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Laurence Olivier joined them David Garrick, Henry Irving, Oscar Wilde and Christmas Coward having a blue English Heritage sign outside his former home in London.
Ian McKellen unveiled the monument at 22 Lupus Street in Pimlico, where Olivier lived from the age of five to 12 and acquired his artistic skills under the watchful eye of his father, the vicar of St Saviour’s across the road.
David Hare once said that a blue label is the only honor you should have, but the problem was you never lived to see it. You heard, however, that Olivier would have been pleased with the warmth of the tribute given on Wednesday afternoon.
McKellen said that it was the fate of actors to forget 20 years after their death, but the memory of Olivier was absent in many ways, in part by living. theater and a award ceremony his name but mainly because of the brightness of his actions.
“I never had the chance to play with him but I was in his National team Theater company at the Old Vic and when I left he sent a message to my agent saying he was upset about the lost opportunity,” he said.
“When I said that Macbeth at Stratford in 1976 for Trevor Nunn he also left a note saying it was the best play he had ever seen, which was the most touching since I had seen Olivier play Macbeth 20 years earlier.
McKellen didn’t just praise Olivier. He gave us Larry’s touch with a refreshing version of the “one more time to the breaking” quote from Henry V that Olivier wrote as part of the campaign to save the Rose theater and which ended with “Cry God for Harry, England and Rose”.
Speaking with McKellen, soon to be in New Zealand to remake Gandalf, I realized that he and I had the privilege of seeing Olivier in his youth. Of course we all remembered a bit of business from Stratford Malvolio.
Indhu Rubasingham, the National’s artistic director who gave an opening speech at the event, said he had not seen Olivier on stage for decades but spoke highly of his courage and vision in creating the National Theater company from scratch.
Walking down the street to St Saviour’s, where the young Diana, Princess of Wales, works as a nursery school assistant, one realizes again the great influence the church had on the young Olivier. He did not sing alone, but he listened to the sermons of his father and other people with interest.
“Those preachers,” he later recalled, “knew when to utter a word, when to weep about the dangers of hellfire, when to sneak out, when to be suddenly angry, when to turn around with interest, when to proclaim blessings.”
It is not a stretch to think that young Olivier was learning at Pimlico the value of service that was to characterize his entire career as an actor and director.
