Olivier (40 page)

Olivier brought it off. “The way in which he led that little band in Aquinas Street is something I’ll remember all my life,” wrote Jonathan
Miller. “He set a standard of leadership which no-one can even
hope
to emulate.” Ronald Pickup, another of the young men who rose to glory under Olivier, talks of the “incredible company spirit” which reigned at the Old Vic. One could cite a dozen such tributes. It was achieved by a conscious effort on Olivier’s part; he could not have explained how he did it, but he knew he was doing it. In a way it was an act: Olivier the all-encompassing Director was as much a creation of his will and skill as Olivier playing Othello or Olivier playing Astrov. Yet it was an act that found its inspiration in his love for the Company, his pride in the Company, his conviction that the National Theatre was, and must continue to be, the greatest company in the world. “It was the most beautiful thing, running a Company,” he later said. His resolve to make this true was his inspiration, transformed him into another being, more intense, more passionate. When he was off duty, when there was nobody whom he needed to inspire, it was as if a light had been turned down; with other members of the company it blazed extravagantly.
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His success depended on his ability not just to communicate with the company as a whole, but to relate to every member of it. “His real quality is as a great leader,” considered Edward Hardwicke. “He worked on a kind of instinctive thing; within seconds he seemed to be able to tell what people were going to do or not going to do. It’s a very special quality; it’s not something you acquire, you either have it or you don’t.” The ability to empathise was in fact not something with which Olivier was well endowed. He was himself so strong a personality that his instinct was to try to transform those with whom he had dealings rather than to understand and to work with them, seeking thus to divert them in the direction he wished them to go. His interest in the workings of other people’s minds was limited. Tynan remembered trying to engage him in a conversation about his relationship with another member of the company. Olivier’s eyes glazed over. When Tynan had finished, he said merely: “I wonder if I should get a new Daimler or a converted London taxi.” Anything that involved emotional relationships, Tynan noticed, Olivier would shy away from. Gaskill felt the same. It wasn’t that Olivier
was cold or unemotional, he felt, but it was not realistic, just because he was a great actor, to expect him also to be “a man of great feeling and emotional depth. Not many actors are.” But though there might be little emotional rapport, on a professional level the meeting of minds was total. Olivier understood what the young actor wanted as well as he knew it himself, and knew too how best that object could be achieved.
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The grander you are, the more your attentions are appreciated. A friendly nod from the Queen is worth half an hour’s obsequious flattery from a court flunkey. Olivier was theatrical royalty and he did not have to do very much to win the hearts of the underlings at the National. What he did, though, he did with style and generosity. “He was always courteous to us understudies, walk-ons and one-liners,” remembered Peter Jolley. “When I appeared for the rehearsals for ‘Eden End’ he took the trouble to welcome me and introduce me to everyone.” How far this sprang from a genuine interest in the young and how far it was done for the sake of public relations is a question that he never asked himself and could not have answered if he had. Simon Callow, who as well as being one of the most distinguished actors of his generation is also an intelligent and perceptive writer on the theatre, can see both sides of the question. “Olivier surrounded himself with the very best of the younger generation,” he wrote in one book, “he carefully modelled their careers, noting what challenges would most benefit them, giving advice and encouragement, teaching by example, leading from the front. They adored him, these young actors.” “Olivier’s National Theatre was just that: organised by one man and what he stood for,” was the verdict of the same author. “The company, as such, barely exists. The growth of the individual artist is not attended to in the least … Most of the company, far from slowly advancing through the ranks, decline in them, until finally they’re out on the back doorstep with the rubbish.”
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There is truth in both judgments. Olivier was Olympian, imposing his vision on the company with scant attention to the needs or feelings of individuals. He was also intensely human, liking to be liked, concerned about the needs of lesser mortals. “He was the perfect guide and mentor
for all young actors,” remembered Robert Stephens, “because while he was palpably
primus inter pares
he was also one of us … He rehearsed with us and he ate with us in the staff canteen … Larry knew and understood what made us tick, and helped you whenever he could. Which, usually, was always.” Many are the junior members of the company who, while grabbing a rapid lunch in the canteen, were disconcerted and delighted to find a rather undistinguished-looking and bespectacled middle-aged man settle beside them and to realise that God had come down to earth.
