Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born British actor and film director. He was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents and emigrated to South Africa at an early age, before later settling in the United Kingdom after World War II. In a career that spanned a quarter of a century, Harvey appeared in stage, film and television productions primarily in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Known for his clipped, posh accent and cool, debonair screen persona; his performance in Room at the Top resulted in an Academy Award nomination. That success was followed by the roles of William Barret Travis in The Alamo and Weston Liggett in BUtterfield 8, both films released in the autumn of 1960. He also appeared as the brainwashed Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate. He made his directorial debut with The Ceremony. He continued acting well into the 1970s, until his death in 1973 of cancer.
Early life
Harvey's civil birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne. His Hebrew name was Zvi Mosheh. He was born in Joniškis, Lithuania, the youngest of three sons of Ella and Ber Skikne, Lithuanian Jewish parents. When he was five years old, his family travelled with the family of Riva Segal and her two sons, Louis and Charles Segal on the to South Africa, where he was known as Harry Skikne. Harvey grew up in Johannesburg, and was in his teens when he served with the entertainment unit of the South African Army during the Second World War.As the Mystery Guest on USA TV show What's My Line screened May 1, 1960, he states he arrived in South Africa in 1934 and moved to the UK in 1946.
Career
Early years
After moving to London, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but left RADA after three months, and began to perform on stage and film.Harvey made his cinema debut in the British film House of Darkness, but its distributor British Lion thought someone named Larry Skikne was not commercially viable. Accounts vary as to how the actor acquired his stage name of Laurence Harvey. One version has it that it was the idea of talent agent Gordon Harbord who decided Laurence would be an appropriate first name. In choosing a British-sounding last name, Harbord thought of two British retail institutions, Harvey Nichols and Harrods. Another is that Skikne was travelling on a London bus with Sid James who exclaimed during their journey: "It's either Laurence Nichols or Laurence Harvey." Harvey's own account differed over time.
Associated British Picture Corporation
quickly offered him a two-year contract, which Harvey accepted. He appeared in supporting roles in several of their lower-budget films such as Man on the Run, Landfall and The Dancing Years. For International Motion Pictures he was in The Man from Yesterday. He had a small role in the Hollywood financed The Black Rose, starring Tyrone Power and Orson Welles, then Associated British gave him his first lead, appearing alongside Eric Portman in the Egypt-set police film Cairo Road.Harvey starred in leading roles for two movies with Lewis Gilbert, Scarlet Thread and There Is Another Sun. For Ealing, he made I Believe in You, then he starred in the low-budget thriller A Killer Walks.
Romulus Films
Harvey's career gained a boost when he appeared in Women of Twilight ; this was made by Romulus Films run by John and James Woolf, who signed Harvey to a long-term contract. James Woolf in particular was a big admirer of Harvey.He had an uncredited role in the comedy Innocents in Paris and in Knights of the Round Table. He received top billing the following year in The Good Die Young, a thriller directed by Gilbert. He was given the romantic male lead in the Hollywood spectacular King Richard and the Crusaders, supporting Rex Harrison and George Sanders. It was a box-office disappointment. That year, he played Romeo in Renato Castellani's adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, narrated by John Gielgud. He became established as an emerging British star. According to a contemporary interview, he turned down an offer to appear in Helen of Troy to act at Stratford-upon-Avon.
Romulus came to the rescue again when Harvey was cast as the writer Christopher Isherwood in I Am A Camera, with Julie Harris as Sally Bowles.
He appeared on American television and on Broadway, making his Broadway debut in 1955 in the play Island of Goats, a flop that closed after one week, though his performance won him a 1956 Theatre World Award. Harvey appeared twice on Broadway: in 1957 with Julie Harris, Pamela Brown and Colleen Dewhurst in William Wycherley's The Country Wife, and in 1959, as Shakespeare's Henry V, as part of the Old Vic company, which featured a young Judi Dench as Katherine, the daughter of the king of France.
Zoltan Korda used him as one of the soldiers in Storm Over the Nile, a remake of The Four Feathers, playing the part taken by Ralph Richardson in the 1939 version. It was popular in Britain as was the comedy Three Men in a Boat. After the Ball was a biopic of Vesta Tilley, in which Harvey played Walter de Frece. The Truth About Women was a comedy.
