Vivien Leigh Read online

  Roles in New York and Hollywood followed, and by the time he returned to London’s West End and Vivian’s attention he was well on his way to becoming a matinee idol, and had been signed by Korda to a remunerative film contract. He was young, famous, handsome, a successful actor—and he was quite happily married to one of the prettiest young actresses in England.

  In Hollywood, New York, and London women had been throwing themselves at the dashing Laurence Olivier to no avail. If Vivian harbored fantasies of a grand affair with him, it hardly seemed possible.

  Shortly after her first play had closed in March 1935, Vivian was cast by Associated British Film Distributors at Ealing as the ingenue in a film to star Gracie Fields. It was called Look Up and Laugh and was to be directed by Basil Dean.

  Her former work in films had not prepared her for working with Dean. A tough director, he was a martinet who seldom humored his players and never mollycoddled them. He would tear her scenes apart, shout invective at her before the entire cast and crew, dissolving her into tears. “Don’t worry, love,” Gracie Fields assured her, “you’ve got something.”

  But neither Dean nor his cameraman gave her any sense of assurance that Gracie Fields might be right. One of their main complaints was her neck, which they claimed was too long. Unlike her experience in Things Are Looking Up, she was not singled out for many close-ups, and though she sang pleasantly in the film and when allowed a chance on camera was quite charming and certainly believable, once again The Times overlooked her, although the picture was considered “skillful and entertaining.” Aubrey Blackburn, the Ealing casting director, tried to get the studio to sign her, but Basil Dean was influential in putting an end to that possibility.

  Look Up and Laugh had taken only four weeks of Vivian’s time, but Leigh was glad when it was completed and hoped they could finally settle down. But the very next day after the film’s end, John Gliddon called Vivian to meet him in Sydney Carroll’s offices on Charing Cross Road for an interview for a part in his new production, The Mask of Virtue, to be directed by Maxwell Wray, who had been Korda’s dialogue director in the past. Gliddon told her very little about the play or the role, as he did not want to raise her hopes. The part was that of Henriette Duquesnoy, a young woman of the streets being masqueraded as an innocent girl to lure the Marquis d’Arcy into a marriage that would disgrace him. The role was not easy and it was the pivotal one of the production. Wray had already tried to get Peggy Ashcroft, Diana Churchill, and Anna Neagle, but none of these well-known actresses was available. Frantic as the opening date drew nearer, Wray rang his old friend Aubrey Blackburn and asked if he could suggest an actress who might be suitable. Blackburn was not too helpful until Wray mentioned that “this girl has to be spectacularly beautiful.”

  “Vivian Leigh,” was Blackburn’s immediate reply.

  She met Gliddon in a stark black dress that emphasized her slimness and the whiteness of her skin; her chestnut hair and oval face were framed perfectly by a wide-brimmed black hat. They went together to Sydney Carroll’s offices. Carroll (whose real name was George Frederick Carl Whiteman) held a special niche in the English theatre. For many years he had been a most revered drama critic for The Sunday Times; and now, as well as heading his own theatre management company, he wrote a powerful theatre column for the Daily Telegraph every Thursday, was the film critic for The Sunday Times, and the author of many books. He had been a successful actor as a young man, having made his first appearance in 1896 at nineteen in The Sign of the Cross at the old Standard Theatre.

  There were about ten other girls sitting in the anteroom. Leaving Vivian waiting there with the other aspirants, Gliddon went in to speak privately to Wray and Carroll. He admitted she had only made one former appearance on stage but that since beauty was the main requisite for the role Vivian certainly had it.

  Wray left the office for a few minutes and then came back. “If Vivian Leigh is the girl dressed in black sitting at the end of the table in the outer room, then as far as I am concerned, the part is cast,” he said.

  She was engaged at a salary of ten pounds a week. Carroll also asked her to alter the spelling of her name to Vivien, as he thought it was more feminine, and she agreed.

