Olivier films Richard III

compiled by Paul Trevor Bale

Laurence Olivier as Richard III.

Perhaps the most famous image people associate with Richard the Third is that of the Shakespeare character created by Laurence Olivier in 1944 on the stage of the Old Vic in London, and put onto film in the summer of 1954.

This ought not to be a surprise considering that this performance was  immortalised on film; because of Olivier's fame; because of the number of times the film has been seen; and because of the fact that it was first shown to an estimated 40 million people on US television, before it had even been seen in  movie theatres. Television has also given the film longevity, and although there have been many other versions, none seems to have had the impact Olivier's had. Dali painted it, and even Peter Sellers spoofed it famously when he "did Larry's Richard" in a version of the Beatles song "A Hard Day's Night".

Salvador Dali, Laurence Olivier as Richard III.

This film Richard is one of the most famous images of the Shakespearean villain, long dark dank hair hanging to his shoulders, crooked nose and twisted body, spindly legs, one shorter than the other, and the stunted hand.

This Richard is deformed and out for glory and revenge, yet as he hobbles about London plotting, he confides in us the audience, with wit and humour.

Criterion Collection DVD of Olivier's Richard III. Release date: February 24, 2004. Buy through this link and your purchase will benefit the Richard III Society, American Branch. Also available: 1995 version starring Sir Ian McKellen; 1912 silent film starring Frederick Warde.

First seen on the stage of the Old Vic in London in 1944 and later toured all over the world to enormous success, Olivier came to immortalising it on screen having already filmed Henry V during the 2nd World War as a patriotic call to arms and glory, and a deeply sombre Hamlet in 1948 that garnered the actor/director two Oscars for direction as well as Best Actor.

Having so successfully adapted two of the Bard's plays for film it is odd to find that Olivier did not originally want to direct Richard, but lobbied Carol Reed, at the time Britain's top film director having made 'The Third Man' and 'Odd Man Out', to direct it for him.

But Carol Reed didn't want the job, and together with Olivier's then wife Vivien Leigh, and the producer Alexander Korda, the producer Olivier had the closest of working relationships with, they talked him into taking on the double task he was becoming famous for of actor/director. Korda also saw it as the start of a number of Shakespearean adaptations Olivier would make for him, 'Macbeth' would follow Richard, something that unfortunately never happened. Oddly enough that this was also the next play on Kenneth Branagh's list to film when his film making luck changed. In Olivier's case it was Korda's death that saw the end of Olivier filming Shakespeare's plays. The Scottish play carries its curse everywhere.

During the late 1940s and early 50s Olivier  had done little of significance, and produced no startlingly innovative performances. But in 1955, with the film of Richard III and an equally splendid season at Stratford upon Avon, including a memorable Coriolanus, Olivier's career was back on track.

Richard III, Olivier's third Shakespearean film, is made with wonderful assurance. Olivier's confidence is  reflected in the fact that it took only 17 weeks to film, while Hamlet had taken six months, and Henry V an entire year (although one has to add that there was a war on while this latter was being made).

He had many of the same crew as before, Roger Furse his production designer, Carmen Dillon as art director, Alan Dent as text supervisor, and William Walton to compose the music.

As in Henry V the production has a look of a Book of Hours, with a series of tableaux, sharp colours, and symmetrical compositions, and the drama unfolds like a series of pages from an illuminated medieval manuscript. Transitions between scenes are done with shadows, and while the costumes are authentically medieval, some of the sets, while not as stylised as in Henry V, have  pastel hues, even appearing cardboardy at times. Most exteriors are clearly not exterior, and the few landscapes, Bosworth apart, are far from real. Bosworth was filmed in Spain where the dry, orange earth and moving clouds make a sharp contrast with what has gone before.

But I run before my horse to market......

Publicity poster. Collection of Paul Trevor Bale.

THE FILM

The first thing Olivier had to do was rewrite and condense Shakespeare's second longest text into a coherent and flowing film script. This he did by concentrating mainly on his own character's rise and fall, cutting a number of characters out, Queen Margaret most noticeably, making the women's roles smaller, and reordering some of the scenes in order to help the cinematic flow of events.

His collaborator on the script of Hamlet Richard Dent said

"One had to choose at the outset between making the meaning perfectly clear to 20 million cinemagoers and causing 2,000 Shakespearean experts to wince."

"If you are going to cut a Shakespeare play, there is only one thing to do, lift out scenes.

