Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Vivien Leigh

Vivian Mary Olivier (née Hartley; 5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967), known professionally as Vivien Leigh ( LEE) and styled as Lady Olivier after 1947, was a British actress. After completing her drama school education, Leigh performed on stage before receiving small roles in four films in 1935, eventually progressing to the role of heroine in Fire Over England (1937). She went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had played on stage in London's West End in 1949. For the latter role, she also won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and later won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963).

This profile of Vivien Leigh covers Early Life and Family Background, Early Career and Breakthrough, 1939: Gone with the Wind, Marriage and Family Life and 1949–1951: Play and film roles in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Despite her fame as a screen actress, Leigh was primarily a stage performer. During her 30-year career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. Later in life, she performed as a character actress in a few films. Although her career had periods of inactivity, in 1999 the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Leigh as the 16th-greatest female movie star of classic Hollywood cinema. Widely lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that her physical attributes sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress.

At the time, the public strongly identified Leigh with her second husband, Laurence Olivier, who was her spouse from 1940 to 1960. Leigh and Olivier starred together in many stage productions, with Olivier often directing, and in three films. She earned a reputation for being difficult to work with, and for much of her life she had recurrent bouts of chronic tuberculosis, which was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s and ultimately led to her death at age 53.

Early Life and Family Background of Vivien Leigh

Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley on 5 November 1913 in British India in Darjeeling, Bengal Presidency. She was the only child of Ernest Richard Hartley, a British broker, and his wife, Gertrude Mary Frances (née Yackjee; she also used her mother's maiden name of Robinson). Her father was born in Scotland in 1882, while her mother, a devout Catholic, was born in Darjeeling in 1888 and of Armenian and Irish ancestry. Gertrude's parents, who lived in India, were Michael John Yackjee, who was born to an Armenian family that moved to India in 1843 and worked as a clerk for the East India Railway, and Mary Teresa Robinson, who was born to an Irish family killed during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and grew up in an orphanage, where she met Yackjee; they married in 1872 and had five children, of whom Gertrude was the youngest. Ernest and Gertrude Hartley were married in 1912 in Kensington, London.

In 1917, Ernest Hartley was transferred to Bangalore as an officer in the Indian Cavalry, while Gertrude and Vivian stayed in Ootacamund. At the age of three, Vivian made her first stage appearance for her mother's amateur theatre group, reciting "Little Bo Peep". Gertrude Hartley tried to instill an appreciation of literature in her daughter and introduced her to the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, as well as stories of Greek mythology and Indian folklore. At the age of six, Vivian was sent by her mother from Loreto Convent, Darjeeling, to the Convent of the Sacred Heart (now Woldingham School) then situated in Roehampton, Middlesex. One of her school friends there was future actress Maureen O'Sullivan to whom Vivian expressed her desire to become "a great actress". She was removed from the school by her father, and travelling with her parents for four years, she attended schools in Europe, notably in Dinard (Brittany, France), Biarritz (France), the Sacred Heart in Sanremo on the Italian Riviera, and in Paris, becoming fluent in both French and Italian. The family returned to Britain in 1931. She attended A Connecticut Yankee, one of O'Sullivan's films playing in London's West End, and told her parents of her ambitions to become an actress. Shortly after, her father enrolled Vivian at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London.

Vivian met Herbert Leigh Holman, known as Leigh Holman, a barrister, in 1931. Despite his disapproval of "theatrical people", they married on 20 December 1932 and she terminated her studies at RADA, her attendance and interest in acting having already waned after meeting Holman. On 12 October 1933 in London, she gave birth to a daughter, Suzanne Holman, later Suzanne Farrington.

Early Career and Breakthrough of Vivien Leigh

Leigh's friends suggested she take a minor role as a schoolgirl in the film Things Are Looking Up, which was her film debut, albeit uncredited as an extra. She engaged an agent, John Gliddon, who believed that "Vivian Holman" was not a suitable name for an actress. After rejecting his many suggestions, she took "Vivian Leigh" as her professional name. Gliddon recommended her to Alexander Korda as a possible film actress, but Korda rejected her as lacking potential. She was cast in the play The Mask of Virtue, directed by Sydney Carroll in 1935, and received excellent reviews, followed by interviews and newspaper articles. One such article was from the Daily Express, in which the interviewer noted that "a lightning change came over her face", which was the first public mention of the rapid changes in mood that had become characteristic of her. John Betjeman, future poet laureate, described her as "the essence of English girlhood". Korda attended her opening night performance, admitted his error, and signed her to a film contract. She continued with the play but, when Korda moved it to a larger theatre, Leigh was found to be unable to project her voice adequately or to hold the attention of so large an audience, and the play closed soon after. In the playbill, Carroll had revised the spelling of her first name to "Vivien".

In 1960, Leigh recalled her ambivalence towards her first experience of critical acclaim and sudden fame, commenting that "some critics saw fit to be as foolish as to say that I was a great actress. And I thought, that was a foolish, wicked thing to say, because it put such an onus and such a responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn't able to carry. And it took me years to learn enough to live up to what they said for those first notices. I find it so stupid. I remember the critic well and have never forgiven him."

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivien_Leigh), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.