Vivien Leigh

by Anne Edwards

  They rehearsed every spare minute away from the studio. The tour, booked for twenty weeks, would open in San Francisco, then move to Chicago, New York, and Washington. But before they were to leave they attended the Academy Award presentations. Vivien had been nominated for best actress of 1939. She looked beautiful and glowing, her chiffon gown billowing behind, her head tossed back, hair loose, as she rushed up onto the stage to accept her Oscar from Spencer Tracy. She smiled a benign Scarlett smile over the top of the microphone, but it was Vivien, her English diction perfect, who thanked “Mr. Selznick, all my co-workers and most of all Miss Margaret Mitchell.”

  The film won eight Oscars and several special awards. It was voted best picture; Fleming was named best director; Hattie McDaniel, beaming, accepted the award as best supporting actress (the first black performer to have won an Oscar); Sidney Howard was singled out for the best screenplay (the Guild having decided he was the major contributor); Ernest Haller and Ray Rennahan won for best photography and Lyle Wheeler for art direction, Hal Kern and James Newcom for editing. A special award went to William Cameron Menzies for his use of color. The Irving Thalberg Memorial Award, “for the most consistent high level of production achievement by an individual producer,” went to David Selznick. Gable had been outvoted as best actor in favor of Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips. There had been strained feelings between Selznick and Gable, and Gable somehow felt the studio publicity department had not worked well enough on his behalf and was responsible for his losing the award.

  Shortly after the awards, Vivien and Larry flew to San Francisco to open in Romeo and Juliet and were aware almost immediately of the two problems that were to plague them for the entire tour—the revolving stage, which made it difficult for them to be heard, and the autograph seekers, who gave them almost no privacy. The notices in San Francisco were mixed. The production came in for a good deal of adverse criticism, and Olivier’s performance was not liked by all the reviewers. But one and all agreed Vivien was splendid. At the end of their short run in San Francisco, Vivien and Olivier threw a rather elegant party for the cast and then they all moved on to Chicago, where the reviews filled all of them with high expectations for their New York opening.

  The much heralded production of Romeo and Juliet [wrote a staff correspondent for a Chicago daily], with Miss Leigh and Laurence Olivier as the star-crossed lovers, becomes a personal triumph for Miss Leigh of a kind to make even Scarlett O’Hara seem meager. Our stages have held many excellent Romeos and perhaps that is why Olivier’s performance seemed less remarkable than Miss Leigh’s. She has the great benefit of immediate contrast with a generation of Juliets less than ideal; Juliets who were stiff or oratorical or middle-aged or even fat. Here the audience beheld a breathless girl, an adolescent in every detail of behavior, love-lorn and gay and terrified as the drama marched along . . . certainly this English girl is the find of many seasons.

  The engagement in Chicago was eighteen days and then they were to move to New York. She wrote Leigh from Chicago:

  I find Juliet an extremely taxing and difficult part. Not that I didn’t know that before. However, by dint of strenuous rehearsals it is getting better and better, and by the time we open in N.Y. it should be all right. It is a perfectly delightful company, all very enthusiastic and young and eager.

  I have been in bed two days with a cold everywhere, and shockingly enough we had to call off the performance tonight, but the doctor said it was useless to try to play. On Saturday night I was so hoarse and uncontrolled that I sounded like a eunuch with croup! Chicago has one good art gallery with some fine Van Goghs. And then it’s quite nice to walk by the lake. But apart from these two diversions there’s nothing, and we shall be very glad to leave. It is still freezing and there’s no sign of spring.

  We gave one benefit matinee in San Francisco, and the proceeds went half to the Finnish and half to the British. Which is what we hope to do in New York.

  The theatre here holds 3,500 people—it was never meant for legitimate shows, just concerts. So you can imagine what hell it is to play in. I hope you are still enjoying your lodgings. My address in New York will be 51st Street Theatre at Broadway. We will actually live in the country [Katharine Cornell’s house at Sneden’s Landing] but I’m not sure of that address yet, and anyway the theatre will always reach me . . . Viv.

  San Francisco is simply beautiful. I thought how much you would have liked it.

  One of the young members of the company was Jack Merivale, the son of English actor Philip Merivale and the stepson of the great beauty and English stage and film star Gladys Cooper. Jack (whose real name was John Herman Merivale) had been born in Toronto on December 1, 1917, and was only four years Vivien’s junior. Romeo and Juliet had not been their first meeting. Educated at Rugby and at New College, Oxford, Merivale had become a student of the Old Vic School in 1937 and played Menteith and understudied Malcolm in Olivier’s Macbeth at the New Theatre. Vivien had, of course, been at the theatre almost every evening.

