Biography
Vivien Leigh, originally Vivian Mary Hartley, was born on November 5th, 1913 in Darjeeling, India. Her parents were Ernest Hartley and Gertrude Jackjee. The two had married a little over a year before Vivien's birth in London. Ernest was a British Officer and after the stock market crash of 1929, Gertrude started a cosmetic business.
Education
Vivien's education started at a very early age. Her mother instructed her in the world of literature in which she introduced Vivien to some great works.
At the age of six, Vivien was sent away from her beloved India to England to attend the Convent of the Sacred Heart. She had been the youngest student to ever be accepted there and remained there for about eight years.
The Convent, though strict, were (in Vivien's own words) some of the happiest years of her life. During her time there she had befriended a girl two years older then her, Maureen O'Sullivan, who she always told, "When I leave school, I'm going to be a great actress!". She proved her passion by acting in various parts at her school.
After leaving the Convent of the Scared Heart in 1928 and after that summer, Vivien continued her schooling at another convent in Italy. Unfortunately, Vivien did not care for this new place. She became very rebellious, which in the end resulted in frequent punishment.
Luckily, in the spring of 1929, Vivien's parents took Vivien out of the school that she detested very deeply. She ended up completing her schooling in Auteil, a place not far from Paris. This school ended up being a considerably better experience because the school encouraged much independence, something Vivien was well at doing. The school's headmistress, too, had hired an acting coach, which Vivien in later years would say was one of the best things that happened to her.
Career
From a very young age Vivien was destined to become a very talented performer. When she was only three-years old, Vivien did a very desired rendition of "Little Bo Peep" for her mother's novice theater group. She also expressed her passion to pursue a career in the entertainment business to her fellow classmates and her parents.
To get her career in gear, Vivien enrolled (with the help of her parents) at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Even though her time there was short because of her first marriage and the birth of her daughter, Vivien got her start in film with a small role in
"Things Are Looking Up".
From there she obtained agent John Gliddon who then recommended her to Alexander Korda, a film director and producer, who at first turned Vivien down because of lack of experience. But a couple of years later after seeing her perform in the play
"The Mask of Virtue" he realized his terrible mistake and signed her immediately to a film contract.
From then on Vivien continued to get many roles in different plays and films. It wasn't until 1939 when she got her big break as Margaret Mitchell's southern belle Scarlett O'Hara in David Selznick's
"Gone With The Wind". She didn't actually obtain the role until after the film began shooting. She came to the lot the night the burning of Atlanta was being shot. When Selznick saw her he knew right away that he has finally, after years of searching, that he had found his Scarlett. Though the filming of
"Gone With The Wind" was quite difficult in many aspects, Vivien came out of it with instant international fame and her first Academy Award.
After
"Gone With The Wind", Vivien went on to do a number of successful films as well as stage performances. She became a natural to many of Shakespeare's ladies including Juliet, Lady Macbeth, and Ophelia. Many of these roles she did opposite of her second husband (and the proclaimed love of her life) Laurence Olivier.
During the midst of World War II, Vivien and Olivier toured all throughout North Africa for troops. Unfortunately, the tour was cut short because Vivien fell ill.
Once recovered, Vivien jumped back into films and started with
"Caesar and Cleopatra" and Leo Tolstoy's
"Anna Karenina". Both films were not major successes at the time, but luckily, for Vivien, her current play,
"The Skin of Our Teeth", was doing very well.
In 1948, Vivien set forth on a six-month tour of Australia and New Zealand to raise money for the Old Vic Theater (where Olivier had not too long before that became a member on the Board of Directors). Vivien performed
"The School for Scandal" and
"The Skin of Our Teeth" during the tour. In the end, the tour was a complete success. To show that success, Vivien and Olivier did a rendition of their tour, with the addition of
"Antigone", in the West End.
After this rendition, Vivien then moved on to portraying Blanche DuBois in a stage production of
"A Streetcar Named Desire", which was yet another big break for Vivien's career. The stage production lasted 326 performances and soon there after a film version was set into motion where Vivien was opposite with Marlon Brando. The film was an instant success and Vivien was able to walk away from the project with her second Academy Award.
Now that her run in
"A Streetcar Named Desire" was over, Vivien did continue on to do many plays and several films, but her career began to slowly stop due to her personal life and health. Her final film was
"Ship of Fools", which came out two years before her untimely death.
Manic Depression
Vivien Leigh was affected most of her life by manic depression or what is now known as bipolar disorder. This disease is what gave her a reputation for being hard to work with at times and was the explanation for when her career declined and a major factor that played into her divorce to Laurence Olivier.
Sadly, during her life time there was not much known about the disease nor what could be done for it other then long periods of rest or electroshock therapy, which Vivien endured a couple times during her life. These treatments would help her for periods of time, but never had an ever lasting effect.
Though this did take many tolls on her life in different ways, Vivien was a strong women who fought hard and long to continue to fulfill her dreams of acting and living life, even with manic depression. She achieved more then anyone could ever dream of and she did it all with a heavy weight on her shoulders. To read more on Viv's manic depression, click
here.
Death
After many long years of battling manic depression and several outbreaks of tuberculosis, Vivien Leigh's body gave out on the night of July 7th, 1957. Her partner, Jack Merivale, came home from a performance around 11PM to find Vivien asleep in bed, safe and sound. About a half hour later he returned to check on her again and, to his horror, he found Vivien sprawled out on the floor of her bedroom. He put her back into her bed right away and noticed that she was no longer breathing so he attempted to resuscitate her, but it was of no use. He then called a doctor and several friends and family. But the doctor only confirmed everyone's worst fear, that Vivien was indeed dead. Because of her recent battle with tuberculosis, her lungs had filled with fluid and she had suffocated.
Gertrude, Vivien's mother, had a mass set up for July 12th, 1967 where relatives and close friends came to pay their respects. Vivien's body was then cremated and her ashes were spread on the lake at Tickerage Mill, near Blackboys, Sussex, England.
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