Olivier (5 page)

Not everyone envied him. Richardson remarked that there was “a distinct absence of normal jockeying among the Rep.’s actors to get the part … Everyone was afraid of the role because of its ponderousness and the ponderousness of the play itself. But not Larry. He was aching for a lead role.” Apart from anything else, the part was dauntingly long. “It would have taken over a month to get a part like Harold down to the point where I could do a rehearsal without help,” said Richardson. “Larry did it in a week and was letter perfect. He was a ‘genius’ when it came to learning lines, better than any of the rest of us.”
¹⁵

He must have wondered whether the effort had been worthwhile. It
was by far the best rewarded role of his career to date – he was paid a princely £20 a week – but the play appealed neither to the critics nor the public. To make matters worse, the first night coincided with the opening of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, an option preferred by most of the leading critics. When they did get round to “Harold” they for the most part damned the play, but were cautiously approving of Olivier. One of the most important critics of the period, St John Ervine in the
Observer
, said that he was “excellent on the whole. His faults are those of inexperience rather that those of ineffectiveness.” But Harold Hobson in the
Christian Science Monitor
struck a cautionary note that Olivier was to remember in a few years’ time. “He might improve his delivery of blank verse …” wrote Hobson. “We do not want the beautiful and pleasing art of verse-speaking to pass everywhere from our stage.”
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*

The monkishness remarked by Jackson was more apparent than real; like many monks Olivier was not immune to the temptations of the flesh. From childhood, wrote his sister, he had been prone to fall in love – he was always returning home saying: “Clare is so pretty, Mummy,” or “I love Sarah. She has such sweet little teeth.” With adolescence, admiration became desire; he hungered for sex but, for religious reasons, felt that his lust should not be indulged except in marriage. The result was frustration and a determination to get married before common sense might have told him he was financially or emotionally ready to do so. But though sex was important it was always clear to him that it must not be all-important. His career came first. “Don’t let your romantic fantasies disturb your life,” he was to advise his son Tarquin. “You see, these wild horses, that natural instincts are, are things that you must be sure to have control over. See that the
reins
are firmly in your
hands
. Don’t let them take you where they will, because they don’t know what’s good for you, or care … Just remember that all the romantic ecstasies, all the rosy reveries, the stoppings of the heart when the phone rings, all the existing and bewitching variations of love’s sweet dreams that mankind is subject to, are basically, simply and solely,
wicked old Dame Nature’s cold-blooded, calculated bribe to bring children into the world.” Except perhaps for the first few years of his relationship with Vivien Leigh, Olivier
did
keep the reins firmly in his hands. Those who believe that love must conquer all will view his attitude as timorous and cold-blooded. No doubt there was a lack of true romance about his approach to sex. But the theatrical life of Britain might have been impoverished if his priorities had been different.
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Be that as it may, Olivier was in quest of a wife before he was twenty-one. Peggy Ashcroft claimed that he was on the point of proposing to her when a lavatory flushing in the next room made the gesture seem inappropriate. The opportunity did not occur again. He claimed that he was “madly in love” with Dorothy Turner, a fellow member of the Birmingham Rep., but she had neither money nor connections and the madness did not stretch to making so unpropitious a match. Then he found himself playing opposite Jill Esmond, an actress a few months younger than him but better established in the theatre. Her father had written a number of successful comedies, her mother had acted in many of them. Her father was now dead; his widow, Eva Moore, lived in considerable comfort, if not affluence, in a large house in Berkshire. She still enjoyed many useful connections in the theatrical world and decided that Olivier had a future and would make an excellent husband for her daughter. Jill was of the same opinion and, without too much reflection, Olivier agreed. Jill was pretty, she was amusing and intelligent, she was a strong personality, inclined to be bossy, but not letting this show in the first throes of a new relationship. Olivier was not “madly in love”, but he was quite ready to tell himself he was: “With those antecedents,” he explained in his autobiography, “though not
dazzlingly
attractive, she would most certainly do excellent well for a wife.” This sounds, indeed was, somewhat cold-blooded. “I suppose, unconsciously, I used all my wives to further my journey up the ladder,” he admitted to Sarah Miles. “Something in me is lacking. No ability to love just for the sake of it …”
¹⁸

