Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier (5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967) was an English actress. She won two Academy Awards for playing “southern belles”: Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played in London’s West End.
She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles. During her thirty-year stage career, she played parts that ranged from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth.
Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress, but ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle. Affected by bipolar disorder for most of her adult life, she gained a reputation for being a difficult person to work with, and her career went through periods of decline. She was further weakened by recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, with which she was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. She and Olivier divorced in 1960, and Leigh worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis.
Early life and acting career
Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, West Bengal, British India (now India), to Ernest Hartley, a British Officer in the Indian Cavalry, and Gertrude Robinson Yackje, whose heritage is in question. She claimed to be of Irish descent, but it is likely that she also had Parsee Indian ancestry. They were married in Kensington, London in 1912. In 1917, Ernest Hartley was relocated to Bangalore, while Gertrude and Vivian stayed in Ootacamund. Vivian Hartley made her first stage appearance at the age of three, reciting “Little Bo Peep” for her mother’s amateur theatre group. Gertrude Hartley tried to instill in her daughter an appreciation of literature, and introduced her to the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, as well as stories of Greek mythology. An only child, Vivian Hartley was sent to the “Convent of the Sacred Heart” in Roehampton in England, in 1920. Her closest friend at the convent was the future actress Maureen O’Sullivan, to whom she expressed her desire to become “a great actress”.
Vivian Hartley completed her later education in Europe, returning to her parents in England in 1931. She discovered that one of Maureen O’Sullivan’s films was playing in London’s West End and told her parents of her ambitions to become an actress. Both were highly supportive, and her father helped her enroll at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London.
In late 1931, she met Herbert Leigh Holman, known as Leigh, a barrister thirteen years her senior. Despite his disapproval of “theatrical people”, they were married on December 20, 1932, and upon their marriage she terminated her studies at RADA. On October 12, 1933, she gave birth to a daughter, Suzanne, but felt stifled by her domestic life. Her friends suggested her for a small part in the film Things Are Looking Up, which marked her film debut. She engaged an agent, John Gliddon, who believed that the name “Vivian Holman” was not suitable for an actress, and after rejecting his suggestion, “April Morn”, she took “Vivian Leigh” as her professional name. Gliddon recommended her to Alexander Korda as a possible film actress, but Korda rejected her as lacking potential.
Cast in the play The Mask of Virtue in 1935, Leigh received excellent reviews followed by interviews and newspaper articles, among them one from the Daily Express in which the interviewer noted “a lightning change came over her face”, which was the first public mention of the rapid changes in mood that became characteristic of her. John Betjeman, the future Poet Laureate, also wrote about her, describing her as “the essence of English girlhood”. Korda, who attended her opening-night performance, admitted his error and signed her to a film contract, with the spelling of her name revised to “Vivien Leigh”. She continued with the play, but when Korda moved it to a larger theatre, Leigh was found to be unable to project her voice adequately, or to hold the attention of so large an audience, and the play closed soon after. In 1960 Leigh recalled her ambivalence towards her first experience of critical acclaim and sudden fame, commenting, “some critics saw fit to be as foolish as to say that I was a great actress. And I thought, that was a foolish, wicked thing to say, because it put such an onus and such a responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn’t able to carry. And it took me years to learn enough to live up to what they said for those first notices. I find it so stupid. I remember the critic very well, and have never forgiven him.”
Meeting Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier saw Leigh in The Mask of Virtue, and a friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. While playing lovers in the film Fire Over England (1937), Olivier and Leigh developed a strong attraction, and after filming was completed, they began an affair. During this time Leigh read the Margaret Mitchell novel Gone with the Wind and instructed her American agent to suggest her to David O. Selznick, who was planning a film version. She remarked to a journalist, “I’ve cast myself as Scarlett O’Hara”, and the film critic C. A. Lejeune recalled a conversation of the same period in which Leigh “stunned us all” with the assertion that Olivier “won’t play Rhett Butler, but I shall play Scarlett O’Hara. Wait and see.”
Leigh played Ophelia to Olivier’s Hamlet in an Old Vic Theatre production, and Olivier later recalled an incident during which her mood rapidly changed as she was quietly preparing to go onstage. Without apparent provocation, she began screaming at him, before suddenly becoming silent and staring into space. She was able to perform without mishap, and by the following day, she had returned to normal with no recollection of the event. It was the first time Olivier witnessed such behaviour from her. They began living together, Holman and Olivier’s wife, the actress Jill Esmond, each having refused to grant either a divorce.
Leigh appeared with Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O’Sullivan in A Yank at Oxford (1938), the first of her films to receive attention in the United States. During production she developed a reputation for being difficult and unreasonable, and Korda instructed her agent to warn her that her option would not be renewed if her behaviour did not improve. Her next role was in St. Martin’s Lane (1938) with Charles Laughton.
