Olivier (57 page)

“I am awfully pleased about The ‘Marathon Man’,” Olivier told George Cukor, “horrific as the story is, and look forward madly to Justin Hoffman and John Schlesinger.” In spite of a certain vagueness about his Christian name, Olivier on the whole liked and got on well with Dustin Hoffman, but he complained that, though “a wonderful actor”, he was “too concerned with the bloody ‘Method’”. Hoffman was eager to improvise certain scenes. Olivier would have none of it. “I’ve got lines to learn,” he protested. “I’m perfectly happy to do it any way you want, but once I’ve learned the lines be very careful, or I’ll forget them.” Olivier’s story is that on one occasion Hoffman held up the action while he was trying to establish the right motivation for taking off his shirt. “Why don’t you try acting, dear boy?” Olivier asked in irritation. Schlesinger said it was not quite like that: the remark was made to him and not to Hoffman, provoked by Hoffman’s habit of drinking quantities of red wine so as to achieve an “out-of-it” sensation. Whatever the details, a certain tension built up between the two stars. It is perhaps significant that, at a surprise party for Olivier when the filming was over, Hoffman proposed a toast to “a great soldier, a great warrior” but not to “a great actor”.
¹⁹

William Devane, playing the head of a secret American agency, was particularly effective in an early rehearsal. He was congratulated on his showing. “This is rehearsal,” said Devane. “It’s nothing. When the camera starts to roll Olivier will give me a little of this, he’ll give me a little of that, and you’ll never know I’m in the movie. No-one’s going to be watching me – that’s Olivier, man.” He was proved right. Hoffman gave a more than competent showing, but it is Olivier who most people remember. Mercifully the ham fat was not entirely eliminated; Olivier’s role cried out for it. “A very theatrical demon king performance,” Peter
Hall found it, which “in a way makes the horror easier to take”. What was certain was that, however ignoble the vehicle, Olivier would tackle his role with the same fury and dedication as he would have given to a Lear or an Othello. Some people criticised him for taking on parts unworthy of his talents. He needed the money, he frankly admitted, and, anyway “they were all rattling good ‘entertainment’ pictures, expertly made, with touches of the innovative”. “Marathon Man” was outstandingly good, he thought; so was “The Boys from Brazil”, in which he played a Jewish Nazi hunter, based on Simon Wiesenthal, who is tracking down the fiendish Dr Josef Mengele, a part given to a distinctly out-of-character Gregory Peck.
²⁰
Olivier was nominated for an Oscar for his part in “The Boys from Brazil” – the eleventh time he had enjoyed that distinction. He was tipped as favourite and had already prepared his acceptance speech when he was told that he was also to be given a special award for a lifetime’s achievement. At once he remembered the time he thought he had been cheated out of the Oscar for “Henry V”. Was this also a device to rob him of the award that was rightfully his? He told the Academy that he would far rather stand his chance in the open field and renounce the special award. There was no link between the two, he was assured; his chances of winning an Oscar would in no way be diminished. “Please don’t ask us to withdraw your name because it will look very bad and people will think you’ve refused it.” Olivier agreed and, sure enough, the real Oscar went elsewhere. It was a sad disappointment.
²¹

Honours, though, were not slow in coming in these years of semi-retirement. In February 1982 he won the jackpot with the award of the Order of Merit. The O.M. is an honour awarded personally by the monarch of the day, limited in number to twenty-four at any given time and regarded as the supreme accolade to be bestowed on the most distinguished service-officers, statesmen, scientists, artists or writers. No actor had ever won it before and no award could have given him greater satisfaction. Perhaps after that the honour that pleased him most was to have a locomotive of British Rail named after him. With the
O.M. he found himself ranked with Graham Greene, Benjamin Britten, Earl Mountbatten of Burma. British Rail’s roll of honour featured Winston Churchill, Francis Drake and William Shakespeare. In either company he felt thoroughly at home.

