Olivier (23 page)

Ralph Richardson had been more prescient. It had been some time since Lord Esher had reached an implicit agreement with Oliver Lyttelton, later Lord Chandos, chairman of the committee that controlled the hoped-for but still nebulous National Theatre, that when the National secured governmental backing and financial support, the Old Vic would
supply the hard core of its operations. Though formal governmental acceptance still seemed a long way off, those on the inside reckoned there was a more real possibility of a functioning National Theatre now than had been true for many years. The decision to involve the Old Vic in the operation was obviously a sensible one. Both Olivier and Richardson rejoiced at the prospect. But Richardson foresaw the implications for the current management. “It won’t be our dear, friendly semi-amateurish Old Vic anymore …” he told Olivier. “They’re not going to stand for a couple of actors bossing the place around. We shall be out, old cockie”
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Olivier had not been convinced. He noticed, though, that a new formality, a bureaucratic element, was seeping into his relationship with the Board. A trivial incident brought it home to him. Shortly before they left for Australia, the egregious Mr Wanbon, whom Olivier had so fiercely dismissed some time before,
lurked outside the Oliviers’ London home, Durham Cottage, until they came home late at night, accosted them and, presumably drunk, tried to kiss Vivien Leigh. In the ensuing brawl Olivier broke a finger. Legal proceedings followed, and Olivier hired a counsel to represent him. Since Wanbon’s attack had been inspired by his resentment at the Old Vic treatment of him, Olivier took it for granted that the theatre would cover his costs. A couple of years earlier they would have done so without demur; now they grumbled that it was not their responsibility and that there had been no need to retain a counsel. In the end they paid only half the costs, and that with bad grace. Things were not as they used to be, Olivier considered. He became suspicious about what was going on. Perhaps Ralph Richardson had a point. While in Australia he was concerned that so many of what seemed to him the most promising productions at the Old Vic had been crowded into the first half of the season while he would be away. “I can’t help thinking there is the tiniest bit of hanky-panky going on,” he told Cecil Tennant.
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Hanky-panky or no hanky-panky, what was in effect outright
dismissal took him by surprise. To have been eased out gently might have been acceptable, to be notified in a brief and not in the least apologetic letter when he was at the other end of the earth and engaged in what he saw as Old Vic business seemed to him intolerable. For more than three years, at considerable financial sacrifice, he and Richardson had devoted themselves to the affairs of the Old Vic, they had raised it to the position of the finest repertory company in Great Britain, possibly the world. To dismiss them, to his mind at least, was not simply gross ingratitude but folly, since it could only doom the Old Vic to the obscurity from which they had rescued it. Harold Hobson compared the deed to the dismissal of Winston Churchill by the electorate in 1945, the triumph of mediocrity over elitism, the ungrateful spurning of the great leader who had brought his country to glorious victory. The analogy begged many questions, but it had a certain poignant force.
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There was, of course, another way of looking at the matter. It was put by Tyrone Guthrie, who was himself probably the individual most responsible for the dismissal of Olivier and Richardson. The two great stars, he admitted, had done wonderful things, but: “The period of glory was brilliant but brief. In spite of enormous houses no money was saved.” They were more concerned, Guthrie suggested even if he did not directly state, with their own careers than with the future of the theatre. When Olivier took his company to Australia he left Richardson and Burrell to run the show in his absence; Richardson, however, acting within the terms of his contract but at variance with the spirit of the agreement between the two stars and the Board, took off for Hollywood. Burrell was left to do the best he could. He had a powerful team to support him – Sybil Thorndike, Alec Guinness, Trevor Howard, Edith Evans, would have been most producers’ acting team from heaven – but the Old Vic audiences had grown used to seeing either Richardson or Olivier, preferably both, in every play. A series of lacklustre productions made matters still worse. The Comédie Française visited London in 1948 and the critics took some satisfaction in pointing out how much better it was than its British rival. Attendances fell away; the Old Vic 1948
season lost £26,000. The only critically acclaimed new production was “The Cherry Orchard” and that, said Olivier, was an economic disaster and led to “the Governors getting the bloody wind up”.
