Olivier (58 page)

Miss Markham was forgotten within a few days; Sarah Miles was more long-lasting. She came back into Olivier’s life in Hollywood in 1976. He took her to a party and after that they made love. It does not sound a wholly satisfactory occasion. Olivier was much preoccupied by his recent illness. “See here,” said Olivier, turning on the light, “that’s why I wouldn’t hold your hand.” He showed Miles the greyish, watery substance oozing from his fingertips. In spite of this they kept the affair going when they got back to London. According to Miles he was at his most vulnerable emotionally and claimed he was anxious to divorce Joan Plowright and marry her: “How easy it would have been then, in his lonely and tormented state, to have him fall – albeit a slightly overripe fruit – plop, into my lap.” One suspects that, when it came to the point, she would have found the apple clung rather more tenaciously to the tree than she had anticipated. He told Miles’s parents that there was nothing he wanted more than to marry their daughter but that his wife had made him realise that “the scandal would be too much for the children to bear”. Miles was hurt that her lover had elected to make this revelation to her parents rather than to her, but the affair flickered on.
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His light still burned in the National Theatre where the existence of the Olivier Theatre made it doubly certain that his name would never be forgotten. As the Company evolved in the new building it seemed to him that all the values he had fostered were being eroded and that the theatrical edifice which Peter Hall was creating had less and less to do with the National Theatre of which he had once dreamed. “His hatred of Hall is now incredible and borders at times on paranoia,” Joan Plowright told Tynan. “He now passionately regrets ever having given his backing to P. Hall as his successor.” To his mingled dismay and satisfaction things were going badly wrong on the South Bank: there was a strike backstage, pickets outside the theatre, plays acted on stages bereft of scenery. It would never have happened in my day, Olivier may have thought; and with some justification, for the loyalty he commanded among those who worked for him would almost certainly have frustrated the efforts of any unionist seeking to stir up resentment of the management. Though he never said as much, it gave him much satisfaction that what was considered to be the best auditorium in the National Theatre bore his name. Douglas Fairbanks wrote triumphantly to point out that he was not the only man to have a theatre called after him. There was now a Douglas Fairbanks Theater in New York. True, the theatre was off Broadway and only seated 199, but that did not affect the principle of the thing. More serious, perhaps, was that nobody seemed sure whether it was named in honour of Douglas Fairbanks
père
or Douglas Fairbanks
fils
. Perhaps the solution, Fairbanks reflected, would be to call it the “Both Douglas Fairbanks’ Theater”.
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As Olivier approached the age of seventy-five it became evident to everyone – even evident to him – that he was every day finding it more difficult to undertake any demanding role. His memory deteriorated by the day. Toby Stephens, son of Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith, remembered how kind Olivier had been to him when he met him with his parents, “but later he was struggling and couldn’t remember who anyone was”. The names of people he had known well for years began to escape him. Who was that man, he asked, with whom he had been
conducting a long conversation about cricket? It was Harold Pinter. “Sometimes the forgetfulness was feigned. Once he saw Maggie Smith in the garden at the Malt House. “Who is that woman?” he asked one of his children. “Daddy, you must recognise Maggie Smith.” “Oh,
another
of your mother’s friends!” He must have been in an exceptionally cantankerous mood. Maggie Smith had always been one of Joan Plow-right’s closest friends and any acrimony that had existed between her and Olivier had long disappeared. But over the years he had become crotchety and unable to control his tongue. Hugh Whitemore opened a play in Brighton. At the last moment Olivier announced he wanted to go. The play starred Glenda Jackson and was booked up, but Whitemore managed to secure two tickets. “We’ve got people staying,” Olivier said. “I need six seats.” Again Whitemore obliged. The following day the two men met. “Didn’t think much of your play,” said Olivier. “He
may
have been joking,” says Whitemore, doubtfully. And the need to earn more bulked ever larger in his mind. Still, he never rated money above the pleasure of living as and where he wanted. People would ask him why he did not follow the example of Noël Coward and decamp to some tax-free exile. “I don’t care what the taxes are or how ghastly the people are – and God knows they
are
!” he declared. “I will not be told I may not return to my own country. That would drive me absolutely mad.”