Olivier was prepared to defend “Marathon Man” and “The Boys from Brazil”, but sometimes he found himself abashed by the depths to which he sank. “Larry has to keep on doing any film that will pay the price he needs,” wrote William Walton. “He has to keep the children at school and it costs the earth. He’s now doing ‘Dracula’ and loathing the thought of it.” “DRACULA … God, the shame of it,” Olivier told Tarquin. But $750,000 for a few weeks’ work was irresistible. Sometimes he drew the line. He was offered $500,000 to play the distinguished physician Sir William Gull in a film about Jack the Ripper. He expressed cautious interest, but said that the money was not what he was accustomed to. “Offer him anything!” said the producer, Andy Braunsberg, but “anything” was not enough; Jack the Ripper is a favourite theme for the cinema, but this version, it seems, was never made. Sometimes he asked too much. He was suggested for Lord Ames in “The Missionary”, playing opposite Maggie Smith. There were doubts about his health and suitability for the role, but the producer persisted; then, Michael Palin records, “Olivier has asked for a million dollars to play Lord Ames. Which makes a decision very easy. Not Olivier.” In the event Trevor Howard played the part for a more modest fee. Olivier was not worried: there were plenty more where that came from.
²²

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Olivier was earning more money than he had ever done in the past. He was convinced that he needed every penny. He was not altogether wrong.

“I
f it puts your mind at ease at all,” Olivier wrote to a well-wisher in September 1979, “I would say that I feel better now than I have done for at least four years.” For the sake of
his
peace of mind it was as well that he felt ready to face the world again. He had the capacity to earn huge sums of money with little investment in time and effort, but his earnings from films were erratic and uncertain. He had convinced himself that his resources were limited and the demands likely to be made upon his pocket were unlimited. “When you are ill you become very anxious for your wife and family,” he explained; when you are better – especially if you are over seventy years old and uncertain how temporary your recovery will be – the need to do something to help that wife and family can seem very pressing.
¹

By now Richard, his second son, was eighteen. The first time Richard realised that his father was anything out of the ordinary was when a contemporary at Bedales refused to accept that he could be the son of “
the
Laurence Olivier”. Since then he had grown accustomed to the idea and had assumed – against the strong urging of his father – that his career, in some unspecified way, would be theatrical. Now he was through with school, but it would be some time before he could hope to be financially independent. In the immediate future he was destined for the University of California to study film and drama. Tamsin and Julie-Kate were still at Bedales, though Tamsin was entering the world of boyfriends. She found her father well-disposed towards her suitors
but disconcertingly vague about their identities. “Darling Djadja,” she wrote reproachfully, “you really must get Carl’s name right. It isn’t good enough to keep calling him Mark.” It was symptomatic of his performance as a parent. Olivier convinced himself that he was the most dutiful of fathers and he was indeed a loving one, but he was distracted by other issues that seemed more urgent. It was still a matter of playing at being a father. The performance was enthusiastic enough to convince himself that it was the real thing, but it was not always good enough to take in his wife and children. He could never have been accused of meanness, however. He was prone to sudden bouts of economy-mindedness in which he would storm around the house – turning off lights, turning down fires, complaining about dripping taps – but he was the most generous of men and rarely failed to treat his children with indulgence.
²

The alimony which he was still paying Jill Esmond was an expense that he particularly resented. Derek Granger visited him in hospital while he was recovering from having his kidney removed. He was sitting up in bed working out how much he had paid her since their divorce: “She’s cost me £75,000 a fuck!” he announced. Otherwise he barely thought of her. For Esmond it was very different. “I hear Daddy is not well …” she wrote to Tarquin. “I hope you will make a special effort to see him … I haven’t seen him much in the last forty years. It’s funny after all that time how
I
can still love him so much.”
³

The alimony and the cost of the children’s education were only part of the expenses that convinced Olivier he could not afford to stop work for more than a few days at a time. His style of life was lavish. The Rolls Royce had given way to a Daimler, but it still called for a full-time chauffeur. His secretary was another, in his mind unavoidable expense. By now they had acquired a house in St Leonard’s Terrace, one of Chelsea’s most agreeable and therefore expensive streets. The Malt House was another drain on their resources. This was a pleasant Elizabethan farmhouse extended in the 1960s, with none of the pretensions to grandeur of Notley but still more spacious than it appeared at first glance. Its
chief attraction was its setting on the River Adur near Steyning, with a fine view of the South Downs. It had been bought as a house for Joan Plowright’s parents, but its strategic position between Brighton and Chichester meant that it evolved into being, first their weekend retreat, then their main home.

