Olivier (51 page)

It was the odder because he did not hesitate to put Tynan down when he thought his dramaturge had gone too far. Tynan had followed his denunciation of the acting ability of the present company with his proposal for improving the situation. His remedy was that the company should be cut back to a hard core of fifteen, “at the most. There may not be another chance of rising from the ashes.” “I’m sure your own thoughts must be running along similar lines,” he concluded optimistically. Olivier’s thoughts were taking no such course. Tynan was talking nonsense, he retorted. He urged him to be more sensible and discreet.
“To let a wish to get something off your chest guide you to an action is obviously going to lead you into prejudicial statements and consequently erratic judgment.”
⁴

He was writing with especial feeling because he was having to devote a large amount of his time and energy to defending his dramaturge against a rampant Board. Chandos in particular had been convinced by the Hochhuth affair that Tynan was a malign nuisance who should never have been employed and had far outstayed his welcome. As early as 1967 he was urging that Olivier dispense with Tynan’s services: “He is a man completely lacking in probity and loyalty and is unscrupulous and untruthful.” Tynan was well aware that Chandos thought little of him and returned the hostility with interest, but he would have been disconcerted if he had known that his stock stood quite so low. To his mind, he was a model of reason and propriety. Germaine Greer used the word “fuck” in a programme note for a production of Shaw’s “Mrs Warren’s Profession”. Olivier asked Tynan to get it changed. He couldn’t possibly do so, protested Tynan. He had already persuaded Greer to cut out “two other uses of the word ‘fuck’, the word ‘cunt’, a reference to the anal practices of prostitutes and the amount of semen in a prostitute’s vagina”. How could he now ask for more? Olivier then himself telephoned Greer and got her to substitute “sexual intercourse” for “fucking”. “I blamed myself, Kennie,” he told Tynan. “I told her you had shouted at me. I said it was my fault.” If Chandos had heard about this exchange he would have known very well whose fault it was and would have notched up another score in his tally of Tynan’s offences.
⁵

For Olivier’s sake – “out of friendship and out of gratitude” – Chandos agreed that Tynan could stay on. When Tynan applied for six months’ leave of absence, however, he saw a chance to get rid of him altogether. John Mortimer, a Board member, went to see Olivier in hospital and found he was as loyal to his dramaturge as ever. He was “dependent on and indebted to Mr Tynan’s work”, Mortimer told the Board. If Tynan were removed, Olivier felt it would “enormously increase the heavy burden which he has to bear”. He did not think any
adequate replacement could be found. Once more Chandos stayed his hand, but he insisted that Derek Granger, from London Weekend Television, should be brought in as fellow dramaturge. Worse still from Tynan’s point of view, he was no longer to be Literary Manager but only Literary Consultant. The salary was the same and the significance of the change in title might seem inconsiderable, but it mattered greatly to both Chandos and Tynan. “He will no longer be able to speak as an officer of the National Theatre,” Chandos told Olivier, “and pontificate on theatrical matters as if he was speaking with our voice.”
⁶

Tynan was outraged, feeling that he played a far more significant role in the National Theatre than Granger could ever hope to do. “I am not by temperament a credit-grabber,” he assured Olivier, possibly with his tongue in his cheek but more probably in self-delusion, “but honestly, my dear heart, I am getting a tiny bit fed up with sharing equal billing with Derek.” He thought it was high time he was reinstated as Literary Manager, leaving the consultancy to Granger, “whom the word accurately describes”. Olivier knew well that Tynan was lucky still to have a job in the National Theatre at all. It was only by claiming that Tynan should be a “consultant”, and that a consultancy was within his gift and not an appointment by the Board, that he had been able to keep Tynan on the strength. In part Tynan must have realised how much he owed to Olivier’s championship, but he continued to feel that he had been misused and that the Director had failed to defend him as vigorously as he had deserved. Olivier, for his part, continued to extol Tynan’s qualities with a generosity that was ill rewarded by Tynan’s malice. Mrs Green spoke for many members of the public when she wrote to say that Tynan should be dismissed from the National Theatre because he had been responsible for the nude review “Oh! Calcutta!”. He was not prepared to pass judgment on Tynan as an impresario, Olivier replied, “but he is still, in my opinion, one of the finest theatrical intelligences in this or any country. It is this which qualifies him as one of the two Consultants to the National Theatre.”
⁷