International stardom
Harvey's breakthrough to international stardom came after he was cast by director Jack Clayton as the social climber Joe Lampton in Room at the Top, produced by British film producer brothers John and James Woolf of Romulus Films. For his performance, Harvey received a BAFTA Award nomination and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Simone Signoret and Heather Sears co-starred as Lampton's married lover and eventual wife respectively. It was the third most popular movie at the British box office in 1959 and a hit in the U.S. Harvey followed it with the musical Expresso Bongo, a film best remembered for introducing Cliff Richard.Room at the Top led to Hollywood offers starting with John Wayne's epic The Alamo. Harvey was John Wayne's personal choice to play Alamo commandant William Barret Travis. He had been impressed by Harvey's talent and ability to project the aristocratic demeanor Wayne believed Travis possessed. Harvey and Wayne later expressed their mutual admiration and satisfaction at having worked together. The Alamo was a hit. Even more successful was MGM's BUtterfield 8, which won Elizabeth Taylor her first Oscar.
Back in Britain, Harvey was cast in the film version of The Long and the Short and the Tall in a role originally performed by Peter O'Toole during the play's West End run. In the U.S., he supported Shirley MacLaine in MGM's Two Loves and co-starred with Geraldine Page in the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke.
In Walk on the Wild Side, he was cast with Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Fonda and Capucine. Fonda was not positive about the experience of working with him: "There are actors and actors – and then there are the Laurence Harveys. With them, it's like acting by yourself." The same year, he recorded an album of spoken excerpts from the book This Is My Beloved by Walter Benton, accompanied by original music by Herbie Mann. It was released on the Atlantic label.
Harvey's portrayal of Wilhelm Grimm in the MGM film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm earned him a nomination for Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. The movie was a box office disappointment.
Harvey appeared as the brainwashed Raymond Shaw in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Film critic David Shipman wrote: "Harvey's role required him to act like a zombie and several critics cited it as his first convincing performance". The movie was a hit and is one of Harvey's better remembered films. Less successful was A Girl Named Tamiko and The Running Man. Harvey made his directorial debut with The Ceremony, in which he also starred.
Harvey played King Arthur in the 1964 London production of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical Camelot at Drury Lane.
Later years
Harvey and Kim Novak took an almost instant dislike to each other when they first met to work on a remake of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. Their acting styles were found to be incompatible, which caused problems for director Henry Hathaway. During filming, kidnap threats were made against both Harvey and Novak.The Outrage was director Martin Ritt's remake of Akira Kurosawa's Japanese film Rashomon. Besides Harvey, the film starred Paul Newman and Claire Bloom, but was unsuccessful critically and commercially. He reprised his role as Joe Lampton in Life at the Top, then he enjoyed a big hit with Darling, co-starring Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde. While his role in the film is short, his involvement enabled director John Schlesinger to gain financial backing for the project.
Harvey co-starred with Israeli actress Daliah Lavi in the comedy The Spy with a Cold Nose, a parody of the James Bond films.
Harvey owned the rights to the book on which John Osborne's early script for the film The Charge of the Light Brigade partially was based, Cecil Woodham-Smith's book The Reason Why. He intended to make his own version.
A lawsuit was filed against director Tony Richardson's company Woodfall Film Productions on behalf of the book's author. There was a monetary settlement, and Harvey insisted on being cast in a cameo role as part of the agreement for which he was paid £60,000. Charles Wood was brought in to re-write the script. Harvey's scenes were cut from the movie at Richardson's insistence except for a brief glimpse as an anonymous member of a theatre audience which, technically, still met the requirements of the legal settlement. John Osborne asserted in his autobiography that Richardson shot the scenes with Harvey "French", which is film jargon for a director going-through-the-motions because of some obligation, but with no film in the camera.
Harvey completed direction of the spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic after director Anthony Mann died during production. The film co-stars Mia Farrow. Harvey provided the narration for the Soviet film Tchaikovsky, directed by Igor Talankin.
He co-starred with Ann-Margret in Rebus then appeared in Kampf um Rom, a film set in Ancient Rome. The latter starred Orson Welles who directed Harvey in The Deep, a thriller that was abandoned.
Harvey had a cameo role as himself in The Magic Christian, a film based on the Terry Southern novel of the same name. He gives a rendition of Hamlet's soliloquy that develops unexpectedly into a campy striptease routine. He had a small role in WUSA and was guest murderer on Columbo: The Most Dangerous Match in 1973, portraying a chess champion who kills his opponent.
Joanna Pettet appeared with Harvey in an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, in which Harvey's character attempts to assassinate a romantic rival by having a burrowing insect dropped in the man's ear.
Harvey starred in Escape to the Sun and was reunited with Taylor in Night Watch.
Harvey directed and starred in his final film Welcome to Arrow Beach, which co-starred his friend Pettet, John Ireland and Stuart Whitman. The film deals with a type of war-related post-traumatic stress disorder that turns a military veteran to cannibalism.
