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.”10
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.11
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.12
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.”13
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.14
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.”15
“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 techniqu
e 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.16
*
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.”17
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.18
The reasons for this volte-face are obscure. Olivier much later told Kathleen Tynan that he had decided he wished to do his own book, “which was why he had been so tough on Ken”. This cannot be the whole story. Olivier was not to sign a contract to write his own memoirs for another eighteen months and even then took much persuading: it was the demise of Tynan’s project that led Olivier into undertaking his own book, not the other way round. Sarah Miles among others had been trying to persuade him to take on the task, but he had proved most resistant: “ ‘I can’t write my own book,’ he grumbled, like a fifth-former over Latin prep.” A series of gossipy articles in the Daily Mail had perhaps contributed to his reluctance to authorise Tynan’s book. These professed to be based on interviews, but were in fact culled from the tape recordings of an American journalist who had encouraged Olivier into indiscretions during a drunken dinner in Venice and secretly recorded them. No doubt these articles gave their victim a jaundiced view of any sort of publicity, but Tynan had no possible connection with them and their effect on Olivier’s attitude can have been no more than peripheral. The factor that seems to have been most immediately responsible was a piece in the Evening News in which Tynan’s wife, Kathleen, was quoted as saying that Olivier wanted “the whole truth” to be told about his relationship with Vivien Leigh. Worse still, the article implied that Tynan’s biography would be official, written with the authority and at the request of its subject. “The New York cocktail circuit is buzzing with rumours of the revelations Kenneth Tynan is going to make in his book on Larry,” recorded Peter Hall. A journalist interviewing Olivier at this time made the mistake of mentioning Tynan: “Olivier tightened up and was very frightening.” It took a few weeks before Tynan accepted that the cause was lost – “The Tynan work is, I think, at the moment, still waffling in the melting pot of altercation,” was Olivier’s characteristically opaque exposition of the affair when in May 1979 he turned down an offer to ghost his memoirs – but within a few weeks the altercation was over; the way was clear for Olivier to do the job himself if he felt so inclined.19
He had, in fact, envisaged the possibility some years before. Hamish Hamilton had written him a loving letter urging him to write a memoir for his “old and trusted friend”. If he failed to do so, Hamilton pointed out, then “vulgar opportunists like Weidenfeld” would go on putting out “undesirable quickies”. Olivier seems to have taken this to heart and even to have started work. “The difficulty I am up against,” he told Jill Esmond, “is that I am absolutely determined that every single word in it as far as I myself am concerned shall be the absolute and utter truth.” Perhaps this daunting prospect proved too much for him; there is no reason to believe that anything was written. In due course Tynan took up the baton. He then dropped it, or had it forcibly removed. The next thing an outraged Hamilton heard was that the “vulgar opportunist” George Weidenfeld had successfully signed up Olivier to write his memoirs for an advance of £100,000. “George wants you to feel absolutely free of any pressure and to write as much or as little as you feel inclined,” Olivier’s agent, Laurence Evans, assured him. The contract, though, was for a book of 80,000–90,000 words. 10 per cent of the advance was to go to Mark Amory, a young and talented writer, whose exact role was undefined but who was, in effect, expected to ghost-write the autobiography.20
Weidenfeld seems to have wooed Olivier with lofty talk of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, suggesting that his autobiography would be an important contribution to Britain’s cultural history. Olivier took the bait and, when Amory began his long series of interviews, he was disconcerted to find that his subject seemed concerned mainly to talk of Irving and Kean. He knew that this was not at all what Weidenfeld required. Joan Plowright saw what was going on and reassured him: “You’re having difficulty persuading Larry to talk about himself? I don’t think you need worry.” Sure enough, when Olivier warmed up he began to talk with alarming candour: the fifty or so hours on tape revealing what he really thought, rather than the emasculated version that appeared in his autobiography, Confessions of an Actor, are as rich a source as any biographer could ask for. Olivier later remarked that “he liked Mark Amory a lot but couldn’t relax with him; he wasn’t one of the boys”. By this he presumably meant that Amory had no theatrical background and therefore could not join in the anecdotal ramblings in which Olivier rejoiced. He nevertheless conducted the interviews with great skill: if Olivier did indeed not feel relaxed then the imagination boggles at the thought of the indiscretions which he might have perpetrated if he had felt more at ease. Only once did he ask Amory to turn off the recorder: it was to protect his revelation that: “Joannie was no good at accents.”21
Then Olivier went on holiday and returned announcing that he proposed to write the book himself. Amory’s role became that of sub-editor, to point out omissions or suggest minor changes. The latter were rarely accepted. Something was “preciously valuable”, wrote Olivier. Did the word “preciously” really add anything? asked Amory. Olivier rolled the phrase around his mouth. “I like it,” he concluded. Once he had committed himself to the project he undertook it with cha
racteristic enthusiasm and energy. “I am able to do absolutely nothing until the end of May but work on That Book,” he told Fabia Drake. “I shall not meet my deadline date if I think of anything else, so I don’t.” He reaffirmed his determination to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The book, he told Drake, would be “as ‘wide-open’ as anyone could wish, self-revelatory, with no holds barred, and I tried to be more sparing of all the other characters that came into my book than I am of myself”.22
When he submitted his text he was disconcerted to be told that Weidenfeld, supported by the American publisher, thought it was too long. Worse still, at certain points in the book Olivier had told the story by quotations from letters and other papers. One of these was the section on Hochhuth, which the editor considered was anyway too long and should be rewritten in narrative form. “Disagree!” wrote Olivier in the margin. The same was true of the passages relating to his retirement from the National Theatre. “Violently disagree!” wrote Olivier. Weidenfeld sent Olivier a version of his book edited in a way that he felt would have greater appeal for the general reader. “I am not willing that this latest edition of the book should be published under my name,” stormed Olivier. “Your editors are clearly antipathetic to me, my life, my career and my story.” Weidenfeld’s response does not survive, but it must have been placatory. Olivier thanked him for his “infinitely kind reply to my querulous petulance”, but on the essentials he gave little ground. “Whatever criticism my writing deserves, it is at least mine, and comes straight from my mind and heart … I cannot and do not pretend to be a writer of distinction, only one of personal and individual images.” He had reworked the text with Mark Amory and this was his last word.23
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