*

In the summer of 1970 the financial problems of the National were more severe than ever. They were contemplating a deficit of £73,000: “most disturbing,” considered Chandos. Olivier had to say that he was “very sorry and deeply concerned” about the unexpected gap between his budgeted surplus and what had actually happened. What was more: it seemed that things were sure to get worse before they could get better. It was not a happy situation and one which was made worse by the Director’s uncertain health.
⁸

*

The Board might have reservations about his management, but his public reputation stood as high as ever. In the little group of theatrical knights he was unquestionably the most prominent. He had enjoyed his knighthood and would have felt bitter chagrin if it had been denied him. It still caused him mild disquiet, however. Privately he might know that he was different to other people, but he did not want to have the fact bruited aboard in any pompous or establishment manner. When Laurence Evans, who had become his agent, asked him if he would like the “Sir” to be left out in any advertising, he replied “Yes, yes, yes,
Please
!” He suggested that a joint approach should be worked out with John Gielgud: “I don’t want us to be different, but personally I don’t like using it at all in billing matters – makes me feel like Cedric Hardwicke or Aubrey Smith, or even Lady Tree.”
⁹

This cautious coyness was redoubled when, early in 1968, he received a letter from the prime minister, Harold Wilson, asking him to accept a peerage. “Kind and giddy-making,” he called the invitation, but on reflection he turned it down. He was a workman certainly, he told Wilson, “an artist hopefully; but I should be a Lord only very uneasily.” If he had to attend in the House of Lords he would be distracted from what he believed was his proper work: “I would have to give up acting altogether, with no time to learn or give due study to my roles.” Wilson was quick to point out that it would mean nothing of the sort: a few appearances and perhaps one or two speeches a year would be the most required of him – “those occasions would be all the richer for your
presence”. It was the most egregious flattery, and Olivier loved it, but he stuck by his guns – the honour was again rejected.
¹⁰

Quite why, it is hard to say. According to Richard Burton, he had said two or three years before that it was his ambition to be the first theatrical peer. Many years later he admitted that he thought the invention of the life peerage had been an excellent idea: “My darling Joan will be a baroness till she dies, I think that’s nice, and my nippers are little honourables, which is also nice; and, we hope, keeps them up to the mark.” He cannot have believed that his duties in the House of Lords would prevent him acting. He told his friends that “there was something about the title that really did, and still does, and probably always will, make me feel a bit awkward. Perhaps there is still enough of the urchin in me to feel a little mockingly about it.” Not enough of the urchin remained, however, to prevent him accepting when Wilson renewed the offer two years later. Perhaps it had always been a question of timing. When the offer had first been made the funding of the National Theatre was still in question: his acceptance of a peerage might have been interpreted as meaning that he had been bought off or awarded the honour as a consolation prize. Joan Plowright suspects that he would never have rejected the peerage in the first place if he had not felt reasonably sure that the offer would be repeated. He himself claims that he gave way the second time round because Wilson persuaded him that it was his duty as a member of society to make his special contribution in the House of Lords: “Thus was my conscience – habitually and quite properly a guilty one – quite cunningly appealed to.”
¹¹

The next battle came over the choice of title. He would be Lord Olivier, that was clear; he had played too many parts in his life already to wish to re-emerge under a new name. But Garter King of Arms ruled that, as his uncle, the colonial governor, had been Lord Olivier within the last thirty years, he would have to add some territorial appendage to his title so as to distinguish himself from the late proconsul. For some reason Olivier took strong exception to this. Possibly he felt that, in the eyes of the world, there could only be one Lord Olivier worth
remembering, possibly he felt that to be Lord Olivier of somewhere-or-other would add an unnecessary touch of pomposity to something which he feared some of his theatrical acquaintances were anyway going to find ridiculous. Anyway, he told Garter that he was “distressed more than you can perhaps understand … I so much infinitely prefer the simple title to the more ponderous ‘of somewhere’.” Garter was unmoved; Olivier did not press the point; it was as Lord Olivier of Brighton that he renewed life in the birthday honours of June 1970.
¹²