Achieving international success
Olivier had been attempting to broaden his film career; despite his success in Britain, he was not well known in the United States and earlier attempts to introduce him to the American market had failed. Offered the role of Heathcliff in Samuel Goldwyn’s production of Wuthering Heights (1939), he travelled to Hollywood, leaving Leigh in London. Goldwyn and the film’s director, William Wyler, offered Leigh the secondary role of Isabella, but she refused it, saying she would only play Cathy, a role already assigned to Merle Oberon.
Hollywood was in the midst of a widely publicised search to find an actress to portray Scarlett O’Hara in David O. Selznick’s production of Gone with the Wind (1939). Leigh’s American agent was the London representative of the Myron Selznick Agency (Myron was David’s brother), and in February 1938, she asked that her name be placed in consideration for the role of Scarlett. That month, David Selznick watched her in Fire Over England and A Yank at Oxford, and from that time she became a serious contender for the part. Between February and August, Selznick screened all of her English pictures, and by August he was in negotiation with producer Alexander Korda, to whom Leigh was under contract, for her services later that year. On October 18, Selznick wrote in a confidential memo to director George Cukor, “I am still hoping against hope for that new girl.” Leigh travelled to Los Angeles, ostensibly to be with Olivier. When Myron Selznick, who also represented Olivier, met Leigh, he felt that she possessed the qualities his brother David O. Selznick was searching for. Myron Selznick took Leigh and Olivier to the set where the burning of the Atlanta Depot scene was being filmed, and introduced Leigh. The following day, Leigh read a scene for Selznick, who organised a screen test and wrote to his wife, “She’s the Scarlett dark horse and looks damn good. Not for anyone’s ear but your own: it’s narrowed down to Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett and Vivien Leigh”. The director George Cukor concurred and praised the “incredible wildness” of Leigh, who was given the part soon after.
Filming proved difficult for Leigh; Cukor was dismissed and replaced by Victor Fleming, with whom Leigh frequently quarrelled. She and Olivia de Havilland secretly met with Cukor at night and on weekends for his advice about how they should play their parts. She befriended Clark Gable, his wife Carole Lombard and de Havilland, but she clashed with Leslie Howard, with whom she was required to play several emotional scenes. Adding to her distress, she was sometimes required to work seven days a week, often late into the night, and she missed Olivier, who was working in New York. She wrote to Leigh Holman, “I loathe Hollywood…. I will never get used to this – how I hate film acting.”
In 2006, de Havilland responded to claims of Leigh’s manic behaviour during filming Gone with the Wind, published in a biography of Laurence Olivier. She defended Leigh, saying, “Vivien was impeccably professional, impeccably disciplined on Gone with the Wind. She had two great concerns: doing her best work in an extremely difficult role and being separated from Larry [Olivier], who was in New York.”
Gone with the Wind brought Leigh immediate attention and fame, but she was quoted as saying, “I’m not a film star – I’m an actress. Being a film star – just a film star – is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity. Actresses go on for a long time and there are always marvellous parts to play.” Among the ten Academy Awards won by Gone with the Wind was a Best Actress award for Leigh, who also won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.
Marriage and joint projects
In February 1940, Jill Esmond agreed to divorce Olivier, and Holman also agreed to divorce Leigh, although they maintained a strong friendship for the rest of Leigh’s life. Esmond was granted custody of Tarquin, her son with Olivier, and Holman was granted custody of Suzanne, his daughter with Leigh. On August 30 Olivier and Leigh were married in Santa Barbara, California, in a ceremony attended only by their witnesses, Katharine Hepburn and Garson Kanin.
Leigh hoped to star with Olivier and made a screentest for Rebecca, which was to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock with Olivier in the leading role, but after viewing her screentest Selznick noted that “she doesn’t seem right as to sincerity or age or innocence,” a view shared by Hitchcock, and Leigh’s mentor, George Cukor. Selznick also observed that she had shown no enthusiasm for the part until Olivier had been confirmed as the lead actor, and subsequently cast Joan Fontaine. He also refused to allow her to join Olivier in Pride and Prejudice (1940), and Greer Garson took the part Leigh had envisioned for herself. Waterloo Bridge (1940) was to have starred Olivier and Leigh; however, Selznick replaced Olivier with Robert Taylor, then at the peak of his success as one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s most popular male stars. Leigh’s top billing reflected her status in Hollywood, and despite her reluctance to participate without Olivier, the film not only proved to be popular with audiences and critics, but it also became her favorite film.
