Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier. Photo: Allan Warren

The ashes of Laurence Olivier, Baron Olivier of Brighton, the greatest actor of his generation, are buried in the south transept of Westminster Abbey. He lies near the graves of actors David Garrick and Sir Henry Irving, in front of Shakespeare’s memorial. He died on 11th July 1989 at his home in Sussex but his ashes were not buried here until 16th September 1991, at a private ceremony. A memorial service was held in the Abbey on 20th October 1989 and items symbolic of his life and work were carried in procession by, among others, Douglas Fairbanks, Michael Caine and Peter O'Toole. The address was given by Sir Alec Guiness. A recording of Olivier reading an extract from Act 4 of Shakespeare's Henry V was played during the service, the first time the voice of the deceased had been heard during their memorial service in the Abbey.

His memorial stone was unveiled on 23rd September 1991 by Sir John Gielgud, who had given a memorable reading at the service in 1989. The stone is of Westmorland green slate and was cut by Ieuan Rees. 

The inscription reads:

1907 LAURENCE OLIVIER O.M. ACTOR 1989

He was born in Dorking, Surrey on 22nd May 1907, a son of the Reverend Gerard Kerr Olivier and his wife Agnes. While attending a choir school in London he appeared in a play aged ten and was seen by famous actress Ellen Terry who declared him to be a great actor even at that early age. In 1930 he married Jill Esmond and in the following year, while in a play on Broadway, he was talent spotted and invited to Hollywood. But his career did not take off at that time and he returned to London and with Gielgud's assistance built his reputation as a major classical actor. Returning to Hollywood at the end of the decade he finally had success there, beginning with Wuthering Heights. His first marriage was dissolved and he married Vivien Leigh in 1940 and the following year returned to England to join the Fleet Air Arm. He directed and starred in the morale boosting film Henry V and was knighted in 1947. In 1981 he was appointed to the Order of Merit.

First published at Westminster Abbey.

Pan Am flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie

December 21, 1988. 

Pan American flight 103 departs London’s Heathrow Airport en-route to Detroit via New York.

It never arrives.

One hour into the flight, just before 7pm, the plane exploded and crashed to the ground over the small Scottish village of Lockerbie.

All 243 passengers and 16 crew perished. In addition, 11 people on the ground were killed. Total fatalities 270.

Named “Clipper Maid of the Seas”, the aircraft was a Boeing 747 type 100, one of the earliest made. It first flew in 1970.

Whilst initial suspicion lay with the age of the aircraft and therefore possible structural failure of the airframe, it was later discovered that a bomb brought the jet down.

The bomb was concealed inside a Toshiba “Bombeat” radio cassette recorder which was amongst the luggage, but not assigned to any specific passenger.

Here is the original CBS News broadcast announcing the disaster (courtesy YouTube):

The nose-cone landed about 35km away from Lockerbie on Tundergarth Hill

The plane’s wings, along with tanks carrying 100 tons of jet fuel, plummeted into Lockerbie’s Sherwood Crescent neighbourhood, creating an inferno and a crater more than 150 feet deep. AP Photo: File, courtesy ABC News

35 students from the University of Syracuse, returning home for Christmas, were among the passengers.

Each year, the University holds a remembrance week as a mark of respect for those students who lost their lives. Visit the memorial website here.

Review: REQUIEM CRIES FOR PEACE

WORLD PEACE CONCERT

War Requiem (Op. 66), Benjamin Britten

by Stephanie Green

BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S War Requiem (Op. 66) is an extraordinary work, reflecting on the tragedy of two major European wars and sounding a warning for the future. In counterposing Wilfred Owen’s war poems with the more stylised Latin liturgy of the Mass for the Dead, Britten created a haunting musical statement on the futility of war.

