Laurence Olivier, cunt of legendary proportion, reviled by the entire show-business, The definition of '' overrated ''

And a hammy actor, to boot!

Aside from being the greatest actor ever?

Those photos are great, OP.

[quote]a boring hippo with a plastic karma

Someone break this down for me?

He was once so furious that Megs Smith got a laugh, that he HIT her backstage with his closed fist. Nobody dared say anything. It's from YouTube but I coudn't find the link. She said she tried to laugh it off by quipping ' now I've seen the stars of Hollywood '

R4 Vivien was buddhist and she believed in Karma. She said that he was so boring in bed that he reminded her of a hippo... With a plastic karma = hopeless

Marilyn completely outshone him in the movie they made together.

I wonder if he'd have a career today

His big daddy with a badly miscast Wood was a masterclass in hammy . Just a huge black hole of bad acting. But boy does he enjoy himself. Second hand embarrassment galore.

His extraordinary good looks as a young man made that career. He would have done well on stage in London, but that face got him to Hollywood and to money, big money, and world wide fame. John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson were every bit as good at acting as Olivier ever was. But Olivier was gorgeous when young and that made the difference.

Olivier was cute.

OP, that list has me wondering what the set of Clash of the Titans was like.

life-altering in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. Also unforgettable in THE ENTERTAINER. Don't be a fool GenX-er and think you have to revise everything.

Merle Oberon's opinion means nothing. I mean really--Merle Oberon, the one time "club hostess" who slept her way into a career with Korda.

The insufferable Danny Kaye seemed crazy about him!

From a NYT article, Olivier was working on Wuthering Heights.

After three weeks of shooting, with the movie badly behind schedule, Goldwyn appeared on the set. 'Willy,' Goldwyn said to Wyler, 'if this - this actor goes on playing the way he is, I close up the picture. Will you look at that actor's ugly face. He's dirty, his performance is rotten, it's stagey, it's just nothing. . . . I won't have it and if he doesn't improve, I'm gonna close up the picture.'

'Right, Mr. Goldwyn,' Wyler said, and from that moment, Olivier later allowed, 'I was obedience itself.'

Garbo had him fired from Hollywood.

[quote]He was once so furious that Megs Smith got a laugh, that he HIT her backstage with his closed fist. Nobody dared say anything. It's from YouTube but I coudn't find the link. She said she tried to laugh it off by quipping "now I've seen the stars of Hollywood."

Dame Maggie actually said something like, "It was the first time I'd seen stars at the National Theatre." Ouch. You can hear her tell this story in the charming documentary "Tea With The Dames" that features her and Joan Plowright, Eileen Atkins, and Judi Dench sitting around and hilariously reminiscing about their lives in the theater.

All the Dames are diplomatic about Olivier; Dame Maggie calls him "tricky" and after all, his widow Dame Joan is sitting right there.

You can see the doc on Netflix and YouTube - well worth the time and small rental.

Thanks R18. Vanessa Redgrave has a few words for him too. Apparently he was co-directing the RSC with her father at one point, and manoeuvred Michael out or had him fired, using the gay excuse. (we'll get in trouble with him). He is also rumored to have personally campaigned for his wife Leigh NOT to be appointed a dame. Ew

Hoffman couldn't stand Olivier because during the making of Marathon Man, after Hoffman had stayed up for days to get into character, Olivier looked at him and said "My dear boy, why don't you try acting the part".

I preferred Robert Donat, John Mills, Ronald Colman and Charles Laughton in film. Olivier for the most part was very hammy and gave performances based on exterior rather than from inside of a character. Thus he focused too much on the right nose, walk, makeup, which is all fine and good, but he then sometimes added bluster and being over-emphatic, rather than letting his audience see who he and his character really was. There are some exceptions, and yes, he was very good-looking early on, but by the 50s or so, he kind of lost his romantic allure and started going after big noses and making big noises.

Alan Bates turned down the Caine part in 'Sleuth' because he coudn't bear to endure Olivier on yet another project. Olivier kept asking and Bates finally agreed to ' voyage round my father ' because he could see Olivier was dying.

He wasn't just hammy, he was often unbelievably queeny. Nothing wrong with that in life, but if it keeps appearing in your performances you are not getting inside your character, which in those days was invariably meant to be straight.