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Lord Esher, supported if not egged on by Guthrie, felt that the Old Vic had become too dependent on its two stars. A situation in which the success of the theatre depended on their presence could not be allowed to continue. The spirit of repertory was being eroded. He was not alone in his doubts. Barbara Ward, one of the most vociferous and influential members of the Board, firmly believed that the director of a putative National Theatre should never be an actor. She had some strong arguments on her side. From the point of view of the long-term future of the National Theatre a change in the style of management was desirable. But the way in which the Board handled the matter – by long-distance correspondence and without a glimmer of consultation – was disastrously inept. The proper course would have been to let Olivier and Richardson return from their travels and then to explain the Board’s feelings in a face-to-face meeting. Even if a compromise had not proved possible, the sense of grievance on the part of the two stars would have been less strong, or at any rate, less justified.
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As it was, the change of regime caused indignation if not outrage. There was to be no official announcement until after Olivier’s return, but within the profession the news spread quickly. One member of the Board, the publisher Hamish Hamilton, resigned in protest: “I cannot remain a member of a body which has treated you so badly,” he told Olivier. George Chamberlain, the general manager of the Old Vic, claimed that the conduct of the Board seemed “to have been borrowed from international politics” and was inexcusable. Olivier realised that when he got back he would have to decide whether to go quietly or to stoke up resentment and make his remaining months as a director unpleasant for everybody. For the moment there was little to do except stay quiet and complete the tour. Richardson seemed disposed to take the less aggressive and easier course. “Aha, dear fellow,” he wrote when Olivier had reached New Zealand. “You seem as sad as I am about the
Old Vic. You must be sadder, you are doing so much more than I am for the cause. It was a happy dream that we might take a share in piloting that ship for years to come … I suppose we will have to look around for another job … I feel the need for something on a long-term basis, not just hopping from job to job. I long to lay my head with yours in this matter.”
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Ill-health, crippling fatigue, a lost job – what would anyway have been a sad end to the Australian tour was made worse by suspicions that his marriage was going awry. “Somehow, somewhere on this tour I knew that Vivien was lost to me,” he wrote in his memoirs. This pronouncement was over-dramatic. He had not lost Vivien and was not finally to lose her for another decade. But there were signs that the relationship was under strain; it would never be glad confident morning again. Olivier put his gloomy comment in the context of their meeting with Peter Finch. Finch would in time play an important part in the disintegration of the Oliviers’ marriage, but in 1948 he was no more than a talented but almost unknown young actor whom Olivier had seen playing Argan in “Le Malade Imaginaire” in Sydney. Olivier was enormously struck by his potential. He wrote to Cecil Tennant to report that “an exceptionally clever, I repeat exceptionally clever young Australian actor is on the way … I cannot express too much what a very, very bright boy I think he is.” Vivien Leigh seems to have shared her husband’s enthusiasm. But at that stage there was no more to it than that. Finch was married; happily so, so far as the Oliviers could judge, and Leigh hardly did more than exchange a few words with him.
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Other factors, though, were threatening the Oliviers’ marriage. There had been tension even during the preparations for the tour. One day an acrimonious argument over lunch had been followed by an ugly scene during the rehearsal of “Richard III”. Olivier ruled that Lady Anne, played by Vivien Leigh, should fall off her chair at a certain point. Leigh refused to do so, saying that it would be out of character. Through clenched teeth, Olivier retorted: “The Lady Anne will fall off her chair
if I have to bloody well push her off myself!” This may have been no more than a tiff between two highly strung artists under pressure, but it would not have happened two years before. Another such confrontation was reported on the tour. At Christchurch Leigh refused to go on stage without her red slippers, which had been mislaid. “Put on any shoes and just get on up there,” Olivier ordered. She refused. He slapped her face, saying: “Get up on that stage, you little bitch!” She slapped him back: “Don’t you dare hit me you – you bastard!” The trainee student who recalled this incident may have been exaggerating – no other member of the party recorded anything similar – but though the couple generally kept up a brave front in public an uneasy feeling that all was not well hung over the later stages of the tour.
