Joan Plowright: A Cold Selfish Cunt

Mein Richard III.

Well, let's face it: Larry probably wasn't "ploughing it right" for the last 15 years either.

From various Laurence Olivier biography books:

"But despite Joan's apparent modesty, many thought she actively importuned her husband to put forth her name as his successor. In a long conversation with Peter Hall at Brighton in June 1973, for example, she protested that she hoped to do more than act: she wanted to direct and to manage.

Peter left this meeting convinced that she very much wanted the position of artistic director. She had a great deal of influence over the National Theatre company for years, according to producer Derek Grainger, a family friend soon to collaborate on several projects with Olivier, and that influence extended to the choice of plays, players and directors. But of course Olivier had not the power to confer the directorship on her, and no great echo resounded when her name was casually dropped in official circles."

"But his illnesses did not alter the family arrangement, and so the Evanses accompanied him to New York for a star gala at Radio City Music Hall the following February. There, Olivier received a prolonged and tumultuous ovation simply for appearing onstage.

'Let's telephone Joanie!' he said proudly, but when the call was put through the maid reported, 'Lady Olivier says she is at dinner.' There was a long stillness in the room before Olivier turned to his friends and said quietly, 'Joan expected me to die when I was seventy. Unfortunately I didn't.' As his friend Angela Fox commented of these years, 'His aloneness was huge, like his talent.'

He was then hit by another painful ailment: a loop of fibrous tissue had threatened to strangulate a ureter, and so in December a delicate kidney operation was performed at St Thomas's Hospital. Bad kidneys or not, he welcomed a visit from Robert Wagner, whose wife Natalie Wood had recently died in a boating accident. In his hospital room, they drank a bottle of Jack Daniels just as at Manchester, recalled Wagner. I had come to cheer him, but he consoled me. He was so lonely in so many respects. But when he put his arms around you he enabled you to touch him in his loneliness. Then he was simply Larry -no title, no fame."

Joan Plowright a cold, selfish cunt?

I endorse this message.

"In1978, it seemed to Markham that Laurence Olivier was in love with her. He made no importunate advances, but he ordered champagne lunches for the two of them under the pretext of working on his accent, and at these times he spoke of the grand passion he had once had with Vivien, and how he identified champagne with their life together. To Markham he seemed a man famished for affection. Her suspicions about Olivier's feelings were con-firmed when the production moved to London in February 1978. He arrived at her home one afternoon with a gardenia, at the bottom of which he had placed a small box from Harrod's and a note describing the enclosed gift as token of his love and gratitude.

Markham had the impression he was suffering a loneliness more lacerating than any illness. He loved his children deeply and often spoke proudly of them, she recalled, but after all they were so very much younger and had lives of their own, and he felt a terrific distance from their experience. And as Laurence Evans and others confirmed, he was indeed lonely"

Markham?

The excerpts lack focus.

R7 Marcella Markham

[quote] lack focus.

Much like Tea with Mussolini.

R8 They are not in a chronological order. The different excerpts show the cunty ugly behavior of Joan Plowright.

She apparently played a part in 101 Dalmatians. I assume she was one of the dogs.

" Larry was back in Los Angeles, accompanied by the Evanses, who saw that he was comfortably settled at L'Ermitage Hotel... Enroute, he stopped at Joan's behest in Boston, to combat the rumours about their marriage, appearing at Joan's Broadway opening on 3 February. (The play that had run for two years in London closed in New York after four weeks.)

Joan chose to return to England instead of accompanying her husband back to Los Angeles.

Constant contact with the Evanses by telephone and with Marcella Markham, who had returned as dialogue coach, buoyed his spirits. Tired, lonely and desperate for company, he prolonged evenings with crew members and relied on the attentions of friends like Markham, Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner (who over a long weekend spirited him away for a Las Vegas holiday).

He chose her.

"At the weekend, Olivier occasionally visited Laurence and Mary Evans or stayed in a Cornwall guest-house, and when Badham asked why he did not go to Brighton, Olivier quietly replied, 'No, dear boy, Brighton is death.' He was referring not to the city, where he was always comfortable, but to life at home. He and Joan had indeed become, as he had said, like ships simply passing in the night.

On his seventy-second birthday, Olivier dined with the Evanses at a Charlotte Street restaurant, where he wondered aloud whether his third marriage had been a mistake. He wanted to be with his children as much as possible, but there was now an unofficial separation from Joan.