The performance of Britten’s War Requiem in Llewellyn Hall on Saturday night was billed as a “World Peace Concert”. Prior to the performance a number of dignitaries spoke briefly, introduced by Sir William Keys. The Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, began the speeches by saying peace was one of the most important issues concerning humankind. He was followed by the American, Soviet and Chinese ambassadors, the British High Commissioner and representatives from the UN and European Communities, while the audience waited patiently to hear the music.

When it began, the opening bells of the Kyrie and the brooding phrases of the Des Irae spoke sincerely and potently for the cause of peace. Sir Ninian Stephen, the Governor-General, spoke after the performance and read an apt passage from the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, who was a contemporary of Owen’s.

The requiem operates on three levels. The liturgy is sung by massed choir with solo soprano, observing the ritual of mourning. The poems of Wilfred Owen, written in the trenches of World War I, are sung by two soldiers on the sides of opposing forces, accompanied by a small chamber orchestra. These solos convey the gruelling realities of the battlefield and contrast with the transcendent voices of the boy’s choir. The War Requiem’s tolling bells and recurring motifs are a reminder of what has to be done. The sad beauty of its final passages achieve a sense of peace in death, yet seeking peace in life.

Owen’s words provide us with a palpable sense of the private, human tragedy of war.

Move him unto the sun, Gently his touch awoke him once … if anything might rouse him now, the kind old sun will know.

David Parker sang the tenor role with Geoffrey Manning as the baritone. Marilyn Richardson sang solo soprano with the strong lyrical purity that is essential to Britten’s music. The large ensemble required for this piece was conducted by Marie Van Hove, who sustained the pace and turbulence of the music while effectively drawing out the more pensive moments with her baton.

The Canberra School of Music achieved an organisational feat in presenting this world peace concert. The requiem was well attended by the public, and it is to be hoped that the support and concern shown for issues of world peace are affirmed in action as they were in words and music.

Marilyn Richardson - soprano

David Parker - tenor

Geoffrey Manning - baritone

Canberra School of Music Opera Workshop Chorus (augmented)
Symphony Orchestra (lead by Leonard Dommett O.B.E.)
Chamber Orchestra (lead by Donald Halewood O.B.E.)

Canberra Boys Choir (conductor, Michael Deasey)

St. Andrew's Cathedral (Sydney) Boys Choir

Entire production conducted by Marie van Hove

First published in The Canberra Times, July 18 1988

Article: HEAR THE PEACE MESSAGE: PM - International Year of Peace Concert - Benjamin Britten's War Requiem - Llewellyn Hall, July 16 1988

THE message of peace was one people could not hear too often or ever afford to ignore, the Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, told a near capacity audience at the Llewellyn Hall of the Canberra School of Music last night.

The Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Mr Zhang Zai, reads a peace message from the President of the Republic of China
to the audience at a peace concert at the Canberra School of Music last night. On the left are the USSR Ambassador, Dr
Eugene Samoteikin, and the Prime Minister, Mr Hawke. Picture: DARRYL GREGORY

The occasion was the performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, a personal statement by Britten of his abhorrence of war using the poems of Wilfred Owen, a soldier and protest poet of World War I, who was killed a week before the Armistice.

Mr Hawke said the theme of peace went to the most important issue facing humankind. His theme was repeated by a number of dignitaries who read messages of peace from world leaders before the performance.

The president of the RSL, Sir William Keys, said War Requiem was probably the most significant musical work of the 20th century. It was a reflection about war, the devastation and futility of war that made an appeal for peace.

The Ambassador of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Dr Eugene Samoteikin, read a message from the Head of State of the Soviet Government which said the greatest evil for all on the planet was the threat of war.

Other messages were read from the President of the United States, Mr Reagan, the Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of China, Mr Li Peng, the British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, the President of the Commission of European Communities, President Delors, and from the Secretary General of the United Nations, Dr Perez de Cuellar.

War Requiem was a production of the Canberra School of Music and the school’s opera workshop with St Andrew’s Cathedral Boys’ Choir Sydney and the Chorale from the Canberra Boys' Choir.