If you cut the lines down merely to keep all the characters in, you end up with a mass of short ends. This is one of the problems with Richard III. To start with it's a very long play. It's not until the little princes come on that the story forms that nice river sweep, going swiftly to its conclusion from about halfway through the play. The first part up until that moment is an absolute delta of plot and presupposed foreknowledge of events. After all, Richard III forms the last part of a cycle of four plays, the other three being parts of Henry VI.

It's a really difficult play to film - it's involved, often obscure. Yet it's always been a popular play; as Dr. Johnson said, its popularity derives from the character of Richard. But I felt it absolutely necessary to do more simplification than I've ever done before, and although every commentator and critic through the centuries had attacked the structure of this play, I quite expect, now, to be accused of vandalism. And yet some of the most famous lines like "Richard's himself again" and "Off with his head, so much for Buckingham" are not Shakespeare's at all, but were added later by Garrick or Cibber, who thought nothing of adding scenes adapted from Henry V to their productions! The film runs two and three quarter hours, and of course ends with the battle scenes, which are not intended to be highly spectacular like De Mille's - I don't claim to be a big battle director."

Once the royal party leaves, and after having first dropped the Duke's coronet, his clumsy page has disappeared, a mistake Olivier kept in and repeated later in the film as a running joke, we are left alone with Richard and "THE SPEECH". "Now is the winter of our discontent..."

But this is not the speech as in the start of the play, but an amalgamation of the opening of Richard III, and the major speech Shakespeare gives Gloucester in Henry VI pt III defining his ambitions. Olivier films this in one shot, urging the camera to follow him around the vast hall, up to the throne that sits under that huge crown suspended from the ceiling, and off the dais again. The lighting is not that good, but in the days before steadicam the scene is spectacularly successful, not only for its imaginative technique, but also for Olivier's setting out his stall for us, inviting us, the audience, to participate in his villainy and chart his progress, something he will continue to do throughout the film.

Next of Olivier's innovations is the division of the Lady Anne seduction scene into two parts, between which is sandwiched a bit of Colley Cibber (who thinking that the Bard had missed something added a few of his own lines in the 1700s) like "Clarence beware thou keepest me from the light..."; an argument between Clarence and the king, at the end of which Richard looks at the camera, nods his head in the direction of King Edward and smiling says "He cannot live. I hope!" and finally Clarence going off to the Tower.

"Was ever woman in this humor woo'd?" Claire Bloom and Laurence Olivier.

In the first part of the Lady Anne scene Olivier has Richard woo her over the coffin of her recently dead husband as opposed to her father in law Henry VI, as in the play, making "the young widow's seduction even more daring and revolting than it is in the original, and giving Anne's capitulation" in the second part after a passionate kiss "a new and neurotic twist" (John Cottrell)

The kiss, before Anne leaves Richard, I doubt Shakespeare would have approved of, I have never seen copied since, and is followed by a suggestive shadow as she goes into her chamber.

A Richard dressed up to the nines.

Richard's line of "since I have crept in favour with myself I will maintain it at some little cost. I'll entertain a score or two of tailors to study fashion to adorn my body.."  in this version is followed in the next scene by a Richard dressed up to the nines, as per the lines in the previous scene, and the only time I have ever seen a Richard do this. Richard coming on in the same plain black he was wearing in the previous scene always jars with me when I see stage productions, or even McKellen's film version. Olivier was clearly paying close attention to the text.

This is followed by Hastings' release. Olivier here swaps some of the lines so that, as unlike in the play text, Hastings doesn't know how King Edward is but asks about him, and Richard can in his answer make a joke of Edward's "evil diet" when Jane Shore appears to greet the new delivered lord. More of Richard's  humour and mischief.

"They do me wrong" is next in which Richard argues with the Woodvilles and for the only time in Shakespeare's text speaks historical truth, supported by Buckingham and Stanley "Peace master marquess you are malapert. Your high new stamp of honour is scare current. They that fly high have many blasts to shake them, and when they fall they dash themselves to pieces." Buckingham adds "Good counsel marquess, Learn it." Dorset returns "It touches you my lord as much as I" so that Buckingham can add "Aye. And much more. But I was born so high."

At the end of the scene Richard runs off to meet his executioners and it is not only Clarence who suffers at their hands but the text, Olivier making a large cut here, in that Clarence's scene in which he argues with the murderers for his life, completely disappears, and it is a straight bang on the head and into the malmsey butt. Clarence was John Gielgud at his best, and his dream speech is amongst the highlights of the film.

