Olivier (27 page)

Olivier was as critical of Shaw as he was of Shakespeare. Shaw,
he complained, gave Cleopatra a marvellous first act and then lost interest in her and lavished all his attention on Caesar. “I call it very bad play-writing,” he told someone who suggested he had disliked playing Caesar: “Though to be truthful,” he added, “it is not often that I can actually enjoy acting in the usual meaning of the word.” What he meant by this last remark is obscure; perhaps that acting made such demands on those who did it that they were unable to derive conscious pleasure from their performance. If that was what he meant, he deluded himself. If he knew that he was acting well in a worthwhile part Olivier drew not merely enjoyment but delight from his activities: if it was a great performance in a major role, then delight became ecstasy. Shaw’s Caesar was not one of the roles likely to stand out in a great actor’s career, but it was quite good enough to give pleasure to a man who was almost as preoccupied by his wife’s performance as by his own.
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His Antony was more questionable. Tynan was not alone in thinking that Olivier’s rendering of the part was diminished by his wish to see Vivien Leigh succeed. He “subdues his blow-lamp ebullience to match her,” Tynan wrote. “Blunting his iron precision, levelling away his towering authority, he meets her halfway. Antony climbs down: and Cleopatra pats him on the head.” Tynan seldom missed an opportunity to denigrate Leigh and to exalt Olivier, but there were others who felt that she was not fit to play Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. “She [is] beautiful to look at, but not grand enough for so superb a part,” judged Harold Nicolson. The play was commercially successful and on the whole got very friendly reviews, but few claimed that it was among Olivier’s greatest successes.
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It was a different matter when they took the plays to New York. “The Oliviers are a sensational hit here,” reported Tennessee Williams. It was as if the critics felt guilty about the bad reception they had given “Romeo and Juliet” ten years before and were resolved to make up for it. “There’s no doubt at all that these two are very serious artists,” Olivier quoted them as saying. “They have changed completely in a few years; they’ve learned all sorts of lessons.” Olivier probably thought that the critics
were the ones who had learned the lessons, but he was not disposed to quarrel with them. His only cause for regret was his wife’s deterioration. Publicly, Olivier emphasised the physical symptoms of her malaise. She had missed two performances of “Caesar”, he told Alan Dent. “At the moment she is sitting up in bed and not allowed even to whisper, so I am blessed with that dream of all husbands, a dumb wife. She has been awfully poorly and very brave and gallant and utterly darling.” He was deceiving Dent; perhaps he was deceiving himself as well. To Jill Esmond he reported that they had been playing to huge houses and making an enormous amount of money: “Our season here has been very decently successful, but somehow it doesn’t seem to feel awfully happy.”
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One of the audience for “Antony and Cleopatra” while it was in London was Winston Churchill. As he had done when he had come to “Richard III” some years before, Churchill recited the lines from memory, providing a muted accompaniment to Olivier. Instead of chiding the great statesman for a practice that must have been irritating to those sitting near him, Olivier congratulated him on his phenomenal memory. “Oh, well, I learned that at school,” said Churchill, going on to say that any actor had to remember much more. Olivier admitted that, if he had not played a part for more than three weeks, he would have to learn it all over again. “You mean you don’t carry it all in your head?” said Churchill in surprise. “That must be a great saving of burden for you.” Churchill took a fancy to Vivien Leigh: “She’s a real clinker,” he remarked to Christopher Soames, his son-in-law. He invited them to Chartwell, his home in Kent, and made much of them. Olivier knew next to nothing about politics, but he could recognise a hero when he saw one. If Churchill had advised him to do so he would have voted Fascist, Communist or for a Flat-earth candidate. At first he felt shy in Churchill’s company. He was by nature shy, he maintained – something which those used to seeing him dominating any gathering would have found hard to credit, but which was essentially true. When it was Churchill who was the host, anyone might have been excused for feeling
abashed. But Churchill, Olivier remembered, “made such a palpable effort to put one at one’s ease that it would be terrible not to do so”. It worked, and by the time the Oliviers left they felt very much at home.
