Ethan Mordden

"....[Peter O'Toole's] romping, bellowing, larger-than-death Henry II in The Lion in Winter is one of those rare movie performances that would seem just as big live on stage. On the other hand, when you've got to confront Katharine Hepburn's Eleanor of Aquitaine, it doesn't do to stint yourself. If Spencer Tracy simplified Hepburn's mannered style in their MGM 1940s and 1950s, O'Toole reliberated it; Hepburn's Eleanor is a last look back at her wild youth at RKO, when to be mannered was sport; and who cared what Hollywood thought?"

Ethan Mordden
Medium Cool: The Movies of the 1960s (1990), p. 74