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“You can’t be too scrupulous,” said Olivier when describing the problems of running a great theatre. “You can’t be too kind … You don’t play for popularity.” He
did
play for popularity, and when he had to be unkind he drowned the medicine under so thick a layer of treacle that the victim was left with a vague sense of gratitude for the trouble that had been taken. “Darling girl, I think we’ll have to let you go,” he told Billie Whitelaw. “We simply have nothing suitable to offer you, nothing that’s worthy of you. I think you should now extend your career and expand your talent. It’s been so marvellous working with you.” She left, thinking how lucky she was to have so considerate a boss and how concerned he was about her career. Even when it was pointed out to her that she had just been fired she remained grateful. “He inspired hero-worship and genuine professional admiration in all of us.”
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“Professional” is the most important word in that sentence. Olivier was above all determined that everything should be done to the highest professional standards, sloppy amateurism outraged him in anything to do with the theatre and above all in any aspect of the National’s activities. He felt it was essential that actors should be fit; he gave them full-time access to a gymnasium and set an example by himself working out with singular ferocity. He wanted the best acting voices in the world, so he employed a full-time voice coach available to all who needed her. He believed actors should eat, not lavishly, but well; the canteen was more likely to provide fruit, salad, cheese and milk than hamburgers and beer. The Liaison Committee at the National Theatre
dealt with issues of programming and training, but also such matters as the state of the canteen, the heating, whether men should clean the ladies’ lavatory, whether table tennis should be played in the Old Vic rehearsal room. Olivier was more likely to attend its meetings than he was meetings of the Main Board. At the last meeting of the Liaison Committee that he attended it was minuted “that the Company wished him to know that they were currently a happy Company”. He would have asked for no better farewell.
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“We were his other family,” Ronald Pickup told Joan Plowright after Olivier’s death, “and I know that is why people who were not part of the National Theatre when he was the Guv’nor envy our blessed fortune and long to participate in glorious tales of the days of Olivier at the Old Vic.” Nobody but he could have done it; Peter Hall, when in due course he took over, did not even try. In a sense Olivier was already past his time. “It is impossible for a catalogue of reasons,” wrote Richard Eyre, “that we will ever see again a great buccaneering actor-manager who is also a Hollywood film star, who is equally celebrated in the theatre, and who is capable of remaking his life and his art so often and so judiciously.” Olivier carried into the world of complex organisations, international financing, governmental subventions, health and safety, the spirit of the individual adventurer, the one-man band. It was not a oneman band in the sense that only one man counted, it was not even a oneman band in the sense that Olivier was autocratic, but it was a one-man band in the sense that it was Olivier’s National Theatre and bore the stamp of his personality in every facet of its being. When he boasted that, but for him, there would have been no National Theatre, he pitched his claim too high. But what is certain is that, but for him, the National Theatre that Peter Hall inherited would have been a lesser and very different place.
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I
f one is launching a new theatre company, should one ease it into existence by choosing something lightweight for its first production or go straight for the jackpot? If one is Olivier, it would be the jackpot every time. It was Peter O’Toole who first put the choice of “Hamlet” into his head. He called on Olivier and asked him to be the director of a production of “Hamlet” which he was planning. Olivier countered with the offer that “Hamlet”, with O’Toole playing the lead, should be the first production of the National Theatre. If he had not committed himself in this way it is at least possible that he would have cast himself in the main part of whatever play was chosen: as it was he settled for director. But for the National Theatre to feature in its first production an internationally famous film star, who had only recently achieved vast success in “Lawrence of Arabia”, called for some explanation. “This is a special engagement and rather outside our general policy,” Olivier wrote apologetically to Tyrone Guthrie. “This policy concerns itself with a hoped-for permanent ensemble (the old, old yearning), such an ensemble not to have its nose put out of joint by the invitation of outside stars except on very rare occasions, the sales talk being that, in the beautiful future, to be a National Theatre player is to be a star.”