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As well as being by instinct if not party allegiance a Conservative, Olivier was a monarchist and a patriot. Though he once refused to call on the Duchess of Kent on the grounds that “We don’t want to mix with that sort of person; we may have to offend them some day”, his attitude towards royalty was deferential if not obsequious. He was equally traditional in his reverence for home and country. When del Giudice tried to involve him in some of his European adventures, Olivier replied: “I can’t do this, Del dear. I belong in England.” This may have been inspired by doubts about del Giudice’s financial acumen as well as by his own love for Britain, but his dedication to his homeland was never in question. Only when the demands of patriotism clashed with the obligations of his profession did he show that there were limits to his ardour. He agreed to join the Executive Committee of the George VI National Memorial Fund, attended the first meeting in May 1952, but then missed every subsequent meeting. The Lord Mayor asked him to consider how the theatrical profession could best contribute to the Fund. He passed the baby to Bronson Albery and eventually opted out altogether, protesting that the existing demands on his time made it impossible for him to organise any sort of matinée.
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When theatrical politics were in question he felt a greater obligation to intervene. Early in 1951 he caused a stir by denouncing the unreasonably large proportion of the income from films which was taken by the exhibitors. From every £1 million taken at the box office the Government took 40 per cent in tax, the exhibitors took a further 40 per cent, the producers were left with only 20 per cent to cover all expenses. His stance caused a storm of protest. Olivier ignored the heavy costs of running a cinema, argued the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association, and in
Today’s Cinema
F. J. Partner pointed out that film actors and producers could live in “palatial residences in London or country estates and take yachting cruises between pictures. How many exhibitors can do this?”
Olivier was on safer ground when he complained that the 30 per cent quota of films shown in Britain reserved for homemade products was too small, but even here he stirred up resentment. Tom O’Brian of the cine-technicians’ union was at one with Olivier on this issue, but he cherished a grudge against him for his opposition to restrictive practices on the employment of foreign actors. “I have no time for a milk-and-floury hypocrite who stands on a platform and condemns United States films,” O’Brian was quoted as saying, “having himself come back from Hollywood with his wife after making a small fortune in dollars.” Olivier took counsel’s opinion on whether these comments were libellous and was told that he would have to prove special damage – which would be difficult if not impossible. He was not naturally litigious and he dropped the idea of taking legal action with some relief.
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His plea that Equity – the trade union representing arts and entertainments – should accept that the best actors or directors should be employed in every case, irrespective of their race or domicile, did not go down well with the more protection-minded members of the Union. O’Brian turned to Churchill for support. If Olivier “enters the field on one side in matters of acute controversy, he must incur the scratchings on the other side … My own personal admiration for Sir Laurence is second to none, and you as a friend can do more probably to bring this issue to a satisfactory conclusion than anyone else.” There is no evidence that Churchill responded to this appeal – it was hardly a matter on which he would have felt it appropriate to intervene – but Olivier paid the price in popularity within the profession. In 1951 he had come second in the election for the General Council of Equity with 741 votes, in 1952 he got only 561 votes, coming ninth, and in 1953, 506 votes, coming eleventh (it may have been some consolation that Donald Wolfit secured a mere 300 votes and was not elected). Though he hated not to be popular, it would in fact have suited Olivier quite well if he had lost his seat. “My life is so jolly full, and I am such a frequent absentee,” he told the President of Equity, Felix Aylmer, “that I do feel … I am keeping some more active and useful Councillor out of it.”
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It was not only the affairs of Equity which made him feel that his life was “jolly full’. Early in 1949 a publisher urged him to write his autobiography. “Even if
you
don’t agree, it is generally assumed that you are now at the peak of your career,” Herbert Thompson of Michael Joseph told him. Only if he undertook the job himself would it be possible to check the flow of inaccurate and sometimes malicious accounts of his life that were appearing. “Even if I could find the energy for it,” Olivier replied, “I would be harder put to it than I am able to cope with to find the time for such a venture.” But he was alarmed by the threat of a flood of unauthorised biographies and he would have checked it if he could. A possible solution seemed to be to organise a biography which, without being formally authorised, would still be known to have the blessing and the co-operation of the Oliviers. Felix Barker, of the
Evening News
, was encouraged, first to write a series of articles on both Olivier and Vivien Leigh, then to inflate them into a book. In exchange for their cooperation and after an initial payment to the author the royalties were to be split two-thirds to L.O.P., one-third to the author. The Oliviers, Cecil Tennant told the editor of the
Evening News
, “never ceased telling me how nice it was to work with Mr Felix Barker”. This is discouraging for the reader: the biographer of a living person is under no compulsion actively to quarrel with his subject, but too cosy a relationship is to be deplored. Barker’s book is pleasantly written and entirely harmless but of interest mainly as showing what the Oliviers wanted to be the truth rather than revealing what it really was.
