Olivier (16 page)

Olivier, Christopher Plummer suggested, had every attribute of the great actor except pathos. “Oh, he manufactured pathos to the hilt – he acted it expertly, wonderfully. He knew all its ingredients, and yet none of them came naturally to him.” The judgment is a curious one: to be able to act wonderfully something which does not come naturally to one is surely the attribute of a great actor? Did the malign wickedness of Richard III come any more naturally to Olivier than the pathos of a Tyrone or an Astrov? Not everyone agreed with Plummer: Ernest Milton, an Old Vic veteran, after seeing Olivier as Caesar, wrote to congratulate him on his “extraordinary gift of pathos”. Of all the actors he had seen or had played with, only Bernhardt and Owen Nares could stand comparison. But Olivier himself was inclined to agree with Plummer. He had, he admitted, “something Philistine in me that produces a pretty invincible resistance to pathos – Pagliacci, He Who Gets Slapped, Laugh Clown Laugh”. That he could nevertheless affect it
so masterfully was a great tribute to his professional skills but he felt more at ease when his part required him to rage, clown or make love.
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In 1965 a young beginner asked Olivier whether he would ever make a great actor or even a good actor. Olivier could – and frequently did – humbug and flatter extravagantly, but where his professional judgment was concerned he could not lie. “I think your personality is very nice,” he wrote, “your presence and your appearance. To be absolutely frank, I do find the lack of an essential quality in our job, and that I can only describe as an absolute grip which makes any part that we are playing, a true part of ourselves, belonging to ourselves.” “Absolute grip” is an imprecise phrase which could mean different things to different people but it does suggest the intensity of purpose, the relentless determination, which Olivier brought to every role. Ian McKellen and Antony Sher were once dining together, discussing the state of the theatre in general and the achievements of Olivier in particular. “We can’t match him – none of us can – ever,” said McKellen gloomily. Sher shrugged in silent acquiescence. “The combination of beauty and self-hatred, and, of course, talent, colossal talent and imagination,” he wrote. “His characters remind me of Michelangelo’s monumental portraits; they have an almost marble feel, awesome yet quite cool.” It was the glorious paradox of Olivier’s acting that he both sublimated himself totally in his acting and yet remained ever present. He is a great actor, Michael Billington has written, in a perceptive analysis of Olivier’s strengths, “partly because he shows us so much of himself in all his performances, partly because he is unafraid to reveal those elements in his personality that most are trained to keep hidden.” He held nothing back yet, in the last analysis, gave nothing away. He could be everything; he could, if he so wished, be nothing. Whatever the mood, whatever the needs of the moment, his integrity was total, his authority absolute, his grip never failed.
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Some time towards the end of 1944, the first year in which Olivier played in repertory at the resurrected Old Vic, a man came to the box office and asked for a ticket for “a Laurence Olivier play”. “
Which
play?”
asked the ticket seller. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever Olivier is in.” The response does not suggest any great sophistication on the part of the would-be theatregoer, but it shows that, in the eyes of the public at least, Olivier had earned the status of the “great actor” par excellence.

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There were a handful of other actors who could aspire to the same grandeur. One of these was Ralph Richardson. It was he who did more than anybody else to get the revived Old Vic under way. There was precious little except its name and its reputation to help in the resuscitation; the building itself had been badly damaged during the war, the management long disbanded. The Old Vic Board invited Richardson and Tyrone Guthrie to take over the New Theatre and, with some financial help from the Government, put the show back on the road. Guthrie’s role was ill-defined, he was heavily involved with the ballet at Sadler’s Wells and was not going to be able to provide much more than encouragement and, from time to time, advice. Richardson was eager to take it on but knew that he could not manage single-handed; he insisted that he must be able to recruit partners who would share the burden of the acting as well as the management. The first two men to whom he applied were Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. “It sounds a harebrained scheme,” Olivier wrote to his American accountant, “but we feel very strongly that the Theatre should have some national representation in London, particularly at this time.” The Lords of the Admiralty were approached and, with almost offensive insouciance, agreed that he should be released from what were anyway increasingly nominal duties in the Royal Navy. His salary was to be a derisory £15 a week as a director; if he was also acting this would rise to £40. In recognition of the fact that he could earn many times as much if he returned to the cinema, it was agreed that from time to time he would take leave to make a film. In the summer of 1944 he resumed his career as an actor in the theatre.