Just before Harvey died, in 1973, he was planning to star in and direct two films: one on Kitty Genovese, the other a Wolf Mankowitz comedy titled Cockatrice. His death ultimately put an end to any hope that Orson Welles's The Deep would be completed. With Harvey and Jeanne Moreau in the leading roles, Welles worked on the film between his other projects, although the production was hampered by financial problems.
Personal life
Early in his career, Harvey had a live-in relationship with actress Hermione Baddeley. He left Baddeley in 1951 for actress Margaret Leighton, who was then married to publisher Max Reinhardt. Leighton and Reinhardt divorced in 1955, and she married Harvey in 1957 off the Rock of Gibraltar. The couple divorced in 1961.In 1968 he married Joan Perry, the widow of film mogul Harry Cohn. Her marriage to Harvey lasted until 1972. His third marriage was to British fashion model Paulene Stone. She gave birth to their daughter Domino in 1969 while he was still married to Perry. Harvey and Stone married in 1972 and soon after, he adopted her child from her previous marriage, Sophie Norris. The wedding took place at the home of Harold Robbins.
In his account of being Frank Sinatra's valet, Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra, George Jacobs writes that Harvey often made passes at him while visiting Sinatra. According to Jacobs, Sinatra was aware of Harvey's sexuality. In his autobiography Close Up, British actor John Fraser claimed Harvey was gay and that his long-term lover was Harvey's manager James Woolf, who had cast Harvey in several of the films he produced in the 1950s.
After working in two films with her, Harvey remained friends with Elizabeth Taylor for the rest of his life. She visited him three weeks before he died. Upon his death, Taylor issued the statement: "He was one of the people I really loved in this world. He was part of the sun. For everyone who loved him, the sun is a bit dimmer." She and Peter Lawford held a memorial service for Harvey in California.
Harvey once responded to an assertion about himself: "Someone once asked me, 'Why is it so many people hate you?' and I said, 'Do they? How super! I'm really quite pleased about it.'"
Death
A heavy smoker and drinker, Harvey died at the age of 45 from stomach cancer in Hampstead, London, on Sunday, 25 November 1973. His daughter Domino, who later became a bounty hunter, was only four years old at the time. She died at the age of 35, in 2005, after overdosing on painkillers. They are buried together in Santa Barbara Cemetery in Santa Barbara, California.Appraisal
According to his obituary in the New York Times:With his clipped speech, cool smile and a cigarette dangling impudently from his lips, Laurence Harvey established himself as the screen's perfect pin-striped cad. He could project such utter boredom that willowy debutantes would shrivel in his presence. He could also exude such charm that the same young ladies would gladly lend him their hearts, which were usually returned utterly broken... The image Mr Harvey carefully fostered for himself off screen was not far removed from some of the roles he played. "I'm a flamboyant character, an extrovert who doesn't want to reveal his feelings", he once said. "To bare your soul to the world, I find unutterably boring. I think part of our profession is to have a quixotic personality."
Awards and nominations
- 1956 Theatre World Award.
- 1959 Nomination BAFTA Award for Best British Actor
- 1960 Nomination BAFTA Award for Best British Actor
- 1959 Nomination Academy Award for Best Actor
- 1960 Nominated Laurel Award Top Male New Personality
- 1963 Nomination for Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama.
