Lord Olivier dies at home in his sleep

Press, 13 July 1989, Page 8

Lord Olivier dies at home in his sleep

NZPA-Reuter

London

The death of Lord Olivier was marked by tributes from around the world hailing him as a giant, a genius and one of the greatest actors of the century.

Theatres throughout Britain dimmed lights and observed brief silences in respect for the actor, aged 82. London’s National Theatre, which he created and ran for more than a decade, and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, in Stratford-on-Avon, flew flags at half mast after the announcement of his death yesterday. “He was a Titan,” the National Theatre chairman,' Richard Eyre, said. “We shall not see his like again.” Illuminations outside the National Theatre were turned off and a simple message read “Laurence Olivier — 19071989.”

Lord Olivier had been fighting his last battle against cancer and heart trouble for more than a decade. But he kept working into his final year before dying peacefully in his sleep at home, with his wife, Joan Plowright, at his bedside. Hailed as the supreme interpreter of Shakespeare, Lord Olivier also tackled a wide range of roles. His Othello, for which he deepened his voice an octave, rehearsed in black leather clothing and covered himself in black greasepaint, was described as the greatest. “Olivier would pounce upon a line and rip its heart out,” a critic, Kenneth Tynan, once said. He was equally at home as a seedy comedian, Archie Rice, in the stage and screen versions of John Osborne’s “The Entertainer” (1957-59) or as a Nazi doctor in the film “Marathon Man”

(1975). “I never really enjoyed the tragic parts. They cost too much,” he had said. Knighted in 1947, Lord Olivier was the youngest of a triumvirate of actor knights that included Sir John Gielgud and the late Sir Ralph Richardson. “I had the voice; Larry had the legs,” Sir John said.

Descended from French Huguenots, Laurence Kerr Olivier was born on May 22, 1907, in Dorking, southern England. His theatrical training began in 1924 in a London drama school. At 19 he joined a repertory company. His first London success was in 1928 in Tennyson’s verse play, "Harold.”

In 1930 he married an actress, Jill Esmond, and enjoyed the first of his lighter successes playing with Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in Coward’s “Private Lives.”

The marriage, as Olivier admitted in his candid “Confessions of an Actor” (1982), was a failure from the start. In 1935, while alternating with Gielgud as Mercutio and Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet,” Olivier was smitten with the “wondrous unimagined beauty” of another actress, Vivien Leigh. Leigh had already fallen in love with Olivier during one of his performances and declared to a friend she would marry him.

She was i stardom in 1 Clark Gable’! wood epic, “'

later to win international 1939 as Scarlett O’Hara to 5 Rhett Butler in a HollyGone With The Wind.”

Cast as young lovers in the court of Elizabeth I in “Fire over England,” Olivier and Leigh hid the relationship for two years. Finally, they shocked the world by announcing their adultery. They married in 1940, but the union was blighted by Leigh’s mental illness. They divorced in 1961.

Olivier became a film idol as Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights” (1939) and as Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice” (1940). He was nominated for an Oscar for his role in “Rebecca” (1939), Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film. Released from active duty with the British Fleet Air Arm during World War 11, Olivier directed, produced and starred in a film of “Henry V” (1944). In the next few years, Olivier was at the height of his powers. With Richardson and two directors, Tyrone Guthrie and John Burrell, he took over the Old

Vic Theatre Company and laid the basis of what would later become Britain’s National Theatre.

His portrayal of Richard 111 in 1944 and 1945 won acclaim in London, Paris and New York. In 1947 he directed and starred in a film version of “Hamlet,” which in 1949 won four Academy awards, including best film and best performance by an actor.

In 1955 he filmed “Richard III” and the following year directed himself and Marilyn Monroe in “The Prince and the Showgirl,” a film version of Terence Rattigan’s “The Sleeping Prince.” In 1963, Olivier became the first director of the National Theatre company at the Old Vic. In the next 10 years, he was an administrator, actor and director, fighting cancer and thrombosis to pour enormous energy into' such parts as

Othello (1964), Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” (1970) and James Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s marathon “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (1971). In 1970, he became the first professional actor to be elevated to the British peerage, taking the title Baron Olivier of Brighton. Two years later, he played a detectivestory, writer, Andrew Wyke, opposite Michael Caine in the film “Sleuth” and won an Emmy award for the television version of “Long Day’s Journey.” In 1974, he was assailed by a severe muscular wasting disease, but recovered to produce his own series of favourite plays for television from 1976. Between 1975 and 1981, Olivier made 20 films, earning money but little critical esteem for parts in Harold Robbins’ “The Betsy” (1978) and a remake of “The Jazz Singer” (1980). He won an honorary Oscar in 1979.

He starred in the acclaimed television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” (1981) and a television film of John Mortimer’s “A Voyage Round My Father” (1982). In 1983, he braved further illness to make a triumphant film of “King Lear” for television.

In the week of his eightieth birthday in May 1987, Olivier’s agent announced he would no longer appear on film or television but would read verse or prose for radio or recorded television programmes.

Olivier had one son by his first marriage, and one son and two daughters by his third, to Joan Plowright, whom he married in 1961.

Plowright joked that she could not tell when Olivier was acting and when he was not: “Larry? Oh, he’s acting all the time.”