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Olivier as Orlando in As You Like It, 1936 |
The danger and daring of Larry
Illtyd Harrington believes the latest biographer of Sir Laurence Olivier doesn’t get to grips with the real Larry Order this book
WE crowded in behind what was then the courtyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields for the start of a unique protest march.
More than 1,000 stars of stage, radio and TV, waited patiently.
“Comrades! We march not just against this act of cultural vandalism, the demolition of St James’s Theatre for office development, but to reassert the cultural values of this great city.”
That unique voice and pronunciation commanding presence with his stunningly beautiful wife Vivienne Leigh by his side was an electric experience.
“Comrades” from Sir Laurence Olivier was a singular challenge to the Establishment in 1956. “God for Larry, England and St George!” someone shouted to loud cheers worthy of a successful first night.
He was the undisputed greatest actor of the English-speaking world in the 20th century – and in 1968 the first actor to be made a Lord.
Born on May 22, 1907, he died on July 11, 1989. This biographer, Michael Munn, seems to have suffered a major identity crisis, confusing his own personality with Larry’s.
He reveals that both he and Larry had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of High Anglican priests. I’m afraid, Larry was more complex than that according to both my own observations and comments made by a mutual friend.
Comparison with his other contemporary theatrical knights, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, quickly lights up his genius. There was danger and daring within him. In Shakespeare’s Coriolanus he flung himself from a dangerous height to be held by the ankles at the last moment by two nervous Roman soldiers. His Richard III was parodied by Peter Sellers. And Tony Hancock referred to him as Laurence “Oliver”.
From early manhood to old age he pushed the envelope out. A dashing matinee idol became a Nazi, terrorising Dustin Hoffman in John Schleslinger’s 1976 film Marathon Man.
Apparently he was a wartime agent who German counter agents had on a death list. Wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill quickly realised his propaganda potential. Larry and his second wife Vivienne Leigh made That Hamilton Woman in 1941 – the love affair between Emma and Horatio Nelson. Churchill watched it continually and his patronage from Number 10 proved essential. When Henry V was filmed, it was an enormous morale booster for the war-weary in 1944.
My personal knowledge of Olivier was at one step removed. I sat on the board of the National Theatre, but I enjoyed the myths and rich anecdotes about him. As he drew towards the end of his extraordinary career on the stage, in film and on television, he granted an interview to a cub reporter whom I knew. Gingerly, the young man asked him about his three wives.
His Lordship quickly answered: “The first Jill Esmond was a lesbian. The second Vivienne Leigh a nymphomaniac,” and then he startled the interviewer by pointing at wife number three Joan Plowright. “I think she's the third one,” he said.
Often acutely jealous but not malicious, Gore Vidal, the American writer, claims to have inserted a strong gay meaning into the scripts of Spartacus when Olivier has a homoerotic scene with Tony Curtis. He didn’t fool Olivier.
Another biographer claimed that he had been discovered in uncompromising circumstances with the comedian Danny Kay. I bumped into him twice after he had been busy proving his manhood; coming out of a Chelsea house with the enchanting Dorothy Tutin and later with Sarah Miles in a Waterloo love nest. We exchanged cordial greetings and a knowing understanding. His vulnerability seems to have escaped Mr Munn.
The last word I feel belongs to Dame Maggie Smith, who was asked to carry one of the cushions, bearing honours and insignia at his memorial service in Westminster Abbey. Dame Maggie, often given to morbid irreverence, uttered: “I suppose I'll get his bloody false nose.”
That was an essential prop for the Olympian of a performer who hid behind so many faces in his long career – and still does.
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