The Entertainer

“As the applause grew fainter … As the spotlight grew dimmer … His women were younger!”

Nobody in the Rice family will say how a man who gets laughs for a living ended up this far down the bill. Archie Rice (Laurence Olivier) is a third-rate music-hall performer, still scheming to keep his name on a poster while his wife Phoebe (Brenda De Banzie) and his father Billy (Roger Livesey) watch from the house. Tony Richardson sets the family in the same rooms as the failing theatres, and the old halls and the old people go together.