Laurence Kerr Olivier

1907 - 1989  (82 years)    Has more than 100 ancestors and 5 descendants in this family tree.

• Name	Laurence Kerr Olivier
  Relationship	with Francis Fox
  Born	22 May 1907	Dorking, Surrey, England, UK
  Gender	Male
  Died	11 Jul 1989	Steyning, Sussex, England, UK
  Person ID	I86620	Geneagraphie
  Last Modified	7 Apr 2002

  
  

  Father	Rev. Gerard Kerr Olivier,   b. 30 Apr 1869,   d. Yes, date unknown
  Mother	Agnes Louise Crookenden,   d. Yes, date unknown
  Family ID	F35503	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 1	Jill Esmond,   b. 26 Jan 1908, London, Middlesex, England ,   d. 28 Jul 1990, Wimbledon, London, England, UK  (Age 82 years)
  Married	1930
  Divorced	1940
  Children	+ 1. Living
  Last Modified	7 Apr 2002
  Family ID	F148243	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 2	Vivien Leigh,   b. 5 Nov 1913, Darjeeling, West Bengal, British India ,   d. 7 Jul 1967, London, Middlesex, England  (Age 53 years)
  Married	31 Aug 1940
  2 children
  Divorced	02 Dec 1960
  Last Modified	17 Jan 2014
  Family ID	F148242	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 3	Joan Plowright,   b. 28 Oct 1929, Brigg, North Lincolnshire, England, UK
  Married	1961
  3 children
  Children	1. Julie Kate Olivier   2. Tamsin Olivier   3. Living
  Last Modified	7 Apr 2002
  Family ID	F148248	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Photos

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• Notes

  Actor and film star. Knighted 1947. created life Peer 1970 as Baron Olivier of of Brighton Sussex. Order of Merit 1981 He could speak Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Laurence Olivier in 1927. One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played Romeo and Mercutio in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Giulgud. A young English woman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was Ophelia to his Hamlet in a special performance at Kronberg Castle, Elsinore, Denmark. In 1940 she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was "Wuthering Heights". Her film was "Gone With The Wind." Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in "Fire Over England" (1937), "21 Days Together" (1940) and "That Hamilton Woman" (1941). There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows". The film project was then abandoned. During their two decade marriage Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money. In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" that was called "Carrie" while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams play, "A Streetcar Named Desire". She won her second Oscar for bringing Blanche DuBois to the screen. "Carrie" was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on the career of Sir Laurence Olivier that was broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond (I) and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers. More than half of his film credits come after "The Entertainer", which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of Archie Rice's daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright who was in the film as well. They married soon after the release of "The Entertainer" (1960).