Confessions of an Actor

Laurence Olivier

Confessions of an Actor

Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Hardback, [1982].
8vo. xii+305 pp. Appendices, Chronology, Index [pp. 262-305]. 48 pages with black-and-white photographs.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Part One
1. How It Began
2. Cradle to Choirboy
3. Rough, Not Ready
4. Gags and Giggles

Part Two
5. New Wife, New World
6. Call to Arms
7. Hired and Fired
8. The Feverish Fifties Begin
9. Le Fievre Recule Pour Mieux Sauter
10. The Prince and the Showgirl

Part Three
11. Sea Changes
12. The Start of the Sixties
13. The National Theatre Launched
14. National But Not Velvet
15. L'Envoi

Appendix A
Appendix B
Select Chronology
Index

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I think there is nothing in the world so precious as truly selfless friendship; I am aware that this is not an original thought, but if it can do nothing else this book must register this gift as the richest in my unfairly rich cake of a life.

Well, this book does a great deal more than that.

After my ambivalent experience with On Acting (1986), a most uneven book indeed, I started the autobiography of Laurence Olivier with some trepidation. I was not a little surprised to find it superbly written, consistently entertaining and greatly revealing about the man behind one of the most staggering acting careers of the past century.

I think it is unfortunate that words like ''biography'' and "autobiography" have come to be associated mostly with the facts and figures of one's life. I think this is a great mistake. Facts and figures are the least revealing aspects of one's life, including when written by one's own hand, even more so when set down by an ''objective'' observer. Moreover, such narratives are only too likely to become unreadable tedium.

Now Larry's autobiography is packed with facts, not to mention names of actors, plays, characters, friends, acquaintances. Yet somehow, miraculously, he manages to avoid boredom. Only very occasionally does excessive detail or overdose of trivia mar these pages.

Perhaps the main cause for his success in this direction is that Larry is a surprisingly fine writer. He writes with strong yet engaging authorial voice, vast vocabulary put to service of lucidity, and a wonderful sense of humour. Consider his description of Hollywood parties in the early 1930s as a typical example of his best:

The big Hollywood parties were unbelievably true to their reputation - a sheer joy if you were in a mocking vein. Those glorious creatures, with their entrances and their descents down the staircase, were quite magnificent in their grace and stateliness and their confident composure - so soon to disappear without trace. After a couple of bootleg shots, and in as few minutes, all that majesty was sprawling and rolling about unable to utter a sentence that could be understood.

The beautiful thing about the profundity of facts is that it's very seldom excessive. The author has no intention of leaving no stones unturned. In fact, he is very selective and the choice what to include and what not is in itself revealing. Besides, the narrative is often enlivened by reflections and opinions that give a striking insight into Larry's mind. For example, he doesn't even mention the birth of his son from the first marriage with Jill Esmond and he seldom refers to him later. But one of these references tells us how, some two decades after his birth, he took him to Scotland during his preparations for the filming of Macbeth (never made, alas), but in the end they remained strangers.

If you choose to believe, this is a very candid book. Of course it is dangerous to take anything at face value, for example the author describing himself as a "moral and physical coward". But on the whole I am inclined to believe that Larry is remarkably honest with his readers - and with himself. See how he describes the budding affair between Peter Finch and his second wife, Vivien Leigh, during the shooting of Elephant Walk in Ceylon:

I could find no blame in my heart for Peter - was he not simply doing what I had done to her first husband seventeen years ago? I found it pretty old-fashioned to work up any extra feelings of outrage on account of my being his boss from whom he had been able to glean a very nice career, thank you; besides, I had always liked him, and in the strangest of ways, just then, the utter confusion of the mess in which we found ourselves seemed to dispel hostility.