Coward got on well with Olivier during Private Lives, but (a) he obviously fancied him, and (b) that was 1930. Coward was the bigger star and Olivier was professionally subservient to him. Olivier had a problem with breaking up onstage, which Coward cured over the run of the play by inventing an imaginary dog that humped Olivier's leg at different points in the performance, to Coward's feigned horror (which I assume was pointed upstage). Imagine any later co-stars trying that.

He was sooo WOODEN in every movie.. I never got the ' greatest actor of all time ' hype.

Anybody here old enough to have seen him on stage?

I, very often at the begin'ing of his illustrious career. We all knew he was going places. Tragically, he died so untimely. To think what could have been...

Danny Kaye and he were apparently an item for a while. I think Gwen Verdon also dated or had a fling with Danny Kaye too.

Has Diane Lane ever said anything about him?

Being hammy can work as it does in his Richard III.

His 'I am not in the giving vein today.' is so chilling. The look he gives Richardson and Sir Ralph's look of dismay are so wonderful.

People who saw him on stage said he was unforgettable.

This current revisionism is being made by idiots.

"Oh, WOWWWWWW!"

[quote]After three weeks of shooting, with the movie badly behind schedule, Goldwyn appeared on the set. 'Willy,' Goldwyn said to Wyler, 'if this - this actor goes on playing the way he is, I close up the picture. Will you look at that actor's ugly face. He's dirty, his performance is rotten, it's stagey, it's just nothing. . . . I won't have it and if he doesn't improve, I'm gonna close up the picture.'

Ugly face???

R28 From an interview with Lane:

If you could ask Laurence Olivier a question today, what would that question be?

The first question that comes to mind is very selfish, because a lot of my association with him has been his quote (Laurence called his costar Diane, then 14, as “the new Grace Kelly”). I would say, “Why Grace Kelly? Am I going to marry a European prince? What’s the deal?”I certainly took it as a tremendous compliment, because the woman (Grace) was a screen goddess.So I would ask him, because he was a very clever man in terms of being honest to a fault.

I remember Laurence rehearsing with my father at the bar in Verona before he was going to give the first interview of many years to the New York Times the next day.My father was thrilled. My father was an acting teacher. So there he was, talking to Lord Larry. My dad came back and told me some of the things that Laurence had said to him. I was amazed and horrified.

I’d ask him (Laurence), what was his motivation to insist on riding his own bicycle (in the movie)? Because he was in great pain at that point, with physical maladies.They had created a motorized bicycle for him to get through the streets of Italy during that part of the film when we’re hiding in a bicycle race.He was reportedly very offended that they had created this automatic bike for him. There were hills involved and they didn’t want him to get hurt. He was going to do it, even though it caused him pain. That’s a level of integrity that not many people would necessarily have.

R25 my partner saw Olivier on stage in Ibsen's [italic]The Master Builder[/italic] and was less than impressed (see the link for more info on that production). He later met Olivier by chance at his tailor's in London and Olivier flirted with him and called him 'dear boy'.

He was all set to become the spokesman for Tidy Bowl in the late 60's and he messed it up by demanding re-writes.

For film acting, at least, give me Richardson or Gielgud anytime.

Two stories about his charmlessness come to mind. He'd heard Alec Guinness had spent the weekend with Gielgud, and later made a graphic sexual remark about what he imagined they'd got up to. The story was Guinness's, and he commented along the lines of, 'Olivier's vulgarity was breathtaking.'

In a play a fellow actor either subordinate and nervous or a distinct rival (or both) was in the wings, just about to make his first entrance; Olivier sidled up to him and whispered something devastatingly destructive before the actor walked on to face a full house. Nice.

Cogito, ergo sum.

I'm glad to see he's finally getting his comeuppance.

In two of his best films he played someone who's running on fumes: "Carrie" and "The Entertainer. "

R38 = Vivien

At the end of the evening did he bring hubby back to Madam Tussaud's?

In his own word. About his beloved wife winning best actress for for Gone with the wind : ' I wanted to grab it and crack her skull open with it '. About his most famous co-star ' My hatred for Marilyn Monroe is one of the most intense feelings I have ever experienced (from his auto-bio)... Charming characters.

