Olivier (36 page)

Evershed-Martin might have resented the subjection of his beloved theatre to the needs of another organisation, but he reckoned that, on the whole, greater glory would accrue to Chichester through its association with the National Theatre than it could ever hope to earn as an independent body. He told Olivier that he could see “nothing but good” in the connection: “perhaps it would be best to call it ‘in association with’ rather than ‘affiliated to’,” he suggested, so as to make it clear that Chichester kept its independence while both sides benefited from the exchange of “productions, casts, directors etc.”. Olivier was almost as
anxious as Evershed-Martin that the importance of Chichester as an independent Festival should not be underplayed. “I think it is putting it a little harshly,” he wrote just before the second season started in 1963, “to call our efforts last year merely a dress rehearsal for something else. I know you don’t mean this unkindly but it is, I think, not the kindest way in which they could be described.” Olivier and Evershed-Martin were to have their differences, some of them pretty tempestuous, but on the central issue of Chichester’s relationship to the National Theatre they were as one.
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What sort of National Theatre it was with which Chichester was to be associated was for some time in question. A resurgent Royal Shakespeare Company under Peter Hall, with its well-established power base at Stratford but already committed to an ambitious London season, could not be left out of the calculations. The Government worked on the preliminary assumption that there would be some sort of merger between Stratford and a new National Theatre which would be based loosely on the Old Vic. So long as the details of the collaboration remained undefined the idea seemed in principle acceptable to all parties. “I don’t believe there is enough talent in this country for two major classical theatres to be operating properly,” Hall had concluded towards the end of 1959. “In other words, if there is a National Theatre, it is essential that in some way this theatre amalgamates with it.” “Stratford could obviously not afford to operate in rivalry,” agreed Olivier eighteen months later. “Unification is from every point of view both desirable and advantageous.” But two strong-minded and ambitious individuals were involved, each reluctant to surrender any real authority to the other. Even if Hall had been willing to accept the disappearance of Stratford’s independence he would not have been allowed to do so. Sir Fordham Flower, the assertive Chairman of the Royal Shakespeare Company and head of the brewing family which had conjured it into existence, would have regarded as intolerable the suppression of its identity in favour of some amorphous new
organisation based in London. Even Lord Goodman, that most persuasive and well-connected of fixers, was unable to negotiate the two parties into a viable partnership.
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In Olivier’s view the breakdown of negotiations was almost entirely due to the intransigence and personal ambitions of Peter Hall. He viewed Hall with suspicion and alarm. The satirist John Wells wrote a skit in which Hall, as Director of the National Theatre, was made to say that he planned to build a new theatre on the South Bank which would “probably be called the Peter Hall”. “You mean, like the Albert Hall?” “Yes, only obviously rather larger!” To Olivier this seemed a fair comment. Hall claimed that Stratford had withdrawn from the negotiations only because they were trying to be constructive and because he thought the National would work better without them. “If your new empire is going to set out to kill Stratford and my Company … then what will have been achieved except the usual British waste?” Stratford was not being in the least constructive, retorted Olivier. “They withdrew entirely for their own reasons, entirely to do with their own
amour propre
… Your letter carries to me a slightly hysterical note (if I may say so without meaning to be in the tiniest bit offensive) which worries me and makes me feel you are not in a good state.”
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The negotiations ended in acrimony. Hall’s subsequent judgment was generous: “I doubt whether the National would ever have finally happened without Larry’s power, prestige and glamour at that particular time.” At that particular time, however, he was not disposed to be so charitable – Olivier was the enemy. It was a feeling that was not to make things any easier a decade or so later when Hall arrived in the National Theatre.