Edward tries to reconcile the factions then dies, the Prince is fetched from Ludlow, Richard and Buckingham begin to conspire together, the Woodvilles are arrested, the queen goes into sanctuary, blessed, in one of her few surviving scenes, by the duchess of York, Richard's mother. The young King Edward arrives in London flanked by Richard and Buckingham, and his brother York is pulled out of sanctuary and reunited with the new king, leading to one of Olivier's greatest moments when the boy makes a joke of his uncle's deformity, and Richard spins round to hover over the child like some malevolent gargoyle, making the boy stagger back, and  giving Richard in Olivier's characterisation some motivation for his later murder.

"Now, by St. Paul, I swear I shall not dine until I see the thing." Richard orders Hastings' execution.

Then it's time to find out if Hastings is up for Richard becoming king. When Catesby tells Richard no it's time for the council meeting and goodbye Hastings. A bloody axe mixes through to a woman washing her steps and reacting to the mayor "Hithes he to Guildhall" and we have the populace begging Richard to take the throne. After a wonderfully played scene with Buckingham, Richard accepts and we get his second great moment as he swings down the rope and forces Buckingham down onto his knees to salute him as king.

Bells ringing mix through to the second of only two of the scenes with the duchess of York that survive, where she sends Anne off to Richard, Elizabeth off to sanctuary, Dorset off to Richmond, and then potters off to her grave. Then it's the coronation and Anne's odd blown kiss to Richard as he sits mesmerised by some far-off vision on his throne. We never see her again, except as a ghost. The wonderful scenes with Tyrell and Buckingham being rejected by Richard and moving off in a huff follow. "Thou troublest me. I am not in the giving vein today."

The next cut to the text is the biggest, for instead of Richard going off to war to be stopped in his tracks by mother, Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville, and then his attempting to seduce Elizabeth Woodville for her daughter, we go straight to news of rebellion, and of Buckingham being caught. Another Colley Cibber interpolation here "Off with his head. So much for Buckingham". Buckingham's final speech and execution was in fact filmed, but for some reason cut from the final film. I heard the soundtrack on a recording  leant me a few years ago, but the actual film scene has disappeared, although stills do still exist. Stanley slides in "Ah Stanley, what's the news with you?" and Richard scrambles up onto his throne, third marvellous moment, to declaim "Is the chair empty? Is the sword unswathed, is the king dead....?"

Then it's off to Bosworth, spectacularly filmed, with another appearance of Cibber as Richard jumps on is horse and whispers to it "Richard's himself again". At one stage there were numerous shots of Richard's men throwing down their weapons and joining Tudor's army, and I am not alone in remembering these, but they also have at some stage been excised from some video versions of the film. Stanley Baker plays a ridiculously Welsh accented Tudor, dressed in shining armour all the time! There is a gruesome death scene, with Richard's throat cut before he twitches and twists on the ground before falling dead. The film finishes with Stanley picking up Richard's crown from inside a bush and as he picks it up we dissolve into a still of the crown image that began the film and the end titles roll.

The filming of Richard III began in late summer of 1954, eleven years since Olivier had been in Ireland making Henry V, and only the third time Olivier had directed. He now had at his side an old friend Tony Bushell, assistant producer on Hamlet who had since become a director in his own right, so Olivier felt confident to leave his director's chair to act when Tony was about. Olivier had also managed to bring together so many of the technicians and actors he had worked with before, enough to get four Cockney lads reported as saying as they stared at a poster for the film   "Cor Look! Four Sirs in one picture!" Sir Laurence apart, they consisted of Sir Ralph Richardson as Buckingham, Sir Cedric Hardwick as Edward IV, and Sir John Gielgud as Clarence. On one occasion three of the cast were riding in a car that was stopped for a traffic offense. Buckingham leaned forward and said to the policeman "I am Sir Ralph Richardson. Seated next to me is Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and behind me is Sir Laurence Olivier." The policeman replied "I don't care if it's the whole of King Arthur's ruddy Round Table. You're getting a summons!"
 
As so often in movie making the filming began with the end of the story, namely the battle of Bosworth, which was done on a bull farm in southern Spain, using soldiers from the Spanish army who, during the Franco period, came cheap as extras. (Samuel Bronston would a few years later benefit too from this when reenacting the siege of Valencia for "El Cid", and Commodus' entrance into a packed Roman Forum for "Fall of The Roman Empire".)

In spite of his advancing years Olivier was still proud of his physical fitness and chose to do as much of his action as possible without the need for a stand in or stunt double. So at one point, dressed as King Richard in full armour and hump back, he galloped at speed towards a camera mounted on a hill. The action was for an archer to step forward and shoot the horse from under him.

