by Anne Edwards
Olivier came over for a week’s stay to talk Beaton into taking on the stage designs for a production of The School for Scandal which he hoped to take on tour to Australia the following spring, and to see Jean-Louis Barrault in a Parisian stage production of Hamlet. He also wanted to be certain Vivien was quite all right. At night they played what they called “The Game,” which was an elaborate form of charades. Olivier was in great humor and very excited about his plans for what he considered his “abstract production of Hamlet.”
Beaton recalls:
With arms flailing he emulated with a big whoosh a great curtain falling down here—a pillar “pffutting” down there—“a hell of a lot of smoke and emptiness all over the place.” Instead of using words that could be found in a dictionary, he would illustrate his intentions by making prep-school sounds—of pops, bangs, and corks being drawn, of internal combustion explosions, farts, and all sorts of other coarse noises. The camera would “raspberry” down onto the castle at the beginning of the film (“an old-fashioned idea, but then I’m old-fashioned”), and then “raspberry” away at the end—and the castle that was shown wouldn’t necessarily tally with the sets but the atmosphere would be the same. Larry is, heaven knows, serious about his career, but the project on hand is referred to only in ribald terms. No question of “would it be beautiful to have . . . ?” ”Mightn’t it be extraordinary to . . . ?”—just: “A great blob here (Bang! Bang-ho!)”—“A great cowpat there (Bungho!)”
It was a most gymnastic performance that we were treated to. Larry’s imitations have about them something of the original clown or, at least, the essential entertainer, who can be found in some remote music hall or performing in the street outside a pub. This was the real Larry— the mummer, the ale-drinking Thespian—not the rather overwhelmed and shy cipher with wrinkled forehead that goes out into society.
With Larry in Paris, Vivien was her gay, witty old self. Then, after he left to return to London, she became quiet and withdrawn. The days were spent listening to Duff Cooper read stories by Elizabeth Bowen in a dry, slow, and rather sad voice while outside there was a forlorn, melting snowscape.
By May they were in production at Shepperton with Anna Karenina, bathed in a premature heat wave during which all the cast members wore furs and trudged through ersatz snow while prop men nailed icicles on the windows. Vivien became depressed and somewhat difficult as the strain of picture making began. She nagged and complained to Beaton that her gloves were too small. Finally, piqued to the point of exasperation, he turned on her. “It’s not that the gloves are too small”—he glared—“but that your hands are too big.”
According to Beaton, the difficulties were becoming overwhelming and absorbing. One morning he went into her dressing room confident that he would find her in a great stage of elation, for it had just been announced that Larry was to be knighted.
I open the door [Beaton writes]. “Oh, I’m so happy for you about the great news!” A face of fury is reflected in the mirror. “Really, it’s too stupid! Would you believe it—the dressmaker from Paris was waiting at her hotel the entire day yesterday and the studio forgot to order a car for her. Really—I’ve never worked on such a film as this!” Later Vivien instructs me: “Please tell Clarissa how to behave when she brings journalists on the set. I don’t want them turned off, but I want to have them announced first and presented.” When the message is relayed to Clarissa, she has already received it from half a dozen other sources.
It had indeed been announced in The London Gazette in the King’s Birthday Honors list that Olivier was to be made a Knight Bachelor (“Laurence Olivier, actor. For services to stage and film”). His investiture was to follow in two months. Vivien, who had worshiped royalty with a passion all her life and who would now be Lady Olivier, experienced a surprising reaction. The news set off one of her manic attacks and this time it seemed of a longer duration and was followed by a painful period of depression.
She had crossed swords with the director (Duvivier), who had not proved an easy man to work with. Korda was in California on legal matters and there was no one strong enough to handle the situation. The crew could not work with either Vivien or Duvivier as matters stood, and they revolted. Fortunately, Korda returned from California in time to keep the cameras rolling. Vivien was giving a curiously remote performance, lacking passion, and Korda was puzzled by her lack of spirit. The film was beautifully mounted and magnificently produced, even within the limitations that black and white film imposed, but unfortunately it never seemed to come alive. George Moore, the Irish novelist, once wrote, “Anna Karenina was written to prove that if a woman lives unhappily with one husband and leaves him for the man she loves, her moral character will deteriorate.” Vivien revered Tolstoy and identified with Anna. Given these two factors and her ability to totally immerse herself in a role, it is understandable that she fell into a state of depression as the film progressed.