Jill Esmond, whether or not she detected something less than
passionate in Olivier’s wooing, was not going to be rushed into any rash commitment. Instead, she took advantage of the fact that the play in which she was then appearing was transferred to New York, to put the Atlantic between herself and her putative lover. Olivier was left to his own devices. There were several possibilities to chose between. In December 1928 he was asked to take the leading part in an unknown play by an unknown playwright being put on for a couple of performances at one of the Sunday Play Societies that then proliferated in London. The hope was that it would catch the eye of a producer and be transferred to a West End theatre. Olivier recognised the merits of his part, but he did not have high hopes for the play as a whole. The author went to a rehearsal and found Olivier looking “bored and restless. I got the feeling that he was wishing he hadn’t come.” He was right, when a more promising possibility turned up Olivier jumped ship with alacrity. The author was R. C. Sherriff; the play, “Journey’s End”, ran for two years and is still frequently revived today. To make Olivier’s chagrin still sharper, the actor who replaced him, Colin Clive, was deemed to have made a great success. The
Daily Mail
quoted the play’s director as saying: “In point of fact it is my opinion that Clive is far the better of the two actors in the part. We were never entirely happy with Mr Olivier.”
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As to the more promising possibility, it turned sour. P. C. Wren’s adventure story of the French Foreign Legion,
Beau Geste
, had been an immense success as a film, with Ronald Colman playing the hero. Olivier had seen it in Birmingham and had appeared that evening with his hair cut in Colman style and a little moustache painted in. “I’m going to play
Beau Geste
when we get to London,” he announced. When the book was reworked for the stage the leading role in it was eagerly sought after: “I was the envy of all the juveniles there were; it was
the
part.” But they could not recapture the spectacle and excitement of the film. Olivier began to feel doubts before the rehearsals were far advanced. Possibly they affected his performance. Basil Dean, the director, was unimpressed. “For Christ’s sake, boy, show us some charm!” he shouted. It was “a horrible bit of cruelty”, thought Olivier, but he took the order
to heart: “I was always very good at accepting criticism.” He showed some charm, but it was not enough; the play failed to grip the audience and soon closed. “It wasn’t much of a piece of work,” Olivier reflected. But he accepted that part of the blame was his. “I hadn’t sufficient star quality,” he admitted. He still had some way to go before he could match Ronald Colman as a romantic swashbuckler.
²⁰

He was now offered the chance of pursuing Jill Esmond to New York. The play in which he was to appear, a trivial thriller called “Murder on the Second Floor”, proved a failure; he himself got some pleasant reviews, but not enough to give him any sort of established position on the American scene. He enjoyed himself extravagantly, however; loved the buzz and hectic excitement of New York life; better still, persuaded Jill Esmond to agree to an engagement. The marriage did not last, but the affection for New York, indeed for the United States, never faltered. He was always British in his loyalties, never contemplated settling in Hollywood or anywhere else abroad, but every time he set foot in the United States it was with the expectation that something interesting and unexpected was bound to happen and that it would almost certainly be good. One of his few complaints was about the American press. When he arrived in New York a journalist asked him whether he did not agree that Katharine Cornell was the greatest living actress. He answered that he much admired her, but he but would hesitate to put her above such fine British actresses as Edith Evans or Peggy Ashcroft. “Unknown British actor thinks Cornell stinks,” was the banner headline the following day. Olivier resolved that in future any journalist, British or American, but particularly American, should be treated with circumspection as a potential enemy.
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Back in London he at last found a part in a worthwhile play. In “The Last Enemy” he played a shell-shocked survivor of the Royal Flying Corps. “I’m awfully glad Larry has another job,” Jill Esmond told her mother. “He’s the luckiest fellow I know.” When his luck ran out after ten weeks – not because audiences were lacking but because the theatre was booked for another production – he could congratulate himself on
some outstanding reviews. “The Last Enemy”, he wrote, with that curiously warped syntax that marked so much of his writing, “brought me friendly and timely establishment as a leading character juvenile.” It did not, however, bring a guarantee that interesting roles would always be available on the London stage. Instead, he made his first film. By now the cinema was well established in Britain. There were more than sixty serious film-producing companies, most of them clustered around London. Olivier’s first film, however, was not made by one of these but by a German company in Berlin, shot simultaneously in English and German. Olivier did not take it very seriously, indeed he did not at this time consider that any film could deserve to be taken seriously, but it earned him some money and gave him an opportunity for an orgy of opera-going – thirteen in just over three weeks. The money was most acceptable, even essential. His marriage to Jill Esmond was fixed for 25 July, 1930. He realised and was unworried by the fact that she would, at least at first, be richer than him, but he had no wish to venture into matrimony empty handed.