Bernard Hepton, later to become well known as an actor on British Televison as Archbishop Cranmer in "The Six Wives of Henry 8th", was one of the fightmasters and choreographers of the battle, and is on record as recalling that "the arrow was fitted with a real warhead. On being struck, the horse was trained to roll over 'dead'. But the horse couldn't be harmed, as he was protected by an armour suiting of half inch cork covering hardboard, and beneath that lay a steel plate. The cork ensured the arrow appeared to really pierce the horse.

"At the crucial moment when the archer fired, Olivier was urging the horse up the hill and jerked his left leg forward. His own armour was made of rubber and wouldn't stop a paper dart. The arrow sank deep into his calf and there, in the middle of a Spanish ranch, the whole location of warring soldiers gradually came to a halt. Everyone fell silent while Olivier just sat there, motionless, blood gushing from the wounded leg. But when Tony Bushell, the associate director, ran over to him, he simply asked, 'Did we get it that in the can?' 'Yes' said Tony. Larry just sat there on his horse, discussing matter of factly how they might use the shot. Only after several minutes of business talk did he finally say 'Now get me off this bloody horse and find me a doctor!'"

The shot is in the final film.

Bernard Hepton went on "he limped genuinely after that, and fortunately it was the same leg he always used for his Richard limp. He scotched the story being released to the press, as he thought it would reflect badly on the production. But I am glad I can now recount it  in total admiration of the way Olivier conducted himself."

The filming of the battle scenes and Richard's death caused Olivier some anxiety. "How the hell can one shoot another medieval battle?" he asked actor Esmond Knight (Lovell) with exasperation. "The Americans have done it over and over again in so many films."

(I have to admit that I cannot personally think of any off hand before 1955, not medieval battles at least, though Hollywood had done the American Civil war rather well.)

Olivier's battlefield death scene combines ferocity with a shocking intimacy.

He did not want to compete with American epics, nor even re-do the spectacle of his Agincourt in Henry V. He wanted a stylized look of a tapestry accompanied by savage realism for the close fighting. As Hazlitt wrote of Edmund Kean's Richard III, Olivier's Crookback "fought like one drunk with wounds" before thrashing and twitching on the ground in animal convulsions, finally extending his sword in a deformed hand and staring momentarily at the cross formed by the hilt. The action leading up to that scene was to be played out with relentless, fast-moving ferocity, and the responsibility for making it convincing was largely the responsibilty of two "boyish looking actors", the already mentioned Bernard Hepton, and John Greenwood, recruited to take charge of the swordplay.

Of the filming of the battle scenes Bernard Hepton says "The main problem was communication. The opposing armies were mainly composed of Spanish extras who understood no English. Olivier wanted us to arrange a battle scene with 800 extras, with the camera on a 20 foot tower pointing down onto archers, panning over foot soldiers, then across to Lord Stanley's men deserting to the side of Richmond at a crucial point of the conflict."

As I said before, these last scenes in the original version of the film, at some stage in the intervening years, disappeared from most versions.

Bernard Hepton again. "We organised the armies into groups of 3 and 4, and taught them four sword cuts and parries which they did at different times during rehearsal while instructors called out through loud hailers 'uno, dos, tres, cuatro'. At one point Olivier came bounding down the tower steps and slapped me on the back. 'That's good,' he said. 'Just right. Now Willie Walton's got to write some music to this, so could we have them do it all again - in rhythm?'

"Tony Bushell warned us at the start not to expect Sir Laurence to react to suggestions, but he explained that he was always alert to the good idea and would absorb what you said to him even if he didn't appear to. What irritated him was people trying to press ideas upon him. Well, I had boned up on Richard III and knew his favourite weapon was a battleaxe that he used with his right arm and with all his strength. When I suggested this to him he seemed to look right through me. Two days later he came back enthusiastically "Lovely idea. Get a battleaxe." So we had one made in Madrid, and when it arrived it was terrible - like a toy tomahawk. Sir Laurence was livid, the only time I saw him lose his temper."

Esmond Knight, who played Lovell, referred to Richard III as 'Dickie Three Eyes', was one actor not impressed by the filming of the battle scenes.

"One terrible mistake was the armour. Because it was made of rubber so you could see it bend in the close shots. All Richard's men were in dark, blackish armour, and Richmond's men were in whitish armour that made them look like the Tin Man in 'Wizard of Oz'."

He also tells an amusing story about the horses. "Olivier was sitting on his white mare watching Tudor's forces. He was worried we were about to lose the light and shouted orders for the three of us (the Cat, the Rat, and Lovell, the Dog) to ride through the trees and pull up behind him. So we thundered up immediately behind him. But my horse was a stallion, and he promptly mounted Laurence's mare, practically engulfing the king in the act.