Acting credits
Stage
Film
Note: Where British Film Institute and American Film Institute differed on release year, or if the Wikipedia article title had a different release year, whichever source is the country of production is the year used.| Year | Title | Role | Director | Producer | Studio/Distributor | Other cast members | Notes | Refs. |
| 1948 | House of Darkness | Francis Merryman | International Motion Pictures | Lesley Brook, | ||||
| 1949 | Man on the Run | Detective Sergeant Lawson | Lawrence Huntington | Associated British Picture Corporation | Derek Farr, Joan Hopkins | |||
| 1949 | John Matthews | Oswald Mitchell | International Motion Pictures | John Stuart, Henry Oscar, Marie Burke | ||||
| 1949 | Landfall | P/O Hooper | Victor Skutezky | Associated British Picture Corporation | Michael Denison, Patricia Plunkett, Maurice Denham | |||
| 1950 | Cairo Road | Lt. Mourad | Mayflower Pictures Corporation | Eric Portman | ||||
| 1950 | Minor Role | Dennis Price | Uncredited | |||||
| 1950 | Edmond | 20th Century Fox | Tyrone Power, Orson Welles, Cécile Aubry, Jack Hawkins, Michael Rennie, Herbert Lom | |||||
| 1950 | Soldier | John Boulting, Roy Boulting | John Boulting, Roy Boulting | Associated British Picture Corporation | Barry Jones | Uncredited | ||
| 1951 | Scarlet Thread | Freddie | Nettlefold Studios | Kathleen Byron, Sydney Tafler | ||||
| 1951 | There Is Another Sun | Mag Maguire | Nettlefold Studios | Maxwell Reed, Susan Shaw | ||||
| 1952 | I Believe in You | Jordie Bennett | Michael Balcon | Ealing Studios | Cecil Parker, Celia Johnson | |||
| 1952 | Ned | Ronald Drake | Leontine Entertainments | Susan Shaw, Trader Faulkner | ||||
| 1952 | Women of Twilight | Jerry Nolan | Romulus Films | Freda Jackson, Rene Ray, Countess of Midleton, Lois Maxwell | ||||
| 1953 | Innocents in Paris | François | Romulus films | Alastair Sim, Claire Bloom, Ronald Shiner | Uncredited | |||
| 1954 | Miles Ravenscourt | Remus Films | Margaret Leighton, Richard Basehart, Joan Collins, Gloria Grahame | |||||
| 1954 | King Richard and the Crusaders | Sir Kenneth of Huntington | Warner Bros. | Rex Harrison, Virginia Mayo, George Sanders | ||||
| 1954 | Romeo and Juliet | Romeo | Verona Productions | Susan Shentall | ||||
| 1955 | I Am a Camera | Christopher Isherwood | Remus Films | Julie Harris, Shelley Winters, Ron Randell | ||||
| 1955 | Storm Over the Nile | John Durrance | London Film Productions | Anthony Steel | ||||
| 1956 | Three Men in a Boat | George | Romulus Films | Jimmy Edwards, David Tomlinson | ||||
| 1957 | After the Ball | Walter de Frece | Romulus Films | Pat Kirkwood | ||||
| 1957 | Sir Humphrey Tavistock | Beaconsfield Films Ltd | Diane Cilento, Julie Harris | |||||
| 1958 | Lt Crabb | Romulus Films | Dawn Addams | |||||
| 1959 | Room at the Top | Joe Lampton | Remus Films | Simone Signoret, Donald Houston | ||||
| 1959 | Power Among Men | Narrator | Alexander Hackenschmied | United Nations Film Services | Documentary | |||
| 1959 | Expresso Bongo | Johnny Jackson | Val Guest | Val Guest Productions | Sylvia Syms | |||
| 1960 | William Barret Travis | John Wayne | John Wayne | Batjac Productions | John Wayne, Richard Boone, Richard Widmark | |||
| 1960 | BUtterfield 8 | Weston Ligget | Metro Goldwyn Mayer | Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher, Dina Merrill | ||||
| 1961 | Pte. 'Bammo' Bamforth | Associated British Picture Corporation | Richard Todd, Richard Harris, David McCallum | |||||
| 1961 | Two Loves | Paul Lathrope | Metro Goldwyn Mayer | Shirley MacLaine, Jack Hawkins | ||||
| 1961 | Summer and Smoke | John Buchanan Jr | Peter Glenville | Hal Wallis | Paramount Pictures | Geraldine Page, Rita Moreno, John McIntire, Earl Holliman | ||
| 1962 | Walk on the Wild Side | Dove Linkhorn | Columbia Pictures | Jane Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck, Anne Baxter, Capucine | ||||
| 1962 | Wilhelm Grimm | Metro Goldwyn Mayer | Claire Bloom, Barbara Eden | |||||
| 1962 | Raymond Shaw | United Artists | Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh, James Gregory | |||||
| 1962 | Ivan Kalin | Hal Wallis | Paramount Pictures | France Nguyen, Martha Hyer | ||||
| 1963 | Rex Black | Columbia Pictures | Lee Remick, Alan Bates | |||||
| 1963 | Sean McKenna | Laurence Harvey | Laurence Harvey | United Artists | Sarah Miles, Robert Walker Jr. | |||