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Olivier’s appointment did not appeal to everyone. In the
Daily Mail
Bernard Levin wrote an article arguing that he was the wrong man for the job – mainly, it seems, because his choice of plays was not to Levin’s taste. Olivier was convinced that the
Daily Mail
had waged a vendetta against him, ever since he had thrown a
Mail
journalist off the set during the filming of “The Prince and the Showgirl”. He wanted to sue them,
was persuaded that there were no grounds, but sent a strong lawyer’s letter threatening action. “Our Clients are most disturbed that your Client should think they are conducting any kind of personal campaign against him,” came the dulcet reply. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Olivier was apt to scent persecution where none existed and the
Daily Mail
was not so unremittingly hostile as he imagined. Certainly there were others who shared its doubts. In the
Sunday Times
Harold Hobson had put forward seven names as potential Directors of the National Theatre including Tyrone Guthrie, John Gielgud and Peter Hall, but did not suggest Olivier as a possibility. Noël Coward was opposed for a different reason. “I am sure everyone has been at you in one way or another,” he wrote, “so I am going to pile Pelion on Ossa, Stoke on Trent and possibly Lee on Solent.
Don’t
administer the National Theatre. You have given us some of the greatest performances of the century. Administration is more frustrating and tiring than poncing about and shouting ‘Ho, there!’ or ‘I’m fair Venice’s lofty cunt’. What you need is a full year off duty.”
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Olivier paid more attention to Coward than to most people, but no chorus of voices – however sage or experienced – could have changed his mind. As for “a full year off duty”, even a week off duty caused him disquiet. He was a driven man. The National Theatre had become his destiny and no discouragement was going to distract him from its pursuit.

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One of the better features of Chichester was that, while the period of rehearsals and the Festival itself were intensely active, there was time to make films or act in plays at the beginning and end of the year. The first film that Olivier made when on leave from the Festival, “Term of Trial”, was as interesting for its cast as for its dramatic content. He was playing an alcoholic schoolmaster whose career has been blighted by his wartime pacifism. He is despised by his wife, played by the French actress Simone Signoret, but adored by one of his pupils who tries to seduce him and, when rejected, turns on him and accuses him of indecent assault.
Olivier had vaguely assumed that he would have an affair with Simone Signoret whose husband, Yves Montand, was embroiled with Marilyn Monroe (“Spoilt, contaminated fat slug!” Olivier spat out, when Signoret complained to him about her husband’s mistress). Instead he became infatuated by “a new little girl called Sarah Miles”, a seductive twenty-year-old who was playing the delinquent schoolgirl. Miles claimed to have been in love with Olivier since seeing him in “Wuthering Heights” when she was eleven years old. Her childish passion was quickly re-kindled: “Seeing him in the flesh was an experience that way surpassed my Heathcliff on the screen. The smile, the wanton twinkle in his eyes, the friendly, springy gait, the determination in the set of his shoulder blades, the gentle stubbornness that continually won him his point of detail – all this reminded me so much of my father.”
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Unlike the schoolmaster he was playing on the screen, Olivier saw no reason to reject this adoring admirer. Indeed, it proved to be one of the most serious of his casual affairs. According to Derek Granger he at one point even went so far as to consult his agent, Laurence Evans, about the possibility of securing a divorce so as to marry Miles. It does not seem likely that he did more than play with the idea and when Evans pointed out that it would seriously damage if not destroy his career, he quickly dropped it. Miles had charm and was almost indecently attractive, but he had no particular respect for her as an actress. He put her into Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” in 1965 but thought she “wasn’t marvellously good”, and when Noël Coward rejected her for “Hay Fever” he accepted the ruling without argument. “I had to fire her before the opening, it was awful for her,” he remembered. Given their relationship it might have been expected to be awful for him too; the fact that he sent her packing without compunction illustrates well the order of his priorities. Sex was enjoyable and it was always satisfying to be loved and courted, but the demands of the theatre came first. Sarah Miles was wrong for the part, Sarah Miles must go, and no amount of delicious dalliance could save her. Sarah Miles anyway denies that she was sacked: she retired hurt when a fishbone stuck in her throat and put her
out of action for several weeks. Coward certainly wanted her gone, but it seems possible that Olivier, as was always his inclination, avoided the stark confrontation which his words suggest occurred.
