Olivier (48 page)

Cinematic excursions of this kind were very much an extra, undertaken to make some money and supplement the inconsiderable wage paid him by the National Theatre. The National itself continued to absorb almost all his energies. Though he was frequently called on to act as both producer and director, Olivier understood and shared the fears and aspirations of the actor. This, however, did not make it any easier to supply their needs. Sometimes, indeed, it seemed to him that his principal function was to frustrate them. Derek Jacobi, for instance, professed his loyalty to the Company but concluded that he no longer felt he was “developing as an actor along the path which makes me an individual performer”. If he was to progress he had to be offered roles that would “make demands on me emotionally and give me an opportunity to use fully the potential that I believe I have”. He had begun to think of himself as a “competent – adequate – professional – supporting – actor who can be relied on to turn in an acceptable piece of work – and I think that that is a very dangerous state to be in”. It was a state that Olivier could never have borne to be in himself and he sympathised with Jacobi’s feelings. It has been alleged that Olivier resented and sought to curb the success of any young actor who he felt might challenge his pre-eminence. He may have been guilty, from time to time, of avoiding appearing with younger actors whose performance might, he felt, distract attention from his own. But except in such rare cases he rejoiced in the success of the up-and-coming members of the National staff. He did not view Jacobi as his rival, on the contrary he felt that the younger man’s success reflected credit on him, Olivier, for having brought Jacobi
forward. But that did not mean that he could always, or even often, find the parts to satisfy the hungry young would-be stars. The fact was that, in a repertory company where acting of the highest standard was the norm, there were not enough good parts to go around. Should Olivier promote Jacobi at the expense of Alan Bates, who appealed for a “yonking big classic part”? Or Alan Adams, to whom Olivier apologised for giving only inadequate roles: “You must understand that it is only on very rare occasions that a Theatre like this … can find useful opportunities for showing a person in the process of development.”
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The women were no less exigent. Maggie Smith was ready to play Hedda in “Hedda Gabler” but wanted Olivier to be Judge Brack. He would love to do it if it were feasible, he said, but “will you be kind enough please to remember that I have to cast from within the Company, and that strive to please you as I might I would hope that you would be prepared to find my final decision acceptable”. He accused her agent, Peter Dunlop – “
Agent Provocateur
,” he described Dunlop in a letter to Smith – of trying to play him along so that they would be able to dictate all sorts of conditions as the price of her acceptance – “and that, my friend, is a situation I do not intend to find myself in”. Eventually Maggie Smith agreed to go to America in “The Three Sisters”, but it was not with “a free and happy mind”, reported Michael Hallifax, the company manager. Smith felt that she had been led up the garden path; her agent reported that it was most unlikely that she would want to stay with the National Theatre after the end of the current season. There was still worse trouble when Smith, playing Masha in “The Three Sisters”, received a letter from Olivier making various points about her playing of the role. He addressed her letter to “My darling Mageen”; her reply was signed coldly “Margaret”. Could he not have spoken to her? she asked: “The written word is always very black and really rather unhelpful, also it is sad that you have
nothing
to tell me about what is
right
(if indeed anything is) about my performance.”
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Trying to persuade a recalcitrant actress to do what he wanted was bad enough, but at least in the case of Maggie Smith he knew that she
was a skilful player who was worth saving for the National Theatre if it could possibly be done. What was more painful was dismissing players who were not up to the required quality. Angela Baddeley was a distinguished classical actress, today best remembered for her role as the irascible cook in “Upstairs, Downstairs”. She proved unsuitable for her role in “The Dance of Death” and Olivier dismissed her to make way for Geraldine McEwan. Her husband, his old friend Glen Byam Shaw, rounded on him and accused him of being cruel, hard and a cold snake. “Only a character of truly Saint-like qualities could be a manager in this line of business without the slightest characteristic of business growing upon him,” Olivier pleaded. “Yes, I do try to take a cool attitude and not let my emotions influence my judgment … When I took on this job, I said that in 5 years I would not have a friend left in the world …” He had two fewer now. It was episodes of this kind that made Olivier wonder whether he had done well to take on the National Theatre; but if he was honest with himself he would have concluded that, whatever, the price, there was no job on earth he would more willingly be doing.
