Laurence Olivier is back! Last week, a headline-grabbing new biography claimed he worked as a wartime spy; next week, the BFI, Southbank kicks off a two-month celebration of his films.
Better late than never, say those of us who raised a glass to Larry back on May 22, the day on which he would have turned 100. But what, I also say, happened to the centenary celebrations for John Wayne, born four days later?
For while Olivier was the 20th century's most electrifying stage actor, he was an also-ran when it came to film. True, Olivier's dreamily howling take on the St Crispin's Day speech in his film of Henry V can make even the most lily-livered long for war, but there's no denying that this is a stage turn trapped on celluloid. Olivier does indeed cry havoc, but the best movie actors say as much by breathing in as by breathing out.
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christopher bray says, when it comes to movies, there’s no one to touch the Duke
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There's a scene in Rio Bravo which Wayne, joshed about whether a pair of lurid red bloomers might suit him, taciturnly blanks his way through Angie Dickinson's seductive mickey-take. Ask Olivier to do the scene and he'd have leered here, winked there - he'd have made the comedy rather than let it make him. Bluntly, he was too big an actor for the big screen. His gyrations and gesticulations looked like semaphore in pictures, and he never mastered the screen actor's trick of standing still.
I shall go to my grave regretting not having been around to see Olivier do Hamlet and Lear at the Old Vic, but when it comes to the movies, John Wayne acted in the only way that counts.
Henry V - Courtesy, Park Circus Films
Rio Bravo - available on DVD, Warner Bros
FIRST POSTED JULY 26, 2007
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