Despite the fact that Larry's second marriage was at the time safely on the rocks, these cannot have been easy lines to write. He discusses his infidelities and sexual problems frankly but without fuss. If you're looking for an autobiography with high "shock value", you won't find it here. A variation of the notorious four-letter f-word - not "fame", the other one - occurs exactly one time in the whole book, and that's an adroit quotation from D. H. Lawrence. As for Vivien's manic depression, a cause of embarrassment for the author on more than one occasion, it is referred to with rare compassion and understanding, yet without melodrama. For instance:

Vivien's Pa and Ma came to dine with me at Durham Cottage. When I had told them the whole wretched tale, I remembered I had to ask them if there had ever been any insanity in either of their families. Ernest, nearly splitting a gut with outrage, almost shouted, 'Good God, no.' I had, by this time, very little patience with those who would insist on making such a distinction between mental and physical illness, and barely managed to bite back, 'Well, you have know.'

The same fine combination of candour and restraint extends to all other personal matters. Larry's numerous and often serious health problems (especially in his late years), his third wife's birth complications, the scandals with the National Theatre: all these are treated in the same no nonsense and non-sensational manner. Moreover, this is not the main topic of the book.

Reading Larry's stupendously eventful life, one thing that becomes immediately clear is the nearly fanatical dedication to his profession. This may sound obvious, even trite, for the author is widely known as "one of the greatest" and "one of the most revered" actors of the twentieth century and other stupid cliches. Yet I wonder how many people, apart from Olivier buffs, are really aware of the real dimensions of his accomplishment. Acting was certainly his forte, but there was a good deal of directing and producing, not to mention serious administrative duties like his tenure at the helm of the National Theatre (which he also co-founded).

As an actor, Olivier's versatility and longevity are impressive. The famous "Shakespeare Trilogy" is just the cherry in the cake of Larry's career. For well over fifty years of acting he starred in numerous films, British or Hollywood ones, modest TV productions or epics with vast budgets, anything. In the theatre he acted and directed everything from Sophocles and Shakespeare to Anton Chekhov, Bernard Shaw and John Osborne. At the time of publication (1982) he still had at least one great performance ahead. On the next year, aged 76, he starred as King Lear, no less, in a very fine TV production for Granada. I am happy that his Lear was preserved for the future generations, if only in the last moment, and I think it's a great loss to posterity that his Macbeth wasn't.

It would be most unfair to Larry to say that friends and family didn't matter to him. Most certainly they did; there are numerous instances in the book where his craving for friendship is poignantly obvious. But I think the stage and the screen was where his heart really belonged. Everything else - three wives and countless affairs included - was firmly on second place.

Olivier was the quintessential professional actor. And I mean professional in the best sense of the word, namely a man for whom acting is a real vocation and a life-long occupation, and one who is familiar with virtually all tricky details about staging a play or filming a movie. The most telling proof about the greater importance of his profession over his personal life I can think of is one casual remark that when Vivien once came to meet him at the airport, he was a little "dismayed" because "she should have been in front of the cameras."

Of course the autobiography is also enlightening about the negative sides of Larry's character, such as they are. He is certainly self-centered but that can't be helped. Who is this actor who is not? The actor is by definition in the same predicament as the orchestral conductor: a substantial ego is prerequisite for entering the profession, and in case of success it cannot but grow bigger.

Vanity plays an important part, too. It's very amusing to read Larry's indignation that Ralph Richardson, despite his by no means greater achievements, was knighted one year before him. Oddly enough, in 1971 he accepted life peerage only after several insistent invitations. He didn't have any misgivings about the knighthood because - at least since Henry Irving - it was common enough among actors. As for flattery, on one occasion "to my shame, and increasingly to my chagrin, I fell for [it] like a lamb for the slaughter." We may be sure there were more such occasions.

(By the way, there is one hilarious photograph of Larry with two other lords and one "Black Rod", all ridiculously dressed-up for a carnival on the street or a farce on the stage. Talking of "real" life not being a stage! "Sir", "Lord" and "Baron" look really nice before your name, and sound even nicer, but what do they mean? What do they signify? What do they matter?)

It's also fun to catch Larry, a most virile creature, in a fit of prudishness now and then. Do you know why he was "hesitant" about directing A Streetcar Named Desire? Because of his "not quite dead preoccupation with respectability." I should have been sorry to miss that! It has to be added that he did direct Vivien as Blanche and indeed went on to defend both her and the play against some nasty critical onslaughts.

