Truly, Madly by Stephen Galloway

Author:Stephen Galloway [Galloway, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2022-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

Arriving in Sydney in mid-June, the pair became prey for the world’s most bloodthirsty tabloids. “I once thought I’d like to be Sir Laurence Olivier,” a reporter mused after a press conference, “but not after the time the press boys and press girls gave him at Usher’s [a downtown bar] last night: they did everything but play football with him. They knew they had the best of him once they got him in the corner. I don’t know whether someone pushed Sir Laurence, but he sat down on the lowest couch I’ve ever seen. The rest was easy.… Just when we’d reached some high cultural plane one fellow at the back yelled: ‘Break it up; let’s have a go at him!’”

Despite this, Larry delivered his finest Richard III. Spurred by his jealousy toward Dan Cunningham, a fellow cast member who had flirted with Vivien, he flew at the hapless man, who was still recuperating from five years as a prisoner of war and still getting over his wife’s desertion. But that didn’t mitigate Larry’s anger. Onstage, he unleashed the full force of his anger—his “splendid fury,” as Ralph Richardson described it—and flung his sword at the actor, who “just managed to shield [it] off him,” as a colleague recalled. “Sir Laurence remembered [Edmund] Kean had done that; [but] he had never rehearsed it or anything.”

Olivier paid the price for his attack when a burning pain ripped through his leg. It wasn’t his gout: he had torn the cartilage in his knee. A morphine shot helped, but he then ignored his doctor’s advice to rest. “Next day,” writes O’Connor, “he found a period crutch which he put to brilliant use, integrating it into his performance just as if Shakespeare had written the part for an actor using a crutch. So expert did he become in its employment that on Monday night he broke it in rage on the back of George Cooper, playing Brackenbury, and stage-hands had to work frantically to make it a new end.”

In the midst of all this, Larry was astonished to receive a letter from Lord Esher, the chairman of the Old Vic board, informing him that he was being dropped as artistic director, along with the others in the Vic triumvirate, Richardson and Burrell. The organization, Esher argued, could not be run “by men, however able, who have other calls upon their time and talent,” a judgment that may have been true but quite overlooked the reason for the Australian tour: to raise money for the theater. The letter stung all the more given that Olivier had just written to congratulate Esher on the passage of the National Theatre Bill, which set aside £1 million for a new building in London, ultimately to be run by Larry himself. “O ME,” he cabled Burrell. “I SEE THE ENDING OF OUR HOUSE.”

Later, he claimed all he could do was laugh. But in truth, he was badly hurt and blamed Tyrone Guthrie, his former friend—the man who had put this leadership team in place—for turning against him.

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