Alec Guinness's acerbic remarks about Laurence Olivier don't amount to a feud

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/08/alec-guinness-laurence-olivier-remarks

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The news that Alec Guinness felt a personal distaste for Laurence Olivier, reported in this morning's papers, didn't exactly come as a bolt from the blue. I recall reading in one theatrical biography that Guinness was deeply offended when, while both men were playing at the Old Vic in 1937, Olivier made caustic enquiries as to what may or may not have happened when Guinness paid a weekend visit to Gielgud's country cottage. The two men, both as actors and as people, were as different as chalk and cheese: Guinness a fastidious miniaturist, Olivier a strange mix of the earthy and the exalted.

Olivier was a king among actors, and, like many Shakespearean monarchs, jealously guarded his throne. That's a polite way of saying that he wasn't always generous to potential rivals. During his directorship of the National Theatre from 1963 to 1973, Olivier was unfailingly encouraging to young actors. He wasn't, however, quite so open-handed to his peers: he sacked a patently ill Michael Redgrave, miscast Gielgud in Tartuffe, and never employed his old friend Ralph Richardson or indeed Alec Guinness. The charitable view is that he and his fellow-directors were trying to create a new ensemble: the less favourable one is that Olivier was like an old lion guarding his territory.

What is striking, however, is how few genuine feuds there have been in the tribe of British actors over the last 100 years. There have been palpable aesthetic differences. Olivier, in a remarkable television interview with Kenneth Tynan, once said that Gielgud was all fire and air while he himself embodied the baser, more prosaic side of humanity – something even said with a rasp of self-disgust. But the two men always maintained a facade of public politeness.

In more recent times, I am impressed by the harmony between leading players. Among the great dames, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Eileen Atkins are all the same age yet each speaks warmly of the others. Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay emerged at roughly the same time from similar north-country backgrounds, yet have worked together – in Ronald Harwood's The Dresser and Yasmina Reza's Art – in visible friendship. And today, I detect not a hint of rivalry between, say, Simon Russell Beale and Mark Rylance.

Of course, it wasn't always so. In the 19th century there was a ferocious public feud between the English William Macready and the American Edwin Forrest. This came to a head in 1849 when they simultaneously played Macbeth in New York. It provoked a fervently nationalist uprising, with Forrest's American supporters cheering their man on and abusing his English rival.

On the fateful night of 10 May an angry mob, responding to posters asking "Shall Americans or English rule in this city?", gathered outside the Astor Place Theatre where Macready was appearing. A riot ensued, leaving 30 dead and many wounded – and causing Macready to flee the city, and the country, for ever. Compared to that, a few acerbic remarks by Alec Guinness about Laurence Olivier seem refreshingly small beer.