The Entertainer ***** (1960, Laurence Olivier, Brenda de Banzie, Roger Livesey, Joan Plowright, Alan Bates, Albert Finney, Shirley Anne Field) – Classic Movie Review 2527

Director Tony Richardson’s superlative 1960 film version of one of John Osborne’s finest theatre plays The Entertainer has the enormous advantage of encouraging Laurence Olivier to record for posterity one of his greatest stage appearances – at London’s Royal Court theatre – as the archetypal has-been music-hall comedian, Archie Rice.

He is an appalling grotesque, spreading his failure, misery and pain around all his loved ones. You’d think he wouldn’t be good company, but he’s great company. Of course he wouldn’t be in real life, but this is only a movie.

Set in Morecambe in Lancashire, northern England, the story sees the penniless, bitter cheesy comic Rice, who is married to the shrewish, gin-sodden Phoebe (Brenda de Banzie), attempting to seduce a beauty queen (Shirley Anne Field), while trying to make a stage comeback with his father (Roger Livesey), who dies in the attempt.

An effective marriage of late Fifties ‘Angry Young Man’ theatre and early Sixties new wave British Cinema realism, the film brings a sharp stench of the rancid era of the late Fifties to Osborne’s emotionally dangerous play. So what if Archie Rice is just Osborne’s Jimmy Porter from Look Back in Anger in a different guise, he is one of theatre’s most well-etched anti-heroes.

In any case, Rice and Porter are simply alter egos of the huge ego-ed playwright. He knows what he’s talking about writing these characters and putting provocative dialogue in their mouths.

Among the remarkable performances, the young Joan Plowright plays Archie’s nice daughter, de Banzie his wife and Livesey his father. Alas Field has little to do as the beauty queen Tina Lapford, involved with Archie, who promises to further her career. And there are only more or less walk-on roles from Albert Finney and Alan Bates (in their feature film débuts) as Archie’s sons Mick and Frank Rice.

Also in the cast are Thora Hird (as Tina’s mum), Daniel Massey, Miriam Karlin, Geoffrey Toone, George Doonan, Max Bacon, Anthony Oliver and the star TV announcer MacDonald Hobley as himself.

In real life, Olivier and Plowright (born 28 October 1929) married the following year on 17 March 1961 and they remained together till his death on 11 July 1989. They had three children. Dame Joan Ann Plowright is now the Baroness Olivier.

It was remade in 1976 by director Donald Wrye with Jack Lemmon, Ray Bolger, Sada Thompson and Tyne Daly. Max Wall played the Rice role memorably on the London stage. Kenneth Branagh revived Osborne’s 1957 play at London’s Garrick Theatre in September 2016.

RIP Albert Finney (9 May 1936 – 7 February 2019), who went on to make his breakthrough in the same year as a disillusioned factory worker in Karel Reisz’s film of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). This led to his starring in the 1963 hit Tom Jones. Finney and Field appeared again together in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and again on stage at the Royal Court theatre in London in The Lily White Boys, directed by Lindsay Anderson,

Shirley Anne Field’s breakthrough came in 1960 when she was chosen by Tony Richardson to play the role of beauty queen Tina Lapford in The Entertainer, starring Laurence Olivier.

RIP Shirley Anne Field, who died on 10 December 2023, at the age of 87.

Her first film appearance was as an extra in Simon and Laura (1955), followed by many small parts, but her first sizeable film role was in Horrors of the Black Museum (1959). She had minor parts in Once More, with Feeling! (1960) and And the Same to You (1960), then a larger role in Peeping Tom (1960).

Her breakthrough came when Tony Richardson picked her to play beauty queen Tina Lapford in The Entertainer. She said: ‘It was Tony Richardson I owe it all to.’ The Entertainer allowed her to escape from her starlet roles in ‘five years being hassled or groped by this star or that’.

In Richardson’s film, she plays Tina Lapford, involved with Archie Rice (Laurence Olivier). Olivier marched Field to the daily screenings of rushes, which she did not want to attend. Afterwards he put his arm through hers and said: ‘No improvement needed there, is there young lady?’

It led to her best known role as Doreen in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,527

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