When necessary, Olivier was tended by nurses, and he and his wife seemed mostly to occupy their two homes separately, making social and public appearances together only for propriety's sake.

"On 2 July he invited Mary Evans to join him in the royal box for the tennis tournament at Wimbledon; later her husband joined them for dinner at Wilton's restaurant. Convinced that there was now an irreparable rupture in his marriage and that Joan's affections lay elsewhere, Olivier — not for the first time — spoke of divorce.

The Evanses dissuaded him, arguing that he consider his age and illness as well as the effects of the adverse publicity.

For the time being, Olivier agreed — but several months later he sent for his lawyer, Laurence Harbottle, and dictated instructions: The Lord Olivier wished to terminate his marriage.

Somehow this reached the press, and the Oliviers tried to cover up the matter. he claimed to have jokingly threatened a divorce 'if you play at the National'. Olivier's sentiments did not alter, despite the constant flow of uxorious remarks for the benefit Of journalists. 'Though Larry and I do seem to be working in different countries some of the time,' Joan said, 'we at least manage uninterrupted weekends With the children.'

Inevitably, such times would become less frequent, and as Olivier told the Evanses this was all the more reason for him to distract himself from an unhappy private life by making films, no matter how unattractive"

I'm sorry but she's ugly from the outside and inside.

Is OP also the "Joanne Woodward is a homewrecker" troll?

"on 5 May 1985, when he attended the dedication at Chichester of Lawrence Holofcener's bronze bas-relief depicting twenty-eight Olivier roles. That week, he had repeatedly been referring to Joan as 'Vivien' , and finally he had apparently overstretched her patience and she departed for a Majorcan holiday.

Still, Lord and Lady Olivier graciously performed their roles for the public, even filming interviews together for a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary programme in 1986 walking politely round the garden he loved so much at home.

The last four years of his life were an unpredictable mixture of loneliness, pleasant moments with a few close friends and times of appalling pain and the gradual erosion of all memory but the most remote. Able to detail the fine points of life aboard the Berengaria in 1930 or the geography of Birmingham after the First World War, Olivier most of all tended to speak long and lovingly (and sometimes guiltily) of his life with Vivien.

I saw her in her one Oscar-nominated performance, “Enchanted April,” last weekend. She seemed like a pale imitation of Edith Evans and a glum forerunner of Maggie Smith in “Doenton Abbey.” I can only assume she was mainly a beard for Olubier, as she was hardly a beauty like Leigh or interesting like lesbian Jill Edmond.

"That year Laurence Olivier composed his will. There were cash bequests to nurses, secretaries, in-laws and a few cousins, and from his personal effects he left mementoes to ten friends, among them the Evanses, Peggy Ashcroft, John Mills, Rachel Kempson Red grave, Pieter Rogers and Meriel Richardson.

An early prompt-copy Of Hamlet he bequeathed to John Gielgud, and to the National Theatre and the Garrick Club he left portraits of himself.

He also set up a trust for his children, but to Joan he left only their jointly held furniture and furnishings — no art, nor silver Or gold objects, china, historic pieces, antique books Or theatrical mementoes. She was to be allowed the Malthouse in her widowhood or until she decided to vacate it (the home in Mulberry Walk was jointly owned), but in either case it would be included in the rest of his estate, finally valued at just over one mil- lion pounds, which was to be administered by four trustees.

Asked during the anniversary garden party that year to name the most important things in his life apart from acting, he replied, 'Women, Shakespeare and gardening.' But when the microphone was turned on and the interviewer repeated the question, Olivier replied with cheerful dignity, 'My wife and my children."

Olivier went to visit Leigh's deathbed and in his autobiography bitchily noted that she had peed in the bed. John Gielgud said he never spoke to Olivier again after that, horrified that Olivier would write something so cruel about Vivien who Gielgud adored.

Joan Plowright should have been grateful that Larry Olivier gave her the time of day. Let alone marrying and having a family with her.

I believe Larry was so vulnerable and desperately in need for any kind of affection and love after the long nightmarish years with Vivien. Joan was cunning and opportunistic (she was also married to fellow unknown actor and left him for Larry), she's not innocent or naïve like she portrays herself.

