Laurence Olivier - Early Career

Early Career

Olivier, 17 years old, attended the Central School of Speech and Drama, tutored by Elsie Fogerty. In 1926, he joined the Birmingham Repertory Company. At first he was given only minor tasks at the theatre, such as bell-ringing; however, his roles eventually became more significant, and in 1927 he was playing Hamlet and Macbeth. In 1928, he was cast to play Captain Stanhope in the Apollo theatre's first production of Journey's End, a play which would expand his career. He always insisted that his acting was pure technique, and he was contemptuous of contemporaries who adopted method acting popularised by Lee Strasberg.

Olivier married Jill Esmond, a rising young actress, on 25 July 1930; their only son, Simon Tarquin was born on 21 August 1936. Olivier was, however, from the beginning not happy in his first marriage. Repressed, as he came to see it, by his religious upbringing, Olivier recounted in his autobiography the disappointments of his wedding night, culminating in his failure to perform sexually. He temporarily renounced religion and soon came to resent his wife, though the marriage would last for ten years. Despite this supposed resentment, Olivier remained in congenial contact with Esmond until his death (as documented by their son Tarquin in his book, My Father Laurence Olivier), accompanying her to Tarquin’s wedding in January 1965.

He made his film debut in The Temporary Widow and played his first leading role on film in The Yellow Ticket; however, he held the film in little regard. His stage breakthrough was in Noël Coward's Private Lives in 1930, followed by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in 1935, alternating the roles of Romeo and Mercutio with John Gielgud. Olivier did not agree with Gielgud's style of acting Shakespeare and was irritated by the fact that Gielgud was getting better reviews than he was. His tension towards Gielgud came to a head in 1940, when Olivier approached London impresario Binkie Beaumont about financing him in a repertory of the four great Shakespearean tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear. However, Beaumont would only agree to the plan if Olivier and Gielgud alternated in the roles of Hamlet/Laertes, Othello/Iago, Macbeth/Macduff, and Lear/Gloucester and that Gielgud direct at least one of the productions, a proposition Olivier declined.

In 1939, Olivier starred in a production of No Time for Comedy, by S.N. Behrman in a Katharine Cornell production with them both in leading roles. It was his first prominent role on Broadway. The engagement as Romeo resulted in an invitation by Lilian Baylis to be the star at the Old Vic in 1937/38. Olivier's tenure had mixed artistic results, with his performances as Hamlet and Iago drawing a negative response from critics and his first attempt at Macbeth receiving mixed reviews. But his appearances as Henry V, Coriolanus, and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night were triumphs, and his popularity with Old Vic audiences left Olivier as one of the major Shakespearean actors in England by the season's end. He held his scorn for film, and though he constantly worked for Alexander Korda, he still felt most at home on the stage. He made his first Shakespeare film, As You Like It, with Paul Czinner, but Olivier disliked it, thinking that Shakespeare did not work well on film.

He first saw Vivien Leigh in The Mask of Virtue in 1936, and a friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. While playing lovers in the film Fire Over England (1937), they developed a strong attraction, and after filming was completed, they began an affair. Leigh played Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet in an Old Vic Theatre production, and Olivier later recalled an incident during which her mood rapidly changed as she was quietly preparing to go on-stage. Without apparent provocation, she began screaming at him, before suddenly becoming silent and staring into space. She was able to perform without mishap, and by the following day, she had returned to normal with no recollection of the event. It was the first time Olivier witnessed such behaviour from her.