He and Danny Kaye were more than just "an item for a while". They had homes built next door to each other and were together for over a decade, mostly while he was married to Vivien. Danny and Vivien were friends at first, but the rumor goes that Larry and Danny's relationship was too much for Vivien and heavily contributed to her psychological breakdown. I always wondered what those two had in common. One day they'll make an interesting biopic about it.

Absolutely loved him in those deathbed scenes in brideshead revisited

E34 Lucy was supposed to have the Tidy Bowl gig, but Gary talked her out of it.

Marty Melcher signed Doris Day to Tidy Bowl. She fought to get out of it and won.

I heard that Suzanne Sommers was up for the Tidy Bowl gig but she couldn't learn how to work the flush handled on the......convenience.

[quote]One day they'll make an interesting biopic about it.

'When Danny met Larry'.

(I won't have what he's having.)

R48, these days we would have a combined nickname for Danny Kaye and Olivier, like KayO

I agree with the poster who said revising the take on Olivier is not so smart. He was a great actor and perhaps not a nice man all the time. Yeah he did not get along with Monroe on their film (he was the director.) However no one ever did. She held up productions for hours and drove everyone crazy. He did say that at the end of the day she wiped us all up in the rushes.

Coral Browne, ever the fabulous bitch, remarked that Olivier's performance in VOYAGE ROUND MY FATHER was so shamelessly hammy that it was one for the ages.

[quote]One day they'll make an interesting biopic about it.

By the time they do, no one will know who either of them were.

Lots of folks have no idea who they are now, unfortunately. Maybe schools have their students watch his "Hamlet" when they are studying the play, so maybe Olivier's name is known. Kaye is mostly known nowadays for yearly go-arounds on tv of "White Christmas" and much less frequently shown now, "Hans Christian Anderson".

As for Kaye... look, if my spouse was bipolar, I'd go nuts over the first sane and fun who expressed any interest in me!

The question is what Kaye saw in Olivier, who was by all accounts an asshole much of the time.

Olivier was Not hated by the entire show business, Come on, he was loved and respected by many.

[quote]The question is what Kaye saw in Olivier, who was by all accounts an asshole much of the time.

Stars can be starfuckers too. Olivier was touched with genius as his best screen work shows. Without doubt he could use that gift to charm birds from trees. If he wanted fun with Kaye he'd have reeled him in without breaking sweat.

Bette Davis was desperate to bone Larry, but she never got her wish.

One can imagine what Sir Larry thought of that Davis creature.

I think it was John Gielgud who said "Larry" got his accent Othello from listening to the Jamaican bus conductors on the London double-decker busses: "Oh, Desdemona! Space on de upper deck!" I've never been able to watch the film version without laughing since, because it's oh so true.

Wonder what else he got from those conductors...

Olivier resented Gielgud not only for his talent but also for the fact that he could reach Vivien when she was ill in a way that Larry couldn’t. When Gielgud was arrested for ‘importuning’, Richardson, Olivier, Leigh & I think Sybil Thornydyke met to discuss what to do as Gielgud was due to begin a new play. Larry ‘magnanimously’ offered to stand in for him, prompting Vivien to exclaim, ‘Larry, you cunt!’ She knew that if Gielgud didn’t go on stage immediately he’d be ruined and that that was Olivier’s game.

[68] do you mean Olivier or Gielgud? I would say Olivier nothing, but Gielgud... as much as he could get

Historical revisionism is DL's maiden name.

Always got a cunty vibe from him. Hate REBECCA for the sight of him.