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Gielgud proved more difficult to tie down. Richardson sent him a cable when he was performing for the troops in Cairo suggesting he should join himself and Olivier in this new enterprise. “I should like
nothing better,” Gielgud told his mother, “if it is a partnership and plays and parts that I like.” Then he seems to have decided that in fact it would
not
be a true partnership. Probably he would have been more enthusiastic if Richardson had been the only other person involved. The thought of entering a triumvirate with Olivier was unappealing. “It would be a disaster,” Gielgud is said to have told Richardson. “You would have to spend all your time as a referee between Larry and me.” He already had his own independent company and decided it would be best to keep it going in competition with the Old Vic. In time he came to wonder whether he had made the right decision. When the Old Vic produced a series of unequivocal triumphs Gielgud admitted ruefully: “I was a bit down … I was very aware they had beaten me to the post and that he [Olivier] was now a much bigger star than I was, but I swallowed that, I was only sorry that I couldn’t live up to it. I enormously admired what they did.” Probably he was right in thinking that he and Olivier would never have made a happy partnership. Writing to a friend about his return from the United States in 1946, in which he happened to find himself on the same liner as the Oliviers, Gielgud remarked: “I hope to make the grade on arrival by hanging firmly on Mrs Olivier’s other arm as soon as the photographers get on board and refusing to be shaken off.” Deference and contempt could hardly have been more neatly blended.
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The fact was that neither man was entirely easy in the other’s company. Each had reservations about the other’s style of acting: Gielgud thought Olivier was too often vulgar, exhibitionist, over-physical; Olivier accused Gielgud of being anaemic, insubstantial, over-musical. Each admired the other’s strengths. Writing to Gielgud about his performance as Andrew Crocker-Harris in Rattigan’s “The Browning Version”, Olivier wrote: “Your old friend was bursting with pride and admiration. Your performance was quite flawless and dreadfully moving. It haunts me still.” Gielgud wrote appreciatively of Olivier’s “acting genius and his gift for leadership”. Both admitted that they were sometimes jealous of the other: Olivier’s jealousy being the more
frequent and the more consuming. Yet there was also a sense of solidarity and common purpose. When Gielgud was arrested for importuning in a public lavatory Olivier’s response was to propose him for membership of the Garrick Club (he was blackballed, though elected later). A homophobic actor set to work putting together a group with the aim of getting Gielgud expelled from Equity. He was ill-advised enough to appeal to Olivier for support. Olivier summoned him to his dressing room in the interval of the play in which he was then acting. Delighted at the prospect of securing so prominent a backer, the actor rushed to the theatre. “Mr ———,” said Olivier. “If you persist in this resolution I shall make sure that you never appear on any British stage again.”
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Richardson and Olivier, then, would provide the main driving force behind the revived Old Vic, but someone else was needed to furnish the nuts and bolts of the operation. John Burrell was chosen, a theatre director in his early thirties working with the B.B.C. Burrell has sometimes been represented as a mere administrator who meekly carried out the bidding of his overpowering partners. This is unfair: he was himself a strong personality with ideas of his own. But he was inexperienced, little known outside a narrow theatrical circle and inevitably outshone. He became an indispensable part of the organisation, but if Richardson and Olivier were both resolved on a course of action there was little hope that Burrell would be able to deflect them from their course.

