Happy Birth: VIVIEN LEIGH

Vivian Mary Hartley, later known as Vivien, was an English stage and film actress.

At the age of three, young Vivian made her first stage appearance for her mother's amateur theatre group, reciting "Little Bo Peep". Gertrude Hartley tried to instil 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’.

Vivian met Herbert Leigh Holman in Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, known as Leigh Holman, a barrister 13 years her senior, 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. In 1935 She was cast in the play ‘The Mask of Virtue’, directed by Sidney Carroll and received excellent reviews, followed by interviews and newspaper articles. One such article was from the ‘Daily Express’, in which the interviewer noted "a lightning change came over her face", which was the first public mention of the rapid changes in mood which had become characteristic of her. John Betjeman, the 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".

Leigh was strongly identified with her second husband Laurence Olivier. Laurence Olivier saw Leigh in ‘ Mask of Virtue’, and after he congratulated her on her performance, a friendship developed. Olivier and Leigh began an affair while acting as lovers in ‘Fire Over England’ (1937), Despite her relative inexperience, Leigh was chosen to play ‘Ophelia’ to Olivier's ‘Hamlet’ in an ‘Old Vic Theatre’ production staged at ‘Elsinore’, Denmark. On 31 August 1940, Olivier and Leigh were married at the San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara, California.
The Oliviers mounted a stage production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ for Broadway. The New York press publicised the adulterous nature of the beginning of Olivier and Leigh's relationship and questioned their ethics in not returning to the UK to help with the war effort.

By 1948 Olivier was on the board of directors for the ‘Old Vic Theatre’, and he and Leigh embarked on a six-month tour of Australia and New Zealand to raise funds for the theatre. Olivier played the lead in ‘Richard III’ and also performed with Leigh in ‘The School for Scandal’ and The ‘Skin of Our Teeth’. The success of the tour encouraged the Oliviers to make their first ‘West End’ appearance together, performing the same works with one addition, ‘Antigone’, included at Leigh's insistence because she wished to play a role in a ‘tragedy’.

Leigh next sought the role of ‘Blanche DuBois’ in the ‘West End’ stage production of Tennessee Williams's ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and was cast after Williams and the play's producer Irene Mayer Selznick saw her in ‘The School for Scandal’ and ‘Antigone’; Olivier was contracted to direct. Containing a rape scene and references to promiscuity and homosexuality, the play was destined to be controversial, and the media discussion about its suitability added to Leigh's anxiety. Nevertheless, she believed strongly in the importance of the work.

When the West End production of ‘Streetcar’ opened in October 1949, J. B. Priestley denounced the play and Leigh's performance; and the critic Kenneth Tynan, who was to make a habit of dismissing her stage performances, commented that Leigh was badly miscast because British actors were "too well-bred to emote effectively on stage". Olivier and Leigh were chagrined that part of the commercial success of the play lay in audience members attending to see what they believed would be a salacious story, rather than the ‘Greek tragedy’ that they envisioned. The play also had strong supporters, among them Noël Coward, who described Leigh as "magnificent".

In 1951 Leigh and Olivier performed two plays about ‘Cleopatra’, William Shakespeare's ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ and George Bernard Shaw's ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’, alternating the play each night and winning good reviews. They took the productions to New York, where they performed a season at the ‘Ziegfeld Theatre’ into 1952. The reviews there were also mostly positive, but the critic Kenneth Tynan angered them when he suggested that Leigh's was a mediocre talent that forced Olivier to compromise his own.

In 1953 Leigh recovered sufficiently to play ‘The Sleeping Prince’ with Olivier; and, in 1955, they performed a season at ‘Stratford-upon-Avon’ in Shakespeare's ‘Twelfth Night,Macbeth’, and ‘Titus Andronicus’. They played to capacity houses and attracted generally good reviews.

In 1956 Leigh took the lead role in the Noël Coward play ‘South Sea Bubble’, but became pregnant and withdrew from the production.

In 1958 considering her marriage to be over, Leigh began a relationship with the actor Jack Merivale. Merivale joined her for a tour of Australia, New Zealand and Latin America that lasted from July 1961 until May 1962, and Leigh enjoyed positive reviews without sharing the spotlight with Olivier. Though she was still beset by bouts of depression, she continued to work in the theatre and, in 1963, won a ‘Tony Award’ for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in ‘Tovarich’.

In May 1967 Leigh was rehearsing to appear with Michael Redgrave in Edward Albee's ‘A Delicate Balance’ when her tuberculosis recurred. On the night of 7 July 1967 Merivale left her as usual at their Eaton Square flat, to perform in a play, returned home discovered her body on the floor. On the public announcement of her death on 8 July, the lights of every theatre in central London were extinguished for an hour.