R5 That knockout incident happened onstage during a scene, the slap was part of the scene but the force wasn't. R18 I found 'Tea with the Dames' ( 'Nothing like a Dame' in the UK, wonder why they changed it for America? ) disappointing, rather dull and twee, no anecdotes anyone theatrically interested hadn't heard before and the rest was the old dears talking about hearing aids and funerals. Nobody, including the widow Plowright, gave a glowing account of Larry however, which I found surprising. I think OP is on to something , but in usual overly aggressive DL style. Add Rex Harrison and Robert Morley to the list of LO non-fans. Morley was dismissive of him throughout an NFT lecture, during the Q&A session someone asked directly his opinion of Olivier, he replied 'Adequate'. When pressed further, Sheridan Morley ( Robert's son and interviewer that day ) stepped in and said 'I think we've had our answer', thereby stopping Morley Snr from elucidating, which he seemed cheerfully intent on. Rex Harrison was equally unimpressed, in old age, when both were heavily bearded for parts ( Larry doing TV Lear, Rex a GB Shaw play ) they shared an elevator , their companions knowing their antipathy braced themselves, but nothing happened as the old boys didn't recognise each other. Olivier was a better actor than either of those two, but the point is their disdain is not un-shared. Lynn Redgrave describes how glibly unkind Olivier was when her father Michael was suffering from early Parkinsons ( which in fairness was not known at the time ) and Olivier replaced him in the Master builder at the National. He was very pleased to tick off another rival. I think Olivier was a good actor who was handsome, more so than any of his contemporaries and he made Shakespeare sexy in a way Richardson, Gielgud ,Redgrave etc couldn't. He was also wildly ambitious and took on the huge National Theatre project, he was very keen on the best actor title and guarded it fiercely, when Branagh was mooted as 'the next Olivier' Olivier said that when Branagh got to the door he would find it barred by an old man. Below is linked an old doc about great acting , the whole thing is a treat for those interested, but from the 25 min mark are interviews with Richardson, Gielgud and Olivier. The first two are modest about their acting shortcomings with Gielgud professing admiration for OL, Olivier is faux modest in comparing himself to Gielgud ( his biggest competition for great actor title ), he describes himself and Gielgud as two sides of the same coin. Gielgud as all air and light and ethereal and himself as blood and earth and reality, but his emphasis and the way he tells it make it very plain which side of the coin he thinks best. Olivier will always lay claim the the greatest actor title, he was good, great at times and worked very hard on that claim, but as time passes so does acclaim, it won't be long before Laurence Olivier is as dusty a name as Henry Irving. Styles change, films from the '30s and '40s, with their clipped speech and historic histrionics are as odd and funny to modern eyes as flickering silent films with chalk faced actors waving their arms about were to us. Those claiming Gen X revisionism are just mad at time passing.

Claire Bloom also wrote that Olivier fucked her, as many other young actresses, as par for the course, not even pretending to be interested in them, and when she got to know Vivien Leigh and see first hand just how much she was suffering, she was even sorrier. Vivien was also very indiscreet about Olivier fucking men, she hated hypocrisy and didn't mind outing him in public. She expressed her wish to get a quiet divorce in order to marry Peter Finch, but Olivier only let her go once it was too late for her, and HE had found a young woman. C.U.N.T. Btw, he soient the rest of his life putting Plowright down and comparing her unfavorably to Leigh, and left her very little in his will. Their children aren't exactly gushing either.

He ' spent' not soient

R73’s link is fantastic.

In so many of the videos posted in this thread I can’t help noticing that Olivier while exciting admiration rarely seems to inspire affection. Even his own son refers to him as Larry, which struck me as weird.

There's some anecdote in a biography about Olivier that Vivien once had a public nervous breakdown while very drunk and getting off of an airplane with him and Danny Kaye, and she screamed at both of them that they should leave her alone, stop being hypocrites and go back to fucking behind her back. This happened in front of many many people supposedly but it was shrugged off as the ravings of a drunken hysteric.

[quote]The question is what Kaye saw in Olivier, who was by all accounts an asshole much of the time.

I've wondered that too. Unlike his gregarious on-screen persona, Danny by all accounts had a rather steely and serious personality himself, so maybe he was able to see something else in Larry. They were together for longer than many Hollywood marriages, so they must have had some kind of real connection. It's always been interesting to me because of how fucking weird and mismatched they seemed.

Larry was à fucking tool

I'm really amazed that Olivier and Leigh stayed married as long as they did. He wrote at length about the agony her bipolar disorder put him through, and I believe it because everyone around someone with untreated bipolar disorder suffers, and not at all about his fucking men and women so indiscretely that she knew all about it.

Today's narcissistic and mentally ill celebrities just don't have that kind of commitment.

Thanks R73 , great find. R76 is right, Larry seems admired but not beloved.

Vivien was a bipolar self medicating drunk, but he also spent years aggressively gaslighting her and cheating on her right in her face. (He later did the same thing to Joan.) Sounds like a match made in absolute hell. How did Danny Kaye stay in the middle of that for over ten years?

"Their children aren't exactly gushing either."

Isn't one of them called Tarquin, R74? It's a wonder the child didn't put out a hit on him for that alone.