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W
ith the departure of Gaskill and Dexter a proliferation of outside directors was brought in to handle a single production each, or perhaps two or three. The number of arrivals and departures, as Michael Billington has remarked, was more what one would expect in Waterloo Station than in a theatre in the Waterloo Road. Out of five productions in the repertoire in the autumn of 1969, four were the responsibility of outside directors. The casual-labour policy was convenient and, Olivier thought or claimed to think, was a useful way of keeping the regular members of the cast on their toes. It could not be the complete answer, though, and Olivier was constantly looking for someone who could provide long-term support and might even one day prove a worthy successor.
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One of the few who seemed a real possibility was Michael Blakemore. Blakemore had toured with Olivier, playing minor parts in the Stratford tour of Europe in 1957, but since then had veered towards direction. He joined the National Theatre in 1969 and became an associate director two years later. He felt in awe of his imposing superior. He told Olivier that he felt he must address him as Larry – “I won’t be able to express an opinion at all properly if I have to call you Sir Laurence.” “Yes, I always hoped you would,” Olivier replied. Blakemore thought he said this rather grudgingly – but in fact Olivier welcomed an approach that was egalitarian and informal in manner, even though deferential in substance. A subordinate who would call him Larry but would do as he
was told was the ideal. Blakemore did not always do as he was told and the two men had occasional rows, but he won Olivier’s confidence to a greater extent than any other of the directors who from time to time worked in the National Theatre.
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In October 1967 the Board had also authorised the employment of Frank Dunlop as an associate director. With Dunlop and Blakemore installed, and Robert Stephens doing some directing, it seemed that the burden on Olivier would at last be relieved. Within a few months, however, Dunlop began to devote most of his energies to the Young Vic. This concept had been inspired by Olivier. He had pleaded the case for a subsidiary company that would train up potential recruits for the National with Jennie Lee, the Minister for the Arts. She was impressed, both by the cogency of his arguments and his benevolence in advancing them: “I was conscious that great actors can be concerned only for themselves, but here was Laurence Olivier pleading for the talented young,” she claimed. Olivier for his part was characteristically extravagant in his gratitude. “My dear Minister,” he wrote, “
our
dear Minister, dear kind wonderful Minister. We shall never live long enough or grow eloquent enough to thank you even halfway properly for all that you have done and we pray may long continue to do for us.” He had nevertheless done himself out of a large part of Dunlop’s services; the pressures on him were as great five years after he had taken over as they had ever been.
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Those pressures were augmented by the turbulent presence of Kenneth Tynan. He bombarded Olivier with suggestions – many of which were excellent, some of which were crass – and was endlessly inventive in his ideas for introducing novelty into the traditional repertoire. He asked Paul McCartney to write the music for some Shakespearean songs. He didn’t really like words by Shakespeare, McCartney replied. “Maybe I could write the National Theatre stomp sometime. Or the ballad of Larry O.” Few weeks passed without Tynan being embroiled in some fearful row, usually contriving to involve Olivier in it as well. In 1965 George Devine was added to the list of his enemies.
Devine had been brought in to direct Samuel Beckett’s “Play”. Egged on by the author, who was in close attendance, Devine took what was anyway an extremely short play at breakneck speed. Tynan was horrified; “It’s beautiful poetry,” he argued, “and I want to be able to hear it.” He wrote Devine one of his most tactless letters, complaining that the dialogue was inaudible and that Beckett was “trying to treat English as if it was French”. Devine responded with predictable fury. Tynan’s letter was “impertinent and ignorant”; even if the dramaturge had any business to interfere in this way – which Devine doubted – his manner of expression was “presumptuous”. Tynan had compounded his offence in Devine’s eyes by suggesting that members of the Board were disturbed and that the whole future of the project was in peril. Given Tynan’s record, to find him invoking the Board as an ally in his effort to encroach on the independence of a director is comical. Devine felt it to be unacceptable: “I find your suggestion that a visiting director should be menaced with conservative members of the National Theatre Board preposterous.”