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When Olivier did finally take to his pen it soon became obvious that the written word was not his forte. At this stage in his life he wrote for publication only with reluctance.
This Month
, a New York magazine, offered him $100 for a piece of 1,500 words on the Old Vic. Olivier demanded $200 but added: “I am not a practised writer and it may take a longer time than would seem to be justifiable.” It did;
This Month
is still awaiting it. He was asked by Fruity Metcalfe, the Duke of Windsor’s great friend, to contribute to a series of “Great Thoughts from Great Men” for the Sunday edition of the
New York Herald Tribune
. This time it
was $200 for only two hundred words. Wavell, Halifax, Shaw and Lady Astor had already obliged. “This will take time, dear boy, and thought, and I am up to my eyes in it,” Olivier replied. “But I’ll do my best.” His best was not good enough. His Great Thoughts never reached the New York reader. He did succeed in finishing a foreword for “School for Scandal”. It was, judged Alan Dent, “at a moderate estimate, the worst article ever written by an adult Englishman in the English language”. Dent was perhaps piqued at not having been asked to write it himself; it is not as bad as all that. But it leaves the reader in no doubt that Olivier was more profitably employed in acting or directing.
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One of the subjects on which Felix Barker was keen to interview Olivier was television. “Honestly, I don’t feel I have any definite enough ideas about this little, newly born medium,” Olivier replied, “and I couldn’t be a bit interesting about it.” It was only recently that he had fully reconciled himself to cinema; it was to be some time yet before he considered television a suitable vehicle for his skills. Films, however, were very much to the fore in the early 1950s. First he played Hurstwood in the film of Theodore Dreiser’s novel,
Sister Carrie
. For Olivier the project had two main attractions: it would take him to Hollywood while Vivien Leigh was also there making “Streetcar” and it was to be directed by William Wyler. “It was always wonderful to work with Wyler,” Olivier remembered. “Though we couldn’t bear each other in ‘Wuthering Heights’, we got on like a house on fire in ‘Carrie’. By that time he respected me …” He would have been disconcerted if he had known that Wyler was at first opposed to him playing the part. “I honestly don’t know what to say,” David Selznick replied. “I still am crazy about the idea of Olivier, and wish you would see it. I think he has every single thing the part requires … He would give the picture the great distinction it should have. He would bring it extraordinary freshness. If it were my picture I would be breaking my neck to get him.”
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Eventually Wyler was persuaded and Olivier contributed a moving depiction of a man who has everything in his favour but is in the end
destroyed by love. But making the film was not a happy experience. His leg was hurting badly and his ill temper often showed. He refused to do more than the bare minimum to help publicise the picture and made a furious scene when visitors to the set made a slight disturbance. Eddie Albert was an American actor playing his first major dramatic role. He found himself opposite Olivier at a point when the hero, Hurstwood, had lost his temper. “Olivier whipped himself up into a frenzy and started playing the role. I looked at him, and the guy is looking back at me like he’s going to kill me. I was in awe.” A few days later, at a party in Albert’s house, the wine ran out, so the host and Olivier, “both badly sloshed”, went down to the cellar to get some more. The door was locked, the key was mislaid, a hinge had to be removed. Albert got a screwdriver and began to fumble ineffectively at the hinge. “Old boy!” said Olivier. “Let me have a dash at it.” He took the screwdriver. “It was scary. His eyes changed. Everything changed. He became a bloody giant in total control. In no time he had the hinge off. It told you that anybody who got in his way, watch out. If he puts the heat on you, you’re in trouble. Try to make it to the border.”
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