August 26th
When trying to discuss our greatest stars, it is a challenge to not just fall into a list of big adjectives.
Passionate, beautiful, mysterious, affecting, clever, tempestuous.
All of these and so many more help describe Vivien Leigh. This English school girl became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars when she was chosen from thousands of actresses from all over the world to play what many still consider the greatest women’s (or any gender’s) role in film history: Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind (1939).
Born Vivian Mary Hartley in India in 1913, Vivien’s passion for performing was said to go as far back as age three when her mother had her recite Little Bo Peep to her friends.
Classically trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Vivien’s ambitions as an actress were not for films, but for the stage. She was even once quoted as saying “I loathe Hollywood.”
Her first great success was in the play The Mask of Virtue in 1935 which brought her to the attention of another great actor who would become the love of her life, Laurence Olivier.
That same year, she made her film debut as the member of an amateur theatre group trying to put on a local production of Macbeth in The Village Squire. Other supporting roles in British films and stage productions followed, but true stardom alluded Vivien Leigh for a few more years.
In 1938, Olivier went to Hollywood to begin work on his first leading role in a Hollywood film in Samuel Goldwyn’s production of Wuthering Heights (1939). Vivien expressed interest in playing Cathy to his Heathcliff, but director William Wyler didn’t think she was well enough known to American audiences. He tried to offer her the secondary role of Isabella saying “You’ll never get anything better than Isabella.”
Willy was unaware that Vivien had far bigger plans.
In 1936, Margaret Mitchell’s debut novel Gone With the Wind became an instant and international bestseller. Producer David O Selznick bought the film rights for $50,000, a huge sum for a debut novel at the time. The most challenging part of bringing the 1,037 page novel to the screen was casting its central character of spoiled Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara. Every actress, and many non-actresses, envisioned themselves and sought the part. Thirty-two actresses including Lana Turner, Joan Bennett and Paulette Goddard screen-tested for the part. Vivien decided the role should be hers. It is unlikely that Vivien ever realized what odds she was against because like Scarlett herself Vivien was a woman of determination who knew what she wanted and got it. As she later recalled “I just wanted to play the part so very much.” Vivien signed with film agent Myron Selznick, brother of David, who brought his new client to visit the set of the burning of Atlanta, one of the only filmable scenes without an official Scarlett. The legend is that Myron introduced Vivien by simply saying to his brother, “Genius, meet your Scarlett O’Hara.”
Vivien was told she had the part on Christmas Day, 1938.
Shooting the four-hour epic was a grueling process. For more than 100 shooting days, Vivien worked tirelessly, often asking director Victor Fleming if they could work into the evenings to get as many shots in as possible.
Olivia de Havilland later recalled what it was like being on the set with Vivien. She said that Vivien would pass the downtime between set ups by playing board games, reading and chain smoking. When it was finally time to shoot, Vivien was able to get up from her chair, go directly into the scene and instantly play Scarlett “superbly” without any moments of transition. Evelyn Keyes concurred that Vivien could be presented with rewrites the day of filming and instantly know the scene.
The difficult shoot proved worth the trouble when Gone With the Wind became not just a box office hit, but a global phenomenon. When adjusted for inflation, the film still holds the record as Hollywood’s most financially successful picture of all time.
Winning a then record setting eight Academy Awards, the film was named Best Picture of 1939 and Vivien Leigh was named Best Actress.
With this one unforgettable performance, Vivien went from virtual Hollywood unknown to one of its greatest stars.
With such overwhelming success, it was a big question what project Vivien would follow Gone With the Wind with. She was always eager to work with Laurence Olivier as often as possible. After testing and being rejected for Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca and Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (both 1940), Vivien was sent on loan out to MGM for the romantic tearjerker Waterloo Bridge (1940) opposite matinee idol Robert Taylor. Based on a play by Robert E. Sherwood, Leigh played Myra Lester, a ballerina who turns to prostitution when her lover is reported killed in World War I.
The serious subject matter of prostitution was a challenge to get past the censors and it was up to Leigh to convey the characters actions without ever directly stating what she was doing. Robert Osborne described Leigh’s famous walk through a train depot meeting soldiers as one of the perfect examples of great screen acting. Waterloo Bridge would ultimately become Leigh’s (and Taylor’s) favorite film.
For her next film, Leigh was finally able to work opposite her now husband Laurence Olivier. 1941’s That Hamilton Woman tells the story of the notorious 18th century courtesan Emma Hamilton and her love affair with Navy Admiral Nelson. The film was one of a series of “propagandist” films made by director/producer Alexander Korda, which were intended to stir up sympathy for Great Britain during World War II. The film was reportedly Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s favorite film.
After several straight years of successful film work, Leigh would only work sporadically in films for the rest of her life. Leigh’s focus as an actress remained the stage. Over her career, she performed such notable stage roles as Ophelia, Juliet, Lady Macbeth and Blanche Dubois.
For the original English production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams chose Leigh to play the role of his heroine Blanche after seeing her performance in Antigone. For 232 performances, Leigh gave the soul baring portrait of a fading southern Belle battling mental instability. This role, perhaps more than any other in her career, was eerily close to Leigh herself.
Leigh’s struggles with severe manic depression are now well documented and proved damaging to her career, her marriage to Olivier and ultimately her life.
When it came time to film the play, Leigh was chosen to reprise her stage role. In the film, Leigh was working alongside much of the original Broadway cast, most notably a young Marlon Brando. While much deserved praise went (and continues) for Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Stanley Kowalski, it really is Leigh whose performance is at the center of the film. Brando is now remembered as a pioneer of the Stanislavsky acting method. In Streetcar however, when one considers that it was Vivien, an actual sufferer of mental illness playing a character suffering from mental illness, it makes one wonder who is giving the more “method” performance.
Costar Kim Hunter once recalled that on the set of Streetcar, during an intense scene between Blanche and Stella, director Elia Kazan continued reshooting the scene take after take. Hunter finally asked Kazan what the problem was and Kazan replied that he was only repeating the scene to see how many times Vivien could cry on the same exact syllable. Vivien again gave a definitive performance as one of fiction’s great heroines and deservedly won her second Academy Award as Best Actress.
Despite the triumph, Vivien only made three more feature films: 1955’s The Deep Blue Sea, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone in 1961 and Ship of Fools in 1965.
In each of these films Leigh played a woman who was insecure about her age and fading beauty who still longed to be attractive to others. Leigh always said that an aspect of herself showed in every role she played.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, another Tennessee Williams story and Vivien’s first film following her divorce from Laurence Olivier is another that feels eerily like art imitating life. Vivien plays Karen Stone, a once great actress who is now past her prime and has suddenly lost her beloved husband. She seeks isolation in Italy and finds comfort from an Italian gigolo (played by Warren Beatty in only his second film).
Williams considered this his favorite of all film adaptations of his work and loudly praised Leigh’s performance.
Vivien’s struggles with mental illness and tuberculosis led to her early death on July 8th, 1967. She was only 53 years old.
In a film career that stretched from 1935 to 1965, Vivien Leigh made only 19 feature films, a relatively small filmography compared to other golden age stars of the time.
However, it is her unforgettable performances in each of these films that have kept her stardom alive now 55 years after her death.
