Another tempting possibility was dangled before Olivier while “Demi-Paradise” was being filmed. Michael Powell had decided to make a film based upon David Low’s farcical cartoon character, Colonel Blimp. It was to be a satirical attack on all that was most hidebound and atrophied in the British establishment. Who better to play it than Olivier, who had himself had the chance to study blimps at first hand during his service with the Fleet Air Arm? He put forward the idea. “Larry stooped like a hawk … Larry is, above all, an inventive actor who has to find the secret pass-key which makes a character work for him … What bitter, burning satire he could bring to bear from his own experience of a diehard Blimp.” Unfortunately, the Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg, who himself was not altogether free of blimpish traits, saw little merit in a film intended to mock the stuffier elements of the British military establishment. He rejected any suggestion that Olivier should be released from the services to make such a film.9
*
Meanwhile, Olivier was making desultory efforts to keep in touch with his son and former wife. He could fairly plead that he had a great deal else to do, but even so he could have tried harder. Jill Esmond wrote wistful letters reporting on their son’s progress. Tarquin loved gardening, like his father, but had inherited the impatience which led Olivier to dig up each plant a few days after it had been put in the ground so as to see how it was getting on. “I think it is awfully difficult to bring up a boy entirely without a man and I’m determined that he will never be a mother’s boy,” wrote Esmond. Could not Olivier make more effort? “I wish you would write him a letter; he can’t quite understand why you don’t, as other boys here have their Father.”10
The truth was that what energy Olivier had left over was devoted almost exclusively to Vivien Leigh. The successful production of “The Doctor’s Dilemma” had brought her to London – “Amazing, the appeal of the film star,” wrote Gielgud superciliously. “She is still madly in love with her husband – who adores her – and is convinced he is a much greater person than herself,” Cecil Beaton wrote in his diary. William Wyler, who saw them several times at this period, agreed that they were “still very much the newly-weds – and it’s very refreshing to see”. About her feelings for him there can be no doubt; Selznick’s London office assured him that the only reason she did not honour her contractual obligations and return to Hollywood was that Olivier forbade it: “She is still terribly in love with him” and “refuses to listen to any criticism of Larry”. Olivier’s feelings are not quite so clear cut. “No-one has ever been made so happy as Vivien makes me,” he wrote in September 1942. “She’s my whole life.” But there are some suggestions that he was beginning to find her devotion a little oppressive and to be alarmed at the force of her emotions. The situation was complicated by her failing health. In 1944 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She seemed to have recovered and was at work on a film of “Caesar and Cleopatra” when she found that she was pregnant. She should have given up the part but filming was by then far advanced and she struggled on. One scene, in which she had to beat an offending slave, proved too taxing for her. She collapsed, miscarried and suffered a fresh bout of tuberculosis. Grief for her lost baby and the protracted nature of her recovery did permanent damage to her psychological balance. She had always been subject to violent mood swings; after this trauma they became dramatically worse. The marriage between Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh would endure for many years yet, but it was under threat. It was not, to employ a trite but telling phrase, the beginning of the end, but it was the end of the beginning.11
*
Olivier himself had other and, if he was honest with himself, more important things on his mind. He was about to embark on the enterprise by which he is best remembered and which established him most firmly as a figure celebrated not only in his own country but across the world.
