THE OLIVIERS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27191, 7 November 1953, Page 3

THE OLIVIERS

, VIVID PICTURE IN A . DOUBLE BIOGRAPHY [Remewed by HX..G.J The Oliviers. A Biography. By Felix > Barker. Hamish Hamilton. 313 pp. Although this is an authorised biography, written by Mr Barker with • the co-operation and assistance of Sir , Laurence and Lady Olivier, it is not what the author calls an “Alleluia ' book.” His interpretation of the main facts in the Olivier s careers is his own, • and his attitude stops well short of idolatry. Provided with all the Olivier’s theatrical records, private diaries and correspondence with famous contemporaries, as well as with their own and their friends’ recollections, Mr Barker has been able to reconstruct a very full account of their careers. Although both have worked hard at • their proiessicn, success did not attend upon prolonged struggle in the lives ' of either of the Oliviers. Both were born in comfortable circumstances and ’ no opposition was placed in the way , of their becoming actors. Sir Laurence was starring as Brutus and as Katharina in “The Taming of the Shrew” while still at the choir school attached . to the Church of All Saints near Oxford Circus, a school whose productions attracted audiences that included Ellen Terry, Sybil Thorndike, and Lady Tree. At the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, he won the cup for the best male student in his second term. At the Birmingham Repertory Theatre the critics were kind to him, praising him for his “sincerity”—a word which, as Mr Barker remarks, was destined to have a considerable influence on his career. (More unkind critics sometimes noticed a lack of inner fire.) At 21, with a Ronald Colman moustache, Laurence was a leading juvenile in London, starring jn Basil Dean’s spectacular “Beau Geste.” It is true that he had made ar. ambitious young man’s mistake in • judgment by forsaking a part in •‘Journey’s End’’ for this glittering prize; I •the mistake was followed by a year’s • ’association with plays that failed. But he made a quick recovery by accept- • ing the thankless part of Victor in , »Noel Coward s “Private Lives,” starring Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. . From then on Laurence's star was in the ascendant. After one flirtation . ’with Hollywood, he shunned films fora crucial five-year period during which . his reputation in the London theatre

was established. By 1935. he was alternating the parts of Romeo and Merbeutio with John Gielgud in the latter’s Production of “Romeo and Juliet,” and Tad started on producing himself. In 1936 Laurence Olivier met his future wife, whose rise in the theatre was even more spectacular. After a youth spent in India, at a convent and L Continental finishing schools, Vivian Hartley had married Leigh Holman (from whom she derives her stage-name), had a child, completed her course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and launched herself into . the theatrical world. Success came overnight when she played in •The Mask of Virtue” in 1935; at 19 She was famous and under contract to

Alexander Korda. A run of successful films was interrupted by a gay trip to Oxford to star in an Oxford University Dramatic Society production and to Elsinore to play Ophelia opposite Olivier. It was after their trip tc Denmark that Vivien Leigh fell obliged to tell her husband anc Laurence Olivier his wife, that they had fallen in love. They were married three years later, in 1940, a 1 Santa Barbara. California, each losing the legal custody of a child. The rest of their joint careers is well known in outline, but Mr Barker has many an interesting detail and anecdote to add. He tells how Olivier’s odd interpretation of lago in the 1937 production of “Othello” with Ralph Richardson was governed by the view of an eminent psychologist that lago nourished a secret homosexual passion for Othello. Olivier has always been inclined to Freudian interpretations. Mr Barker lets a cat out of the bag by revealing that Olivier, at least in the *3o’s, was very lukewarm in his appreciation of the character of Henry V. As a professed pacifist, he disliked the glorification of heroic warfare and what he called Henry’s “scoutmaster humour.” He even “discussed darkly a debunking production which would hold up fiag-waving to ridicule.” But by 1943 he had modified his sentiments. The Old Vic in the last days of Lilian Baylis, Olivier in the Fleet Air Arm, Olivier as actor-manager of his own theatre at the St. James’s, Vivien Leigh getting the part of Scarlett O’Hara through a half-joking remark made at a lucky moment, or arguing with G.B.S. over the character of .Cleopatra, the Oliviers together in the Spectacular failure of “Romeo and jJuliet” on Broadway in 1940, Olivier Slaying his astonishing series of great ’Toles in 1944-46 and nervously receiving his knighthood in 1947 —all these fggs Mr Barker describes in lively iL He tells how the tour of AuSa and New Zealand was marred die Oliviers partly by the imposity of escaping the adoring •wds, the speed at which they had travel and the frequency of permances, and partly by a serious •w that came to them in the middle this exacting tour: this was a letfrom the Chairman of the Old Vic vemors dismissing Olivier and his low-directors, Richardson and BurL- (“O me, I see the ending of our »-wJse!” cabled Olivier to Burrell.) To jcap it all. Olivier’s knee which he had finjured ip Sydney gave out in Christ»church and he finished the tour in I hospital. t This double biography gives a vivid (picture of two highly successful, hardworking and brilliant people who have t lor the most part sincerely tried to be .actors rather than stars. Both have some genuinely great roles. •Their story, fully illustrated by some 60 photographs, will fascinate all who are interested in the theatre.