Originally published in The Canberra Times, July 17, 1988

Article: SOPRANO PERFORMS TO FOCUS ATTENTION ON NEED FOR PEACE

Saturday July 16, 1988

by MARK UHLMANN

Brisbane soloist Marilyn Richardson who is participating
in tonight's World Peace Concert in Llewellyn Hall at the
Canberra School of Music. Photo: MARTIN JONES

One of Australia’s finest sopranos, Marilyn Richardson, believes that tonight’s World Peace Concert, in which she will perform, will be like a “church service on a Sunday”.

It will not directly assist the cause of world peace, but will help to focus attention on the issue and “the  more aware you are the better”.

Ms Richardson has sung in Britten’s War Requiem, the centrepiece of the concert, “many times”, but the last occasion was several years ago. She said the work, “commonly acknowledged as a modern classic…could be performed every Anzac Day, as the Messiah is performed each year…if anyone had the imagination”.

Based in Brisbane, Ms Richardson has recently completed a season of Aida for the Lyric Opera in Queensland. She is performing in War Requiem at the invitation of her old friend Mr David Parker, organiser of the concert and head of the vocal department at the Canberra School of Music.

Ms Richardson arrived in Canberra on Thursday for her first rehearsal and was very impressed with the quality of the choir. She also praised the Canberra School of Music as an institution: a “marvellous facility…increasing in reputation around the country”.

As the soprano in War Requiem, Ms Richardson will sing the solo piece from the Latin Catholic Mass for the Dead. The poems of Wilfred Owen form a second text in the work and will be sung by the other two soloists.

Ms Richardson sees Owen’s work as “a comment on the brevity of life and the absolute uselessness of war”.

Tonight’s concert will be held in Llewellyn Hall at the Canberra School of Music and starts at 8.15pm.

Originally published in The Canberra Times, July 16, 1988

Danny Kaye

Danny Kaye. Photo courtesy Facebook

(entertainer, born January 18, 1913, Brooklyn, New York; died March 3, 1987)

His fame began when he became the first man--at least the first in recorded history--to sing a song in which he named 54 Russian composers in 38 seconds.

The song was "Tchaikovsky." The place was Broadway's Alvin Theater on January 21, 1941. The show was Moss Hart's Musical Lady in the Dark. The man was Danny Kaye. Hart had discovered this young mobile-faced, nimble-tongued redhead in a small Manhattan basement nightspot and written him into the play with the now-famous 11-minute part of a temperamental photographer who had developed the art of tongue-twisters. The number brought the second act to a stand still. Danny Kaye never stood still in his profession again.

He was born David Daniel Kaminsky, the son of an immigrant Ukrainian tailor. After having dropped out of school in his teens, he got early experience as a comedian on the Borscht circuit of summer hotels and camps in the Catskills. With the help of his wife, composer-lyricist Sylvia Fine Kaye, who provided much of his musical material, he continued to gain prominence. She wrote many of the songs and gags that brought him to the attention of Samuel Goldwyn in 1944. 

Starting with the film Up in Arms, he was for a decade one of the screen's biggest comedy and musical stars--often as disaster-prone, manic clown with good intentions and a plethora of words flung out haphazardly and at a dizzying rate.

Films he made during this time period included Wonderman, the Kid From Brooklyn, The Court Jester, Merry Andrew, Me and the Colonel, and The Inspector General. He also starred in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Hans Christian Andersen, White Christmas, and The Five Pennies and was the recipient of a special Academy Award in 1954.

He took his one-man concert revue to London in 1948, and his success at the Palladium was instant. The Royal Family not only went to see him, but for the first time in history left the royal box and sat in the first row of the orchestra. Life magazine described England's reaction to Kaye as "worshipful hysteria." Another aspect of his career, conducting major symphony orchestras, began at a time he described as "100 years ago" --an era in which he tends to place many things. Even though he claimed he could not read a note of music, had been known to conduct with a fly swatter and lie on the podium on his back keeping time by kicking his feet in the air, the music was true to its symphonic form and his concerts raised more than $5,000,000 for musicians, pension funds.

