Biographical Information

A bright light overcome by shadows: Vivien Leigh

By: Sheryl Flatow, for Biography Magazine, Nov. 1999, Vol. 3, Issue 11

Vivien Leigh, an actress unknown in America, stole the coveted role of Scarlett O'Hara from Hollywood's biggest stars--and entered film immortality. Vivien Leigh will forever be remembered for her Oscar-winning portrayals of two of literature's most compelling women, Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche DuBois. The extraordinarily beautiful British actress had much in common with these very different Southern belles, who embodied the dual nature of her own personality. Like Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett, Leigh was passionate, vibrant, courageous, driven, and determined. Like Tennessee Williams' Blanche, Leigh was romantic, emotionally fragile, and tragic. But for all the characters' richness, their stories were neither as turbulent nor as moving as Leigh's own personal journey.

Vivien Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, India, on November 5, 1913. Her English father, Ernest Richard Hartley, had left Britain for India in 1905 to join the Calcutta office of a British brokerage firm (he eventually became a senior partner). In 1911, he married Gertrude Yackje, most likely a native of Darjeeling, in London.

Gertrude was a devout Catholic, and when Vivian was a few months shy of her seventh birthday, she was enrolled in the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, England. She had many relatives close by, but until her parents moved back home in 1927, she saw them only in the summer. An excellent student, Vivian was very popular with her classmates, including another future actress, Maureen O'Sullivan. In addition to taking the usual classes, the talented youngster studied violin, piano, cello, and ballet, and participated in school plays.

The Hartleys were quite wealthy when they returned to England, and they decided to enjoy their money by traveling the Continent with Vivian in tow. As they moved about Europe for the next four years, Vivian attended school in Italy, France, and Austria. Her formal education came to an end when she was 17; the following year, 1932, she announced that she wanted to become an actress, and in May began studying at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Her career choice was no sudden decision: In addition to encouraging her amateur theatrics at school, her mother had begun taking her to the theater during their summer visits, and a very young Vivian told her friends and classmates that she intended to be an actress. By the time she entered RADA, she had fallen in love with a 31-year-old lawyer named Herbert Leigh Holman, known to everyone as Leigh, whom she had met months earlier. Holman proposed in July, and they were wed in December, a month after Vivian's 19th birthday.

Although Vivian and Leigh would remain close and genuinely fond of each other for the rest of her life, it was clear almost from the start that they were not well suited as a couple. They agreed on very little, particularly Vivian's aspirations. Leigh did not want her to pursue acting, and shortly before their wedding, she discontinued her studies at RADA. But just weeks after returning from their honeymoon, she was back taking classes. She also became pregnant and in October 1933 gave birth a month prematurely to a daughter, Suzanne. (At the time, she kept a diary, in which she wrote, impersonally, "Had a baby--a girl.")

Vivian, not yet 20, was too ambitious, too beautiful, and too restless to play the role of wife and mother 24 hours a day. She landed a small part in a movie, Things Are Looking Up, and acquired an agent, who told her she needed a better stage name than Vivian Holman. At a friend's suggestion, she became Vivian Leigh, and, subsequently, a producer recommended altering the spelling of her first name to Vivien. Three months after appearing in her first West End play (which closed in two weeks), and following the release of two bad movies, she won rave reviews for her portrayal of a prostitute disguised as a young woman of rectitude in the play The Mask of Virtue (1935). Overnight, Vivien Leigh became London's newest star. She signed a five-year contract with the great British film producer Alexander Korda, which called for her to make two pictures a year. That left her with enough time to perform in plays, which she preferred.

Vivien had always longed to be a part of the theater, and now theater held an additional attraction for her: Laurence Olivier. She had seen this young rising star in a few plays and was obsessed with him. She admired his talent, his energy, and the passion he brought to every role. She was also smitten by his looks and drawn to his sexual magnetism. He aroused a passion in her that she had never felt before.

In his book Confessions of an Actor, Olivier recalled that he had "first set eyes upon the possessor of this wondrous, unimagined beauty" when she was appearing in The Mask of Virtue. "Apart from her looks, which were magical, she possessed poise. ... She also had something else: an attraction of the most perturbing nature I had ever encountered. It may have been the strangely touching spark of dignity in her that enslaved the ardent legion of her admirers."

Leigh and Olivier were introduced for the first time at the Savoy Grill, when he was dining with his wife, actress Jill Esmond. Although their encounter was brief, Vivien was convinced they were destined for each other. One day, when Olivier was appearing in Romeo and Juliet, she arrived backstage prior to a performance. "She only stayed a couple of minutes," Olivier wrote, "and then she gave me a soft little kiss on the shoulder and was gone." His wife was pregnant when the affair began, and although Vivien and Olivier both felt guilty about their relationship, they were too infatuated to give each other up. Korda cast them as lovers in the movie Fire Over England, and their mutual adoration was cemented during the weeks they worked together. But it was also during the filming that Olivier's son, Tarquin, was born, and pained with the thought that they would destroy two families, both Olivier and Vivien rejected the possibility of leaving their spouses at this time.