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Special engagement or not, it did not get the National off to an easy start. Olivier as director was at his most authoritarian. He told O’Toole, “I know my way about the map of ‘Hamlet’ much more than you can possibly do,” and proceeded to dictate not just the route that should be
followed but the precise pace that should be set and every stopping place along the way. “He tried to make O’Toole act Hamlet as he, Olivier, would have done,” remembered William Gaskill. During rehearsals – apart from the fact that the revolve, which had been installed at great expense, developed a personality of its own, refusing to budge when needed and, even more disconcertingly, revolving when it should have been stationary – all seemed to be going well. Olivier convinced himself that O’Toole was going to do everything that was asked of him.
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The final dress rehearsal provided what Olivier claimed was “the most perfect performance of ‘Hamlet’ I think I shall ever see”. And then, when the first night came, in Olivier’s eyes at least, all went wrong. O’Toole was influenced by “silly and impractical ideas”, Olivier recollected. He took too slowly scenes through which he should have galloped, he indulged his emotions extravagantly. “He stripped himself stark naked and said: ‘Look, I’ve got nothing left at all’. I felt so ashamed for the poor chap.” Not many shared his opinion. Noël Coward thought O’Toole’s Hamlet was “wonderful” and, though some critics felt that his rendering was not princely enough, on the whole his performance was well received. Olivier, however, convinced himself that his advice had been ignored and that disaster had ensued. He made his feelings very evident and O’Toole took offence. They parted acrimoniously. It seems that the breach took some time to heal. “Please stop behaving like a pompous, ill-mannered, resentful, tuppence-ha’penny failed politician,” O’Toole wrote to Olivier some years later. It was not till 1971 that O’Toole invited Olivier to “bury the hatchet in my head” by taking part in some “cinematic entertainment”. “This end of any hatchet buried and forgotten long ago,” Olivier responded; but he still turned the offer down.
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The choice of “Hamlet” as the first production was a resounding statement that the National Theatre was not going to leave Shakespeare to Stratford and considered itself responsible for sustaining all that was noblest in classical British drama. This could not be its sole or even principal
raison d’être
, however. Olivier realised that his choice of plays
over the first year or two was going to shape the public’s perception of the theatre. He had given William Gaskill the impression that he was going to concentrate on modern works; primarily British, though with American and European plays added for good measure. When it came to the point, however, there were two Shakespeares, a Shaw, a Sophocles, an Ibsen, a Chekhov, Brighouse’s “Hobson’s Choice”, Farquhar’s “The Recruiting Officer” and, thrown in presumably to satisfy Tynan, Max Frisch’s “Andorra” and Samuel Beckett’s one-act “Play”. It was an eclectic list which displayed the range and versatility of the new company but did not do much for contemporary British drama. The choice of the Beckett was adventurous and Olivier did not regret it. “Would you be interested in writing a full-length play for the National Theatre?” he asked Beckett in 1965. “If so, we’d be delighted to commission it.” He did not claim to be at one with the avant-garde, but he had an instinctive perception of quality and, while not really knowing what “Play” was about, knew that it was good. It was much the same with Harold Pinter. “I enjoy, in fact love, every line of Pinter as it falls on my ears,” he told Pamela Berry, “but at the end of the evening I always dread someone asking me what the play’s been about.”
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Tynan was keen that the National Theatre should engage a resident playwright who would work with the company and be guaranteed a living wage. Young dramatists, he said, at the moment tended to offer their work to the Royal Court or to some West End producer like Michael Codron. If the National were to offer one of them a contract it would be a bold affirmation that they could now look south of the Thames to further their careers. Olivier was sceptical. How would the theatre choose whom to take on? “It’s a very, very vexed question and needs a lot of thought and discussion” – in other words, certainly not. He accepted Tynan’s thesis that it was part of the National’s remit to encourage young British dramatists – it would not be too long before writers like Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard were seeing their work appear in the Old Vic – but he was determined that the prestige of the fledgling theatre should not be undermined by putting on work that
was ephemeral or second-rate. Better to be cautious and perhaps miss an opportunity or two than to be rash and damage the reputation of the theatre.
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