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“Semi-Detached”, a first play by a talented young dramatist called David Turner, illustrates how even a producer/director as experienced as Olivier could misjudge a script. When he first read it, he thought that it sparkled with wit and that the author had brought off a brilliant success. By the time rehearsals had ended his confidence had dwindled; the reviews convinced him that he had made a monstrous error. “I was miserable doing it,” he confessed. “They hated me – the critics, the audiences. I could feel it coming over me every night … it was thirteen weeks of sheer torture.” Noël Coward read the reviews and hoped that they were unjustified. He went to see it and concluded that they were not. “It’s a dreary, untidy little play with Larry good in spots,” he wrote. “Oh, what a bad judge he is. To do this play was a major mistake.”
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It was a painful experience in another sense. His diary entry for 16 January, 1963, includes the sentence: “Gout started during Act I. Violent.” Olivier had been suffering from occasional attacks of gout since 1947 but recently they had been coming more often and more intensely. “They are frequently provoked by stress,” wrote the specialist who examined him, “and as stress of various sorts is obviously inseparable from his professional life one must fear that they may become, in time, even more frequent and extensive.” Perhaps, he suggested, a mild tranquilliser might be permitted before particularly testing occasions such as first nights. Olivier had recourse to more arcane remedies. “Oh dear, Oh dear!” he wrote to his doctor. “I have allowed myself to be persuaded into trying one of those one-eyed, definitely un-B.M.A., absolutely quacky schemes which should work or otherwise in three weeks. I hope you don’t mind. I shall no doubt be coming to you with my tail between my legs after that.” He did, but neither the quacks nor the regular practitioners could do much to help. It was rare for Olivier to miss a complete evening, but he was quite often struck by agonising pain in the middle of a performance. The discipline required to let no flicker of distress
disturb his acting but rather to continue to appear light-hearted, thoughtful or whatever the part demanded, must have been one of the most testing experiences of his professional life.
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He had to turn down one invitation which would have cost him little effort and caused him some amusement. Bob Hope wrote to say that he and Bing Crosby were planning to enrich the next of their Road series – “Road to Hong Kong” – with a series of cameo parts in which major stars – Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, David Niven and Sophia Loren among them – would appear unexpectedly, without billing, and utter a line or two. Hope would be a Chinese coolie pulling a rickshaw. He would turn to his passenger, Bing Crosby, and say: “I bet Laurence Olivier wouldn’t play a part like this.” Then the camera would cut to Olivier standing by a nearby lamp-post, who would say: “Nobody made me an offer.” “Wouldn’t it be thrilling,” Hope concluded, “to do a scene without having to wait for Marilyn?” Olivier was tempted but could not find a slot in his crowded diary. He genuinely regretted it. He would gratefully have cut short the run of “Semi-Detached” so as to fit in a quick visit to Hollywood – or, for that matter, Hong Kong.
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On 10 October, 1962 Olivier attended his first meeting of the National Theatre Board as Director-designate. Before his arrival Chandos had told the meeting that Olivier’s salary had been agreed at £5,000 a year: “The Board considered that Sir Laurence had acted in a very public-spirited way in accepting the financial terms, which were clearly far less generous than those which he could command elsewhere.” Olivier was to be given a period of leave each year in which he could make films or do whatever else he wanted; a reasonable provision given the financial sacrifice he was making but one which caused Binkie Beaumont some alarm. It must, he insisted, be managed in a way which would not impair the running of the theatre. Olivier then joined the meeting and, after a welter of mutual backslapping, it was minuted that “Sir Laurence should pursue the problem of the future relations between the National Theatre and Stratford with Mr Peter Hall on as broad a basis as he
thought advisable.” The following week Olivier visited Stratford and suggested that they should give up their efforts to maintain a London base and instead appear for three months of the year in some part of the new National Theatre. In Hall’s view, this was not a case of “as broad a basis as he thought advisable” so much as “as narrow a basis as he thought he could get away with”. Fordham Flower agreed. This, he thought, was a fresh attempt on the part of Olivier to snuff out the Royal Shakespeare Company as a rival in London. Olivier, he believed, could not endure the thought of Stratford at the Aldwych and would stop at nothing to eliminate it. He was wrong, but not wholly wrong. There had been a time at which Olivier would have been ready to make sacrifices to patch up some compromise with Stratford; by the end of 1962 he asked for nothing better than to forget about Stratford and be left in peace to develop the National Theatre as he thought best.
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