Kaye recalled that he took up the baton at the invitation of Eugene Ormandy. It was while Kaye was playing in a stage show in Philadelphia in a theater located a block away from the Academy of Music. In spite of the unpredictable zany antics that accompanied the conducting, it was praised by the likes of Zubin Mehta who has stated that Kaye "has a very efficient conducting style." And his "Live from Lincoln Center: An Evening with Danny Kaye and the New York Philharmonic," broadcast on PBS, was partially responsible for the Peabody Award Kaye received in 1981. The award was presented to him for "his superb and stimulating entertainment efforts" both for that performance and for his serious dramatic role as a Nazi concentration camp survivor in "Skokie" that year.

Kaye was a familiar face on television. He starred in his own musical-variety series, "The Danny Kaye Show," for four seasons (1963-67). It won him an Emmy Award in 1963. He also received an Emmy for his 1975 appearance on "Danny Kaye's Look-In and the Metropolitan Opera," part of "The CBS Festival of Lively Arts for Young People" series. The following year, he starred opposite Sandy Duncan in "Pinocchio," and as Captain Hook to Mia Farrow's "Peter Pan." 

When he returned to Broadway in 1970 in Two by Two, he hurt his hip but continued with the show, appearing night after night for 10 months either on crutches or in a wheelchair.

Although performing was the backbone of his life, Kaye's heart was also with UNICEF for which he was a permanent ambassador-at-large to the world's children. He was so identified with the United Nations agency that, when in 1965, UNICEF received the Nobel Peace Prize, Kaye was selected to accept it. The entertainer logged thousands of miles on his UNICEF jaunts. He once went to 65 cities in five days and did all the piloting, one of his hobbies. He started flying, also "100 years ago," with a single engine plane and has since flew 747s. 

Laughter, however, is what he did best--singing, impersonating and miming, making audiences laugh and cry in the same breath, changing staid adults into grinning children by making faces or following a routine such as one he used in Washington D.C. when presented with an award for his work with UNICEF from B'nai B'rith International. At the end of his standing ovation, he told the audiences to keep standing. He suggested that they all sing "Happy Birthday" to no one in particular. At the end of the song, he asked th why they were "standing up like fools." Then he made faces at the photographers for 20 seconds "so they would go away." As a youngster, David Daniel Kaminsky wanted to be a doctor. He has become one, using what is considered the best medicine.

First published at The Kennedy Centre.

Article: LIBERACE: THE EVANGELIST OF KITSCH - TIME

Monday November 3, 1986

Liberace: The Show, the Book, the Legend

by Richard Corliss

The lights go down in Manhattan's deco dream palace, Radio City Music Hall, and Mr. Showmanship makes his entrance, flying across the huge stage in a cocoon of feathers, enough for a whole flock of purple ostriches. Did we hear someone say "Peter Pansy"? Go on and laugh. He doesn't care; he knows you'll soon be laughing with him. Perhaps by the first-act finale. A gigantic Statue of Liberty mock-up stands in center stage holding a candelabrum. Thirty-six Rockettes perform their automated scissors kick. Skyrockets flare on the back scrim. And then Glitter Beau Peep his bad self emerges from the stars-and- stripes Rolls-Royce in a red, white and blue hot- pants outfit and flourishes his baton like the most cunning majorette from Camp Camp.