For Olivier the greatest attraction was the acre of land, lying almost wild when they started but destined to become a garden of some elaboration. As always, Olivier proved incapable of doing anything half-heartedly or to less than professional standards. He found an old gardener called Reg who did some of the spade work, but he devoted to it every spare minute that he could contrive: digging, planting, fencing, creating a series of small gardens, “each separate like a small stage set, the main feature being a curved ‘where’er you walk’ tunnel of trained lime trees, redolent of Notley”. He took delight in his achievement. It was not even a vicarage garden, he told Peter Hiley, with what must have been affected humility, no more than a curate’s garden – “a poor thing, in fact, but mine own … I feel proud of it for the pleasure it gives me.” For good measure he added a tennis court and a swimming pool, in the second of which he swam sixty-six lengths, half a mile, every morning regardless of the weather. “Monotonous, but worth it,” he observed. “To be fit should be one of an actor’s first priorities.”
⁴

At least he did not have an expensive wife to maintain. Joan Plowright was a great actress at the height of her powers. If it had been required of her she could have supported the family single-handed. Olivier would have denied it if he had been told that he was jealous of his wife’s achievements. “Joannie seems to be a more splendid actress every time I see her,” he told his old friend, Fabia Drake. “Much, much better since her work has been entirely independent of mine. I know you will believe me when I say this with gladness.” Up to a point she had reason to believe him, but at the same time he resented the fact that Plowright was still able to shine in a forum which once he had dominated but which now was barred to him. When she received an effusive fan letter he at once announced that it was time he returned to the
stage himself. He knew there was no real possibility of his doing so, but could not bring himself finally to rule it out.
⁵

What put their marriage under still greater strain was that he sought to compensate for his own inactivity by managing his wife’s professional life. “As I’ve got no career of my own left, I shall have to live through you …” Joan Plowright remembers him saying, “I must direct all your performances, stage or screen.” He must have known this was impossible, but he still felt possessive towards his wife’s career. She knew that he was unable to play the role to which he seemed to be aspiring, knew too that only one person was going to control her acting life, and that was Joan Plowright. Things came to a head when Peter Hall asked her to return to the National to act in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”. It was a sumptuous part and she was resolved to play it. “You’re not going back to that bloody theatre unless
I
direct you,” Olivier decreed. Even if Hall had agreed, Plowright did not think her husband had the intellectual or physical stamina to undertake the task. She ignored Olivier’s ultimatum and told Hall she would be happy to play the part. Olivier seemed to have acquiesced; then suddenly a lawyer’s letter arrived threatening divorce. It was only then that she realised how far her husband’s grasp on reality was fading. When he returned to their house in St Leonard’s Terrace, apparently in the best of moods, she told him that she would be replying to the letter through her lawyer. He looked bewildered, and it soon became clear that he had no recollection of having instructed his lawyer to send the letter nor any idea what it contained. He was horrified at the very idea that there could be any talk of separation. The incident passed; it could be forgiven, but it was not forgotten. In self-defence Plowright began to withdraw from the marriage. Formally their relationship remained unstrained; a good face was put on it by all. In practice they grew further and further apart and Olivier felt himself isolated in the heart of his own family.
⁶

Another irritant in their relationship was Olivier’s resolute philandering at an age when Plowright might have thought such adventures were beyond him. Olivier loved women. “One of the prides of my life
has been my women friends,” he announced in the early 1980s. “I’ve got two, or three, or four now whose company I really delight in. I’ve always loved having women friends … When a woman is a friend to a man, an absolute loving friend, I think they’re simply marvellous.” An “absolute loving friend” covers a multitude of sins or, for that matter, virtues. In the case of Olivier the sins were the more apparent. He enjoyed making love and felt that the fact he could persuade some much younger woman to go to bed with him was a comforting reaffirmation of his virility. According to Marcella Markham, an actress who coached Olivier in his Viennese accent for “The Boys from Brazil”, he conceived a maudlin passion for her. When the production moved to London he arrived at her home with a gardenia and a diamond-studded ring. She told him she was on the point of becoming engaged and he was “visibly angry”. “Well,” he said, “it’ll be over in a few years – sex, the relationship, everything. It doesn’t last. Why do you bother?”
⁷