In the simplest analysis, there are two ways of putting on plays: deciding on the play and then looking for the actors, or engaging the actors and then looking for a suitable play. For the sort of ensemble acting which the Governors had in mind for the Old Vic, the emphasis would in principle be on the latter. In practice the process was almost always a patched-up compromise: reflecting a multitude of requirements. The needs of the permanent members of the company were certainly one, perhaps the most important, but there was also the need to present a balanced theatrical diet with a fair amount of Shakespeare as well as Ibsen, Shaw, Chekhov or Brecht and an occasional obeisance
in the direction of contemporary British drama. It had been decided that the play to open the London season should be Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt”, so the first batch of actors had to be selected with that in mind. The cast required for “Peer Gynt” was, however, substantial and since by the time it began the Old Vic would already have opened in Manchester with Shaw’s “Arms and the Man”, it was obvious that the management could not afford the luxury of employing actors who were too narrow in their specialities. One of the first to be approached was Renée Asherson, a talented young actress who had played opposite Olivier in “Henry V”. Olivier urged her to keep the fact that she had been invited to herself. “It is a vague plan still,” he told her, “and we do not want to invite catty conjectures or exaggerated musings in the press … The offer, roughly, is that you should be our juvenile girl.” To the layman that sounds a rather unappealing proposition, but since Olivier went on to say that she would be asked to play such parts as Anne in “Richard III”, Hero in “Much Ado About Nothing” and Sonya in “Uncle Vanya”, it must have been clear to her that she would not be starved of challenging roles. “Three of these plays will be performed every week,” Olivier concluded, “so I think and hope it will be more fun to act in the Theatre than we have known it to be before.”
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In the event, Renée Asherson could not escape from her existing contract. There were other refusals, too. Ursula Jeans at first agreed to appear but then recanted because she wanted to act in a new play by Peter Ustinov. “I hope that when you come to see us next, you will bring your coffin with you, because you will need it,” Olivier wrote indignantly, concluding with: “My appalled, incredulous but always devoted love.” But such cases were the exception and occurred usually only when the actor concerned was committed elsewhere. Most people leapt at the opportunity of acting with Olivier and Richardson in such surroundings and agreed that it was likely to be “more fun” than an appearance in the conventional theatre. They did not do it for the money, though. Sybil Thorndike, Margaret Leighton, Alec Guinness, Miles Malleson, all of whom had appeared earlier at the Old Vic, were well-established figures
much in demand on the West End stage. They could not have earned anything approaching the money that Olivier would have been offered if he had returned to Hollywood, but they could still have done a great deal better for themselves elsewhere. Olivier and Richardson had constantly to bear in mind that many of their most valued performers were making a sacrifice in working in the Old Vic and that their continued loyalty could not be taken for granted.
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The most powerful force in the London theatre at the end of the war was Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont’s company, H. M. Tennant. Beaumont dominated the West End stage; at one point eleven out of London’s thirty-six theatres were playing his productions. Many of these were of high quality, but his main concern was that they should make money: he eschewed the experimental and had little use for any except the most popular of classics. He was, as Michael Billington put it, the Fortnum & Mason of London theatre. Beaumont did not fear the Old Vic – he had no reason to – nor did he seek to do it down, but he presented a powerful counter-attraction. Even the most high-minded actor would hesitate to reject out of hand an overture from this magnetic figure. Olivier himself could afford to ignore his blandishments, but even he – apart from the fact that he rather liked him – hesitated to thwart him too overtly and realised how powerful his attraction was for many members of the company.
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When dealing with potential adversaries like Beaumont Olivier was adept at using kid gloves; in other circumstances he was ready to resort to knuckledusters. He was on the whole sensitive to other people’s feelings, anxious not to offend, taking care to wrap up criticism or bad news in a rich cocoon of treacle, but if he felt his patience was being abused or that he was being in some way put upon, his anger could be terrifying. A Mr Wanbon protested that he was being fobbed off with trivial roles and not treated with the consideration he deserved. “You talk about being thrust into a walk-on part as if you were deserving of something better,” retorted Olivier. “I have not been able to discover what should give you this idea … Your allegation that this very busy organisation
should spare time to frame intrigues against you personally is, of course, absurd. The ‘ability’ which you speak of did not emerge sufficiently clearly to justify your engagement. Your letter is wild to say the least of it, and the manner of it endorses the reports of your behaviour. I should most strongly advise you to behave yourself and to fulfil your dearest ambition in a way that will not be a nuisance to other people. I wish you luck, but I doubt if you will have it unless you change.” Not many people fared as badly as the unfortunate Mr Wanbon, but Olivier was always liable to explode and if he was in a bad mood his anger could lie heavy on the whole building.
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