It was during one of those performances of Othello that I saw for the very first time Sir’s feet of clay, and realised he was just another actor. It happened one night when Frank Finlay and I were waiting in the wings to come on stage, and Olivier was screaming with grief, ‘The handkerchief, the handkerchief, the handkerchief!’ before coming off.
That night he won a great round of applause. Now for this scene he was in bare feet, and he had several pairs of slippers dotted around in the wings to slip on after his exit for the next scene. As he did this he would lean on Frank or on me, as we were waiting to come on, and put a hand on our shoulders to steady himself.
As he came off to thunderous applause, he leant on my shoulder, and he was pulling on his slippers when he said out loud – but to himself – ‘What the fuck can I do for my next exit?’ It was the actor saying, ‘I have peaked too soon.’ Depressing in one way, but a good lesson for instilling self-restraint. Even so, it was a significant moment in my never-ending learning curve.
Sir’s attack was prodigious, the emotional energy stupendous; he rolled as he walked, in costumes with padded shoulders, like a god. He was godlike, but there was always a light-heartedness around in all of these years in the company he led, so the ‘Daughters’ laughed much of the time.
Dexter commented, somewhat morosely, or perhaps it was with envy, that Brett, Pickup and I were ‘usually in a state of convulsed hysterics, compared to which my strained nerves on a cold spring morning were as nothing!’ Later during the run of Othello we gave a special performance on a Sunday just for members of the profession, when practically every member of the audience worked in the theatre in some capacity or other. They didn’t just stand up at the end to give him an ovation, they stood on the seats. It was such a display of affection and admiration. It made him ideal to lead the profession – and lead he did.
Sir seemed to consider there was an important closeness between himself as Othello and Bob Stephens as the Inca God in The Royal Hunt of the Sun. He told Bob to be careful of his voice, asking him rather discreetly and shyly whether it was possible for him to make love to Maggie after giving a performance in this role. Bob answered that he found there was no problem, but Sir Laurence said he couldn’t rise to anything much in that department after playing Othello, so Bob pointed out that the comparison was false: Othello was so much more demanding a role!
The funniest moment for me on stage throughout my theatrical career came in The Royal Hunt of the Sun, when I played the first Indian the audience sees. I walked out onto the mountain range set, shining with a hairstyle somewhat like Cilla Black’s in the 1960s: a black Cilla, covered in that terrible make-up called Texas Earth. My character attempts to rape one of Atahuallpa’s daughters, and as a result suffers short shrift, dying at the end of the second act.
We then come to the immortal moment! It was in the scene when all the Indians have to prostrate themselves flat on their faces, and all in feathers. So here was Ted Hardwicke and Ted Petherbridge, me, and the rest of the Indian crowd, including by this time Michael York, and we were all lying flat on the stage, naked but covered with feathers, and we were creating a stunning visual effect.
Then somebody explosively farted!
When you get a large group of actors, all nearly naked and in feathers, and somebody farts, the effect can only too easily be imagined. At once the whole stage was a-quiver, positively palpitating with all these feathers shaking. It was awful, truly awful – and wonderful. We couldn’t stop laughing.
As the run extended, some of the Indians grew bored. During the picturesque scene where the Spaniards, my character leading them, were climbing to the peak of the Andes (all beautifully choreographed), and were ranged up high at the back of the stage, the Indians, on their first entrance, entered down below from the side, backs to the audience, about six of them spaced across the front.
They opened their feathered cloaks to reveal to us upstage, as salutation to the visitors, that they were all stark naked – and one of the Indians had fixed an oil lamp to his cock: the lantern was simply hanging down from it. The entire line above at the back folded up helpless with laughter, myself included, and behaved more like giggling schoolgirls than conquering conquistadores.
As my character suffers an early death in the play, I remember one of the perks was that I was allowed to ‘shower off’ with Fairy Liquid the nightly coating of ‘bole’ or Texas Earth, and leave the show early without staying for the curtain call. There were so many Indians to wash down, and few showers in the theatre.
There was a time when I almost took to the bottle out of boredom. This was when I played the unrewarding part of Mr Worthy in The Recruiting Officer. It was all very well for Sir Laurence, Colin Blakely, Maggie Smith and Bob Stephens – they had wonderfully funny parts. But Sarah Miles and I had to play these two impossibly wet juves who come on, chattering together nothing but plot-plot-plot, and nobody was the slightest bit interested.
We would go off, and then in would swan Maggie and Sir Laurence, and they would get the laughs again, and it was all wonderful – for them. Sarah couldn’t bear it and walked out, and Mary Miller, who’d been her understudy, came in instead. Before the show one night I was meeting a friend at the pub next to the stage door, and I did something I had never done before: I drank a large whisky. Not for any other particular reason than that my friend offered me one, but I thought, ‘Why not? It’s only The Recruiting Officer tonight!’
The whisky went straight to my head, anaesthesia took over, and the effect was that I actually enjoyed the performance. I got two laughs, and I was so relaxed. Before the next performance I thought, ‘I’m going to try that again.’ I went to the pub, bought a large whisky. Again, it was great. I even raised a few more laughs. It was then it suddenly hit me: ‘What the hell are you doing, Derek? You’re relying on this to get on the stage, and you could easily end up a piss-artist – like so many of us have.’
So for me that was it – finito.