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Vivien Leigh
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Vivien Leigh (November
5, 1913 – July 7, 1967) was an
English actress who was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, India to Ernest Hartley (who was of English parentage) and
Gertrude Robinson Yackje (of Irish descent). She and her parents later moved to
England, where young Leigh grew up.
She attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, England, along with fellow actress-to-be
Maureen
O'Sullivan. She then went on to graduate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Art.
She was married in 1932 to Herbert Leigh
Holman, and they had a daughter, Suzanne, in 1933.
Leigh's career began on the stage. Her first play was The Green Sash,
though it was Mask of Virtue that really brought her to stardom. In 1935, she began her film career with such
movies as The Village Squire, Things Are Looking Up, and Look
Up and Laugh.
In 1937, Leigh starred in four films:
Fire Over England, 21 Days opposite future husband Laurence Olivier
(which was shelved until 1940), Dark Journey and Storm
in a Teacup, opposite Rex
Harrison. In 1938 Vivien gave two of the
best performances of her movie career: the flirtatious Elza in A Yank at
Oxford and the marvelous and ambitious street performer Libby in St.
Martin's
Lane, which co-starred Charles Laughton. Leigh is better known for
her role as Scarlett
O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she won her
first Academy Award for Best Actress.
The film's producers went through an exhaustive talent search to fill the
much-coveted role; actresses competing for the role opposite Clark Gable included Jean Arthur, Lucille Ball, Tallulah Bankhead,
Joan Bennett, Claudette Colbert,
Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Paulette Goddard, Jean
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Harlow, Olivia de
Havilland, Susan
Hayward, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Norma Shearer, Barbara Stanwyck, and Margaret Sullavan.
Producer David O.
Selznick had secretly selected Leigh for the role after seeing her in the MGM film A Yank at Oxford, but told no one
until late 1938, when filming began.
In 1940, Leigh arranged for a divorce from Holman and married Olivier,
with whom she had been having a highly publicized relationship for years. At the
time, both were married, Olivier to actress Jill Esmond, who was pregnant when the affair began.
In 1944, Leigh was diagnosed as having a
tuberculosis patch on her
left lung. Though she continued her career
with such plays as Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our
Teeth, the 1945 film Caesar and
Cleopatra, and the 1948 epic film
Anna Karenina,
her illness was getting worse. In 1952, however, Leigh won a second Academy Award for her
portrayal the previous year of Blanche DuBois in A
Streetcar Named Desire.
By the early 1960s Leigh had suffered
two  miscarriages, and the
severity of the tuberculosis was incapacitating. She had also been plagued by manic-depression for
some time, which was believed to be a factor in the failure to cure her ailment.
She received shock
therapy in London for the depression. In
1960, she and Olivier divorced on supposedly
friendly terms, despite the reported volatility in their marriage, and Leigh
insisted on keeping the title Lady Olivier until her death. Leigh
continued to keep a framed photograph of him on her bedside table, even while
living with her companion, actor Jack Merivale.
The actress died of chronic tuberculosis in her London home at the age of 53,
survived by her daughter, grandchildren, and her own mother, Gertrude Hartley, a
devout Roman Catholic
who had to settle for a Requiem Mass rather
than a Mass of
Christian Burial.
Leigh was cremated, and her
ashes were scattered on the lake at Tickerage Mill pond, near Blackboys, Sussex, London.
Leigh has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6773 Hollywood
Blvd.
Source:
Wikipedia Encyclopedia
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