She and Olivier mounted a stage production of Romeo and Juliet for Broadway. The New York press publicized the adulterous nature that had marked the beginning of Olivier and Leigh’s relationship, and questioned their ethics in not returning to England to help with the war effort; and critics were hostile in their assessment of the production. Brooks Atkinson for the New York Times wrote, “Although Miss Leigh and Mr. Olivier are handsome young people they hardly act their parts at all.” While most of the blame was attributed to Olivier’s acting and direction, Leigh was also criticised, with Bernard Grebanier commenting on the “thin, shopgirl quality of Miss Leigh’s voice.” The couple had invested almost their entire savings into the project, and its failure was a financial disaster for them.
They filmed That Hamilton Woman (1941) with Olivier as Horatio Nelson and Leigh as Emma Hamilton. With Britain engaged in World War II, it was one of several Hollywood films made with the aim of arousing a pro-British sentiment among American audiences. The film was popular in the United States and an outstanding success in the Soviet Union. Winston Churchill arranged a screening for a party that included Franklin D. Roosevelt and on its conclusion addressed the group, saying, “Gentlemen, I thought this film would interest you, showing great events similar to those in which you have just been taking part.” The Oliviers remained favourites of Churchill, attending dinners and occasions at his request for the rest of his life, and of Leigh he was quoted as saying, “By Jove, she’s a clinker.”
The Oliviers returned to England, and Leigh toured through North Africa in 1943, performing for troops before falling ill with a persistent cough and fevers. In 1944 she was diagnosed as having tuberculosis in her left lung, but after spending several weeks in hospital, she appeared to be cured. In spring she was filming Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) when she discovered she was pregnant, but suffered a miscarriage. She fell into a deep depression which reached its nadir when she turned on Olivier, verbally and physically attacking him until she fell to the floor sobbing. This was the first of many major breakdowns related to bipolar disorder. Olivier came to recognise the symptoms of an impending episode – several days of hyperactivity followed by a period of depression and an explosive breakdown, after which Leigh would have no memory of the event, but would be acutely embarrassed and remorseful.
She was well enough to resume acting in 1946, in a successful London production of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, but her films of this period, Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) and Anna Karenina (1948), were not great successes.
In 1947 Olivier was knighted, and Leigh accompanied him to Buckingham Palace for the investiture. She became Lady Olivier, and after their divorce, per the style granted the divorced wife of a knight, she became, socially, Vivien, Lady Olivier.
By 1948 Olivier was on the Board of Directors for the Old Vic Theatre, and he and Leigh embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand to raise funds for the theatre. During their six-month tour, Olivier performed Richard III and also performed with Leigh in The School for Scandal and The Skin of Our Teeth. The tour was an outstanding success, and although Leigh was plagued with insomnia and allowed her understudy to replace her for a week while she was ill, she generally withstood the demands placed upon her, with Olivier noting her ability to “charm the press.” Members of the company later recalled several quarrels between the couple, the most dramatic occurring in Christchurch when Leigh refused to go onstage. Olivier slapped her face, and Leigh slapped him in return and swore at him before she made her way to the stage. By the end of the tour, both were exhausted and ill, and Olivier told a journalist, “You may not know it, but you are talking to a couple of walking corpses.” Later he would comment that he “lost Vivien” in Australia.
The success of the tour encouraged the Oliviers to make their first West End appearance together, performing the same works with one addition, Antigone, included at Leigh’s insistence because she wished to play a role in a tragedy.
Leigh next sought the role of Blanche DuBois in the West End stage production of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and was cast after Williams and the play’s producer Irene Mayer Selznick saw her in the The School for Scandal and Antigone, and Olivier was contracted to direct. Containing a rape scene and references to promiscuity and homosexuality, the play was destined to be controversial, and the media discussion about its suitability added to Leigh’s anxiety, but she believed strongly in the importance of the work. J. B. Priestley denounced the play and Leigh’s performance, and the critic Kenneth Tynan commented that Leigh was badly miscast because British actors were “too well-bred to emote effectively on stage”. Olivier and Leigh were chagrined that part of the commercial success of the play lay in audience members attending to see what they believed would be a salacious and sensationalist story, rather than the Greek tragedy that they envisioned, but the play also had strong supporters, among them Noël Coward who described Leigh as “magnificent.”
After 326 performances, Leigh finished her run; however, she was soon engaged for the film version. Her irreverent and often bawdy sense of humour allowed her to establish a rapport with her co-star Marlon Brando, but she had difficulty with the director Elia Kazan, who did not hold her in high regard as an actress. He later commented that “she had a small talent,” but as work progressed, he became “full of admiration” for “the greatest determination to excel of any actress I’ve known. She’d have crawled over broken glass if she thought it would help her performance.” Leigh found the role gruelling and commented to the Los Angeles Times, “I had nine months in the theatre of Blanche DuBois. Now she’s in command of me.” The film won glowing reviews for her, and she won a second Academy Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. Tennessee Williams commented that Leigh brought to the role “everything that I intended, and much that I had never dreamed of,” but in later years, Leigh would say that playing Blanche DuBois “tipped me over into madness.”