As soon as Anna Karenina was completed she went to visit Leigh at his country house, while Olivier remained at Notley. With Leigh she never seemed to “misbehave.” She wanted desperately to meet with his approval. After a very short time with him, her depression would disappear, only to reappear when she was away from him.
On Tuesday morning, July 8, 1947, Vivien accompanied Olivier to Buckingham Palace. In direct contrast to her own presentation at Court fourteen years before, she wore a stark and simple black suit, no jewelry, and a brimmed black hat. She looked beautiful but sad, a piquant mourner, a subdued butterfly. Olivier, wearing Ralph Richardson’s black waistcoat (Richardson had been knighted in the previous list), his hair bleached blond for Hamlet, left her standing alone in the Grand Hall as he stepped forward and walked up the long aisleway to His Majesty, King George. Then, head bowed, he went down on one knee on a red plush stool as the King lightly touched his sword on each of Olivier’s shoulders. When he rose he was Sir Laurence Olivier, Knight Bachelor, at forty the youngest actor to receive the honor.
That weekend Ivor Novello visited them at Notley and kept referring to Vivien in a teasing manner as Lady Olivier. Finally Vivien blurted, “Oh, you bloody fool, will you have some fucking tea?” and they both broke up with laughter. She appeared unimpressed with her new status, and she had even expressed surprise that Olivier had accepted the honor. Had she been made a Dame, that would have been another matter. But Olivier’s knighthood only meant that he had once again outdistanced her.
Hamlet was completed by November, which was a bitterly cold month. Olivier and the doctors were concerned about Vivien’s lung. Leigh Holman’s brother offered them L’Oulivette, his house in Cannes. They took both children and Gertrude and planned a family holiday. Vivien was soon her old self, sparkling like champagne, her smiles sweet and winning, considerate of everyone. It was easy at such times for Olivier to put aside all his anxieties about her.
She had worked hard to bring Tarquin and his father closer together, though a chasm of emotion still existed between the two which made it difficult for them to communicate. Tarquin loved his father painfully. He thought of him as the “king of the castle” when they were at Notley. And although Olivier was tender to the boy on these visits, Tarquin sensed that his father was afraid of him. One time he came back from a visit to Notley and told Jill, “Daddy seemed less afraid of me this time.” Tarquin appeared to make Olivier feel somewhat off guard, while Vivien was freer and more giving in her kindness and understanding. She encouraged him often, where Olivier criticized him. She was enthusiastic about his playing the piano for them. He could talk to her about “things.” She took him for walks, and she always asked kindly after his mother, which Olivier could not do. Vivien handled her role as go-between to father and son. Bridging the awkwardness of her own relationship to Suzanne was not as easy, but the two young people, who shared a cottage a little way along a hill and a short distance from the main house, got along well together, despite the three-year difference of age.
Vivien bloomed with all this happ
iness about her, and Olivier felt more relaxed and at ease about her health. He was certain that Hamlet was a fine film, equal and perhaps superior to Henry V. Vivien had earned some money from the Korda film. The tour they were planning to Australia, now scheduled to begin early in 1948, was falling into place. It seemed to them both that the dark days of illness and despair had passed.
Chapter Nineteen
Some seventy intimate friends came for a bon voyage party at Durham Cottage the night before they were to sail on the Corinthic for Australia. By five A.M. Danny Kaye and Roger Furse, the last guests, left, still in very high spirits as they revved the motor of their car and drove away, taking some of the whitewash on the front gate wall with them. Three hours later Vivien stood amid the debris of the abused drawing room where the party had been held and bid a tearful goodbye to her Siamese cat, New (named after the theatre).
