked glum in the street at the end. Now I wave and smile."

When The Exorcist first made waves -- as a best-selling novel -- O'Malley was an English teacher and drama coach at McQuaid Jesuit High School in Rochester, N.Y.

He was recruited to review the book at a local library program, and he sent a copy of his review to Blatty, expecting nothing more to happen.

"I got a letter back. He took exception because I complained that the Jesuits in the book were too cutsy-flip. Later we met for dinner in New York, and after I tried to impress him for 15 minutes, he laughed, and said, 'You're being cutsy-flip.' "

Later when The Exorcist was being filmed, Blatty brought O'Malley and other Jesuits aboard as advisors -- and as actors, hoping to give the film authenticity.

"In my case, they were looking for a genial boob priest," O'Malley says with a self-deprecating laugh, "And I walked into it like a hand into a surgeon's glove."

Actually, O'Malley is quite good in the film. Then 42, he had the craggy look of a Montgomery Clift.

In the days following the film's controversial release, O'Malley had considerably more than 15 minutes of fame as Rochester's "Exorcist priest."

"People were constantly calling me to exorcise their house, their cat, their daughter. I told people, 'If you think I'm going to take the devil out of your cat and jump out the window, you're crazy."'

More than a quarter-century later, O'Malley is still proud of the film, especially because "it doesn't make evil attractive. Today we have Teflon skins against evil. This film stripped the glamour from evil."

He remembers that most people he encountered in the Catholic Church loved the film, "especially the Conservatives," because of its strong portrayal of evil, and the triumph of good.

But after the excitement of the film diminished, O'Malley went back to teaching, directing pupils in school plays, and writing. (He's the author of at least a dozen religion-oriented works, including the just-published "God: The Oldest Question.")

He left McQuaid and Rochester in 1986, after 22 years, and was eventually assigned to the Bronx, where he teaches at Fordham Prep and Fordham University. He's directing his 89th play, a Fordham Prep production of Beckett.

Now 69, O'Malley has no thoughts of retiring. "I'll keep plodding onward. If I retired I'd go cuckoo."

And he says the possibility of acting always remains. "I was acting when I broke the amniotic sac," says the Buffalo native. "They say I screamed for three days.

"I wrote my first play when I was in fifth grade, after I wasn't chosen for the official school play about Indians."

In fact, O'Malley's love of performing is evident in The Exorcist. As he plays the piano at a Georgetown party, he says a line he personally contributed to Blatty's script. Consider it an O'Malley motto:

"My idea of heaven is a solid white nightclub with me as the headliner -- and they LOVE ME!"