According to his memoirs, the suggestion that he should undertake a film of “Henry V” came first from the Ministry of Information, who presented it to him in a package which also contained “Demi-Paradise”. With the Normandy landings not too far ahead, the swashbuckling heroics of Shakespeare’s most patriotic play seemed very much to chime with the popular mood. Only a few weeks before, Bernard Miles had conceived the idea of putting on the play in the West End with the characters clothed in modern battledress. “Larry didn’t go for it. Larry only likes ideas of his own,” he commented sourly. But when it was a question of a film with full governmental backing, things were different. The idea was a daring one. Since the coming of sound to the cinema, producers had fought shy of Shakespeare, believing that a mass audience would not be able to cope with the arcane language. In the previous fifteen years there had only been four serious efforts to put Shakespeare on the screen: Olivier’s own contribution, “As You Like It”, having been one of the most notable, though by no means a total success. Far from being deterred by this, Olivier saw it as a reason to take it on. “You have always been loath to have a bash,” he told Tarquin. “I used to be a bit like that, but not for a long time now.” It must indeed have been a long time; Olivier seems to have been eager to have a bash almost from childhood. That he would have a bash at “Henry V” was never in doubt.12
But how much of the work should he undertake himself? It was clear from the start that he would play the King. Who should direct? Olivier’s first idea was Terence Young, at that time relatively inexperienced though much later to achieve fame through his direction of several of the James Bond films. Young, however, was still in the armed forces. Olivier invited James Grigg, the War Minister, to dinner to try to persuade him that Young should be released. He “got him drunk as a skunk”, Young recalled, and secured a promise that Young could be freed for ten weeks. The dates didn’t work, though; Young’s name was scratched off the list. Garson Kanin was then approached, then William Wyler – both turned the invitation down. Michael Powell, Korda’s favourite director, was next on the list. Olivier expounded all the ideas he had for the film. Powell listened attentively and then told Olivier that it was obvious he should direct “Henry V” himself. “Do you really think I could?” ventured Olivier. It has been suggested that this had been his intention from the start and that he had gone through the rigmarole of inviting others so as to make it clear that the task had been forced on him. Possibly by the time he approached Powell the idea that he should take on the direction himself had begun to seem more feasible, but there is no doubt that at the start he had been hesitant. One of the people whom he most trusted was Roger Furse. “I remember poor Larry’s heart-searching,” wrote Furse, “and how he questioned me and others as to whether he should take it on. He seemed to be as nervous and uncertain as a virgin.”13
Once he had taken the plunge, however, all doubts were put behind him. Furse recalled “the tremendous vigour and confidence he exuded to all around him”. He told Terence Young that, Young having been ruled out, he was relieved to be doing it himself. “The torturous business of balancing one second-rate director against another and trying to decide which would be worse, was too much. It really feels better to be riding a terrible great horse myself than pretending to trust somebody else whose riding I suspect.” Neither Wyler nor Kanin fit into the category of “second-rate” directors and Powell too might have been affronted by the description. The phrase can hardly have been carefully considered but it reflects Olivier’s exhilaration at having made up his mind and mounted his “terrible great horse”.14
Having done so, he had no intention of sharing the ride with anyone. Dallas Bower of the B.B.C. had written the original script for a film of “Henry V” and took it for granted that he would be the director or producer of the current version. His pretensions to the director’s role were brushed aside and to his dismay he found that he was soon bypassed as producer too. Olivier, he told Derek Granger, “in fact invited me to be the producer, and I was the producer, although he liked to take the production credit to himself. I think it is now generally accepted by ever
ybody that it was a pretty selfish thing to do.” He had reason to be aggrieved – Olivier had been at the least guilty of inconsiderate behaviour – but one can only rejoice that Olivier kept the reins of his horse firmly in his own hands. Since he was so totally in charge, he told his son, “it’ll be all my fault if it’s no good. I’m afraid I’ve made rather a mess of a good many things in my time; let’s hope this will be an exception.” It was an indication of his total absorption in his work, as well as his relationship with his son, that he absent-mindedly signed the letter “Larry Olivier”, then crossed out the “Olivier” and added “(well well well)”.15
Olivier never forgot that, while he intended to produce a great film, he had been commissioned to conduct a propaganda exercise. The Ministry of Information had suggested that he should follow Bernard Miles’s plan and clothe the troops in modern battledress. Olivier would have none of it, he had envisaged a setting of spectacular beauty along the lines of the Limbourg brothers’ book of hours, Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. The film, however, was dedicated to “The Commandos and Airborne troops of Great Britain the spirit of whose ancestors it has been humbly attempted to recapture”, and immense pains were taken to emphasise the supposed parallels between the patriotic fervour of the fifteenth century and the present day. There was no mention of treason within the state of England and inconvenient details like the King’s order to kill all the French prisoners were omitted.