As they continued to see each other, their relationship became more and more an open secret--to everyone, it seems, except Leigh Holman. Jill Esmond knew and also understood that it was a matter of time before she would lose her husband. That time came in June 1937, when Vivien and Olivier, who by now were in the process of making a second film together, traveled to Denmark to co-star in Hamlet. They decided to live together when they returned to England. Six months later, they asked Leigh and Jill for divorces, but both spouses refused.

How deeply they were in love was apparent to anyone who saw the couple together. Vivien was in awe of Olivier's talent and wanted to become a great stage actress, as much for his sake as her own. He was consumed by the theater; it was all that really interested him. Vivien hoped to forge with Olivier the kind of personal and professional partnership that was shared by actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. But she knew she needed to grow as a performer. She took speech lessons to lower her high, thin voice, which lacked resonance in theaters. She studied Olivier's performances and absorbed his every thought on acting. But Vivien was more than Eliza Doolittle to Olivier's Henry Higgins. She was already a well-rounded person, multilingual, a voracious reader, and knowledgeable about painting, music, and dance. She had a probing intelligence, and with the encouragement and support of Olivier and others, Vivien did indeed mature into a skilled stage actress. In a 30-year career, she appeared in 41 stage productions--many directed by and/or co-starring Olivier--and just 19 films.

The most memorable of those films is, of course, Gone with the Wind. From the moment Vivien read the book, she knew she had to play Scarlett O'Hara. Certainly, Vivien shared Scarlett's tenacity. She campaigned for the part in the American movie as best she could on the other side of the Atlantic. The fact that she was not American, and that after auditioning hundreds of actresses, producer David O. Selznick had already narrowed his choice to a handful of hopefuls, did not deter her. At Vivien's urging, her agent contacted Selznick's office in order to introduce his client; he suggested the producer watch her in Fire Over England in hopes he would see something that would make him think of Scarlett. It didn't. Robert Taylor, Vivien's co-star in the movie A Yank at Oxford (and later Waterloo Bridge), also spoke to Selznick at her behest, but the producer (who'd never met her) wasn't interested.

In November 1938, Olivier went off to Hollywood to film Wuthering Heights. A month later, Vivien joined him for what was scheduled to be a five-day visit. Although she told no one, she planned to stay a lot longer, intending to use those five days to win the role of Scarlett. Fortunately, Olivier's American agent happened to be Myron Selznick, and he agreed to introduce Vivien to his brother. On the night of December 10, a few months before production was scheduled to begin, David Selznick was already filming one scene: the burning of Atlanta. As the flames rose, Myron arrived with Olivier and Vivien, turned to his brother and said, "David, meet your Scarlett O'Hara." Much later, David Selznick said of that meeting, "I took one look and knew that she was right--at least right as far as her appearance went. If you have a picture of someone in mind and then suddenly you see that person, no more evidence is necessary. ... I'll never recover from that first look." Her screen test confirmed she was everything he was looking for; later, a speech coach helped her perfect a Southern accent.

Ironically, Leigh hated making Gone with the Wind. She had adored the film's original director, George Cukor, but he was fired after a few weeks. From the moment Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming, a good friend of Clark Gable's, Vivien's attitude changed. She felt Fleming had no respect for her, and she, in turn, considered him a terrible director. ("Ham it up" was his favorite direction.) It made her time on the set unbearable. Each Sunday, she secretly consulted with Cukor, who coached her throughout the shoot (he did the same for Olivia de Havilland). Although she never completely bonded with Gable, their relationship was adequate, except for those moments when she had to kiss him: His false teeth supposedly gave him bad breath.

After Vivien had signed her GWTW contract, Selznick advised her and Olivier that they could not be seen together in public. Their affair had no effect on the roles they were offered in London, but in America a scandal could ruin the picture--and their film careers. It wasn't until January 1940 that the way was cleared for them to be married, as Jill and Leigh finally petitioned for divorce. Vivien knew Suzanne was better off with Leigh and let him have custody of the child. Although she loved her daughter, they never bonded, and she remained emotionally distant from the girl. Vivien spent very little time with Suzanne, felt few maternal feelings, and never took the time to get to know her.

Both divorces became final in August, and on August 31, 1940, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier were married in Santa Barbara, California. They remained in the United States long enough to co-star in the film That Hamilton Woman, then set sail for home. They worked occasionally during World War II: Vivien appeared onstage in George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma and filmed the playwright's Caesar and Cleopatra opposite Claude Rains, while Olivier produced, directed, and starred in a patriotic movie version of Shakespeare's Henry V. He also served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during the war. During the decade following the war, Leigh and Olivier were the glittering royalty of the British theater, appearing at home and abroad in classics including Richard III, The School for Scandal, Antigone, Antony and Cleopatra, Caesar and Cleopatra, Macbeth, and Titus Andronicus, among others. Olivier directed many of these productions and occasionally directed his wife in plays in which he did not appear, most notably the London premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire. This led to Vivien's winning the role of Blanche DuBois on film.