At Euston Station, where they were taking the boat train to Liverpool, they were met by the forty-odd members of the Old Vic Company traveling with them (with Olivier as their head), an alarming number of reporters, photographers, film and television cameramen and interviewers, friends, fans, the high commissioners of Australia and New Zealand, and the stationmaster in a top hat. It was Saturday, February 14, Valentine’s Day, and the Oliviers looked like the perfect lovers as they boarded the train, Vivien’s arm entwined with Larry’s, smiling up adoringly at him. They reached Liverpool by three, to find more friends, fans, and many flashbulbs on the dock and masses of flowers and about a hundred telegrams in their stateroom. By four-fifteen, tugs were pushing them out toward the open sea. Vivien managed to wave from the ship’s rail to Cecil Tennant and Dorothy Welford, who had come to see them off, but then she went down to their cabin exhausted and remained there for the rest of the night, not eating much of the food sent to the room, and in poor spirits, her public face cast aside. Olivier explored the ship and walked the decks wearing a duffle coat, hands deeply buried in his pockets, lost in his thoughts, not glancing up when one of his own company passed by. He was hoping that the four-week sea trip would complete Vivien’s recovery. He knew she was enthusiastic about the tour and about her roles as Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal, Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth (a rather daring and controversial inclusion on Olivier’s part), and Lady Anne in Richard III. She loved ships, seeing new places, facing new experiences. That was one of the wonderful things about Vivien. She had an adventurous spirit. New things excited her.
The winter sea was the color of gun metal, and cold winds blew down even the most protected deck areas. But in a few days they would reach warmer southern waters, and Olivier hoped that with bluer waters and under a golden sun Vivien would cast aside her depression and once again become the radiant creature he adored, overflowing with activity, taking every opportunity to display her charm, wit, and intelligence. In their early days she had never seemed a complicated woman to him. He recalled the holiday in Venice in 1937 and the childish delight she had taken from its sheer physical splendor, the relaxed days on the sands of Malibu, the car trip through France before the war, and the first informal and gay parties they had given at Durham Cottage. Perhaps it was impossible to go back to the beginnings. Her fame as Scarlett O’Hara could not be swept under a carpet. She had played the most famous woman’s role ever put on film and had reached the top of her profession, yet it had not been enough for her. It was of major importance to her now to compete and equal him in his arena. Her ability, professionalism, and talent could not be denied, but Vivien’s extraordinary beauty and the high pitch of her voice would always get in the way of her attaining greatness as a Shakespearean actress. In order to present her to her best advantage, he had been meticulous in his choice of roles she was to play, making certain they were well within her range physically and vocally.
Lately, a new and difficult problem had to be dealt with. She seemed to want to provoke his jealousy. As he limped back to their stateroom, his foot hurt him curiously. He was suffering a “burning pain like a white-hot needle in [his] right toe.” He ran a bath but was too exhausted in the end to step into it, so he crawled in bed to read Logan Pearsall Smith’s English Aphorisms.
On the third day at sea Vivien finally began to move about the ship, and she joined him for dinner at the Captain’s table. Someone had given Olivier a travel diary, and later that night (February 17) he wrote, “Tonight at dinner at the Captain’s table Vivien turned to me suddenly with an alarmingly wild look and said, ‘Tonight I should like to play dominoes.’ ”
But by February 21 she had returned to her loving, charming self. The Old Vic Company rehearsed in the dining saloon from ten-thirty A.M. until eleven forty-five, then cleared out so that it could be prepared for lunch. They returned at two forty-five until teatime, when they would move to the forward lounge. Vivien worked hard and long on her role of Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal. The quarrel scenes between Lady Teazle and Sir Peter (Olivier) in the play were difficult for her. She was feeling deeply apologetic about her “moods” for the past weeks. Even in performing she wanted no more cross words to pass between herself and Larry.
