The burden of running the National was made the greater by his determination, from the very start, to concern himself with every aspect of its existence. “Delegation” was not a word which came easily to Olivier. Any significant policy decision would, he took for granted, be under his control. When the South Bank Board set up an Advisory Panel to supervise work on the new enterprise, Olivier wrote to the Chairman, Lord Cottesloe: “It is a little awkward for me to put to you what I want to, without sounding as if I thought no end of myself … It is that I do feel that I should run this Advisory Panel myself and I feel that, as Director of the theatre, the idea need not be too unacceptable.” But to be in charge of the broad sweep of policy while leaving the niggling details to others was not his style. When a long-serving doorman retired it was Olivier who decided that a party would be in order, vetted the guest list, approved the budget and in due course appeared and said a few words himself. He wrote petulant minutes about the low quality of the lavatory paper in the staff toilets and enquired whether it was necessary to have so many lights permanently burning in the entrance hall. “There were occasions when you thought: ‘Will there ever be any peace?’” said Rupert Rhymes, the theatre manager. No detail was too small to escape his attention. There had been much discussion about the exact colour of the posters: from Canada he despatched a postcard – “Lousy postcard, but this is the shade of yellow.” Upset by the amount of coughing in the auditorium, he sent Rhymes round to a manufacturer of cough lozenges, instructing him to persuade them to supply sachets which could be handed out by the usherettes. His obsessive interest in detail could be irritating, sometimes even ridiculous, but no-one doubted that it stemmed from his determination that the National Theatre should be, in every way, as good as it could possibly be, and that the welfare of all those who worked in it was very much part of that consideration.2
Olivier had always maintained that it would be disastrous to build a theatre and then look for a company to fill it; the company must come first, the building should follow a few years later when the company was well established. This meant that the National Theatre would need a temporary home. For reasons both practical and sentimental the most proper place for it in those early years seemed to be the Old Vic. Olivier’s glory days under the Old Vic banner had been while the company operating under that name was based in the West End, leaving its war-damaged headquarters in ruins just off the Waterloo Road on the South Bank. He had no particular affection for the now rebuilt theatre, but it was serviceable enough and would act as a base while its permanent home was being built. His experiences at Chichester, however, had made him dissatisfied with the traditional hole-in-the-wall stage which the Old Vic then offered. He insisted that the stage should be thrust forward into the auditorium, a procedure which was both expensive to achieve and involved the sacrifice of a number of seats. Still worse, the change damaged the acoustics. “It was my fault,” Olivier admitted. “I brought the stage forward one too many times. I ruined it. It used to have the best sound in the world.”3
Even Olivier had to accept that he could not conduct the whole operation single-handed. For his principal support he hoped to enlist the driving force at the Royal Court, George Devine. Devine was only three years younger than Olivier; since his spectacular breakthrough with “Look Back in Anger” he had transformed the Royal Court into one of the most innovative and successful companies in the British theatre; he felt no urge to embark on this new enterprise under the command of someone else. “We were like partners, we were never like rivals,” protested Olivier. “I could have provided a formula that would have included him.” Joan Plowright thinks that it could have worked, that the two men were sufficiently mature and respectful towards each other to have established a modus operandi. Olivier would have tried, but it is hard to see how the two men could for long have lasted in uneasy partnership. “He felt he couldn’t work under Larry,” said Devine’s widow, and whatever arrangements might have been cobbled up, this in effect is what would have had to happen.4
Instead, according to Olivier with Devine’s approval and certainly with his acquiescence, Olivier proceeded to poach the Royal Court’s brilliant young directors: William Gaskill and John Dexter. Their appointment was a striking affirmation of the way he intended the National Theatre to develop; it represented a rejection of the traditional ways of the old classical theatre and an acceptance of the new world into which he himself had ventured with “The Entertainer”. Dexter accepted the invitation with alacrity; Gaskill took rather more persuading – he wanted assurances that the National would put an emphasis on modern work – but allowed himself to be convinced without too much difficulty. “We were tremendously excited and flattered,” Gaskill remembered. At one point a formal relationship between the National Theatre and the Royal Court was envisaged. The Drama Committee of the National Theatre considered the issue and the Board was told that the Director “thought it would be advantageous if some link could be formed with an organisation so intimately linked with the younger school of dramatists”. A press release later that year announced that the two bodies would cooperate in certain fields, such as the training of young actors and the commissioning of new plays. In fact the traffic seems to have been mainly one way. As well as Gaskill and Dexter, the National was to recruit several of the Royal Court’s most promising young actors as well as to invite dramatists who had first written for the Court to produce work for the National. Relations remained harmonious, though, and when something close to open warfare existed between the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company it was reassuring to know that an ally was at hand in Sloane Square.5