[quote]I found 'Tea with the Dames' ( 'Nothing like a Dame' in the UK, wonder why they changed it for America? ) disappointing, rather dull and twee, no anecdotes anyone theatrically interested hadn't heard before and the rest was the old dears talking about hearing aids and funerals.

I agree but the story about Miriam Margulies asking Judi Dench if she'd made her own funeral arrangements yet was pretty good.

It seemed like they were all holding back about Sir Larry, however. Dench would get a look on her face like she was biting her tongue when talking about him, and Maggie Smith didn't go into detail in her story because of her deference to Plowright. I think the story she told about how ridiculous Larry looked as Othello was said when Joan Plowright was out of the room.

Danny Kaye was a difficult, egotistical jerk, so they deserved each other.

I ' EW '-ed at that pic for endless reasons

Stinky link

Excuse his beauty.

His French accent. Oy.

He was just another young hopeful pretentious ACTAH, before he hooked up with Leigh. Korda was determined to sell her down the river and make millions out of her, it was obvious she was going to make it big, and saw the potential in their ' love story' which was an open relationship from the start. He was never in her league, film wise. He tried to prevent her to take the GWTW role, saying she was not good enough for that big a project, couldn't do an accent and would be ridiculed. She sure showed him. Then he tried to kill her career, like he had Jill Esmond's. (She was a brilliant stage actress as well, but with a small voice.) somebody had to tell him, and I think it was Gielgud ' Don't be a shit twice'. People were flocking to their stage productions clamouring' 'scarlett ! Scarlett !' ' and he hated and resented that, and her, for it. K. HEPBURN put it that way' 'great actor, small man' '

Prevent her from taking.. Sorry

[quote]Miriam Margulies

Oh, dear.

[quote]Dame Maggie calls him "tricky"

Like the color green?

Tricky must be English code for "fucked up".

"tricky" is english code for ' cunt on wheels'

When did Vivien Leigh become beyond critical comment. She died 52 years ago..

If you care to see a moving screen performance from Olivier watch Carrie based on Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.

By moving I mean touching, and poignant.

Olivier made commercials in Japan in the 70's - one for a floor wax that showed him flying through the air on a mop.

I think Joan Plowright is tremendously liked by everyone in the acting profession. For this reason, people hold back a great deal talking about ‘the real Olivier’. Most notably how revolting he was and his affairs with men, which would be humiliating for Plowright to ensure hearing. When she dies you will get everyone recounting the real stories.

As other posts have said, he pretty much gaslit Vivien Leigh. Oliver would ask Male friends over to their home for the weekend. Very soon Leigh would be in a manic state and drunk and take to her bed. Olivier and whatever Male companion with him, would then spend their time nude in the swimming pool and conducting their activities in ear shot of Leigh’s bedroom window. Leigh would later confide this information to friends.

Olivier scholars on this thread will confirm or deny, but another distant story has popped into my head.

Over the breakfast table Plowright was checking mail - and opened a writ for divorce from Larry. As well she might, she asked him quite what that was all about. Coolly Olivier said that he didn't care to be married to anyone who planned to work with Peter Hall, as Joan was soon to do. Her association with Peter Hall thus concluded.

Some say Anthony Hopkins is Olivier's heir to cuntiness.

When would anyone get the chance to talk to Hopkins to interact with him off-screen; doesn't he go over his lines like thousands of times?

Hamboned asshole with a penchant for cruelty. And that's being nice.

He was absolutely adorable and I was in awe of him. A great man

Today's the day Larry married Vivien.

It was at the San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara on this day 79 years ago.

The witnesses were Katharine Hepburn, Garson Kanin, Ronald Colman and Benita Hume.

For all the pearl clutching shrieks about revisionism and how dare we, all you have to do is WATCH the films and the performances.

There are a few decent ones but there's also lots and lots of ham handed dreck.

He was just so obvious with his acting...something in common with another overpraised actor, Ms Streep.

Dear R105 that is a gross generalisation.

You can watch about a hundred of all the thousands of characters he played on screen, on stage and in life. Some are comic, some are ironic, some are utterly appropriate for their time.

You can have a debate if you actually mention which performances you're complaining about.

"History, sir, will tell lies as usual."

R106

"THOUSANDS of characters"

What the fuck kind of drugs are you on?