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Though she usually managed to put on a good show when others were present, it was obvious to all who knew her well that Leigh was under great strain and was growing increasingly unpredictable in her reactions. “My birth sign is Scorpio and they eat themselves up and burn themselves out,” she told a reporter. She spoke lightly, but she must have believed that there was truth in what she said. Olivier was realising that the tuberculosis which had so alarmed him in 1945 was only part, and not the worst part, of her problems. To a friend who asked how she was, Olivier replied that it was difficult to be sure: “Her sort of trouble is rather veiled in mystery and it is hard to get conclusive and satisfactory news.” That was in 1946; two years later the veil of mystery was as thick as ever but Olivier was becoming more convinced by the day that something was badly wrong. It was to be several years before the full horror of the situation dawned on him, but during the Australasian tour it became ever more clear that there was trouble ahead and that things were likely to become a great deal worse.
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During the last weeks in New Zealand and on the ship going home this manifested itself in an irresponsibly conspicuous flirtation between Vivien Leigh and Dan Cunningham, a young man who, according to Emma Brash, the wardrobe mistress, was not much of an actor but “terribly funny and very attractive and elegant and a really charming
person”. Olivier was first having the operation to his knee, then more or less confined to his cabin: it was understandable that Leigh should hanker after some entertainment and welcome the attentions of an eligible young man happy to squire her around. There is no reason to believe that there was more to it than that, but the relationship was indiscreet enough to create much gossip and cause her husband some unease. In the end, as he described in his memoirs: “I pleaded with her not, please, to make her flirtation with one young man in the company so obvious … I really couldn’t see that it was justified that I should be so humiliated.” Rather to his surprise, she took the rebuke meekly and promised that the gossips would have no further material on which to exercise their talents.
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The Oliviers docked at Tilbury on 16 November, 1948. There would be another six months to serve with the Old Vic. After that the future appeared a great deal more uncertain than had been the case a year before.

O
ne of the first things Olivier did after his return to London was to confront Lord Esher. He and Richardson had by then agreed that there was no point in contesting the Board’s decision: if they were not wanted, they were not wanted, there were plenty of opportunities for them elsewhere. Esher oozed appreciation of all that the existing directors had done to get the Old Vic up and running; the time had come, however, to entrust the enterprise to a single man who would devote himself wholeheartedly to carrying it to still greater heights. According to Olivier, he went on to suggest that that single man should be Olivier himself: now that Richardson and Burrell had resigned, the way was clear for the third, and most effective, member of the triumvirate to assume supreme power. Olivier answered that he could not betray his friends in such a way. Barbara Ward, who made a similar approach, was similarly rebuffed: “I couldn’t let them be fired … It would have been rather ugly. But they couldn’t see that, these bigwigs.” The scenario is not convincing. It seems more likely that Esher was referring to a time – he hoped only two or three years away – when the Old Vic would be reborn as the National Theatre and a fresh start would be needed. Olivier, however, must have found it pleasing to portray himself as standing by his friends and spurning a chalice which, if not poisoned, would still have left a nasty taste in the mouth.
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To replace the dismissed directors, Hugh Hunt was brought in from the Bristol Old Vic. “Quite a respectable director, nothing thrilling,”
Olivier dismissed him. Guthrie, too, returned to the fold to supervise the move back to the now-restored Old Vic building south of the river; he compounded Olivier’s indignation by bringing in Donald Wolfit to play Tamburlaine. Hunt was anxious to keep Olivier on board in one capacity or another. He had only accepted the position after much self-questioning, he wrote: “On the one hand every sense of loyalty to John [Burrell], you and Ralph pulled against it; on the other, I felt the alternatives were not in the Vic’s interests.” He besought Olivier not to turn his back on the theatre: would he play Malvolio? Would he play Othello? “I realise that this is a very great deal to swallow from your point of view, but I can only make a very personal plea.”
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