“Sun directly overhead,” Olivier wrote on the 27th. “No shadows.” They were three days from Capetown, where the boat was to dock for a two-day stopover. Vivien was bubbling and happy. Never had she looked more beautiful. Her eyes took on the color of the sea, and she dressed in greens and blues and flowing fabrics, her white-rimmed sunglasses like sea foam on her deep blue lenses. She dazzled the Captain, the crew, and fellow passengers, and treated the company as though they were all aboard a seagoing Notley. Olivier meanwhile relaxed, concentrating on his work.
They were met at Capetown by flowers, messages, the press, fans, and by Ivor Novello, Gwen ffrangcon-Davies (who had known Olivier since their Birmingham Rep days in the 1920s), and Vanessa Lee—all of whom were appearing in Novello’s Perchance to Dream at the Alhambra Theatre. It was a marvelous reunion for Vivien, and she was in peak form.
“Vivien looking v. lovely in New Look black and white,” observed Olivier. “Ivor’s car took us to the Alhambra to see ‘Perchance to Dream.’ Wonderful having to come all the way to Capetown in order to see it. [It had been playing in London for the previous season.] Lots of rippling applause from the publique on the way in [for him and Vivien].”
Wherever she went, everyone recognized Scarlett O’Hara. Autograph collectors followed them. Fans crowded around them. It was a small indication of what would happen once they reached Australia. Gone With the Wind had assumed the stature of a classic with continuing appeal. It had only recently premiered in the liberated cities of Europe—Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna. Everywhere else it had been reissued several times. Vivien enjoyed the instant recognition, the return to star status.
The flat summit of Table Mountain was shrouded in the famous white mist called the “Tablecloth” for the entire two days of their stay in Capetown, but it did not seem to keep them from having a wonderful time and seeing every tourist attraction—the Botanical Gardens, the Sea Point Aquarium, the Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals, the National Gallery, the seventeenth-century castle. Olivier’s foot was still somewhat painful, but he was glowing and happy as he watched Vivien enjoy herself in the South African sun.
There was a big party given for them by Sir Evelyn and Lady Baring at High Commission House, and then the next morning the Corinthic left the Cape on its way to Perth, arriving there on schedule at eight A.M. on Monday (March 15) morning, right in the midst of an unpredicted heat wave and after a late farewell night on board, at which Olivier had consumed more whiskey “than I remember since an evening with Roger [Furse] and Dallas [Bower, Olivier’s associate producer on Henry V] in Dublin, 1943.”
Vivien was wide awake at seven, an hour before they docked. She smiled winningly at the cameras, did not blink at the flashbulbs, and welcomed reporters warmly aboard. Eventually they went ashore. The Australians fell in love with her immediately. She looked miraculously cool in spite of having to we
ar a tweed suit in sweltering 100-degree weather, her light dresses having been packed and already sent ashore.
The theatre in which they were to appear in Perth was a movie house. They were the first live show to appear in it, and there were no dressing rooms. The Oliviers finally screened off with wire netting a part of the stage to each side, and the men used one area, the women the other. Vivien did not complain and even helped to iron costumes. Olivier, upon seeing the immense old theatre for the first time, said, “We’d better dress up as Christians and throw ourselves to the lions!” Working in shirtsleeves in the unbearable heat, his foot intensely painful, he managed to do wonders on the narrow stage. Once again wherever they went were crowds, but they were treated not as film stars but as visiting royalty. In fact, since King George VI and Queen Mary were scheduled for a royal visit the following year, the Oliviers appeared to be giving officials and the public a chance for a grand rehearsal.
They opened with The School for Scandal the evening of March 20 to overwhelming applause. A week of receptions and speeches followed. “Straight from Lord Mayor to University for lecture on ‘The Use of Poetry in Drama.’ Dear Professor Currie introducing V. She makes the most damn awful fuss but I think she’s beginning to like it,” wrote Olivier. By March 27 his foot was well enough for him to execute some dance steps in the play. He was not entirely happy with his own makeup for Sir Peter, or his interpretation, though he remarked, “Show getting better. Vivien loosening up no end, but she must bubble with delicious laughter both inner and audible.”