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Though his memory grew weaker and his physical powers diminished by the day, he continued to play important roles. Each time his fellow actors would ask themselves if he could carry it off, each time when the challenge came Olivier rose to it and showed that he could still conjure a commanding performance from what had seemed to be the ashes of his career. Some of the material was pretty ghastly. Olivier’s own bête noire was “The Jazz Singer”. “I’ve never had such a horrid time,” he protested. “The sickening, absolutely molasses-like Jewish sentimentality of it! It made me feel ill … it oozes sentiment like pus. I never saw anything, heard anything, read anything so absolutely awful.” Still, if one was earning $1 million for a few weeks’ work, feeling ill seemed a small price to pay.
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Almost as awful was “Inchon”, in which he played General Douglas MacArthur. Gregory Peck, who had played MacArthur in another film a few years before, wrote to reassure him that he felt no pique at Olivier usurping his role: “I shall look forward to seeing what you do with the old boy.” Don’t, he advised, let the producer do what happened to him: put him on the bridge of a battle cruiser during the assault on Inchon when the film company had been too mean to portray the assault itself. Olivier would happily have settled for such a misfortune: instead he had to cope with a monsoon, a typhoon, a director on the edge of a nervous breakdown and make-up which took an hour and a half to put on. It left him most impressively disguised, but his new persona did not “look a scrap like MacArthur either”. It was a disaster, Olivier concluded; “it was one of those occasions when one says: ‘I’m doing my best. You didn’t
have
to ask me to play.’” Once again his feelings were solaced by a payout of $1 million.
Newsweek
called it the worst movie ever made, but as it was never shown in Britain Olivier was at least spared the humiliation of being exposed before his native audience.
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This was his “last chance to make big money”, he considered. Even while these films were being shot Olivier was engaged off and on in the aesthetically far more rewarding yet financially less well-rewarded task of playing Lord Marchmain in a television series based on Evelyn Waugh’s novel
Brideshead Revisited
. “It’s a masterpiece of a book,” he announced. Some people consider that it was far from being Waugh’s masterpiece, being marred by sentimentality and odious snobbery, but it made magnificent television. In Olivier’s hands Lord Marchmain’s protracted and picturesque death bed, already an important scene in the novel, became the most memorable feature of the series. Olivier himself was upset because John Gielgud had been given the role of Edward Ryder, the narrator’s splendidly eccentric father. “Why did you give Johnnie the best and funniest part?” he asked the producer, Derek Granger. “Why didn’t I get it?” In fact the director had thought that Gielgud was the better choice for Ryder, but Granger assured Olivier that Lord Marchmain was a far more glamorous role. Olivier was just
being mischievous, thought the director; given half a chance he would have played both parts and others as well. Olivier was right for March-main: it is hard to believe that the aged aristocrat fighting to retain his independence and his dignity even as death closed in could have been more convincingly or movingly portrayed. “You are a clever old one,” wrote Robert Flemyng. “After all those triumphs in the theatre and on film, to complete the hat-trick on television too.”
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It was television that occupied most of his energies in the declining years of his career. His small part in a drawn-out and unsuccessful series about the life of Wagner was memorable only because he appeared on the screen with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, the first time they had acted together since “Richard III” a quarter of a century before. The director, Tony Palmer, remembered that “each tried, in a gentlemanly way, to upstage the other two”. Richardson, he felt, managed to be the most successful. Richard Burton was playing Wagner. He gave a dinner party for the three veterans, drank too much and chose the occasion to abuse his guests. Olivier, he said, was “all technique and no emotion”, Richardson had lost his memory, Gielgud’s offence was to be a homosexual.