Olivier had hoped to cast Vivien Leigh as Princess Katherine, but Selznick ruled that it was a miserable little part which could only damage her reputation. She had already enraged Selznick by refusing to honour her contract and return to the United States; to defy him still further would have been foolhardy. Reluctantly she bowed out. Gielgud admitted that he had hoped to be invited to play the Chorus but was too proud to ask: either the idea never occurred to Olivier or, as Gielgud suggested, “he feared I should be likely to show off my verse-speaking again at his expense, and he chose Leslie Banks instead”. The boldest piece of casting was Robert Newton as Ancient Pistol. Newton was a fine actor but a notorious drunk. Olivier warned him that if he ever appeared “pissed, as we all know you’ve been on many occasions – no matter how far we’ve got in the script, I’ll sack you and start with someone else”. Newton complied and as a result put in an anaemic performance instead of the rumbustious rendering expected of him: “I don’t know how to do it, Larry boy,” he pleaded, “show me how.” Olivier obliged, coaxing the sober Newton into the sort of performance that a drunk-but-not-too-badly-drunken Newton would have provided. “It is doubtful,” wrote Esmond Knight, who played Fluellen, “if Newton would have undergone that kind of torture for anyone other than Laurence, and he certainly would not have trusted anyone else to show him how to act.” One of Olivier’s bolder improvisations was bringing in the veteran comedian George Robey to play Falstaff in a scene pillaged from “Henry IV, Part Two”. “I felt I needed it,” Olivier said, “because he was the definitive part of the comic … I had to have those comics, otherwise it would have been Henry, Henry, Henry, through an entire two hours.” The obvious person to have asked to play Falstaff was Ralph Richardson, who was in time to achieve glory in the role. There is no evidence, however, that Olivier ever invited him to do so. Perhaps he did, but Richardson was reluctant or unavailable. More probably Olivier feared that he would intrude rather too conspicuously into what in his own mind he did intend to be “Henry, Henry, Henry, through an entire two hours”.16
Olivier always paid great attention to music. “For goodness sake, I implore you, don’t give up on your music,” he wrote to a girl who had asked for his advice. “It is a higher art; a more rewarding art; a greater weapon for your soul’s purpose than the questionable craft of acting.” His experiments with “Romeo and Juliet” had convinced him that composition had best be left to professionals, but he was determined that “Henry V” should be entrusted to a composer of vision and passion as well as technical ability. Dallas Bower put forward the name of William Walton: “He’s a bit modern,” he said, but he still writes a good tune. “Modern? Oh, very good. That will be splendid,” replied Olivier, who did not know much about contemporary music but liked the idea of modernity. He claimed that, once the decision was taken, he left it entirely to Walton to produce what he thought right. Walton on the contrary maintains that Olivier had strong views on the subject and did not hesitate to voice them. His ideas were not always helpful. “Now this is a beautiful tune I’ve thought of,” said Olivier, humming a few bars. “Yes,” replied Walton. “It’s a lovely tune. It’s out of ‘Meistersinger’.” But, however much he may have been tempted to interfere, Olivier soon concluded that he could have total faith in Walton. Their partnership, based on real affection as well as mutual respect, was to last for many years.17
Making “Henry V” “changed my entire career”, Olivier believed. “I discovered that I was capable of being an extremely capable film director. I took to it like a duck to water.” Not everyone agreed. “His method of direction was simply extraordinary,” said Dallas Bower. He would play each part himself as he conceived it and expect the actors to copy it. Though Robert Newton welcomed the treatment, some of the other senior actors felt that they were more than capable of conceiving their performance by themselves. Olivier was insistent, though; not indifferent to their opinions but determined to impose his overall vision on the production. In the end, Bower noted with mingled dismay and admiration, the players concluded: “Well, if this is what he wants, we’ll simply have to do it.” With “Henry V” Olivier established a reputation for being one of the most demanding and perfectionist of directors. “Ruthless would be too strong a word,” Harry Andrews felt. “Single-minded, I’d say. Single-minded in doing what he thinks is right for him.” Right for him, and right for the production. “Henry V” was not the creation of one man, but every aspect of it bore the mark of one man’s authority.18