Like mother like son:

Richard (Olivier' youngest son) came with his new wife to live at the Malthouse. Joan was often away working. He remembered endless silent dinner tables. Later, when his father was too frail to decide how to spend his time, he and Joan would decide for him. "She would ask my advice, we would consult together at one end of the dining table, while my father became the child, helplessly looking on from the other. I remembered . . . the flashes of bitter resentment that would pass across his face as he struggled even to hear the plans we were making for him. And I remembered the sadistic pleasure I had felt in not repeating them louder so he could participate, or dare to refuse. I had revelled in the opportunity to punish him, for being away, for being ill or whatever it was."

At the time they came to live in Sussex, Richard and his wife were believers in holistic medicine, and so, up to a point, was Joan. They tried to reduce his intake of steroids and to wean him off alcohol by mixing his wine, behind his back, with a nonalcoholic wine substitute called Jung, which Richard knew was horrible stuff. Sometimes his father went along with it, or seemed to. Sometimes he showed that he knew, and that he wasn't happy with it at all.

Julie-Kate later made it clear that he wasn't: "That was one of the decisions that was made for him. He hated that. He tried to go along with it for a while, because it was meant to be healthy ... I hated it, and I remember thinking, 'You're ruining the rest of his life.'

In 2001, Joan got jealous and upset about a documentary called "Larry and Viv: The Oliviers in Love" that talked candidly about Larry and Viv relationship (the good, bad and ugly times). So the following month, Joan released a ridiculous documentary called "When Larry Met Joan" and fluffy memoir "And That's Not All" and also releasing Larry love letters to her (mostly in the beginning of their relationship.)

"Interest in the Olivier story does not fade. Only a few weeks ago, there was a biopic on Channel 4 called Larry and Viv: The Oliviers in Love. Had she seen it? 'No, I was in Bucharest.' ('In Bucharest' could be a good code for making yourself scarce.) But isn't she curious? 'No. I don't want to see it. I was asked to be in it; it was supposed to be about Olivier's acting.'

In fact, it was an attempt to disinter a great romance when both the players are dead. Tarquin, Olivier's son by his first wife, Jill Esmond, stated plainly that Vivien Leigh was the 'love of Olivier's life'. Leigh herself once said she would rather have had a short life with Larry than a long life without him.

Any ostrich would want to keep her head down and make a different programme altogether. And that is exactly what Plowright has done (the result can be seen in a BBC Omnibus, When Larry Met Joan on 3 November).

Joan bashing Vivien in a passive aggressive manner:

"Plowright quotes a letter Leigh sent her in 1965: 'I have been meaning to write to you for some time but some how one puts off difficult things and this is a difficult letter to write. I have felt how much more pleasant it would be if we could all meet.' It ended by saying: 'I was very sad for you when you lost your baby.' (Plowright had a miscarriage between her first and second children.) Leigh had passionately wanted a child with Olivier, but had miscarried herself. When Plowright succeeded in having a baby, Leigh wrote again - to congratulate her.

Did Leigh write because she still wanted to have a part, however small, in Olivier's life? Was her motivation generous or jealous? 'I don't know the truth of it. I feel that if I put myself in her place, it was very sad not to be at all connected with the National Theatre [which Olivier founded], not to have any children, all of which I was doing, and in that way, you know, I felt sad for her. I could understand what it felt like.' On the advice of Leigh's doctors, they did not meet. 'I don't see how it could have worked - even with the best intentions on both sides.'

Was she haunted by Vivien Leigh, in spite of her absence? 'No. I don't think I was, because it was so obviously over, and her life and my life were so totally different. It wasn't as though I was competing with her. It might sound arrogant but I didn't really think much about it."

Joan Plowright: the Susan Boyle of her day.

Plowright's good with Alec McCowen in this TV adaptation of an Elizabeth Taylor short story, "A Dedicated Man".

He must have been a real shit to her in the latter years of their marriage. Probably cheated relentlessly. Her actions speak of a woman scorned who got quiet revenge.

If a couple is estranged, and all but separated, you don't call either one "selfish" for moving on. It's what people do when they have fallen out of love and have grown to greatly dislike and resent each other. I'm sure Larry left A LOT of lonely, sad ex-lovers in his wake as well.

You don't mess with a manic depressive, bitch!

She got her karma though, she's blind now