Laurence Olivier died at the age of 82 after nearly two decades of suffering various serious illnesses. Though the world had lost who many consider to be the greatest actor of his generation, Larry left behind a tremendous lagacy of film and theatre performances. He inspired many of the top actors of today and a few notables even consider him their mentor and their inspiration for getting in to acting. Larry loved his job and more importantly, he loved life. Though some biographers claim he was not as interesting as Vivien Leigh was, it's something to be said that he had many friends, many fans, and left a tremendous impression on people around the world.

Below are anecdotes and stories of how he was remembered by friends and colleagues alike.

• All good actors have their time and Larry then was at his peak. He was playing Richard III. It was a history-making company with Ralph Richardson, Alec Guinness, and Peggy Ashcroft.

While we were getting ready for the first night, around six o'clock, the phone rang. It was Larry. The curtain was due up at 8. He said, 'You're coming tonight, aren't you?' 'Of course we're coming,' I said, 'What do you mean?' 'I want you to come and see me in my dressing room before the show,' he said. Nobody ever asks to see anybody before the show, not even your wife. I put down the telephone and said to Mary, 'What the hell is going on? It all sounds very strange.'

We got to the theatre at 7, an hour before the show and went up to the dressing room and there he was. He was prancing about in full make-up, false nose, hair, totally ready to go on. He said, 'Sit down I want to tell you something, you are my greatest friends and I want you to know that I'm in for a fucking awful flop.' he said, 'I'll tell you something. We haven't been through the play, John Burrell has cocked it up, I think. We are all over the shop, I don't know it, I've dried twice. I just want you to know that I know. That's all, see you later.'

So we tottered out, went to that pub across the road from the New Theatre and grabbed two double brandies. We thought we were in for a total disaster because he really meant it. Anyway, we were in the second row as the curtain came up and on came Larry. I cannot explain what it was like, it was a reincarnation of Edmund Kean who was supposed to have made ladies faint he was so real. Larry gave the performance of his life. The cast was on the verge of hysteria, not sure what he was going to do and that gave the play an extra edge as well. At supper afterwards, I told him it was the greatest performance that I had ever seen on stage.

'How did you honestly feel?' I asked. He said, 'Well after "the winter of our discontent" for the first time in my life I felt I had the audience in the palm of my hand. It was a wonderful sensation. I became marvelously reckless. I knew, whatever I was doing, the audience was going to be with me.' During dinner I looked at him often and thought, I'm having dinner with Olivier. I'm bloody lucky to be with this great actor. He had such humility, and he was fantastic..."--John Mills

• Larry and Natalie and I had such a splendid time together that he eventually brought his entire family to be with us on the 'Splendour'. It's impossible to know what goes on in anybody else's marriage, but Larry's domestic situation was far from ideal. In a biography that she authorized, Joan Plowright was very hard on Olivier for his ego and competitiveness. On the basis of the time they spent with us, I thought she was very hard on him -- she was continually snappy and pettish. Larry was ailing -- he was much older than she was, he had a debilitating skin disease, and he was still working hard to put money aside for his children. But she didn't seem to want to make any allowances for his situation.

Larry wasn't too tired to fight back, but he seemed to have made a private emotional calculation that it wasn't worth the trouble. It was obvious that the main reason they were together was their children, whom he simply adored. He was determined that his son Richard would go to UCLA, as he eventually did. Larry and Joan did not have a love match by any means, and I thought that he deserved much more sympathy and consideration than he was getting.

Years later, after both Olivier and Natalie died, my friend Steven Goldberg gave me a beautiful German shepherd...I called him Larry.--Robert Wagner

• The last thing I ever heard him say was about eighteen months ago in the lobby of the Olivier Theatre. I said "Do you have to pay to get in here?" He said, "Yes I bloody well do. And I'm going to talk to someone about that."--Michael Caine

• The original passion between Larry and Vivien, their uneven though adored performing talents, and their aura that relations and friends would not believe could ever become stale, kept alive in the two of them a belief that would otherwise have evaporated. For the selection of plays there was not much around in terms of new product that Coronation Year, yet the occasion pleased for "the both of them" to be together on stage: normally a concept Larry deplored; it was so limiting to be typecast as a couple. Romeo and Juliet and the two Cleopatras were exceptions.

Vivien's health was improving. They read plays and plays, even though she was still in bed. They were looking for a light comedy. Isolated from the world, they relished the near secrecy of the valley they were in, as if the sun shone from the sky only for them. One morning I accompanies him for a walk along the Thame. The river bank was alive with birdsong, thick with reeds, bullrushes and wild summer flowers. We cut armfuls of kingcups and carried them home, stuffed them into champagne buckets to take up to her bedroom like trophies.

His wish to remain a good husband, and the depth of his commitment , added to his gravitas. Emlyn Williams came for a weekend with Molly, and was strolling along with us. He asked how it was Larry could stand it all. Larry gave a deep sigh, looked up at the lichened roof beneath the warm sky and said: "I just look at the place, and think everything will be alright. I love it all so."

"I'm much taken with Vivien's mother, Gertrude," said Emlyn (Williams).

Larry smiled, scenting a bejeweled worm of Emlyn wit. "How so?"

"She seems so respectful toward actors. Asked me what we did with ourselves in the day time."

"And did you say..."

"That we played with ourselves? No dear boy, she's terribly grand for that."--Tarquin Olivier

Click the names below to read longer stories from some of Larurence Olivier's friends and colleagues

Elaine Dundy • Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. • Angus McBean • Emlyn Williams • Sir Anthony Hopkins
Dame Maggie Smith • Franco Zeffirelli

     

 
 
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