From the time they returned to England, Vivien's physical and mental health had become a growing source of concern. Since the late 1930s, she had experienced periodic, disconcerting mood swings. They became more frequent during the war, when she also developed a bad cough and began to lose weight. Both Vivien and Olivier initially attributed her troubles to the stress and conditions of wartime London and were not overly worried. They actually had reason to rejoice when, in 1944, Vivien became pregnant. But she suffered a miscarriage (the first of two) while filming Caesar and Cleopatra and, after the movie was completed, became extremely depressed. One quiet evening at home, Vivien's personality suddenly changed. Her voice became shrill, and she grew verbally abusive toward Olivier. She would not let him near her. After a while, she began weeping uncontrollably. When she at last stopped crying, she couldn't remember anything she had said. Olivier urged her to see a doctor, but she decided against it. This was the first of many increasingly frightening episodes.

Vivien was also painfully thin, but in 1945 she seemed well enough to return to the stage in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, despite a lingering cough. Shortly after the play opened, she went to see a doctor, who informed her she had tuberculosis. He also told her that the nervous outbursts she was experiencing were not uncommon with this disease. She was hospitalized for six weeks, after which the doctor wanted her to continue her convalescence at a sanatorium for at least six months. She refused and instead spent the next nine months recuperating at home.

Her physical health returned, but her inexplicable mood swings continued, and over the years the number of incidents accelerated and intensified. The Vivien Leigh so beloved by friends was known as thoughtful, flawlessly mannered, high-spirited, fun, and funny. When she had an attack, her personality was almost unrecognizable. In a biography of Leigh, author Anne Edwards wrote that by the mid-1950s, "a pattern was beginning to show itself. First she would enter into a depressive phase, which was of gradual onset. She would become increasingly depressed, find it difficult to think and concentrate, lose her appetite and weight, be unable to sleep without help, and hold suicidal thoughts (though suicide did not seem an actual threat at the time). The manic phase would be of sudden onset. She would feel a marked elevation of mood and begin to lose her natural restraint and normal reserve. She would always turn on Larry [Olivier], say whatever came to her mind, and suddenly lose judgment, reasoning power, and insight. Then severe claustrophobia would set in. She would tear her clothes off, feel the desperate need to jump out of a car, train, or plane in which she might be riding. The attention to impeccable grooming would disappear and she would slip into slovenly habits."

One of the most dramatic incidents occurred in 1953 when, with the approval of her doctors, Vivien went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and then Hollywood to co-star in Elephant Walk with Peter Finch. In Ceylon, she began an affair with Finch, who had been discovered by the Oliviers several years before. (Some biographers claim that their affair started a few years earlier, but according to one writer, Finch once confirmed that the relationship began in Ceylon.) Day by day, Vivien became increasingly unstable on location, reaching a point where she sometimes seemed to mistake Finch for Olivier, calling him Larry. One evening, she became confused and slipped into the character of Blanche DuBois, reciting her lines from Streetcar, and spent the rest of the night crying. Then, when the Elephant Walk company traveled from Ceylon to Hollywood, Vivien became hysterical on the plane and had to be sedated. After a few days in California, she seemed well enough to continue working. But she had another attack in her dressing room at the studio, again confusing Finch with Olivier, again slipping into the persona of Blanche, again crying uncontrollably. It was now apparent to everyone that there was no way she could continue to work on the film. (She was replaced by Elizabeth Taylor.)

Olivier came to California to bring Vivien home. When they arrived in London, she was taken to Netherne Hospital in Surrey, which had a good reputation for treating emotionally disturbed patients. She remained there for three weeks, during which time she was allowed no visitors. For days, her body was packed in ice, and she later began electroshock treatments, which she would undergo intermittently for the rest of her life.

By the end of the year, Vivien was back onstage with Olivier, co-starring in The Sleeping Prince. When the run was over, her attacks increased, and she spent all of 1954 and the beginning of 1955 at home, under a doctor's supervision, trying everything--counseling, shock therapy, and drugs--to rid herself of her illness, which had been diagnosed as manic-depression.

In 1955, Vivien co-starred with Olivier in three more plays, but by then their great love affair had been over for several years. For a while, Vivien saw a lot of Peter Finch, and Olivier did not much care. Although Olivier had stayed with her and tried to help her through her many dark periods, her illness had taken its toll on both of them. His passion had turned to pity, and she was no longer in love with him. In 1957, Olivier began seeing actress Joan Plowright, and in May 1960 he wrote a letter to Vivien asking for a divorce. She granted his request.

At the time, Vivien was in New York, appearing in the play Duel of Angels. One of her co-stars was Jack Merivale, whom she'd first met in 1937 and had not seen for 10 years. But when they met again prior to rehearsals, Merivale was captivated. They soon became a couple and not even her worst episodes frightened him away. He was with Vivien for the remaining seven years of her life, during which time she bravely continued to work onstage and in film and to battle horrific demons.

In June 1967, a doctor discovered a recurrence of tuberculosis. She refused to be hospitalized, agreeing instead to complete bed rest at home. Vivien Leigh was just 53 when she died there on July 7 from complications of the disease. Not long before she died, she told a writer she'd "rather have lived a short life with Larry than face a long life without him."

ED NOTE: The photos that appear on this page were not published with this article. They were added by the webmaster of this website.

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