Laurence Olivier

There is even, okay, and it's funny because it's Vivian Leigh.

Because she's married to Laurence Olivier, right? Who is the director and star of the Academy Award winning film Hamlet just a few years previous.

Hamlet, Olivier... literally had Freudian consultants on the film in order to help with the production.

Queen Gertrude's bed and the hallways and stuff, because first of all, they cast a woman who was younger than Olivier to play his mother to help with the Oedipal desires.

And she had amazing stories.

You know, she worked with Olivier.

She worked with all the greats and...

And it's nice to think, you know, maybe when I'm Maggie's age, I'll be sitting with somebody my age and they'll be going, oh, she worked with Maggie Smith.

You know, the way we'd be like, she worked with Laurence Olivier.

Yeah.

But yeah, she was an incredible woman, an incredible actress.

Yes.

Laurence Olivier.

Who? Yes.

Well, so obviously he's known now as one of the most famous and most sort of important theatre actors in the UK in the 20th century.

It does also

get revived quite a lot.

Never with Laurence Olivier.

And after that, he did a bunch of different theatre productions, none of which really took off.

He led the Roman army against Spartacus and the rebel slaves.

In cinema, he was played by Laurence Olivier.

And he's also quite famous for being the richest man in Rome, prototype billionaire.

He literally owned most of the city, and he's almost as famous for being in the first triumvirate with Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus.

In just a moment, you'll hear James Stewart as The Six-Shooter, just one of the many great stars brought to you Sundays on NBC.

Every Sunday, hear Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in The Marriage, Sir Laurence Olivier on Theatre Royal, Laurence Tibbett with The Golden Voices, Helen Hayes, Fredric March, Rex Harrison, and Lilli Palmer on the NBC Star Playhouse, all of them heard only on NBC.

James Stewart as The Six-Shooter.

[instrumental music] The man in the saddle is angular and long-legged.

Is evil grown in the blood or grown in the home? Hi podcasters, thanks for joining me today.

I'm Daryl and today we're taking a look at The Boys from Brazil, the 1978 thriller directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lily Palmer, Denholm Elliott and a very young Steve Guttenberg.

Let's get into it.

Now a little bit of context first because this one comes with quite a pedigree.

He starts digging and what he uncovers is a gathering at a palatial home, a meeting of former SS men presided over by none other than Dr Joseph Mengele himself, played by Gregory Peck.

Kohler manages to plant a microphone and gets some of the meeting on tape, Mengler dispatching a squad of young operatives to travel the world and murder 94 unassuming 65-year-old civil servants, each at a precisely timed moment over the next two years.

Kohler phones the veteran Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman in Vienna, played by Laurence Olivier, and starts playing him the tape down the phone line.

And then Mengele's men arrive at his door.

Oh, no.

Where it's Laurence Olivier as Othello in 1965 in blackface.

[gasps]

But he looks like a swamp creature because-

I like most-

Mm-hmm

... adaptations of Othello, with the exception, apparently, of Laurence Olivier's from 1965, [laughs] 'cause I didn't know it existed.

But I, yeah, I think that if they treat the subject matter with the gravity that it deserves to have to be treated, and I am glad that they didn't try to make this, like, not another teen movie, but Othello.

Uh, uh, Edward Norton, uh, played Pete Seeger, and he did a, a real swell impression of Pete Seeger there that really added a lot to the character, you know? That's not how Ed- Ed Norton talks.

And, uh, Kenneth Branagh, uh, pla- portrayed, uh, Laurence Olivier in that movie about Marilyn.

And it's, it's delicious when you see a really good actor, uh, give a little something to the character that he's portraying, if it's a famous person, and kinda go in that direction, and just sorta, just enough, you know, to, uh...

It's, it's to- and it's totally artistic.