A king of stage and screen
As happy as Larry? MARION McMULLEN looks at the life, legacy and leading ladies of acting legend Laurence Olivier
NO COVETED Olivier Awards will be finding new homes with the nation’s acting stars this year. The ceremony is among the coronavirus cancellations which have seen theatres and venues across the country shut their doors during the pandemic.
Nominations for the prestigious awards were announced at the beginning of March with new musical & Juliet leading the nominations with nine nods. Now the winners will be revealed at a special event later in the year.
The awards are named, of course, after British acting star Laurence Olivier and the design of the trophies pays tribute to his famous performance as Shakespeare’s Henry V.
Born in 1907 as Laurence Kerr Olivier, he once said: “I take a simple view of life – keep your eyes open and get on with it.”
His acting career spanned stage, films and television while his many leading ladies included Hollywood stars like Marilyn Monroe, Merle Oberon, Joan Fontaine, Jean Simmons and Claire Bloom.
Marilyn Monroe was mobbed by waiting press at the airport when she arrived to shoot 1957 romantic comedy The Prince and the Showgirl.
Larry, who directed and co-starred, later described her as “a professional amateur” and the problems with the troubled film shoot were famously told in 2011 movie My Week With Marilyn with Kenneth Branagh playing Olivier.
Olivier himself appeared with his second wife, Gone With The Wind star Vivien Leigh, in several movies including Fire Over England, 21 Days and That Hamilton Woman. The marriage ended in divorce in 1960.
He played the father of Joan Plowright in The Entertainer in 1960 and they married several months after the film’s release.
Olivier was knighted in 1947 while working on the screen version of Hamlet – which won five Oscars – and he went on to become the first actor to become a life peer in 1970 in recognition of his acting work.
“I’d like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman,” he said.
“I think a poet is a workman.
“I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God’s a workman. I don’t think there’s anything better than a workman.”
Olivier’s roles covered everything from Shakespeare kings and villains to a vampire slayer and a Nazi hunter. He even played Neil Diamond’s father in a remake of The Jazz Singer and was lined up at one point to play the Marlon Brando role of Mafia boss Don Corleone in The Godfather.
“I like to appear as a chameleon,” he said, “so all my career I’ve attempted to disguise myself.”
He also played Nazi war criminal Dr
Christian Szell in 1976 movie Marathon Man, but was said not to be a fan of co-star Dustin Hoffman’s extreme method acting techniques to prepare for the role. For one scene in which Hoffman’s character had supposedly stayed up for three days, Hoffman admitted that he too had not slept for 72 hours. “My dear boy,” Olivier reportedly replied, “why don’t you just try acting?”
One of his early stage roles saw him alternating the roles of Romeo and Mercutio with John Gielgud in Romeo and Juliet in 1935 and he helped establish the National Theatre in London although he did once declare “I think that bl**dy old National nearly killed me”.
The acting giant took his final curtain all in 1989 when he passed away at the age of 82.
A memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey with actors such as Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, Peter O’Toole, Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi arriving carrying some of his many awards and props including the crown in wore in Hamlet.
Ale Guinness spoke at the service saying: “Larry always carried the threat of danger with him; primarily as an actor, but also, for all his charm, as a private man.
“There were times when it was wise to be wary of him.”
Olivier inspired a generation of actors and his legacy continues with the theatre awards that bear his name.
But it is not just the acting profession which owes him a debt, Catcher In The Rye writer J D Salinger wrote a letter to him in 1951 simply saying: “I think you’re the only actor in the world who plays in a Shakespeare play with a special, tender familiarity as if you were keeping it in the family.”
Olivier himself once said: “The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust human emotions.
“The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.”