Alec Guinness personal letters and diaries acquired by British Library Archive of theatre knight, famed for Ealing comedies, reveal Pooterish moments and brickbats for Sir Laurence (THE GUARDIAN)

Maev Kennedy
The Guardian,

Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson in the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai. Photograph: Allstar/COLUMBIA/Sportsphoto

On July 12 1989, one of the greatest actors of his generation was reflecting in his diary on the death of another. If Sir Alec Guinness's thoughts/words of praise for Sir Laurence Olivier were extracted, as theatre promoters routinely do with critics' write-ups, it could read as a rave review.

The full text, revealed for the first time in the actor's personal archive just acquired by the British Library, tells a different story. In his impeccably neat tiny script, Guinness wrote of Olivier: "I greatly admired his extraordinary courage … as a comedian he was superb … technically brilliant … he was a great actor."

But he also wrote: "Like so many people whose ambition drive them to great eminence, he had a cruel and destructive streak. Side by side with his generosity, he could be unpleasant, possibly even vindictive. Consciously or not, he made attempts to destroy John G [Gielgud], [Michael] Redgrave, [Paul] Scofield and if he had been given the chance, me."

The theatre knights meet again in the library. The vaults also hold the archives of Olivier, Gielgud, and an actor of whom Guinness writes with uncomplicated affection, Ralph Richardson.

Olivier and Guinness were near contemporaries, born respectively in 1907 and 1914, and met constantly on stage and elsewhere over more than half a century.

Guinness said: "There was a touch of pretension about him, and his public speeches were fulsome and awful. I first met him in 1935, in Romeo and Juliet. We all thought he looked and behaved like the leader of a dance band. But his Romeo was as arresting and beautiful as his Mercutio was vulgar and gimmicky."

That production was famous for the fact that Olivier and Gielgud opened as Romeo and Mercutio respectively, and then swapped roles.

Guinness conceded: "Many of us were … too admiring of John to value Larry's qualities fairly." However, he then added a snide line recalling: "The sniggers that went round when he said, during a rehearsal I think, of the procession at George V's jubilee … 'I had a wonderful view of the whole corsage'."

Guinness was unforgettable in a string of classic Ealing comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters, and for his long collaboration with the director David Lean, including with the film The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957, for which he won an Oscar.

He was also acclaimed as John le Carre's spy George Smiley, in the television adaptation of the novels. However to fans of a certain age his true stardom came in the 1970s, as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy.


READ MORE:http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/07/alec-guinness-letters-british-library