Husband Laurence Olivier
Queer Places:
Tickerage Mill, Tickerage Ln, Blackboys, Uckfield TN22 5LT, UK
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Vivien Leigh (5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967; born Vivian Mary Hartley and styled as Lady Olivier after 1947) was a British actress.
Hollywood is an American drama web television miniseries about a group of
aspiring actors and filmmakers during the Hollywood Golden Age in the
post-World War II era trying to make their dreams come true. Katie McGuinness
as Vivien Leigh, a fictionalized version of the actress; she is portraied as
one of the usual guests at George Cukor's
infamous parties and as one of the customers of
Scotty Bowers'
notorious gas station.
In their recent (2011) biography, Damn You. Scarlett O'Hara: the private lives
of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, published by Blood Moon Productions,
Darwin Porter and Roy Moseley expose the wrenching details of the vibrant and
adventurous love life of Vivien Leigh. Moseley had been Laurence Olivier' s personal
assistant and Porter knew the actress in the 1960s. When Vivien was as young
as 15, her mother had to rescue her from Paris, where she was parading herself
in Chanel fashions for the pleasure of older admirers. The biography is also
the first to identify several of Leigh's lesbian lovers. One of her first
bisexual lovers to be named in the book is
Isabel Jeans, a British actress
who, like Jill Esmond, had appeared
in early films by Alfred Hitchcock. Based on letters and interviews the
authors claim that the relationship lasted for about three months in 1938.
There are at least two other lesbian relationships outlined in the book, as
well as affairs with a host of attractive leading men, including
Marlon Brando and Rex Harrison. In
addition, Porter and Moseley detail her taste for casual sex — strong young
men picked up at a notorious Los Angeles male brothel Scotty's Garage. This
"service" station had one petrol pump in order to masquerade as a petrol
station for legal reasons, and up to 22 male attendants. Vivien and film
director George Cukor, for example, used to go to this place and pick out one
"attendant" each. They were paid off so they would never tell that they had
serviced Scarlett O'Hara.
Vivien Leigh; Laurence Olivier
by Paul Tanqueray
half-plate glass negative, 1942
Photographs Collection
NPG x180373
Vivien Leigh (1913-67)
Actress
London, 19 December 1947
Fragment of vintage tear contact sheet
Vogue, The Condé Nast Publications Ltd, by Clifford Coffin
Leigh won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her definitive performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963). Although her career had periods of inactivity, in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Leigh as the 16th greatest female movie star of classic Hollywood cinema.
After completing her drama school education, Leigh appeared in small roles in four films in 1935 and progressed to the role of heroine in Fire Over England (1937). Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that her physical attributes sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. Despite her fame as a screen actress, Leigh was primarily a stage performer. During her 30-year career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of
Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. Later in life, she performed as a character actress in a few films.
At the time, the public strongly identified Leigh with her second husband, Laurence Olivier, who was her spouse from 1940 to 1960. Leigh and Olivier starred together in many stage productions, with Olivier often directing, and in three films. She earned a reputation for being difficult to work with and for much of her adult life, she had bipolar disorder, as well as recurrent bouts of chronic tuberculosis, which was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s and ultimately killed her at the age of 53.[1]
According to the provisions of her will, Leigh was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium and her ashes were scattered on the lake at her summer home, Tickerage Mill, near Blackboys, East Sussex, England.[121] A memorial service was held at St Martin-in-the-Fields, with a final tribute read by
John Gielgud.[122] In 1968, Leigh became the first actress honoured in the United States, by "The Friends of the Libraries at the University of Southern California".[123] The ceremony was conducted as a memorial service, with selections from her films shown and tributes provided by such associates as George Cukor, who screened the tests that Leigh had made for Gone with the Wind, the first time the screen tests had been seen in 30 years.[124]
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