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Worst of all, Tynan had claimed to speak “on behalf of the National Theatre” and had invoked Olivier as an ally in the cause. As it happened, in this particular case Olivier did think that Tynan was right, but he was appalled by his dramaturge’s methods. He had known Devine all his life and very intimately, he said: “he is overweeningly proud but wonderfully valuable.” Anyone of any sense could have seen that Tynan was going about it in the wrong way. Would he please in future learn to curb his tongue?
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He might have been sharper still if he had known that this was a sighting shot for Tynan’s most explosive venture. The Hochhuth affair disturbed Olivier so deeply that he devoted twenty-eight pages to it in his memoirs. Rolf Hochhuth was a German dramatist whose new play, “Soldiers”, was submitted to the National Theatre at a moment when Tynan’s craving for the sensational was at its most virulent. “I’m worried,” he had told Olivier at the beginning of 1966. “Nothing really specific: just a general feeling that we are losing our lead … We are
doing nothing to remind [the public] that the theatre is an independent force at the heart of the country’s life – a sleeping tiger that can and should be roused whenever the national (or international) conscience needs nudging.” When a play came along that condemned Churchill for authorising the bombing of Dresden and accused him of complicity in the “murder” of the Polish leader, General Sikorski, Tynan’s delight knew no bounds. That the author was German made it even better – “only a damn Boche would have had the crust to attempt it,” wrote Air Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris: a reaction that would have enchanted Tynan if he had known of it. Hochhuth may not be Euripides, Tynan handsomely admitted, nor “Soldiers” “The Trojan Women”, “but it is in the same tradition. Hochhuth is the test of our maturity, the test of our willingness to take a central position in the limelight of public affairs. If the play goes on under our banner, we shall be a genuinely national theatre, and, even as the stink-bombs fly, I shall be very proud of us.”
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Olivier had his doubts. Unlike Tynan, he disliked rows; he was an ardent patriot and worshipper of Churchill; he did not even think it was a good play – “I dislike the bloody thing,” he told Joan Plowright. He may have seen some attractions in Tynan’s insistence that he was the only man to play Churchill: “My God, how like you the old bastard is! The passionate maddening love of detail, the concentration that can wither other people by simply ignoring their presence, the sudden changes of subject, the sudden focusing on apparent irrelevances, the love of anecdote and quotation, the brutally realistic assessment of human motives, the terrible stubbornness, the impatience and the patience.” More than this, though, Olivier was attracted by the idea of espousing a cause which seemed both daring and controversial, and which would put the National Theatre in the forefront of progressive thinking. He assumed that there would be trouble and was ready to accept, even welcome it: if he had realised how severe that trouble was going to be he would have been more cautious, but by the time it became apparent it was too late.
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Please reassure the author that there are no political problems over mounting his play, Tynan told Hochhuth’s English agent. “We are
subject to no political pressures of any kind.” He quickly discovered how wrong he was. The Board took strong exception to the play and were unconvinced by Tynan’s assurance that Hochhuth possessed documentary evidence to support his thesis and that eminent historians considered that it might be correct. Olivier, for his part, took strong exception to Chandos’s argument that he could not support a play which criticised Churchill so vociferously when he himself had been a member of Churchill’s wartime Government. Until that moment, he said later, he had been “completely on the Chairman’s side in my heart”, but he found this argument “so appallingly dangerous that I turned against him”. The Board debated, dithered, debated some more and concluded that it must ban the production of the play. Olivier protested. The Board took note of his protest. Olivier insisted that the fact that he was unhappy about the ruling should be recorded in the minutes. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” said the Chairman. Olivier stuck to his guns. “Oh, let him be unhappy if he wants it,” cut in Kenneth Clark.
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