Vivien Leigh

Ranked #48 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]

Pictured on one of four 25¢ US commemorative postage stamps issued March 23, 1990 honoring classic films released in 1939. The stamp features Clark Gable and Leigh as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind (1939). The other films honored were Beau Geste (1939), Stagecoach (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).

She died after collapsing at home from complications from an attack of tuberculosis on July 7, 1967. That evening lights of West End theater marquees were kept dark for an hour in her honor.

After Joan Crawford quit filming Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), Leigh was offered her role which she turned down. Olivia de Havilland, Leigh's co-star in Gone with the Wind (1939) was then offered and accepted the role.

Had an affair with actor Peter Finch that nearly ended her marriage to Laurence Olivier. The movie The V.I.P.s (1963) is based on an incident from Leigh's and Olivier's marriage, when she was about to leave him for Finch but Olivier wooed her back.

She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6773 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.

Lived with John Merivale from 1959 until her death in 1967.

She was supposed to star in the Paramount film Elephant Walk (1953) with Peter Finch and Dana Andrews, but after appearing in a few scenes she was replaced by Elizabeth Taylor. The reasons for Leigh's dismissal were rumored to be her difficult nature, having just been diagnosed as a manic-depressive. Further complications may have erupted because of an affair she had with co-star Finch while she was still married to Laurence Olivier, and Leigh and Olivier were still married in 1954.

She wouldn't have returned to America to make that film had not Laurence been going over there to do a film, Carrie (1952) based on Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie". Laurence tells their friends that his motive for going to Hollywood to make films is to get enough money to produce his own plays for the London stage. He even has his own theater there, the St. James. Now Sir Laurence, with a seat in the British House of Lords, is accompanied by Vivien the day the Lords are debating about whether the St James should be torn down. Breaking protocol, Vivien speaks up and is escorted from the House of Lords. The publicity helps raise the funds to save the St. James. Throughout their two-decade marriage Laurence and Vivien were acting together on the stage in London and New York. Vivien was no longer Lady Olivier when she performed her last major film role, The Roman Spring of Mrs.

So let's show 26-year-old Vivien walking up to the stage to accept her Oscar and then as the Oscar is presented the camera focuses on Vivien's face and through the magic of digitally altering images, the 26-year-old face merges into the face of Vivien at age 38 getting her second Best Actress Oscar for portraying Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

Laurence Olivier wrote in his autobiography, "Confessions of an Actor", that sometime after World War II, Leigh announced calmly that she was no longer in love with him, but loved him like a brother. Olivier was emotionally devastated. What he did not know at the time was that Leigh's declaration -- and her subsequent affairs with multiple partners -- was a signal of the bipolar disorder that eventually disrupted her life and career. Leigh had every intention of remaining married to Olivier, but was no longer interested in him romantically. Olivier himself began having affairs (including one with Claire Bloom in the 1950s, according to Bloom's own autobiography) as Leigh's eye and amorous intentions wandered and roamed outside of the marital bedchamber. Olivier had to accompany Leigh to Hollywood in 1950 in order to keep an eye on her and keep her out of trouble, to ensure that her manic-depression did not get out of hand and disrupt the production of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). In order to do so, he accepted a role in William Wyler's Carrie (1952) that was shot at the same time as Streetcar. The Oliviers were popular with Hollywood's elite, and Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando both liked "Larry" very much (that was the reason that Brando gave in his own autobiography for not sleeping with Leigh, whom he thought had a superior posterior -- he could not raid Olivier's "chicken coop" as "Larry was such a nice guy".) None of them knew the depths of the anguish he was enduring as the caretaker of his mentally ill wife. Brando said that Leigh was superior to Jessica Tandy -- the original stage Blanche DuBois -- as she was Blanche. Ironically, Olivier himself had directed Leigh in the role on the London stage.

Peter Finch was discovered by Laurence Olivier in 1948 when Olivier and his theatrical company, which included wife Leigh, were conducting a tour of Australia, Olivier signed the young Aussie to a personal contract and Finch became part of Olivier's theatrical company. He then proceeded to cuckold his mentor and employer by bedding Leigh. Olivier was personally humiliated but ever the trouper, he kept the talented Finch under contract after having brought him back to England, where Finch flourished as an actor. Finch and Leigh carried on a long affair, and since Leigh was bipolar and her manic-depression frequently manifested itself in nymphomania, some speculate that Olivier subconsciously might have been grateful for Finch as he occupied Leigh's hours and kept her out of worse trouble and Olivier from even worse embarrassment. Their on-again, off-again affair reportedly reached a crisis point on the movie Elephant Walk (1953), when they had renewed their affair. However, the instability of their relationship allegedly triggered a nervous breakdown in Leigh, and Olivier had to step in to take care of her.

Became pregnant twice (in 1944 and 1955) during her marriage to Laurence Olivier; she suffered miscarriages on both occasions.

Laurence Olivier's first wife, Jill Esmond, named Vivien as co-respondent in her February 1940 divorce from Olivier on grounds of adultery. Vivien would name Joan Plowright - Olivier's next and last wife - as co-respondent in her 1960 divorce from Olivier, also on grounds of adultery.

Vivien, who has just recently read Gone with the Wind (1939), thinks that the role of Scarlett O'Hara is the first role for an actress that would be really exciting to bring to the screen. She sails to America for a brief vacation. In New York she gets on a plane for the first time to rush to California to see Laurence. They have dinner with Myron Selznick the night that his brother, David O.

Vivien is 26 when Gone with the Wind (1939) makes a sweep of the Oscars in 1939.

In 1938, Hollywood wants Laurence to play Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1939).

In real life, both fall in love while making this film, Fire Over England (1937).

Vivien has an opportunity to play a small role in an English film, Things Are Looking Up (1935). She has only one line but the camera keeps returning to her face. The London stage is more exciting than the movies being filmed in England, and the most thrilling actor on that stage is Laurence Olivier. At a party Vivien finds out about a stage role, "The Green Sash", where the only requirement is that the leading lady be beautiful. The play has a very brief run, but now she is a real actress. An English film is going to be made about Elizabeth I. Laurence gets the role of a young favorite of the queen who is sent to Spain. Vivien gets a much smaller role as a lady-in-waiting of the queen who is in love with Laurence's character.

If a film were made of the life of Vivien Leigh, it would open in India just before World War I, where a successful British businessman could live like a prince. In the mountains above Calcutta, a little princess is born. Because of the outbreak of World War I, she is six years old the first time her parents take her to England. Her mother thinks she should have a proper English upbringing and insists on leaving her in a convent school - even though Vivien is two years younger than any of the other girls at the school. The only comfort for the lonely child is a cat that was in the courtyard of the school that the nuns let her take up to her dormitory. Her first and best friend at the school is an eight-year-old girl, Maureen O'Sullivan who has been transplanted from Ireland. In the bleakness of a convent school, the two girls can recreate in their imaginations the places they have left and places where they would some day like to travel. After Vivien has been at the school for 18 months, her mother comes again from India and takes her to a play in London. In the next six months Vivien will insist on seeing the same play 16 times. In India the British community entertained themselves at amateur theatricals and Vivien's father was a leading man. Pupils at the English convent school are eager to perform in school plays. It's an all-girls school, so some of the girls have to play the male roles. The male roles are so much more adventurous. Vivien's favorite actor is Leslie Howard, and at 19 she marries an English barrister who looks very much like him. The year is 1932. Vivien's best friend from that convent school has gone to California, where she's making movies.

Selznick, is burning Atlanta on a backlot of MGM (actually they are burning old sets that go back to the early days of silent films to make room to recreate an Atlanta of the 1860s).