He did not make his maiden speech for more than a year. Since he reproduced it in his memoirs one must assume that he took some pride in it: his delivery, indeed, may have been impeccable, but the speech itself was pompous, contrived and grovellingly sycophantic. He never spoke again. “I wish I’d been a little more courageous about it now,” he admitted some years later. “It’s an ordeal by fire, you know. If they sense that you are speaking on a subject just a little outside your province, they will shoot you down in flames.” Olivier knew a great deal about his province, but little about anything outside it and debates which related to the theatre were few and far between. He was intimidated by what he imagined to be the superior learning and wisdom of their lordships, he hardly ever visited the House and was silent when he did so: “I was going to get up late one night, then I thought, in the first place, do I know what I really feel, and the second, am I going to phrase it properly?” But he liked being a lord. Formally, he was a committed egalitarian. He would urge people to call him Larry or, at least, Sir Laurence; he complained when Harold Hobson referred to him in a review as Lord Olivier; but he still had occasional flickers of
folie de grandeur
. Joan Plowright remembers him remarking that he thought the staff ought to refer to him as “The Baron” and that the children should be known as “Master Richard” or “Miss Tamsin”. It did not take much to laugh him out of such pretensions, but if his family had been more inclined to ostentation he might have ended up a very lordly lord.
¹³

*

Lord Chandos retired as Chairman of the National Theatre Board in July 1971. Olivier made all the appropriate noises. “It was unlikely,” he told the Board, “that anyone would ever again be able to do so much for the British Theatre.” Not only had Chandos done more than anyone else to transform the National Theatre from a vision to a reality, he had continued the battle so that the new buildings were now at last under construction. “For that building London, Great Britain and the theatrical profession would be eternally grateful.” This was not hypocrisy – Olivier appreciated the importance of Chandos’s contribution – but in many ways he was glad to see Chandos go. Their relationship had never recovered from the imbroglio over Hochhuth. Recently things had got even worse. According to Max Rayne, Chandos’s successor, Olivier had suggested to Chandos that Joan Plowright should succeed him as Director, either as an individual or as part of a governing consortium. Chandos is said to have treated this recommendation “with such contempt that Olivier refused to speak to him”. There cannot be much truth in this. For one thing, Chandos liked and respected Joan Plowright. When Olivier put forward the need for employing another associate director, the Chairman replied: “Why pay another £5,000? You’ve got Joannie.” He might well have doubted whether it would be wise to appoint a woman Director, let alone one who was the wife of the present incumbent, but he would never have dismissed the idea with offensive scorn. Possibly he was reluctant to discuss the issue, feeling it should be left to his successor, and Olivier took offence at what he saw as an attempt to exclude him from the debate. At all events, Olivier saw Chandos go with little regret.
¹⁴

About Chandos’s successor, Olivier was cautiously optimistic. Max Rayne was a Jewish entrepreneur who had made a vast fortune out of property development and was notably benevolent towards the arts. He did not know very much about the theatre, but acquaintanceship with the minutiae of theatrical life was not a necessity for the Chairman of the National Theatre Board; indeed, might almost be a handicap. He was shrewd, clear-headed, tactful, and quite prepared to accept
unpopularity if he felt it was the price of doing what was right. He was also discreet and preferred to keep his own counsel until he felt the right time had come to reveal it. Olivier offered his resignation to the incoming Chairman. He knew that it was highly unlikely to be accepted and would have been outraged if it had been. Rayne insisted that he should stay on at least until his contract ran out in 1973 and hoped that he would in some way continue to be associated with the National Theatre long after that date. Like everybody else, Rayne assumed that Olivier would be very much present, if not in charge, when the Company moved into the new building.