  This time she had a director who was determined for the success of the play to give her every advantage. He studied her for a long time during rehearsals and decided her best qualities were her extraordinary grace when sitting or moving and her great beauty in repose. He worked with the lighting director to make the most of these attributes. She also had one extremely difficult scene at the end of the play, when on Henriette’s wedding night the Marquis discovers her duplicity and threatens her with his pistol. She throws herself at his feet begging his forgiveness and declaring her true love. Wray took her through this scene over and over, assuring her that her own natural intelligence and sincerity would come through to make the scene believable.

  The other members of the cast—Frank Cellier, Jeanne de Casalis, Lady Tree, and Douglas Matthews—were marvelous to her. On opening night Leigh escorted her to her dressing room (he had not attended the first night of The Green Sash), where presents from all her co-workers were waiting for her bearing little notes of good wishes. Maxwell Wray came in to tell her it was a full house and that she was not to be nervous. Then he left her alone, taking Leigh out of the dressing room with him. He did not tell her that on his insistence his friend the great Alexander Korda was in the audience.

  Korda, occupying a center aisle seat in the stalls of the Ambassadors’ Theatre that night (May 15, 1935), expected to see an intelligent interpretation of a German comedy that he was already familiar with, and fine performances by the well-known members of the cast. He was as certain that newcomer Miss Vivien Leigh would give an adequate but rather stereotyped performance as the prostitute. Leigh Holman, seated only a few seats away, expected little more.

  The houselights darkened, the curtain rose. From the first moment of Vivien’s entrance, Korda and the rest of the audience were enthralled. Vivien possessed a kind of radiance that transcended the footlights. There was magic in her performance, an intangible electricity that sparked her audience. No matter what else was happening on stage, it was difficult to tear one’s eyes away from her. She was lighted and costumed so that, with the magnificence of her classic long neck and her ivory skin and perfect face, she looked in repose like a Florentine painting. There was a lilting beauty to her voice even if it lacked range, and she had a curious vulnerability that brought instant sympathy to her role.

  Korda headed for her dressing room as soon as the last bravos echoed in the house. He had been able to see in her performance that stamp of uniqueness that he had missed previously. She was the passionate street girl who could be a great lady at the same time or, in reverse, the great lady who could be a street girl. There was, he observed, a complex and mesmerizing duality to her personality. (Korda was right, and Vivien’s most successful roles were to be portrayals of either of those two aspects of the “dual” woman.) Korda met Gliddon at her dressing-room door and told him to come and see him the next day. Then he went in and congratulated Vivien. “Even a Hungarian can make a mistake,” he said suavely.

  Vivien was in a whirl, but she tried to keep her head. She dressed and went with Leigh and her parents to a small cast party at the Savoy and then to the Florida to dance. At four in the morning she and Leigh taxied to Fleet Street to buy the morning papers; and they stood in the gray light, Vivien shivering in her evening gown in the dampness of the early morning, and read the headlines on the theatre pages:

  VIVIEN LEIGH SHINES IN NEW PLAY

  YOUNG ACTRESS A TRIUMPH

  ACTRESS IS A DISCOVERY

  NEW STAR TO WIN ALL LONDON

  She was ecstatic with happiness as she got back into the taxi with Leigh. On the way home they passed the Whitehall Theatre. The marquee lights were out, but she had already memorized the names: Laurence Olivier, Cecil Parker, and Greer Garson in Golden Arrow.

&
nbsp; It seemed anything was possible for her now, even her name on the same marquee with Olivier’s—or even Olivier himself. Later that day, when Beryl Samson came over to Little Stanhope Street to congratulate her, to her friend’s astonishment Vivien confided, “Someday I am going to marry Laurence Olivier.”

  Beryl was too taken aback to remind her that they were both already married to other people.

  Chapter Six

  All the evening papers carried front-page stories about “the fame-in-one-night girl.” She was now Vivien Leigh and her new identity was indelibly etched in printer’s ink. When she saw Leigh’s puzzled and unhappy face as he returned from chambers that night after having had to push aside the reporters to enter his own house, she knew what she dared to lose. The need for love and security had always been the motivating powers in her life. She loved Leigh and yet was not in love with him, and the security he gave her made her terrify-ingly insecure in the end, because with it she lost the comfort of her own identity.

