Olivier by Philip Ziegler Page B

O’Toole played Hamlet in the first production at the National Theatre. Olivier directed – an experience not greatly relished by either party.
    Olivier’s Othello was one of his greatest roles. His interaction with Maggie Smith produced an unforgettable theatrical experience and much discomfort to
     both parties.
    Olivier took three and a half hours to make up as Othello: blackening every part of his body, whether visible to the audience or not.
    With the architect, Denys Lasdun, in 1967, inspecting a model of the new
     National Theatre.
    As James Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey into Night” – “a pretty well perfect play”, Olivier judged it.

    With Lord Cottesloe, smoothing out the cement during the topping-out ceremony for the new National Theatre in May 1973.
    With Peter Hall in May 1973: the past and the future of the National Theatre.
    As John Tagg in “The Party”: Olivier’s last stage role and one of his most successful.
    With Michael Caine in “Sleuth” – “He’s young enough to be my son,” said Olivier ruefully.
    Opposite Sarah Miles’ marvellously seductive schoolgirl in “Term of Trial” in 1962.
    Operating on Dustin Hoffman. “I am awfully pleased about the ‘Marathon Man’,” Olivier wrote, “horrific as the story is.”
    Reunited with Gielgud and Richardson in 1983 in a mini-series for television
     about Wagner.
    As Lord Marchmain in “Brideshead Revisited” (1981) with Diana Quick as Julia Flyte.
    Olivier with Joan Plowright.
    The family at the time of Olivier’s eighteieth birhday. Tamsin, in the patterned dress on the left, Richard in the centre and Julie Kate on the right.

Biographer’s Afterword
    N early thirty years ago I completed a biography of Admiral of the Fleet Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Time and again as I worked on Laurence Olivier I was struck by the similarities between the two men, whose lives followed very different trajectories yet whose personalities were in so many ways the same.
    Mountbatten and Olivier were natural leaders. In his film “In Which We Serve” Noël Coward, a close friend of both men, portrayed Mountbatten as Captain Kinross, in command of a destroyer in the Second World War. “I want my ship to be a happy ship,” Kinross/Mountbatten famously declared. He wanted his ship to be a happy ship because happy ships were more likely to be efficient ships but also because he had a strong sense of belonging and mutual responsibility. The crew were like an extended family: he took it for granted that they would be loyal and would respect, admire, even love him. He felt the same for them. Olivier wanted the National Theatre to be a happy theatre: he knew everyone, took an interest in everyone, consciously fostered a sense of community. Both men were adored by the people who worked under them.
    Both men were inordinately ambitious. Mountbatten was sixteen when he announced that he would one day follow his father as First Sea Lord, professional head of the British Navy; Olivier was only a few years older when he said that he intended to be the greatest actor in the world. To achieve their ends they both thrust upward, paying little heed to the victims of their progress. Mountbatten may have been adored by his men, but the contemporaries over whose heads he jumped weredecidedly less enthusiastic about his qualities. Richardson, Gielgud, Redgrave, Scofield, all paid tribute to Olivier’s transcendent skills, but disparaging comments were not infrequent when it came to discussion of his personality.
    Both were obsessed by detail. Nobody would deny that Mountbatten was capable of viewing the picture as a whole; the creative force behind the National Theatre could hardly be accused of taking the narrow view; but given half a chance they would each have accepted responsibility for every tiny technicality. Mountbatten had views on what equipment each infantryman should carry when he stormed the beaches of Normandy; Olivier would interfere in the choice of