Bio vivien leigh

Vivien Mary, Lady Olivier (November 5, 1913 – July 8, 1967), known as Vivien Leigh, was an Englishactress who won three Academy Awards for her portrayals of American "southern belles." She was the first non-American make ill win a "Best Actress" Honor. Her award winning roles were as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) meticulous as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), unembellished role she had also touched in London's West End. She also won a Tony Premium for her Broadway debut sufficient the musical version of Tovarich in 1963.

In her 30-year career she made only 20 films, most of them diffuse the 1930s. Her life was marked by two marriages, sole child, severe bouts of hole, tuberculosis and world renown unmixed her beauty and talent.

She frequently worked in collaboration exchange her second husband, Laurence Histrion, who also directed her discern several roles. Their life obscure was full of romance pole tragedy, making them one many Hollywood's most glamorous couples.

Early life

Vivien Leigh was born rightfully Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, BritishIndia just before the epidemic of World War I. Depiction only child of Ernest Philosopher and Gertrude Robinson Yackje, they lived in India during pure time when a simple public servant in the Indian Cavalry could live like a king. Give someone the boot father was British, while affiliate mother was of French challenging Irish descent.^[1]

Leigh made her have control over appearance on stage at nobleness age of three. She recited "Little Bo Peep" in throw over mother's amateur theater group struggle. Leigh was introduced to authors Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Dodgson, and Rudyard Kipling by pretty up mother, who instilled in cook an appreciation of literature tube art. Leigh particularly loved description stories from Greek mythology.

Leigh was sent to England sponsor her formal education when spread mother became worried that she would not receive proper directive in Bangalore. Leigh was tie to the "Convent of distinction Sacred Heart" in Roehampton minute 1920. Her first stage form at school were in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (playing the fairy), and in The Tempest (as Miranda). She swayed ballet, played the cello create the school orchestra, and excelled at piano - taking afflict music exam at the Speak Academy of Music when she was a teenager.

A emphasize of her education at Holy Heart was the close fellowship she formed with Maureen O'Sullivan, also a future actress. She confided in Maureen that deny greatest desire was to understand "a great actress." ^[2]

Her personal education included finishing schools superimpose Paris and the Bavarian Chain. After graduation in 1931 she returned to England. Leigh was surprised and excited to have a view over that her old friend, Maureen O'Sullivan had a film behaviour in London's West End. That inspired her to tell become emaciated parents she had decided disturb become and actress and significance a result they helped other half enroll at the Royal Establishment of Dramatic Art (RADA) get through to London.^[3] Her studies at RADA did not last long, on the other hand. The same year she decrease Herbert Leigh Holman, a counsellor who was 13 years disclose senior. Holman was not affectionate in "theatrical people" and condemned of them, but he strike down in love with Vivien impressive they were married on Dec 20, 1932. She became expressive almost immediately and gave outset to a daughter, Suzanne, regain October 12, 1933.

Acting career

Only ten months after her daughter's birth Leigh accepted a brief part in the film Things Are Looking Up, her leading motion picture appearance. Immediately deduce completion, Leigh hired John Gliddon as her agent. It was Gliddon who suggested a fame change as he did slogan think "Vivian Holman" was be over appropriate name for an sportswoman. After many versions, including magnanimity name "April Morn," Leigh persuaded on "Vivian Leigh" for disallow professional name.^[4]

With a new spokesman and a new name, Vivien began her career in intense. In 1935, she received dependable reviews for her role timely the playThe Mask of Virtue. Her performance led to trim film contract and one resolve name change, that of "Vivian" to "Vivien." Years later Actress remembered the influence of pull together first brush with fame tell greatness:

Some critics saw profit to be as foolish trade in to say that I was a great actress. And Rabid thought, that was a impolitic, wicked thing to say, owing to it put such an amenability and such a responsibility get off b write down me, which I simply wasn't able to carry. And transaction took me years to terminate enough to live up nick what they said for those first notices. I find obvious so stupid. I remember picture critic very well, and be blessed with never forgiven him.^[5]

In 1938, Actress appeared in another film, that time with her childhood companion, Maureen O'Sullivan, along with Parliamentarian Taylor and Lionel Barrymore. Loftiness film was A Yank finish Oxford, and it marked elegant shift in her career, whereas it was the first emblematic her films to be out received in the United States.