  Even having shared her opening night, Leigh was mystified by the clamor she had created. He did not think fame had much meaning to her. Only a short time after the opening they had motored to Brede, and when they had entered, Frewen had walked a circle around her and looked her up and down and then had said, “Well, I don’t see any change.”

  Vivien had nearly burst into tears. “There isn’t any change and there never will be, Oswald,” she had said.

  Gliddon had kept his appointment with Korda for the day following the opening, and Korda had offered a contract paying Vivien £750 for the first year. Gliddon, feeling in a strong position for once, protested, but Korda, the charming voice suddenly becoming rapieredged, refused to bargain. Gliddon pressed his case further and at the end of the meeting Korda agreed to give her a five-year contract starting at £1300 for the first year and rising with the standard options to £18,000 in the fifth year. She would have to be available to make two films a year, but she could use the time between for appearances on the stage.

  Gliddon was delighted, but when he discussed it with Vivien and Leigh, Leigh did not think it at all equitable, since, in his opinion, Korda had all the options and Vivien none. Vivien overrode his advice not to sign, and three days later the newspapers carried headlines like £50,000 FILM CONTRACT FOR LAST WEEK’S UNKNOWN ACTRESS!

  Feeling that Vivien’s newfound stardom could fill a much larger theatre, Carroll transferred the play to the St. James’s so that his discovery could be seen by twice as many theatregoers. It was a poor error in judgment. Vivien’s voice did not carry in the immense St. James’s, and her great beauty seemed lost on the cavernous stage. The play lasted only ten weeks after the transfer. Then Carroll sent it on the road, planning to bring it back into a smaller theatre. But by that time there was no smaller theatre available.

  Vivien was not unhappy about her sudden inactivity, since Korda had just announced that she was to play Roxanne to Charles Laughton’s Cyrano de Bergerac. But Laughton did not like the script, the putty nose created for him, or Vivien as Roxanne, and Korda refused to let him film the production simultaneously in French and English. Plans were therefore abandoned.

  Days for Vivien were now filled with housewifely duties, and she had no time to take the two-year-old Suzanne to play by the Serpentine. The taste of fame had spurred her ambition. All she could think about was the theatre. She read everything she could, seeing if she couldn’t find a role for herself.Staying in the public eye in whatever way she could manage occupied much of her time. She lunched at the Savoy and the Ivy. She posed for Cecil Beaton and Vogue magazine, and she gave interviews whenever asked. Almost every night she dragged Leigh to parties, remaining very often after he had gone home, sometimes even until dawn.

  Leigh viewed it all as a whim. Her success and instant fame after Mask of Virtue had surprised him, but he still had not taken it seriously. She was spoiled and beautiful and easily bored. She was either wildly excited or cool and detached. It was enough to drive Leigh to distraction, but he also found her bright, exhilarating, and quite irresistible. He had led an ordered life before he had met Vivien, but her mercurial presence brought him a vitality he did not possess himself, and he truly loved her.

  The big theatrical event that autumn was the Olivier-Gielgud production of Romeo and Juliet at the New Theatre. The two men alternated playing Romeo and Mercutio. It was a grand theatrical stunt on its own, but also Olivier introduced to the stage a new interpretation of Romeo, bringing to the role a sexuality that had not been portrayed previously. It was a bold and fearless thing for him to do, and it was obvious that nothing could have kept Vivien away from seeing the play.

  She chose a matinee performance and went by herself. Olivier’s sheer animal magnetism leaped across the stage lights as he stood against the balcony in an extraordinarily insinuating pose, and Vivien had much the same reaction as she had when she had seen him in Theatre Royal. She decided to go backstage to congratulate him on his performance. There were a few people in his dressing room when she arrived, but he was aware of her presence as soon as she entered. “I’m Vivien Leigh,” she said, “and I just had to tell you how marvelous you were.”

  Olivier thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He asked her courteously if she had any theatre plans after telling her that he had seen her in The Mask of Virtue and had been impressed with her ability. She replied that she had been offered the part of Jenny Mere in Clemence Dane’s stage adaptation of Max Beerbohm’s story The Happy Hypocrite opposite Ivor Novello. “That sounds a good project,” he told her, and then suggested that perhaps they could meet for lunch and talk about it before she went into rehearsals.