"'Get off Ned, you bloody twit!' he shouted.

"'It's not me,' 'I protested, 'It's this randy stallion.'

"Then the grooms rushed in to pull the stallion stallion off. And as I fell off backwards, somebody shouted, 'Castrate that damned horse.'''

The 57 year old actor playing Lovel (with a far from authentic Scottish accent), John Laurie, was no horseman, and had been instructed to have some trial rides in costume, sword dangling at his side, to see how the Spanish horses reacted to a rider in full medieval costume. After a short canter the horse broke into a gallop. John Laurie's wife, an accomplished horsewoman, had instructed him to saw on its mouth in such an emergency, so he did. The horse only went faster, and leapt over a ditch with the actor hanging on for dear life. Then it stopped short at another ditch, but John Laurie didn't, and he somersaulted over the horse's head. "Afterwards I discovered what went wrong," Laurie said. "A Spaniard explained that their horses have very sensitive sides. The hanging sword was the cause, gently tickling the horse, and the faster it went the more strongly the irritation spurred it on. After that, we all thrust our swords through our belts so they stayed solid."

Douglas Wilmer, playing Dorset, and later to co-star in films like "El Cid" and "The Fall of the Roman Empire", as well as starring as Sherlock Holmes on BBC TV, tells this story of Olivier.

"What really amazed me was his energy. His work program was exhausting; yet he could just sit down in a chair and close his eyes for a short time, then walk straight onto the set and act a long scene perfectly despite the enormous burden he carried of being producer, director, and leading man.

"And he's got a mind like a vacuum cleaner. If there's something you've got he wants, he'll draw it out of you. We were walking around the set on Richard III and I remarked that a bit of heraldry wasn't correct. Heraldry is a hobby of mine. 'What?' he said, and then started on me as if he was drilling for oil, pumping every bit of information out of me. His precision and concentration are enormous. Like a diamond drill. He is a very formidable man, and I know some actors find him a frightening man. I certainly do.

"Sometimes he cuts with a bluntness that is really amusing. I remember Esmond Knight wanted to make more of his lines where, as Ratcliffe, he comes into Richard's tent at dawn on the day of the battle of Bosworth. ('The early village cock hath thrice done salutation to the morn; your friends are up, and buckle on their armour'.) And he said to the director, 'Larry, suppose I loosen my sword in the scabbard, then look over my shoulder through the flap in the tent towards the horses, and then say it.' And Olivier just sat there and looked at him, sucking his teeth. Then he said, 'No. Just say the line and piss off.' "

Laurence Naismith, Lord Stanley in the film, says of the director "He never spares anything. In sword fighting he rally expects you to have a go. No quarter is given, and he expects none in return. You hit him, or he hits you."

Richard III made entertainment history, the first full-length feature film to be televised in advance of the cinema showing. NBC paid half a million dollars for one screening, and it was estimated this showing on a Sunday afternoon was watched by more than 40 million people. Sir Laurence viewed the television experiment with complete dismay. Varying long shots and close ups were almost lost on the small screen, and colour was only available to a minority, and much of the blood and gore had been censored. But what appalled him most were the commercial breaks.

In England the film had a royal premiere, with both the Queen and Prince Philip in attendance, and earned Olivier huge critical acclaim.

The film's 165 scenes, involving thirty featured players, forty actors in bit parts, and hundreds of crowd artists, were filmed in just seventeen weeks, including two weeks rehearsal and one month on location in Spain. Hamlet had taken six months.

The performance was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, and it was Best Actor, Best British Film, and Best Film from any source at the BAFTAs, the British 'Oscars'.

Although the acting style is dated and appears camp to most modern eyes, the impact of Olivier's portrayal was enormous, and held sway over the minds and imaginations of all for many years to come. From then on every actor portraying Shakespeare's Richard found himself trying to cast off a very big shadow indeed.

About the author: Paul Trevor Bale has worked in the film and television industries as an Editor since leaving school in 1966 when the choice between going to Leicester University to study History, and working on a feature film, was to the movie mad kid he then was, no choice. He's continued a passionate interest in the fifteenth century since then, and his lifelong ambition has always been to direct the film he has written on the story of the real Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, and King of England. His many credits include "Rumpole of the Bailey", "Edward and Mrs Simpson", and movies with Katheleen Quinlan, Katherine Hepburn, and a James Bond. He lives in London, but will travel anywhere, and enjoys doing so whenever the opportunity presents itself.