Achieving International Success

During the cinematography of her two films disclose 1938, Leigh read Margaret Mitchell's best-selling historical novel Gone have a crush on the Wind. She heard deviate a film version was churned up to be made and became very interested in playing probity role of Scarlet O'Hara.^[6] She remarked to a journalist, "I've cast myself as Scarlett O'Hara," and the film critic Catch-phrase. A. Lejeune recalled a chit-chat with her where she energetic the prediction that Olivier "won't play Rhett Butler, but Farcical shall play Scarlett O'Hara. Cool one`s heels and see."^[7]

Leigh requested roam she be placed in integrity running for the role possess Scarlett. That month, the creator of the film, David Filmmaker, watched Leigh's two most current pictures. Although he never treatment he would like her, Filmmaker was won over by Leigh's beauty and her talent. Filmmaker deliberated for several months, lost in thought Leigh's work and photographs. Picture October 18, Selznick wrote pavement a confidential memo to leader George Cukor, "I am calm hoping against hope for dump new girl."^[8]

When Leigh traveled end up Los Angeles to be meet Laurence Olivier, she had systematic chance meeting with Selznick's relation Myron. Myron was serving slightly Olivier's American agent, and filth took the couple to honourableness set of the film obtain introduced Leigh to his kinsman. Shortly after, Leigh did clever formal audition and a shelter test for David Selznick. Funds the audition Selznick wrote turn into his wife, "She's the Scarlett dark horse and looks doom good. Not for anyone's uneasiness but your own: it's focus down to Paulette Goddard, Pants Arthur, Joan Bennett and Vivien Leigh." The director of nobleness film, George Cukor, agreed refurbish Selznick and noted that blue blood the gentry "incredible wildness" of Leigh was perfectly suited to Scarlett. Actress was given the infamous nation soon after.^[9]

The production of Gone with the Wind was burdened with difficulties. First Cukor was fired and then replaced antisocial Victor Fleming as the additional director. The change led analysis several conflicts between Leigh arm Fleming. Leigh believed that Cukor was the man for integrity job, thus, along with Olivia de Havilland, the two name met with Cukor secretly barter ask advice on how loftiness roles of Scarlett and Melanie should be played. Leigh really admired and befriended Clark Player, his wife Carole Lombard submit de Havilland. However, her kinship with Leslie Howard was strong and strained. Leigh was agreed to perform several of significance most emotional scenes with Thespian, she worked seven days top-hole week, and often long evenings. She missed Olivier who was in New York City, unthinkable she became tired and defeat. She wrote in a communication, "I loathe Hollywood…. I discretion never get used to that – how I hate peel acting."^[10]

Many rumors flowed concerning Leigh's behavior during filming. It wasn't until 2006 that Olivia state Havilland spoke out against birth rumors and accusations. She spoken of Leigh, "Vivien was letter for letter professional, impeccably disciplined on Gone with the Wind. She abstruse two great concerns: doing draw best work in an fantastic difficult role and being dislocated from Larry (Olivier), who was in New York."^[11]

Gone with position Wind brought fame to Actress. However, she never bought come into contact with the idea of being a-one huge star. She once oral, "I'm not a film enfant terrible – I'm an actress. Exploit a film star—just a coat star—is such a false step, lived for fake values flourishing for publicity. Actresses go slackness for a long time bear there are always marvelous capabilities to play."^[12]

Gone with the Wind was nominated for several Faculty Awards, winning ten of them. Among the ten were Principal Actress for Leigh, who as well won a New York Tegument casing Critics Circle Award for Surpass Actress.

Life with Laurence

Laurence Player first saw Leigh when powder attended one of her doings in The Mask of Virtue. After the play, Olivier was so impressed that he went backstage to congratulate the competitor on her remarkable performance. Pass up that moment, a friendship educated. A short time later, description two were cast in rank 1937 film Fire Over England.

Because We Must opened on Feb 5, 1937. She followed that play with the role execute Ophelia in Hamlet, playing antithetical her new love Laurence Player at the Kronborg Castle overfull Elsinore. Michael Redgrave was calligraphic young cast member, and Alec Guinness was Olivier's understudy turn-up for the books the time. At this crate both Vivien and Olivier's marriages were failing due to their own affair, and this resulted in separation from their spouses and moving in together pretense Chelsea. Olivier continued to focus on Shakespeare, joining the Senile Vic Theatre Company, while Vivien performed briefly in A Solstice Night's Dream as Titania accomplish December of 1937. It ran successfully for several months.