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In 1983 Olivier was asked to play Lear for Granada Television. The doctors told him the effort was beyond him; Joan Plowright refused to discourage him, if he felt he could do it he must try. Several years before, Peter Sallis had suggested that he should make a film of “King Lear”. “Oh no, dear boy,” Olivier had replied. “There’s no way I’d do that.” Now the possibility was there, all inhibitions were forgotten. He would stumble onto the set looking so tired and decrepit that it seemed he would not even be able to stand upright while the shooting was on; then, as if at the click of a switch, he would come alive and blast his way into one of the most exacting roles ever written for the theatre. John Hurt, who was playing the Fool, felt that Olivier was all the time conscious that he was battling against failing powers. “He hated it, but Larry would never capitulate … He’d get edgy, basically with himself. If people tried to help him too much he would say ‘Oh, just leave me alone’.” Hurt was
afraid that Olivier might resent him, as being a young upstart with a career before him. On the contrary, he found that he was treated with respect and as an equal. Olivier was always ready to offer advice if it was asked for, but he would never thrust himself forward. Indeed, he could sometimes be irritatingly evasive. His Cordelia, Anna Calder-Marshall, once asked him: “Please, tell me anything I should know.” “Ah, do you know where babies come from?” asked Olivier. “Yes, I’ve just had one.” “Oh blast, I wanted to be the first to tell you.”
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“It was the most moving performance he had ever given,” wrote Joan Plowright. Moving, perhaps, not so much in the quality of the performance as in the courage and the resolution which he displayed. Olivier advised Christopher Plummer not to see it. “I’m not very good in it, you know,” he said. “I was so bloody weak they had to lift me onto my horse.” Plummer saw it nevertheless and had to agree with Olivier’s verdict: “He was indeed very frail and his voice was pitched unusually high – he no longer owned those wondrous ringing tones …” George Hall acted as his voice coach. Very little coaching was needed since Olivier understood and controlled his voice with a completeness which Hall had not found in any other actor. But though the technique was still perfect, some of the power had gone. He tired quickly, and not only where his voice was concerned. Hall noticed that even though Anna Calder-Marshall was far from substantial Olivier tottered perceptibly when carrying her around the stage. Lear, of course, is an old man’s part, but it is a part which demands authority and grandeur. Olivier still enjoyed all the technical skills that had allowed him effortlessly to dominate so many stages, but the fury had dwindled, the force was no longer with him. He was to act in seven or eight more films for the cinema or television, in several of which he played substantial roles, but after “Lear” he knew that he was on the way out. He had put his foot flat down on the accelerator and the surge of power had failed to come. He would not yet get out from behind the wheel but he knew that his racing days were done.
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*

It remained to ensure that a proper record of his life was left for posterity to marvel at. There had already been a dozen or so biographies, some substantial, some trivial, none approaching the definitive. Olivier professed to have read none of them. A joint biography of Olivier and Vivien Leigh by Felix Barker was the only one that could claim any sort of endorsement by its subjects; it had been published in 1953 and so had long been overtaken by events. Olivier had at that point no intention of undertaking anything himself and felt little enthusiasm for the idea that he might feed the necessary information to some trusted confidant. “My peculiar dislike of interviews,” he told an aspirant for this role, “my inability to do them well, my horror at the result and my consequent reluctant decision to avoid this means of expression, are things which are going to make you find me not the most co-operative person in the world.”
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Then Kenneth Tynan, early in 1977, announced that the
New Yorker
had asked him to write a profile of Olivier. Tynan was different: Olivier trusted him; he was already conversant with much of the background; however malevolent his treatment of Vivien Leigh in the past, his reverence for Olivier as an actor had never been in question. Olivier gave the project his blessing and, still more important, gave Tynan permission to quote from their correspondence. Probably Tynan from the start had intended to develop the article into a book; at all events, at the end of 1978, he announced that it had grown beyond the bounds – already generous – laid down by the
New Yorker
and that, as soon as the magazine had finished with it, he proposed to publish it, “in expanded form, of course”. Olivier made no direct response to this and Tynan therefore assumed that he would have no objection and proceeded to do lucrative deals with British and American publishers. It was not going to be a full biography, he explained to Olivier, it would concentrate on Olivier’s post-war career, particularly his time at the National Theatre. The response was a blunt statement that Olivier did not propose to cooperate with the project in any way and, what was even worse, that he would recommend all his friends and associates to take the same line.
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