[This is the first in an occasional series describing
British actors and performers who achieved fame in the theatre or in the
movies.]
I begin with one of Britain’s most eminent actors ever, Laurence Olivier (1907-1989), regarded
by many as the finest British actor of the 20th century.
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| Laurence Olivier |
Olivier’s father was an Anglican priest and his mother’s
family was clerical too. Losing his mother when he was 12, his strict father
nevertheless encouraged Olivier’s acting ambitions and sent him aged 17 to
drama college. Joining the Birmingham Rep in 1926, he soon made his mark in
classic Shakespearean roles although his West End breakthrough came in 1930 in
Noel Coward’s brittle comedy Private Lives. In the same year Olivier (or “Larry” as he was known in
theatrical circles) married the actress Jill Esmond and, as he admitted in a
much later autobiography, failed to perform sexually on his wedding night –
perhaps a manifestation of those first night nerves which were to plague him
all his career. They produced a son but the marriage was not a great success,
ending in 1940, although they remained friends.
Larry built up his formidable reputation in the 1930s,
particularly in seasons at the Old Vic where he shared classic roles with John
Gielgud, starting an often abrasive rivalry with that very different actor.
“Shakespeare’s lines are to be spoken, not sung” complained Larry but often the
critics preferred Gielgud’s bell-like style of diction over Larry’s forceful
clarity, to Larry’s mortification. In 1937 he started an affair with Vivien
Leigh, with whose life and career he was to become entwined.
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| Olivier as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights with Merle Oberon |
Inevitably Hollywood beckoned and although Sam Goldwyn
berated Larry for overacting, Wuthering
Heights was a great movie success in 1939 to be followed by a fine Maxim de
Winter in Hitchcock’s Rebecca and a
foppish Darcy in Pride and Prejudice
in 1940. Larry was now a matinee idol
and he and Vivian Leigh were a famous celebrity couple after her glittering
success as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with
the Wind.
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| Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara |
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| Olivier as Henry V |
After some difficulty divorcing their respective former
spouses, Larry and Vivien married in California in 1940. Larry was a national
asset during WW2 and he was the virile star and director of the 1944 patriotic
epic Henry V, filmed in the neutral Irish
Republic, with the under-employed Irish Army deployed as extras.
Released from the forces in 1944 (Larry had been in the
Fleet Air Arm), he joined his friend Ralph Richardson in 5 seasons at the New
Theatre (later the Albery and now the Noel Coward) acting in Shakespeare,
Sheridan, Shaw and Chekhov, usually 3 different plays every day. These New
Theatre seasons are regarded as a highpoint in the English theatre and the
apogee of Olivier’s career. He also toured in the US and Australia and starred in
his classic films of Hamlet (it won
Britain’s first film Oscar in 1948 and Larry’s only Oscar too) and Richard III. Larry had an uncanny
chameleon-like ability completely to absorb the persona of his role and actually to become Romeo or Astrov in Uncle Vanya or Sir Peter Teazle. It went
well beyond fine acting and was a rare and unsettling gift.
Sadly his marriage to Vivien Leigh was troubled. She had an
unstable mind, diagnosed as bi-polar disorder, and her mood swings and tantrums
caused endless scenes. She was a born film actress, but she wanted to be a
Shakespearean rival to Larry and her technique and voice projection were
inadequate. When the critic Kenneth Tynan disparaged her performance in New
York and opined she was holding back Olivier, she went into paroxysms of
self-loathing. She had her triumphs as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar named Desire and in the much later movie The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone. Larry was usually kind to her,
though he had his tantrums too, and one is reminded of Lord Melbourne’s doomed
marriage to Lady Caroline Lamb, a similarly impossible spouse. From 1953,
Vivien embarked on a fitful affair with the actor Peter Finch (Larry consoled
himself with Claire Bloom) but over time she descended into manic-depression,
schizophrenia and (embarrassingly) into nymphomania. They divorced in 1960 and
Vivien died in 1967, quite mad.
In the 1950s and 1960s Larry was not attracted to the
kitchen-sink school of British drama but he had a great success as Archie Rice,
the down-at-heel comedian in John Osborne’s The
Entertainer, as usual entering into the role with amazing panache.
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| Olivier as Hamlet |
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| Olivier as Archie Rice |
In 1961 he married the actress Joan Plowright and they had 3
children whom he had to cosset and finance. He had to make money and he took a
large number of roles in inferior movies to keep the pot boiling. Larry became
the first Director of The National Theatre in 1962-73 when it was based at the
Old Vic – the South Bank building did not open until 1974. He played Othello and other strenuous roles but
from 1968 his health gave problems with prostate cancer and a chronic degenerative
muscle disorder. Larry could never be negligible on screen and he shone in
1972’s Sleuth and perhaps most
memorably in 1976 as the Nazi dentist sadistically drilling a terrified Dustin
Hoffman’s teeth in Marathon Man.
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| Olivier the Nazi dentist in Marathon Man |
He ended his acting days with cameo roles as Lord Marchmain
in TV’s Brideshead Revisited and as John Mortimer’s blind father in
Voyage round my Father. He died in 1989, aged 81, laden with honours, the
youngest ever theatrical knight at age 39 and the first ever theatrical peer.
Even his wife admitted he could be “difficult” and behind
the insincere “luvvy” façade, Olivier’s diaries show what a bitchy, insecure
and pathologically jealous type he was. He disparaged his co-stars like Joan
Fontaine and Merle Oberon, and as director of the National Theatre never
invited John Gielgud or Alec Guinness to play and limited the parts given to
the coming stars like Albert Finney or Derek Jacobi. A monstrous ego was at
work here. Watching Olivier, one always wondered what the real man was all
about, but he remains enigmatic and probably unknowable.
That said, Laurence Olivier brought enormous distinction to
the British theatre, was an unquestioned patriot and the brightest jewel of his
wayward profession. He was admired and wondered at by a richly entertained
global audience.
SMD
11.02.14
Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2014
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