At 67 every star has the fame he deserves. A lifetime of fabulation has honed his image; it matters little whether the public mask matches the private face, so long as it fits and pleases. The mask on Wladziu Valentino Liberace fits like a face-lift; it has evoked smiles and giggles for two generations. And it surely keeps the man busy. His current engagement at the Music Hall will bring Vegas glamour to more than 100,000 of the faithful, though ticket sales are lagging behind his two previous record-breaking Radio City gigs. In addition, Lee has a new book (his fourth), called The Wonderful Private World of Liberace. He is about to open a new museum in Las Vegas, filled with costumes and pianos. He will soon franchise his Vegas restaurant, Tivoli Gardens. The Liberace Foundation, which endows promising young musicians, ! provides the star with a string of proteges (like Eric Hamelin, the 14-year- old piano whiz who performs a featured solo at the Music Hall). Not bad for a fellow who might once have been laughed off as a novelty act, a Tiny Tim at the Baldwin.

From his first eminence in the early '50s as the rage of syndicated TV, Liberace was a vision out of a closet yet to be opened in mainstream show business. The silken singsong voice, the candelabrum, the welded dimples and fluty presence, the references to his sainted mother Frances, all made him a conversation piece, a figure of fun -- the Gorgeous George of mid-cult music. As Michael Herr observes in his new book The Big Room, "Never before, at least knowingly, had a man ever had the big steel balls to show himself like that, and on television." The slurs must have hurt Liberace, but his blithe heroism became a '50s catchphrase: "I cried all the way to the bank."

He did more: he exaggerated the very elements of his persona and performance that had earned him his early notoriety. The costumes were soon fit for a king -- King Frederick of Hollywood -- with their exotic plumes and freighted trains. He wore diamonds as big as the Ritz; his hair was not so much teased as taunted; his candelabra were large enough to light the Library of Congress reading room. The patter between numbers became bolder, dropping innuendos like anvils.

Finally it was impossible to make fun of Liberace because he was having too much fun making fun of himself. He was in on the joke; he may have created it. In doing so he exploited the show-biz principle that nothing succeeds like wretched excess. And soon members of the rock glitterati from Little Richard to Elton John, Alice Cooper to Patti LaBelle, were raiding the wardrobes Liberace had stocked. He gave audiences what they never knew they wanted: a polyester blend of classics and crass, of Van Cliburn and Van Halen. Oh, yes -- and their money's worth of high dazzle.

14 year old pianist Eric Hamelin with Liberace, 1986

Every appearance and artifact now buttress the Liberace pseudo story. The anecdotes in his new book are buffed beyond belief; there is nothing, for example, about the 1982 palimony action brought against Lee by his former companion-chauffeur-bodyguard, which was dismissed in 1984. He does reveal that 50 years ago he lost his virginity to a chanteuse at Milwaukee's Club Madrid named Miss Bea Haven ("Say it fast," Lee advises). He tells of a night "when I was very near death" in a Roman Catholic hospital and "a very young and lovely nun, wearing a white habit," visited him and sped him toward recovery; the mother superior later told him, "There are no nuns in this hospital who wear white habits." The rest of the book is less miraculous: lists of his favorite stars and soap operas, reminiscences of Elvis Presley and Ronald Reagan from the '50s, and the recipe for Liberace's Sticky Buns (feeds 18). It is a tell-nothing autobiography, but, as Lee jokes to his Music Hall devotees, "I figured I'd better write it before Kitty Kelley did."

They lap it all up, these ladies of a certain age and young gentlemen of a certain persuasion. They laugh when, as he sits down on his studded coattails, he says, "No kiddin', if the rhinestones are turned the wrong way it'll kill ya." They give Lee's new "friend, valet and chauffeur" three separate ovations. They sing along to Let Me Call You Sweetheart and You Made Me Love You. They cheer when he summons a woman from the audience to dance onstage with him. His duet with the mechanized Dancing Waters earns aahhs. And at the end, when he comes to the stage apron to shake hands with the audience, his elderly fans rush down the aisles with a fervor not seen since the last stampede at the Social Security office. This evangelist of kitsch takes one more bow, waves and vanishes. Friends, that's entertainment.

First published in TIME, November 3 1986