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Olivier
By Terry Coleman
608 pages
Bloomsbury £20
Dateline: 13th September, 2005
It cannot be easy to write the authorised biography of a man who happily
reinvented parts of his own life that he did not think went well in
practice. Putting it politely, Olivier enjoyed embellishing the truth.
In blunter language, he might as easily have been described as an outrageous
liar.
The man chosen by his estate and family to write his biography is possibly
an unexpected selection. Terry Coleman is a political journalist but
also an experienced biographer who can list the likes of Lord Nelson,
Thomas Hardy and the Transatlantic Liner as subjects.
Coleman counters his subject's invention by sheer hard work and massive
research from literally hundreds or possibly even thousands of sources.
He constantly gives different versions of the same event and leaves
readers to decide which is the most likely to have taken place.
The conclusion that one reaches from reading this biography is that
Laurence Olivier was really not a very nice man. Despite a religious
upbringing, he would always throw away morality when he had the opportunity
to womanise and, on meeting Vivien Leigh, was happy to give up his current
wife and baby son.
He was also readily prepared to walk over others to ensure that he
achieved his own goals. As John Gielgud put it: "The truth is he
is a born autocrat and must always be right. He has little respect for
the critical sensitivities of others". Paradoxically, in spite
of all of this, Olivier was also much loved, in every sense.
His relationship with Vivien Leigh was often tempestuous but, on occasion,
became a love that surpassed reason. They shared a self-loving arrogance
but also a determination to succeed that ensured that the almost unknown
actress became an overnight success in Gone With the Wind and
her husband one of the greatest actors of his generation.
In retrospect, theatrical and film stars always appear to have been
constantly successful, but, like everyone else, Olivier had more failures
than successes, particularly in the early part of his career. He first
sprang to fame and success, probably much to his chagrin, on
film rather than stage. First in Wuthering Heights and then far
more so with his stirring, wartime Henry V, he became a household
name and only then consolidated it with Richard III, perhaps
the first stage role that hinted at his true greatness rather than merely
high quality acting.
What Olivier had as an actor, that few others can match, was an ability
to transform himself into the character that he was playing on stage.
He could also do this on more private occasions and apparently had an
ability to "disappear", for example when the press were hounding
him.
Olivier more than met his match when he fell madly in love with Miss
Leigh. The two had the ability to spend money like it was going out
of fashion and, as her manic depression became increasingly bad, her
husband's life must have seemed unbearable. By that time, he constantly
worked himself to exhaustion and even in his early fifties, it was only
an incredible constitution that saved him from physical collapse.
At that point, he was also trying not only to be an actor-manager but
also to set up a new theatre in Chichester and, after battles with Peter
Hall, a National Theatre for his country. The politics of the creation
of what is now the Royal National Theatre and of its operations thereafter
are fascinating, although the author loses balance in his judgments,
constantly supporting the views of the conservative elements against
the avant-garde. In particular, Coleman has an absolute hatred of Ken
Tynan and makes no attempt to hide this fact.
By the end of his ten-year stint, Olivier had officially opened the
new building on the South Bank that currently houses the National Theatre
but left his post a bitter and disappointed man. This was not helped
by the appointment of Peter Hall, his old rival, to succeed him.
Sadly, life for Lord Olivier went rapidly downhill from there. A man
who had almost never been ill in the first 60 years of his life spent
the last 22 ailing. His marriage to Joan Plowright and their three young
children gave him pleasure but even then he found her successful theatrical
career hard to take. He worked almost to the end but gave up the stage
after a period of increasingly difficult struggles against stage fright
which made the medium nigh on impossible.
He continued working on film and in television, primarily to make money,
appearing in some really awful things in amongst the hits such as Brideshead
Revisited. As Terry Coleman observes, the final battle between the
ultimately successful Westminster Abbey and St Paul's for the right
to inter his ashes would almost certainly have amused his Lordship.
This is a long and worthy book from a biographer who chooses to view
one of the most famous and possibly greatest actors of the last century
in the same light as if he were a politician or Admiral. The research
is immense but, too often, there is doubt as to whether Mr Coleman empathises
with the theatrical life as one might demand when choosing the man to
write the definitive life of Laurence Olivier.
Philip Fisher
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