Othello alone onstage, Frank Finlay (who was playing Iago) would have to stand offstage where Olivier could see him to settle his nerves. This performance was recorded complete on LP, and filmed by popular demand in 1965 (according to a biography of Olivier, tickets for the stage production were notoriously hard to get). The film version still holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for acting ever given to a Shakespeare film – Olivier, Finlay, Maggie Smith (as Desdemona) and Joyce Redman (as Emilia, Iago's wife) were all nominated for Academy Awards. Olivier was among the last white actors to
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) a moment of despair, Constance is thrown into both her subconscious mind and the two Shakespearian tragedies to discover the truth about herself, and to find the lost fool with the help of Desdemona and Juliet. MacDonald received the Governor General's Award, the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award for the play. Goodnight Desdemona begins with a "dumb show", or a scene with no sound, in which three situations occur simultaneously. Othello murders Desdemona, Juliet and Romeo kill themselves, and Constance Ledbelly throws a pen and a manuscript into a wastebasket. In scene 1,