  Olivier had taken the initial step in helping to guide her career, though he was not aware of it. Vivien signed for The Happy Hypocrite. Directly after she did so, it was postponed for several months, but Korda now decided to exercise his option and cast her opposite Conrad Veidt in Dark Journey, a spy story that was to go immediately before the cameras. Vivien managed time to meet Olivier for lunch, however. They ate at the Ivy, but it was not the rendezvous Vivien had hoped it might be. Gielgud was with them. Olivier was charming and wittier than she expected. His dark eyes flashed with merriment as he told some funny anecdotes about himself. Vivien was dazzled and now more drawn to him than ever. He suggested she audition at the New Theatre one afternoon for a role in a production Gielgud was preparing of Richard II to be given by the Oxford University Drama Society. Gielgud agreed. Theatre and the classics seemed to be all that mattered to Olivier, and though he found films necessary to support himself and Jill he had a low opinion of them.

  The luncheon literally changed Vivien’s thinking. Of course she must play in the classics. Nothing else would be an achievement. She found time out from the filming of Dark Journey to audition at the New Theatre. Olivier sat down front as she read a scene from the play to Gielgud. Standing, looking out into the audience of one, Vivien began: “This way the king will come ...” Gielgud invited her to participate in the play, casting her as the Queen. Rehearsals began directly upon the completion of the Korda film.

  On January 20, 1936, King George V died. Vivien had never forgotten the image of the aging but still imperious and handsome monarch at her presentation. She wept at the news and was quite affected by his death. She was, and would remain, in awe of royalty, and perhaps that is why she loved her first experience with the classics.

  Florence Kahn, who was Sir Max Beerbohm’s wife, and Vivien were the only professionals in the undergraduate cast, and the young people included them in all their festivities. The last night there was an Oxford University Drama Society supper and Beerbohm spoke. It was three a.m. before the party broke up. Vivien had her little two-seater car with her and she piled John Gielgud, his brother Val, and four others in with her and started driving to Burford in the Cotswolds to continue the party. They were traveling forty miles an hour along the Burford road, Vivien dozing at the wheel in spite of John’s dramatic recitatio
ns to keep her awake, when the car hit the grass verge, swerved, and almost turned over. They had all been saved by Gielgud’s fast thinking, for he seized the wheel and straightened it. Vivien was badly shaken and quite sober by the time she returned to London and Leigh the following day. But if Leigh expected her to be high spirited on her return, he was wrong. Immediately before leaving Oxford Vivien had heard that Jill Esmond Olivier was pregnant.

  She attended the preview of Dark Journey with Gielgud. Her role in that film was of such a mysterious nature and the script so complex that Vivien did not understand what the film was about or what the character she was playing in it was doing. “What am I. doing that for?” she whispered to Gielgud. He just threw up his hands. “Why did I say that?” Gielgud obviously had no idea. “Where am I supposed to be?” Gielgud was as confused as she. Dark Journey was indeed a complicated spy story, set in Sweden, with Vivien playing a French double agent masquerading as Swiss. The film was seldom convincing, but Vivien photographed exquisitely, a fact that no reviewer could overlook. But vanity was not one of her character traits, and she despised the idea that she was being commended only for her beauty. No matter how successful the film was, Dark Journey would remain a failure to her. It had been no test of her acting ability. Olivier was right. Theatre and the classics were the most valuable training.

  Disappointed in her first venture with Korda, she threw herself into rehearsals of The Happy Hypocrite. Ivor Novello was one of the best-looking men in the English theatre. His coal black hair covered a magnificent head, and his profile could only be rivaled by John Barry-more’s, with the high forehead, large luminous eyes under sweeping lashes, regal nose, and determined chin. He was a prodigious playwright and actor and was often compared, to his disadvantage, to Noël Coward. Novello, defending himself, claimed he wanted to be associated only with commercially successful plays, so he wrote what he thought were guaranteed profit makers and acted roles below his true ability. But it was clear that it was a thorn in his side to be considered a second-rate Coward.