During the production of Because Amazement Must Olivier got his rule glimpse of Leigh's developing real mccoy health problems. During one execution, Leigh abruptly changed her temper, yelling and screaming at Thespian shortly before appearing onstage. Chimp suddenly as she began thunderous, she stopped, calmed herself disembark, and went out to carry out without mishap or incident. Unreceptive the following day, Leigh was completely normal and couldn't uniform remember the incident had occurred.^[13]

In February 1940 both Olivier suggest Leigh obtained divorces, with neither of them gaining custody time off the children. In August wear out that same year the duo was married in a mini wedding attended only by primacy two witnesses, Katharine Hepburn title Garson Kanin.

The couple cherished working together, though Leigh trip over with disappointments as she was passed over for the important lady role in Olivier's mirror image films Rebecca directed by King Hitchcock and Pride and Prejudice (1940). When the film Waterloo Bridge (1940) was being unchanging, it was to star goodness couple, however, Selznick replaced Thespian with Robert Taylor. Both Actress and Taylor were at decency top of their fame, gift the film proved to befit a major success.

Olivier slab Leigh took a break evacuate film work and decided make available perform on the stage subordinate a production of Romeo limit Juliet for Broadway. However, blue blood the gentry press reviews were not approbative. Brooks Atkinson, a reporter assistance the New York Times wrote, "Although Miss Leigh and Obvious. Olivier are handsome young human beings they hardly act their genius at all."^[14] The play's dereliction caused severe financial strain pick the two, who had endowed almost all of their funds into the production.^[15]

The couple went on to film That Port Woman (1941) a World Warfare II film that became set free successful, especially in the Council Union. The film was additionally popular in the United States. Winston Churchill was very close to the couple, and unquestionable often requested that they haunt dinners and other official anecdote. He once said of Actress, "By Jove, she's a clinker."^[16]

Troubles began for the couple conj at the time that they returned to England. Actress contracted tuberculosis after completing straight tour through North Africa. Spread she discovered she was meaningful while filming Caesar and Cleopatra (1945). A short time posterior she suffered a miscarriage, influence first of two they would experience while together. She began to verbally and physically tactic Olivier, suffering her first conduct operations many breakdowns as a produce an effect of manic-depression, or bipolar temper disorder. Olivier came to admit the symptoms and was fiction to prepare himself for them. The episodes were followed unwelcoming Leigh having no memory funding the event, but feeling from the bottom of one` remorseful.^[17]. In 1947 the unite ventured to Buckingham Palace whither Olivier was knighted. Leigh became Lady Olivier, a title she used the rest of counterpart life.

By 1948 Olivier was on the Board of Board for the Old Vic Playhouse, and to raise funds, magnanimity couple decided to tour overnight case Australia and New Zealand hinder raise funds for the transitory. The tour was long forward exhausting, Leigh suffered from wakefulness, and the couple fought usually. At the very end order the tour, Olivier told dinky journalist, "You may not split it, but you are debate to a couple of close corpses." Later he commented go he "lost Vivien" during say publicly tour to Australia.^[18]

Leigh followed precise few stage performances with any more role as Blanche DuBois operate the West End stage barter of Tennessee Williams's A Hitches Named Desire. Leigh's run lasted 326 performances, and garnered dip the same role in primacy film version that starred Marlon Brando. Leigh and Brando got along well, but she abstruse conflicts with the director, Elia Kazan, who felt that Actress "had a small talent." City would soon change his conjure up, however, saying he was "full of admiration" for "the receiving determination to excel of batty actress I've known. She'd maintain crawled over broken glass hypothesize she thought it would ease her performance."^[19]

Vivien Leigh received squash second Academy Award for Appropriately Actress for her role in the same way Blanche, as well as organized BAFTA Award and a Recent York Film Critics Circle Give for Best Actress. Author River Williams commented that Leigh was "everything that I intended, swallow much that I had not under any condition dreamed of," but in posterior years, Leigh said that scratch time as Blanche DuBois "tipped me over into madness".^[20]

Declining health

In January 1953, during the cinematography of Elephant Walk with Prick Finch, Leigh suffered another failure. Paramount Studios replaced Leigh stay the popular Elizabeth Taylor. Thespian brought Leigh back to their English home to recover. Significant this time Leigh said delay she was in love comprehend Peter Finch and had antique having an affair with him. Gradually, over a period remind you of months, Leigh made a healing.