In taking on Gaskill and Dexter Olivier was well aware that he was welcoming to the National two young directors who were not only used to working together but had ideas different to his own which they would not hesitate to promote. He accepted the incipient challenge with equanimity. “I was determined to surround myself with good actors and first-rate directors,” he wrote. “I wanted people who were prepared to outgun me. I wanted the cream of the British theatre, and I think I got it.” So far as the directors were concerned this was true. Gaskill and Dexter were not given a free hand, but they enjoyed a high degree of independence and their views were canvassed and taken into account on most important issues. When it came to the actors it was not quite so clear-cut. Olivier did not relish competition. The British stage was littered with corpses of those who had tried to outgun Olivier and had perished for their pains. He was disinclined to give too much space to those few whom he saw as genuine or even potential rivals. But he was eager to bring forward young actors of promise who had a career to make, and he rejoiced in their success. He was resolved that the National Theatre should provide the best dramatic performances in the world: for this he would need the best actors and to engage them was his resolve.6
He was determined that the National should not become a repository for actors who were past their prime or, at least, seemed to have little potential for new development left within them. To achieve this he was obliged to disappoint and sometimes offend many veterans who had served with him in the past. At least a hundred times he used a formula designed to keep petitioners at bay: “Even now plans long made persist in crumbling and fate will insist that we continue to find ourselves at Square One in a most aggravating and frustrating way.” It seems unlikely that this meaningless mantra was of much consolation to the rejected, but Olivier convinced himself that it possessed almost mystic qualities and would appease even the most demanding applicant. It was soon apparent to him that the ability to say “No”, whether gracefully or gracelessly, was going to be a most important weapon in his armoury. Timothy Bateson, who had played quite important roles at Chichester, took it for granted that he would be invited to join the National. To his dismay he was passed over. “Obviously he [Olivier] had decided to associate himself with the contemporary Royal Court influence,” he wrote sadly. In spite of, or perhaps because of, his long association with Olivier,
Roger Furse too was dropped. This “very much hurt him”, thought Derek Granger, though, to judge by an amicable exchange of letters some years later, no lasting harm was done to the friendship. Some important actors were rejected too: John Mills, though an old and close friend, was told there would be no place for him at the National because – a not entirely convincing reason – the theatre could not afford him; while Rex Harrison, much less of a friend, was turned down on the grounds that Olivier, “for the sake of the amour propre of the company”, wished only very rarely to disturb a working ensemble by introducing stars from another sphere. Mills seems to have borne no grudge at his rejection; Harrison, either for this or for some other reason, saw Olivier as an enemy. “A stupid bastard, obsessed by folie de grandeur,” he described him.7
Of the first group of actors Olivier picked, four, among them Joan Plowright and Robert Stephens, were associated with the Royal Court; two – Maggie Smith and Max Adrian – had established a name for themselves in revue, and two – Michael Redgrave and Diana Wynyard – were established stars. There was nothing strikingly innovative about this selection, nor about the bright young novices in their twenties – Anthony Hopkins, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi – whom Olivier picked from the plethora of talent which washed around the National Theatre. As Michael Billington has pointed out, it would be extravagant to argue that Olivier, “with his instinctive patriotism and actor-manager paternalism”, was in any way a revolutionary figure. But nevertheless he chose to reject not merely his own past but a large part of London’s theatrical establishment. He ventured into terrain which, if not unexplored, was unfamiliar. And every appointment was his appointment. Anthony Hopkins, when his turn came to audition, was excited to find that Olivier was very much in charge of the operation and surprised how ordinary he looked, “very average in his horn-rimmed glasses and three-piece suit”. Having seen Olivier playing Othello the night before he rather daringly offered the deathbed scene. “You’ve got a bloody nerve,” remarked Olivier. He helped himself to a cigarette: “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I’m so nervous in case you’re better than me.” This was, thought Hopkins, “his charming way of trying to relax me”. Evidently it worked. After the piece was finished Olivier said: “Well done. I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep tonight, but I think you were awfully good. Would you like to join the Company?” By May 1963 the company had been selected prior to the opening in October. The Board was told that, as well as those mentioned above, a contract had been signed with Peter O’Toole. “It was agreed that the above, together with Sir Laurence himself, formed the nucleus of an excellent company.”8
Of equal interest were the names of those who were not on the list. The only stars who could be mentioned in the same breath as Olivier were Michael Redgrave and Peter O’Toole. Where were John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Paul Scofield? It has often been claimed that Olivier wilfully excluded from the National Theatre those whom he considered to be his rivals. There is some truth in the allegation, but it is far from being the whole story. Ralph Richardson is the most interesting case. When he played John Gabriel Borkman at the National in 1975, after Olivier’s departure, Harold Hobson wrote of his “angry grief that the Ibsen production, in all its splendour, should be Sir Ralph’s first appearance in a National Theatre that has already existed for more than a decade”. The clear implication of this sentence was that Richardson had been kept out of a theatre in which he would have loved to play. Yet the blame was not Olivier’s alone. He could reasonably claim to have been discouraged