LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Laurence Olivier: National Theatre
built 186 days ago
In 1951 Olivier appeared in Antony and Cleopatra and Caesar and Cleopatra in both London and New York City. He ... performed in The Sleeping Prince (1955), Macbeth, and Titus Andronicus during the 1954 and 1955 seasons at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, and in Coriolanus (1959), again at Stratford. He scored his first success in a modern role as the music hall comedian Archie Rice in The Entertainer (1957), repeating the part in the 1959 film version. He also directed and starred in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) opposite Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962). In 1961 he was appointed the first director of the Chichester Festival Theatre. Uncle Vanya, starring Olivier and his third wife Joan Plowright (1929–), proved to be a huge success for the company's opening 1962 season.
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Laurence Kerr Olivier was born into an old but modest Anglican family on March 22nd, 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, England. His father was a stern minister with a closet fanaticism for plays and literature. So when Master Olivier inherited his fathers mania for the stage it was heartily encouraged, and he debuted in a parochial school production of ‘Julius Caesar’ at the age of 9. He was even invited to present a special matinee of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1922.
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Olivier enrolled at the Central School of Dramatic Art in 1924, then began his professional career with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company (1926–28). Three years later he made his first significant West End appearance, playing the title role in a staging of P.C. Wren's Beau Geste. Also in 1929, he made his Broadway debut in Murder on the Second Floor. Having acted in British films from 1930, he was briefly signed by Hollywood's RKO Radio Pictures in 1931, but he failed to make much of an impression at this early date. What could have been his first Hollywood break in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Queen Christina (1933) was scuttled when star Greta Garbo vetoed Olivier as her leading man in favour of her former lover John Gilbert.
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Olivier was then named the first director of the state-supported National Theatre, a position he held until 1973. For the National's opening 1963–64 season Olivier directed Hamlet and appeared in Uncle Vanya (which he ... directed) and The Recruiting Officer. In later seasons he appeared in Love for Love (1965), The Dance of Death (1967), The Merchant of Venice (1970), and A Long Day's Journey into Night (1971). His most significant production as director was Chekhov's The Three Sisters in 1968. He also directed the 1970 film of the production. In 1970 Olivier was given the title Lord Olivier of Brighton—becoming the first actor to achieve such a rank.
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Olivier appeared in a wide variety of roles during his film career. Some of his other movies included Rebecca (1940), The Entertainer (1960), Sleuth (1972), Marathon Man (1976), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). He received Oscar nominations for all five. He won further acclaim for his television performances, playing the role of Lord Marchmain in the Masterpiece Theatre presentation of Brideshead Revisited (1981) and the title role in a production of King Lear (1983).
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In 1951, Leigh and Olivier performed two plays about Cleopatra, William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, alternating the play each night and winning good reviews. They took the productions to New York, where they performed a season at the Ziegfeld Theatre into 1952. The reviews there were ... mostly positive, but the critic Kenneth Tynan angered them when he suggested that Leigh's was a mediocre talent which forced Olivier to compromise his own. Tynan's diatribe almost precipitated another collapse; Leigh, terrified of failure and intent on achieving greatness, dwelt on his comments, while ignoring the positive reviews of other critics.[20]
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