Edwards - Vivien Leigh: A Biography

Tennessee Williams says of Vivien, Having known madness, she knew how it was to be drawing close to death. Having often been close to death, I might add, gave her a fearlessness, a daring, a sort of insolence toward life, and a kind and tender and incredibly affectionate regard for the living. She was a good deal more than a film star who received two Oscars for two of the most celebrated roles in film history (Scarlett OHara and Blanche DuBois), or a stage actress who won acclaim for her Juliet, Antigone, and Cleopatra. Vivien Leigh was a woman of great extremes and greater excesses. A woman whose candle surely did burn at both ends, and yet refuses, through the incandescence of her friendships and her film portrayals, even now to be extinguished. I found myself wanting to know why Vivien Leigh would not recognize defeat, why in the face of it she would raise her exquisitely molded chin and stare uncomprehendingly at it with fiery eyes.

I traveled to London, Paris, the South of France, Hollywood, and New York to find that answer. I sat in darkened projection rooms watching almost every foot of film she had shot, spent weeks poring over her private letters and papers, talked to those closest to her and those who only had brushed her life. I walked her school halls, sat in her garden, studied her medical reports. These pages were written fortunately with the cooperation of many wonderful people: first and foremost, Mr. John (Jack) Merivale, who shared the last seven years of her life; Mr. Tarquin Olivier, whose sensitivity and insight were invaluable; Mr, Leigh Holman, her first husband; and Mrs. Suzanne Farrington, her daughter.

I am beholden as well to Doris Nolan and Alexander Knox, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Cecil Beaton, Mr. Elia Kazan, Ms. Maxine Audley, Ms. Maureen OSullivan, Mrs. Lucinda Ballard Dietz, Mr. Howard Dietz, Mr. Peter Hiley, Dame Flora Robson, Viscountess Lambert (Patsy Quinn), Mr. Theodore Thaddeus Tenley, Mr. Stanley Kramer, Mr. Arnold Weissberger, Ms. Paula Laurence, Mr. Charles Bowden, Mr. Angus McBean, Ms. Radie Harris, and Mr. Tennessee Williams.

Also, I must again thank Jack Merivale, Leigh Holman, Suzanne Farrington, Sir Cecil Beaton, Lucinda Ballard and Howard Dietz, Tarquin Olivier, Vicountess Lambert, and Dame Flora Robson for contributing photographs from their personal collections for use in this book.

I owe a debt of gratitude as well to the Mother General and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart Convent, Roehampton, the staffs of the British Film Institute, Mr. Steve Rubin and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Ms. Martha A. Mahard and the staff of the Harvard Theatre Collection, and the staff of the Lincoln Center Library of the Performing Arts. This book could not have been written without the great enthusiasm of Mr. Michael Korda; the fine editorial help of Ms. Joan Sanger; the encouragement of Ms. Monica McCall; the tremendous help of Mr. Mitchell Douglas and Ms. Marlene Marks, who had the difficult task of transcribing many, many hours of taped interviews; and the invaluable research assistance given by Ms. Marcelle Garfield. I am also most grateful to the many, many others who answered my queries, letters and newspaper advertisements so graciously.

Vivien Leigh molded her life from dream and fantasy, which never contain defeat, lived in the future, where almost anything could happen, and truly believed, like Blanche, that everyone had a right to magic. And magically she lived her life.

Anne Edwards
New York City
July 1976

The search for an actress to play Scarlett OHara had cost David O. Selznick $50,000 and lasted two and one half years. Yet, work would begin on Gone With the Wind this clear, cold December evening in 1938 with the role uncast, and the city of Atlanta would burn on the back lot of his studio with seven Technicolor cameras standing ready to roll. Doubles for Scarlett and Rhett waited on the sidelines for their cues to hop aboard the buckboard that would take them through the fiery streets of Atlanta, streets that had been created by giving false fronts and new profiles to the old sets of King Kong and Little Lord Fauntleroy in order to simulate buildings of the American Civil War period. Selznick knew he was about to take a tremendous gamble. Over the past two and one half years he had, after all, sent out to every hamlet in the South the best talent scouts in the country, dispatched director George Cukor and a whole crew to follow, and had personally seen hundreds of young women who were untrained actresses and an equal number who were trained and who read and tested for the part. In fact, he had done everything conceivable, and yet there was still no Scarlett. There was the possibility that Margaret Mitchells world-famous heroine with her seventeen-inch waistthe smallest in three Georgia countieswould never be found.

But Selznick was a gambler by nature and he knew his financial backers would not wait. Either he was to begin work or abandon the project. Never had he felt so excited at the start of a film. Like Sherman himself he paced back and forth on the high-railed observation platform from which he was to watch the spectacle of Atlanta burning. But still he would not give the signal for the crew to turn on the gas jets to start the blaze for the cameras to photograph. The crew waited impatiently. The three pairs of Scarlett and Rhett doubles, the three identical buckboardseach with a Melanie, her newborn baby, and the servant Prissy hidden in the backstood by. But Selznick was waiting for his brother, Myron, and refused to begin without him.

David Selznick was a bear of a man, big and robust and well over six feet tall, and he seemed a positive giant to the crew watching him from below for some sign. Shortsighted, he leaned forward scanning the night for a speck that he might recognize as his brother. Finally, furious at Myron, he gave the go-ahead. As the gas jets were turned on, fire leapt up, devouring the dry wood, and the first set of Scarlett and Rhett doubles jumped on their buckboard and raced alongside the flames. The scene was shot and reshot eight times before Selznick was satisfied. Sweat poured down his face and he had to remove his glasses to wipe them clean. He was exhausted and yet at the same time exhilarated beyond anything in his past experience. The shooting of Gone With the Wind had finally begun.

Replacing his glasses, he stood for a moment watching the flames consuming what remained of the set. Every available fire company in the area stood by and the back lot was a maze of men and equipment. Then he spotted his brother, Myron, elbowing his way through, a man and a woman following close at his heels. Myron had mentioned that he was dining with a client, the renowned English actor Laurence Olivier, and as the three came closer he was able to identify Olivier. But who was the woman? Selznick fixed his gaze on her as Myron took her hand and helped her up the precarious steps of the platform. Dressed starkly in black, she held tightly to a wide-brimmed black hat that framed her face as it shadowed it. It was windy at the top of the platform and she turned her head to the side as she approached him, so he could not see her.

Here, genius, Myron said in greeting to his furious sibling, meet your Scarlett OHara.

The woman tilted her head back and swiftly removed the halo hat so that her dark chestnut hair blew wildly behind her. The reflection of the flames lighted her face and made her green cat-eyes dance. She smiled, her almost childlike mouth turned up at the corners, as she extended her hand.

Selznick stared with stunned disbelief at the young woman who was grasping his hand. Vivien Leigh was indeed Scarlett OHara as Margaret Mitchell had described herthe green eyes in the carefully sweet face turbulent, lusty for life, distinctly at variance with her decorous manner. It was exactly this duality of personality that he had been looking for in every girl he had interviewed for the role: an elusive quality that he now suspected was the chief factor that had caused him to be so slow in reaching a final decision. He had found his star and the world was about to see one of the most famous fictional heroines of all time come alive.