I may tell you that if you're looking for some interesting details about people he worked with or knew, be it Marylin Monroe or Winston Churchill, you may be disappointed. Larry is definitely the star of the book. He knows it and he never lets you forget it. And I, personally, like it that way.

Another thing that you are certainly not going to find on these pages is any marked insight into the characters Larry played on the stage, most notably the great Shakespearean roles. This is all for the better. For this is what he tried to do in his second book, On Acting, and he failed miserably. Indeed, the weakest moments in this book are usually those in which he discusses some of his most famous creations. For instance, he dedicates an inordinate amount of space to Hamlet's final jump in his 1948 movie. Apparently it was a dangerous stunt, so he was justly proud of his performance, but it's hardly the most important moment in the film.

I guess he gave everything he could to the stage and the screen. Nothing was left for the page. Nothing, that is, except himself.

The book is lavishly illustrated with black-and-white photos. The only one in colour is on the back of the dustjacket and it shows Larry in Chekhov's Three Sisters. The romantically yellowish endpapers are also notable. They contain 18 fine portraits of Olivier in different roles: from Hamlet, Henry V , Richard III, Lear and Othello to such fascinating curiosities like Archie Rice in The Entertainer or Sergius in Arms and the Man.

The captions are also written by Larry and some of them are hilarious. Under an impressive portrait of Henry V on his horse, the following is written: "Henry V, 1943-4. Producer, director and star, Laurence Olivier, dialogue by Shakespeare. As you will deduce, I am somewhat proud of it." Lovely! Exactly the right dose of modesty and humility: the one that never degenerates into foolish self-debasement.

The photographs cover a wide range in both time and scope. Many are from movies or plays, but there are a lot off-stage and off-screen moments, usually with colleagues or friends. One particular favourite shows Olivier with Maggie Smith on the set of Othello, both sitting and smoking, her legs resting on the Larry's chair. The caption runs: "Othello boring Desdemona between shots in Shepperton."

Laurence Olivier has become so firmly associated with some of his parts, that it's a kind of surprise to discover that there is nothing of Hamlet's melancholy or Richard's villainy in him, although he is every bit as witty. What emerges between the covers of this autobiography is a man of great integrity and industry, flawed no more than the rest of us but somewhat more talented than many, who made the most of such gifts as Providence had endowed him with.

To be sure, much was omitted from this book. But if Larry thought something unimportant, or wanted to maintain his privacy on certain matters, this is fine with me. I expect to find all those omissions meticulously noted by Terry Coleman in his mammoth biography Olivier (2005). So we'll see how much they matter.

Meanwhile this autobiography, in addition to being highly entertaining, contains more than enough substance, especially as regards the character of its author. An essential read for all fans of Larry. Those who for one reason or another don't like him needn't bother about this book either.

P. S. The appendices make an interesting read.

Appendix A consists mostly of letters and deals with the beginning of the tensions with Lord Chandos and the board of the National Theatre that finally resulted in Olivier's resignation as director. Apparently a contemporary play that presented Churchill not quite as godlike as some old prigs wanted him was the seed of contention. It's a wonderful example of sheer idiocy in a high-flown style, stemming from gross prejudice, passion for censorship and painful inability to distinguish between history and fiction.

Appendix B is Lord Olivier's first speech in front of the "most potent, grave, and reverend signiors" that had accepted him as one of them. It's amusingly pompous. ( )

While this book offers a lot of insight into the career and romantic relationships of Laurence Olivier, many things are quite puzzlingly left out, such as the birth of his first child and any mention of his sister after adolescence. His timeline is also quite confusing. There are many tangents which interrupt the narrative and at times he goes back to a prior point without informing the reader. Readers outside of Great Britain may be confused by much of the political discussion. The strong points include his brutal honesty about his own and others behavior, including Vivien Leigh and Marilyn Monroe. The first appendix about a battle within the National Theatre turned intensely political is fascinating.