Laurence Harvey - Decline

Decline

Harvey's career began to decline from the mid-1960s. The 1964 remake of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage was a failure, as was The Outrage (1964), director Martin Ritt's remake of Akira Kurosawa's classic Rashomon, despite the presence of Paul Newman. Harvey reprised his Oscar-nominated role as Joe Lampton in Life at the Top (1965), but the film was not a success.

Harvey returned to Britain to make the comedy The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966). His last hurrah was his appearance in the spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic (1968), which he took over after the original director Anthony Mann died during shooting. In 1968, in settlement of a dispute with Woodfall Films over the rights to The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Woodfall cast him in their version as a Russian prince. He performed as cast, but was never seen as the Prince in the finished film. The only part of his performance remaining in the final cut is a brief appearance of him in the background of one shot, as an anonymous member of a theatre audience. Thereafter Harvey played out his career largely in undistinguished films, TV work and the occasional supporting role in a major production.

In The Magic Christian, he recited Hamlet's soliloquy, almost nude and very thin. A promising project, Orson Welles's The Deep (1970) with Jeanne Moreau, was never finished. One performance from this period was in a 1971 U.S. horror film television episode, titled "The Caterpillar" on Rod Serling's Night Gallery. He was also guest murderer of the week on Columbo: The Most Dangerous Match in 1973 as a chess champion who murders his opponent.