His resolve to serve as both producer and director, not to mention playing the lead role, imposed a burden which even with his great energies he found hard to bear. Making a film in wartime Britain created problems far beyond those which ordinarily plagued a producer. “The various Ministries and Secretaries of Supply, War, Manpower, Labour, Information, etc. that all have to be wooed with such abandon, in order to get anything done at all, leave one gasping at the end of the day,” he complained to Terence Young. Sometimes his patience cracked under the strain. He could be unreasonable. Laurence Evans, the production manager, once asked him how many horses he would need for a certain shot. “I don’t know how many fucking horses I want,” Olivier truthfully but unhelpfully replied. More often he was exemplary in his command of detail and of his precise requirements. “Because I was an artist and a dreamer and an actor, I didn’t want them to say ‘Ah well …’,” he recollected. “I wanted to be the most professional director they’d ever had.” Of course he depended on the expert help of others. Nowhere was this more the case than where the financing of the operation was concerned. In this field, his task would have been far harder, perhaps even impossible, if it had not been for the support of the Italian Filippo del Giudice, a cheerful extrovert with a nose for money, who made sure that the necessary funds were always there when it seemed that otherwise filming might have to be halted.19
His most innovative and daring departure from the cinematic norm came at the very beginning of the film. He was worried what effect Shakespearean verse would have on an unschooled audience when superimposed on the naturalist background against which most of the film would be shot. The solution came to him after a long evening’s discussion with Alan Dent in the Garrick Club. The two men made their way to their respective homes, then, in the small hours of the morning, Olivier telephoned Dent to expound his ideas. The action would begin in a mocked-up version of the Globe; the actors, performing with stagey theatricality, would create an atmosphere of conspicuous artificiality. Then would come liberation; the camera would desert the theatre and soar over
medieval London into the realistic setting of the embarkation for Harfleur. Relieved of the trappings of the Elizabethan theatre the dialogue would seem natural, even modern. A few critics complained that the mixture of approaches marred the integrity of Shakespeare’s play; most of them and, to judge by the film’s rapturous reception, the general public, felt that it was a brilliantly conceived and executed enterprise which provided one of the most memorable moments of cinema history.20
Though Shakespeare’s play, for obvious reasons, did not dwell on the battle of Agincourt itself, Olivier was determined to avoid the traditional rendering of a handful of soldiers dashing on and off leaving occasional corpses in their wake. Why make a film at all if one was not going to exploit all its potentialities? He wanted a cavalry charge that would surpass all previous charges, he wanted an array of archers who would blacken the sky with their deadly arrows. But where, in wartime Britain, could one find enough horses and able-bodied extras; where were there enough open spaces free of pillboxes and other such wartime encumbrances; where were there skies not afflicted by passing aeroplanes? It was Bower who suggested the battle scenes should be shot in Ireland. Olivier felt guilty about it, though a more authentic French setting would patently have been impossible and England was no more appropriate than Ireland as a venue. “Dear old boy, I feel we’re perpetuating the swindle of the century,” he observed as he and Bower got off the boat at Dun Laoghaire. It was a swindle that was both expensive to mount and difficult to bring off. It was triumphantly worthwhile. The filming in Ireland took eight weeks to produce only ten minutes of screen time, but those ten minutes provided images that linger in the mind more than half a century after they were first created.21
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