| 1964 | Of Human Bondage | Phillip Carey | Metro Goldwyn Mayer | Kim Novak | ||||
| 1964 | Husband | Metro Goldwyn Mayer | Paul Newman, Claire Bloom | |||||
| 1965 | Darling | Miles Brand | Embassy Pictures | Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde | ||||
| 1965 | Life at the Top | Joe Lampton | Romulus Films | Jean Simmons, Honor Blackman | ||||
| 1965 | The Doctor and the Devil | Nicholas Ray | Raymond Brandt | |||||
| 1966 | Dr. Francis Trevelyan | Embassy Pictures Corp. | Daliah Lavi, Lionel Jeffries | |||||
| 1967 | King Leonites | Cressida Film Productions | Jane Asher, Diana Churchill | |||||
| 1968 | Eberlin | Laurence Harvey, Anthony Mann | Anthony Mann | Columbia Pictures | Mia Farrow, Tom Courtenay | |||
| 1968 | Russian Prince | Uncredited | ||||||
| 1968 | Cethegus | CCC Filmkunst | Sylva Koscina, Orson Welles | |||||
| 1969 | Rebus | Jeff Miller | Ann-Margret | |||||
| 1969 | L'assoluto naturale | He – Producer and co-star | Laurence Harvey | Laurence Harvey Productions | Sylvia Koscina | |||
| 1969 | Hamlet | Commonwealth United Entertainment Group Inc. | Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr | |||||
| 1970 | WUSA | Farley | Paramount Pictures | Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Perkins | ||||
| 1970 | Tchaikovsky | Narrator | Innokenti Smoktunovsky | Mosfilm | ||||
| 1970 | Hughie Warriner | Orson Welles | Orson Welles | Orson Welles | ||||
| 1972 | Escape to the Sun | Major Kirsanov | Noah Films | Josephine Chaplin, Lila Kedrova, John Ireland, Jack Hawkins | ||||
| 1973 | Night Watch | John Wheeler | Avco Embassy Pictures | Elizabeth Taylor | ||||
| 1973 | F for Fake | Himself | Orson Welles | Les Films de l'Astrophore | Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten | |||
| 1974 | Welcome to Arrow Beach | Jason Henry | Laurence Harvey | John Cushingham | Warner Bros. | Joanna Pettet, Stuart Whitman, John Ireland | ||
| 1974 | Yellow-Headed Summer | Jason Henry | Laurence Harvey, Walter Pidgeon |
Television
| Year | Title | Role | Other cast members | Notes | Refs. |
| 1950 | Othello | Cassio | André Morell | ||
| 1953 | As You Like It | Orlando | Margaret Leighton | ||
| 1955 | ITV Play of the Week | Beljajew | Margaret Leighton | A Month in the Country | |
| 1955 | The Alcoa Hour | Dick Swiveller | The Small Servant | ||
| 1956 | |||||
| 1957 | Holiday Night Reunion | ||||
| 1959 | Alfred Hitchcock Presents | Arthur Williams | Hazel Court, Patrick Macnee | Arthur | |
| 1959 | ITV Play of the Week | Chris/Misha | Hildegard Knef | The Violent Years | |
| 1960 | Pontiac Star Parade | Self | Entire cast and crew of The Alamo | The Spirit of the Alamo, wrap party in Brackettville, Texas | |
| 1960 | What's My Line? | Self | Guest panelist 6 March; mystery guest 1 May | ||
| 1960 | Here's Hollywood | Self | Episode 1.19 | ||
| 1962 | Self | 9 March episode | |||
| 1962 | ' | Narrator | |||
| 1964 | Password | Self | Georgia Brown v. Laurence Harvey | ||
| 1964 | Self | Episode 18.5 | |||
| 1964 | Self | Episode 1.2 | |||
| 1965 | Self | Episode 2.15 | |||
| 1965 | Self | Episode 3.14 | |||
| 1966 | Hollywood Talent Scouts | Self | 31 January episode | ||
| 1966 | Late Night Line-Up | Self | Michael Dean, Denis Tuohy, Joan Bakewell | 5 February episode, BBC | |
| 1967 | Self | 27 April episode | |||
| 1967 | Dial M for Murder | Tony Wendice | Diane Cilento, Hugh O'Brian, Cyril Cusack, Nigel Davenport | TV movie | |
| 1967 | ' | Self | Joey Heatherton | 17 October 1967 episode | |
| 1968 | Self | Episodes 2.245 and 3.40 | |||
| 1968 | Marvelous Party! | Host | A 70th birthday tribute to Noël Coward | ||
| 1969 | Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In | Self | Episode 2.25 | ||
| 1969 | Joker's Wild | Self | American TV game show | ||
| 1970 | Self | Episode 2.184 | |||
| 1971 | ITV Saturday Night Theatre | Major Sergius Saranoff | John Standing | Arms and the Man | |
| 1971 | Self | 11 May episode | |||
| 1971 | The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson | Self | 19 November episode | ||
| 1971 | Celebrity Bowling | Self | Unknown episode | ||
| 1972 | Night Gallery | Steven Macy | Caterpillar | ||
| 1973 | Columbo | Emmett Clayton | The Most Dangerous Match | ||
| 1973 | 45th Academy Awards | Self | Co-Presenter: Best Art Direction – Set Decoration | ||
| 1973 | The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson | Self | 24 August episode |