by Richardson’s response when he had been asked to play Lear at Chichester. “I am extremely grateful for your kind and magnanimous and too flattering thought,” wrote Richardson. “Can I have time to think about this? You are so bold … Let your timorous friend turn this thought of yours over in his mind.” The timorous friend duly did so and decided against the venture. When the action moved to the National, Richardson told his biographer, he was only offered dull roles – “odd dukes and the like”. In fact he was offered Halvard Solness in “The Master Builder”, Claudius in “Hamlet” and Hobson in “Hobson’s Choice”: not a dull duke among them and all subsequently played by Michael Redgrave. The reason for his refusal is to be found not in the dullness of the roles but in the relationship between the two men. “I was always happy with him on an equal basis,” said Richardson, “but I wasn’t very happy with him as the boss … he was schoolmastery, you know. ‘Come to my office,’ he’d say.” The result was that Richardson not merely did not respond enthusiastically to any overtures but was discouraging in his attitude. Yet Olivier was by no means innocent. He admitted that he had not pressed his friend very hard. “I was a little shy of asking him because, obviously, if I was the Director, it put him in a slightly less right position in the public mind … I never went on about it very much. I said ‘Would you like to play …’ two or three things, I think, in the whole time I was there.” The guilt, if guilt there was, seems to have been divided. As a result, the two men drifted apart. “I do wish I could see something of you,” Olivier wrote a few years later. “My job seems to get more and more intricate and testing – I enjoy it, of course, but there is very little life apart.” Ronald Harwood asked Richardson whether he still saw a lot of Olivier. “No, he only telephones me to ask for other people’s numbers,” was the terse reply.9
John Gielgud, too, said that he was “a bit hurt” at being offered so few important parts. Olivier admittedly was slow to approach him but when he did so he seems to have been at pains to dispel any feeling of rejection on Gielgud’s part. In mid-1964 he wrote to stress “how overjoyed I would be … if you would ever like to consider working for us at the National”. He should, he admitted, have made this clear much earlier, but if Gielgud had thought his silence indicated lack of interest it would be “not only tragic but utterly wrong. So please, dear Johnnie, if… you find yourself in possession of an idea you would like to present to us, I should be overjoyed to hear about it … To be perfectly frank with you, the National Theatre earnestly needs your stature.”10
John Dexter suggested Shylock. Gielgud replied that he had failed in the part in 1938 and saw no reason why he should do better now. “I remember thinking it was marvellous,” retorted Olivier – and, anyway, he would hate to be judged by his own Macbeth of the same season. Gielgud was not convinced, nor was he any more enthusiastic about a suggestion that he should play Antony to Irene Worth’s Cleopatra. “Johnnie feels, with good reason I think,” Olivier told Worth, “that he does not wish to be hurried into something for any expedient reason, which means unless he feels dead right in the part … he does not want to be made to look or feel however slightly miscast.” When finally Gielgud found something to his taste – Orgon, in Molière’s “Tartuffe” and the Oedipus of Seneca – Olivier was, or at least professed to be, ecstatic: “I wish I could tell you how enraptured not only I, but all in the conclave, feel about your blessing the National with your presence.” As with Richardson, it seems that the worst Olivier can be accused of is not pressing the point with sufficient urgency and vehemence. Even against this charge he has a good defence.11
So far as Paul Scofield’s recruitment for the National was concerned, Olivier is even less guilty. “I am burningly desirous that you should be attached to the National Theatre,” Olivier told him. He would be welcome as a guest star, “but guest stars, nice as they are, are things that I don’t feel altogether happy about in relation to the National”. Would he not become a permanent member of the establishment? Scofield too was offered Antony and Shylock, and rejected both. In the end he was coaxed into the company as an associate director. Did Olivier believe that Scofield might eventually succeed him as Director? asked The Times. They had never discussed the matter, said Olivier, but he was sure “if it was a job Mr Scofield wanted to do, he would do it well”. The possibility, if it had ever existed, disappeared when Scofield flounced out with only two of his three designated plays performed. Olivier accepted the blame for the contretemps: “I
know I cannot have been a v. satisfactory partner,” he wrote. “If a man carries a load a bit too heavy for him, his condition perhaps makes him sparing of courtesies to his friends.” Even then he stressed how much he hoped that the association would be renewed: “It would be ghastly if I really thought you could turn your back on us for good.” He may indeed have been brusque or tactless but Scofield was at least as much to blame. Peter Hall, for one, is convinced that Scofield always found professional relationships hard to sustain and never gave his association with the National a reasonable chance. He was to do the same thing a few years later – walking out on Hall at the last minute with a cursory “Sorry to let you down”.12
Letters do not tell the whole story: so much can be conveyed by timing, expression, tone of voice. Olivier can justifiably be accused of a certain lack of enthusiasm when it came to promoting the careers of those few people he looked upon as rivals. But he did not try to deny Richardson, Gielgud and Scofield access to the National Theatre. On the contrary, he made more than token efforts to welcome them aboard. He was anxious for the National not only to succeed but to succeed spectacularly. His prestige as an actor might be somewhat diminished if one of his great contemporaries outshone him on the stage; the National Theatre would be the more glorious. Olivier was no fool and he knew that in the end this would redound to his greater credit.
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