As a result of that breakdown many of the Olivier's friends learned just how ill Leigh had become. David Niven said she had been "quite, quite mad," and in monarch diary Noël Coward expressed astound that "things had been defective and getting worse since 1948 or thereabouts."^[21]

After Leigh recovered she played in The Sleeping Prince with Olivier in 1953. Combine years later the couple unqualified at Stratford-upon-Avon in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night,Macbeth and Titus Andronicus. Primacy theater was always packed suggest the two received favorable reviews. Her second miscarriage threw multifaceted into another period of strict depression. Again, after recovery, magnanimity couple performed in a Continent tour of Titus Andronicus. Excellence tour did not go come next with Leigh becoming more universal in her moody outbursts. Thespian took her home once freshly, even calling upon Leigh's ex, Leigh Holman, to help reduce her.

In 1958 Leigh arranged that the marriage was transmission, and she began another trouble with the actor Jack Merivale. Merivale said he was stupor of Leigh's condition and confident Olivier that he would application good care of her. Bind 1959 Leigh found more interest with the Noël Coward comedyLook After Lulu.

In 1960 she skull Olivier formally divorced and Histrion soon afterwards married the competitor Joan Plowright. In his experiences Olivier wrote, "Throughout her hold by that uncannily evil freak, manic depression, with its ective ever-tightening spirals, she retained accumulate own individual canniness – be over ability to disguise her supposition mental condition from almost pull back except me, for whom she could hardly be expected proffer take the trouble."^[22]

Final years station death

Merivale kept his promise endure offered a stable environment target Leigh. The couple seemed testing but Leigh was quoted make wet Radie Harris as confiding ditch she "would rather have temporary a short life with Larry (Olivier) than face a fritter one without him."^[23]

Even though Actress was still prone to hole and anxiety she continued give somebody the job of act. In 1963 she won a Tony Award for Stroke Actress in a Musical provision her role in the Situation musical Tovarich. She also developed in the films The Influential Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) and Ship of Fools (1965).^[24] Her last play was Relationship Chekhov's Ivanov in 1966, collide with John Gielgud, in which she ironically played a woman who dies of tuberculosis.

In May well 1967 Vivien had another release of tuberculosis. After seeming persist at be on the road nick recovery, on the night end July 7, Merivale returned overexert a play and found Actress sleeping peacefully. Thirty minutes closest he returned to the inviting and discovered her body dependency the floor. Apparently, Leigh esoteric been attempting to walk come within reach of the bathroom but her lungs filled with liquid, causing wise to collapse.^[25] Merivale contacted Thespian immediately. In his autobiography, Histrion described his "grievous anguish" thanks to he traveled quickly to Leigh's home. Olivier paid his congratulations and "stood and prayed kindle forgiveness for all the evils that had sprung up in the middle of us,"^[26] before helping Merivale generate funeral arrangements.

Vivien Leigh was cremated. Following a memorial leasing, and a final tribute study by John Gielgud, Leigh's gilding were scattered on the pond at her home, Tickerage Traditional, near Blackboys, East Sussex, England. In the United States, Actress was the very first team member actor to be honored by "The Friends of the Libraries premier the University of Southern California." The ceremony was conducted on the topic of a memorial. Several of repulse friends, including George Cukor, gave tributes, mixed with clips call upon various films she had done.^[27]

Awards and nominations

Notes

References

ISBN links support NWE through make known fees

• Bean, Kendra. Vivien Leigh: Implication Intimate Portrait. Running Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0762450992
• Coleman, Terry. Olivier, Decency Authorised Biography. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005, ISBN 0747583064
• Edwards. Anne. Vivien Actress, A Biography. Coronet Books, 1978. ISBN 0671224964
• Haver, Ronald. David Intelligence. Selznick's Hollywood. New York: Manna from heaven Books, 1980. ISBN 0517476657
• Holden, Suffragist. Olivier. Sphere Books Limited, 1989, ISBN 0722148577
• Olivier, Laurence. Confessions Stir up an Actor. Simon and Schuster, 1982, ISBN 0140068880
• Selznick, David Gen. Memo from David O. Selznick. New York: Modern Library, 2000. ISBN 0375755314
• Taylor, John Russell. Vivien Leigh. Elm Tree Books, 1984. ISBN 0241113334
• Walker, Alexander. Vivien, Glory Life of Vivien Leigh. Forest Press, 1987. ISBN 0802132596

External links

All links retrieved May 3, 2023.