Vivien leigh

Vivian Mary Hartley –real name of the actress– was born on November 5, 1913, while her parents, British nationals, lived in Darjeeling (India). Her parents, a stockbroker with a solid position assigned to that country, and an Irish woman, remained there until 1919 when World War I ended.

Already in the many schools he attended, he demonstrated his ability for theater in school productions. She was so clear about it that he enrolled in acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After finishing, he debuted on the stage, in 1934, in “The Green Sash”. She immediately shot her first film, Things are Looking Up , and although it turned out to be extraordinarily photogenic, the director and operator complained about her huge hands, and asked her to hide them.

While working on stage again, in the play “The Mask of Virtue”, an encounter took place that would change his life forever. One day one of the greats of the British scene came as a spectator, Laurence Olivier , who in the end stayed to meet the actors and was delighted with the actress. Shortly after they agreed on the cast of the historical film Fire Over England . Love arose despite the fact that she had married in 1932 Herberg Leigh Holman, foreign to the world of cinema, with whom she had had what was to be her only daughter, Suzanne, and from whom she had taken the stage name. her. For his part, Olivier had Jill Esmond as his wife., also an actress, and was expecting her first daughter… Finally, they both divorced, which caused a great stir, and they got married in 1940, in a simple ceremony in which Katharine Hepburn herself acted as a witness . Leigh and Olivier shared the screen again in 21 Days Together and Lady Hamilton .

Olivier’s influence was positive for the emerging actress, as they worked extensively together on stage, and he was instrumental in her being cast in A Yankee in Oxford , with Robert Taylor , and St. Martin’s Lane , with Charles Laughton . She also introduced her to David O. Selznick , who auditioned her for the hotly contested role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind . She didn’t have much of a chance, as heavyweights like Jean Arthur , Joan Bennett , Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball , and even Carole Lombard , married to Clark Gable , appeared.. It was said that Paulette Godard already had practically her role in her hands. In addition, Leigh had against her the low popularity of her in the United States. Against all odds, the director who was going to take charge of the film, George Cukor , was very impressed by her acting ability, and decided that she was her ideal Scarlett. Although Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming , the leading lady was retained.

The rest is history. The narration of the adventures of the southern heiress transformed by the vicissitudes of the war was not only an unprecedented success, but also became one of the most emblematic titles in the history of cinema. He won 9 Oscars, plus an honorary one. One of them was for the actress, who during the gala was seen crying in the bathroom because her supporter, Cukor, had not been able to be there.

Surprisingly, and despite having been exalted as the female star of the moment, Leigh did not shoot many titles afterwards. She preferred to lavish herself on the British theater, which was what she really liked, and she rarely went through Hollywood. In addition, she suffered from bipolar syndrome – she was quite irritable and had earned a well-deserved reputation for conflict – and respiratory problems, which severely limited her ability to work as much as she wanted. While she was filming in Sri Lanka The Trail of the Elephants took a turn for the worse to the point that Paramount had to replace her with Elizabeth Taylor .

Despite everything, he shot titles like Waterloo Bridge , Caesar and Cleopatra , Anne Karenina (1948) , and above all A Streetcar Named Desire , where he did a memorable job as Blanche, a southern lady who is going to living with her sister and brother-in-law, a brilliant Marlon Brando . For this Elia Kazan adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ most iconic work, Vivien Leigh rightfully won a second Oscar, though she didn’t let such a tremendous feat cloud her vision, declaring she used one to hold doors and one as paperweights for bathroom wipes.

Leigh had recently divorced Olivier when she was shooting The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone , another Williams play, so perhaps she could quite understand her disoriented character, a mature actress disoriented after the death of her husband.

Following the filming of Ship of Fools , her last screen job, Leigh was found dead in the bedroom of her central London apartment on 8 July 1967 by her new partner, actor John Merivale . who, not knowing what to do, called Laurence Olivier. He had been admitted to the hospital, but when he found out that the woman he considered the great love of his life had died, he asked for voluntary discharge and went to her to ask her “forgiveness for all the damage we had done to ourselves.” , as the actor recalls in his memoirs.

Although she had hidden it, Leigh was seriously ill with tuberculosis, and had also suffered the ravages of alcohol abuse.