I was asked to do a short run of Two for the Seesaw in Boston. This was a welcome job. I loved the part, I missed Gittel, and I was always desperate for money. John Lehne was directing, a very easy and knowledgeable guy. Gittel and I melded again. It was an easy, unstressful, happy run, and Dinah was with Arnie and the boys.
Boston was a great town for time off. It has its own buzz, a mix of colleges, upper-class art, theater. The last time I had been there, Gene Lyons and I found each other, both understudying in our first play. Now, Maureen Stapleton was here on an upper floor of the hotel, and Laurence Olivier, also staying at our hotel, was playing the mad and unpredictable king in Becket. He’d played the title role of sober Becket on Broadway. Anthony Quinn had played the king and gotten all the reviews. Realizing he’d chosen the wrong character, Olivier was giving himself a chance to explore the king here, in Boston.
I had to wait till the Seesaw run was over to see him onstage. I’d been blown away by his performance as Archie in The Entertainer the year before. When it was over, I just sat in my seat while the audience filed out of the theater. Archie was an over-the-hill song and dance man. His pathetic need to please an audience—a dwindling audience since both vaudeville and Archie were on their last legs—was an incredible stretch for a powerful classical actor. Olivier gave it everything he had and found that dim place in his head that Archie saw out of. It was brave. I wonder if that’s where Bravo! comes from—the root. I can certainly see jumping to my feet and crying, “Brave! Brave!” and meaning it. Theater people are brave.
Joan Plowright was also in The Entertainer. She played his daughter. Vivien Leigh and Olivier had split. Plowright was to be his next wife. The very antithesis of Leigh, who in this period was at her most fragile, and to me most exquisite. Plowright, down to earth. Sensible. A nice, sensible woman.
Jim Frawley, a friend from the Actors Studio, played a small part in Becket. He told me about an afternoon rehearsal in Boston. Olivier stopped rehearsal and said to the director, “Tony”—it seems most English directors are named Tony—“give me a chance to walk around a bit and work this out.” The cast backed off or sat down while Olivier went into himself onstage. He walked, he talked, he suddenly kicked the can full of water that held the cigarette butts, kicked it downstage into the orchestra pit, and began to wail—undistinguishable words, angry, loving, longing, while walking the entire stage. Within himself. Exploring himself. Suddenly he called out, “Vivien!” and began to cry. He stood within himself, as the hushed actors watched, afraid to breathe. Then suddenly he turned to the director. “All right, Tony, I think I’ve got it.” “You want more time?” “No, no,” he said, and slowly the actors went to the positions they’d left onstage earlier.
I didn’t learn about this from Jim until years later. What I saw onstage in Boston, in one matinee, was so powerful, I nearly fainted. I could feel the blood leave my head and come back, my hands on both sides of my seat to steady me. Like when a plane suddenly drops and you grab for stability, or like when you’re four and some passionate tenor lets loose with La Bohème and it makes you dizzy in a new way. It never happened to me before or since in the theater.
I gave my name to the doorkeeper backstage. I imagined Olivier knew my name from Seesaw, which had been at a theater near his. All actors know who’s in town. I was determined to throw myself at his feet, as Ken Tynan had thrown himself to his knees in my dressing room when I played in A Hole in the Head on Broadway. I understood the gesture. It was beyond words, and that’s what I felt.
The door to Olivier’s dressing room was opened. He was alone in the brightly lit room, wearing a silk dressing gown. “Lee,” he said cheerily, “would you like a drink?” He was pouring white wine into a wineglass. I shook my head no. I realized I didn’t know how to get to my knees from a standing position. Ken Tynan had thrown himself across the room. I bent my knees a couple of times, still standing by the door. Olivier kept talking, chatting really, nervously, like a host with a shy, dangerous guest.
There was a footstool by his chair. If I could make it to his footstool, I reasoned, I could slide from there to my knees. I walked to the footstool and sat on it, facing him. I still couldn’t speak. He had almost exhausted his small talk and was dying for me to leave. From the stool I said, “I understand you don’t like the Actors Studio.” I don’t know why. I had given my heart to this man, Heathcliff, when I was a child, and suddenly I was a child again. Some part of my brain was chattering about the Actors Studio, arguing with Laurence Olivier about its good points. I could not throw myself at his feet and tell him he was the greatest actor in the world and had, that afternoon, given the greatest performance I would ever see. He chatted about Joan Plowright, anything to fill the void. Suddenly I got up from the footstool, thanked him, and walked the long distance to his door, opened it, walked out, and closed it behind me.
I’m sure he gave a gasp of relief. I’d also heard that Maureen, who drank a bit, had called him from her room in the hotel at two in the morning, telling him how much she wanted to fuck him. After she woke up and realized what she had done, she walked up and down the stairs for the rest of her stay so she wouldn’t run into him in the elevator.
For many years I wanted to write to him, to tell him. I never did. I have a picture of the two of us taken at some Hollywood event years later. I don’t resemble the actress in his dressing room—Gittel. In the photograph, I’m wearing brown chiffon and long earrings; my hair is auburn. We’re looking at each other, posing for the camera.