The critic Kenneth Tynan likened Vivien’s performance to a ‘principal boy in pantomime’. Gielgud also said, ‘Vivien, Vivien dear, don’t make Viola twee.’ That remark destroyed Olivier’s performance. Gielgud shouted, ‘Oh Larry – no! It’s so vulgar!’ She leant over and whispered, ‘I need that little touch of the Aussie Finchie nearby.’Īt the first rehearsal, Gielgud tore into Larry, who was playing Malvolio. At the first rehearsal we were seated according to importance. I was speechless – I had no idea I had been cast as Sebastian to her Viola in John Gielgud’s 1955 Twelfth Night. What fun!’įinchie was my mentor, the actor Peter Finch. We’re to be twins next year at Stratford. She looked up, took off her sunglasses and I was staring at Vivien Leigh. I followed him across the set to where a woman, muffled in a scarf, sat huddled in a canvas chair. ‘You scamp – of course! Come with me, someone wants to meet you.’ ‘Sydney, Tivoli Theatre, Sir Laurence, in 1948.’
During a tea break, Olivier walked across the set and asked, ‘Where have I seen you before?’ In Olivier’s 1955 film of Richard III, I was cast as the Duke of Northumberland – an invented, non-speaking character.
I can still remember the sincerity, warmth and appeal in the voice I’d only heard on screen before. Mario sent them a telegram on every subsequent first night of their tour. ‘Please, Mario, could we go to a pub and sort this problem out over a schooner of good Aussie lager?’ In a high-pitched voice, full of sex appeal, Vivien said, ‘Would you help Scarlett O’Hara in distress, dear Mario?’Īn acrobat couldn’t have climbed down that ladder quicker: ‘Oh, Lady Olivier!’ ‘Mario, I’m your new boss, Larry, and I’ve got a problem with the quick scene change. Olivier walked over to Mario and, in an Aussie accent, called up to him, where he was standing at the top of a ladder. I watched as Larry and Vivien appeared for rehearsals.
Mario, a bolshie stagehand, was refusing to help with a scene change. I was a twenty-year-old Australian actor, appearing in the crowd scenes in Richard III at the Tivoli Theatre. Alan Strachan's new biography of Vivien Leigh, Dark Star: The Untold Story of Vivien Leigh, puts me in mind of when I was in Twelfth Night with her (pictured), many moons ago.
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