By then, however, his career had taken a momentous turn. He was, of course, well acquainted with the work of Noël Coward, had admired the shockingly controversial “The Vortex” and revelled in the wit of “Hay Fever” and “Bitter Sweet”. He had admired Coward from afar, however, and, though he longed to get to know him, had no reason to believe that this would soon come about. Then, on 18 June, he was summoned to the presence. A new life began.

C
oward had a proposition to make. His new play, “Private Lives”, was essentially a vehicle for himself and Gertrude Lawrence but it had two other parts which, although uninteresting, were by no means insignificant. One of these he offered to Olivier. Olivier needed to be associated with a success, he said; “Private Lives”, he was confident, would be enormously successful; Olivier would be ill advised to reject the opening. Olivier needed little persuading, especially since his pay would be far more generous than anything he had so far earned. He accept without demur. Years later he asked what Coward had thought of his visitor. “I liked you very much,” Coward said. “I found you very attractive, wildly attractive, but you were a bit pro-ey.” “I suppose I was,” admitted Olivier. “A young actor showing off his professionalism.” It was not enough to deter Coward. The fact that he found Olivier “wildly attractive” may have been a factor in his thinking. He made it very clear that he would like their relationship to be physical as well as friendly. Olivier always felt guilty that he did not respond; it would have cost him little and given great pleasure to his benefactor. The idea, however, both repelled and alarmed him; he rejected the overtures and Coward bore him no grudge.
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Olivier always revered Coward as well as enjoying his company. More than twenty years later, after the first night of “Titus Andronicus”, by which time he had unequivocally entered the ranks of the great, Dulcie Gray noticed that, while telling an anecdote, he kept his eyes on
Coward to see the effect that he was having. “Does it really matter to you if Noël laughs or not?” she asked. “Certainly,” Olivier replied. “Noël was my first leading man and the gap never lessens.” He was an “incredibly brilliant man”, Olivier insisted, “better educated than me by a long chalk”. He told Olivier that he was “the most illiterate boy I have ever met” and prescribed a reading list, consisting, rather bizarrely, of
Wuthering Heights
,
The Old Wives’ Tale
by Arnold Bennett and Somerset Maugham’s
Of Human Bondage.
Whether Olivier read them or not is uncertain but he claimed to have done so. Many years later, when asked to name five books that had influenced him, Olivier cited these and added
The History of British Civilisation
and
The Reason Why
. He might have been embarrassed if challenged to expound their contents.
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*

The knowledge that, in “Private Lives”, he had a profitable and, with luck, long-lasting job awaiting him on his return meant that Olivier went to his wedding and honeymoon with a light heart. It would be surprising though if, in those last few weeks, he did not ask himself whether he was making a mistake. “I love you. Oh, my dear, I do love you,” Jill Esmond assured him, and in her way she did, but was it Olivier’s way, and did
he
really love
her
? The honeymoon got off to an inauspicious start when they found that the house in Dorset which had been lent to them was occupied by the owner’s two daughters who seemed determined to accompany their guests everywhere except into the marriage chamber. Perhaps it would have been better if they had followed them even there. The first night was a disaster: Olivier was inexperienced and notably inexpert; his wife had physical problems which were not sorted out for several months. Even when the teething pains had been overcome, it became agonisingly evident that while Olivier possessed the most vigorous sexual appetites, Jill found the physical side of marriage distasteful if not repellent. Worse still, though she was unaware of it at the time of her marriage and probably remained so until after they had separated, she was far happier in a lesbian relationship. Olivier later claimed that he had known about
this from the start: “I thought I could cure her. I was wrong. I didn’t realise how strong nature was …” It seems unlikely that this is true: both parties to the marriage were strikingly innocent and Jill would probably not even have understood what lesbianism was. Perhaps with a more experienced and sympathetic husband they could have established a satisfactory sexual
modus vivendi
. As it was, Olivier felt cheated and frustrated.
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