  Macbeth had been a difficult production. Lilian Baylis, who had guided the Old Vic for thirty years, had died on opening night. On its second night Olivier, who always was a realistic and rather wild fighter on stage, cut open the hand of the actor playing Macduff in a terrifying stage battle. The following day just before the matinee the actor playing Malcolm took ill. Merivale had to go on without any rehearsal to do some of Shakespeare’s longest scenes with an actor with whom he had never rehearsed. He was only twenty and truly frightened. As he started down the stairs for his entrance, Vivien (whom he had not yet met) was ahead of him. She turned around (“That gorgeous little face—I shall never forget it”) and said, “Good luck,” and let him pass.

  In Romeo and Juliet, Merivale played the small role of Balthasar and understudied Olivier’s Romeo. He was thrilled to work once again with Olivier and Alexander Knox (Friar Laurence). His dream was to get to go on as Romeo to Vivien’s Juliet, but Olivier never missed a performance. For Merivale it was the happiest theatre company of his experience. Everyone in the company seemed to adore Vivien or Larry or both. One cast member considered them “the most enchanting producers.”

  Certainly, as heads of a company, there seemed to be little they would not do to make their co-workers happy. In San Francisco they threw the company a beautiful gay party, and once they were ensconced in New York they invited them up for weekends at Sneden’s Landing. Portraying lovers on stage and being lovers off stage had even intensified their own passion. They were wildly in love and could not take their eyes off each other. This “sexual greediness” for each other could not but be observed by all the company (which also included Dame May Whitty, Cornel Wilde, and Edmond O’Brien), but for those who had worked with Olivier in the days when he had been married to Jill it was even more apparent and perhaps more shocking.

  Jill was an attractive, talented lady, extremely organized, but there had been nothing of the passionate personality about her. With her, Olivier had seemed reserved, cool, and somewhat self-conscious. When together, he had treated her as he did the rest of the Old Vic players, as one of the gang. On the other hand, Vivien brought out his tremendous sense of humor. He would behave outlandishly at times. He was no longer afraid of displaying his emotions in public, and it seemed that Vivien and he were living, consuming, and enveloping’ each other’s world. They were simply overwhelmed by each other and the sexual feelings they had for each other. If Vivien’s world in their early days had been Larry, his was now totally—and even above the theatre—her.

  Jack Merivale was fascinated by the two of them, but it was Vivien and Vivien alone who he felt “glittered.” She would walk into a room with a tremendous presence that awed him, a marvelous glitter shining from her, conscious of herself as being known as one of England’s most beautiful women (second only to his own stepmother, Gladys Cooper) but simply accepting it. She knew and admired Gladys, and this acquaintanceship brought them closer together. He was riveted by her ambition becaus
e it never destroyed but instead added to her femininity.

  Their reception in Chicago had given the company a false sense of assurance. They all felt certain New York would cheer their production. They were wrong, and the reviews the morning after the opening sent them all into a near state of shock. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times began his review, “Much scenery; no play.” And about the leads, he stated, “Although Miss Leigh and Mr. Olivier are handsome young people, they hardly act the parts at all, and Mr. Olivier in particular keeps throwing his part away.”

  Atkinson’s colleague, Richard Watts, Jr., of the New York Herald Tribune agreed. “Romeo and Juliet is a most undistinguished production,” he said, adding, “Miss Leigh and Laurence Olivier must expect to have their local sojourn in Romeo and Juliet taken as a spectacular personal appearance of Heathcliff and Scarlett O’Hara, rather than as an earnest impersonation of the star-crossed lovers in the Shakespearean tragedy.” Then he softens Vivien’s blow somewhat by continuing: “Miss Leigh, who must certainly be one of the most attractive women in the world, is considerably more successful than Mr. Olivier, despite the fact that he is a more experienced Shakespearean player. She is assuredly one of the brighter spots in the production.”

  There was good reason for the failure of the play in New York. The circular stage, set far back from the footlights so it could work mechanically in the 51st Street Theatre, destroyed any possible intimacy between players and audience. It also made the dialogue frequently inaudible. But the real problem was Olivier’s overlapping roles as producer, director, and star. He was determined to show the world that Vivien could be a great stage actress, and that they could be a great theatrical team. In the scenes where Vivien was on stage alone or with Dame May Whitty he succeeded. But he could not direct his own Romeo with the same objectivity.

  With such reviews it was evident that, even had they changed Romeo and Juliet to Laurence and Vivien, in so large a theatre and with so great an overhead they were going to lose much of their initial investment. How much they were not yet sure. Vivien, who adored good wine and had ordered cases of the finest vintage before the reviews, got on the telephone immediately: “About that wine—don’t send it!” she said succinctly. Then they moved out of the hotel and commuted daily to Sneden’s Landing, which was about ten miles outside of the city. Both were concerned about their immediate financial futures, but they tried hard to keep up the spirits of their company. Weekends at Sneden’s Landing there were always members of the cast.

  “What are you going to do when we close?” Vivien asked Jack Merivale a few days before they were scheduled to do so.

  “Well, I’m signed for a revival of Journey’s End in Ridgefield, Connecticut.”

  “How long will that last?” she inquired.

  “It’s a week’s rehearsal and a week’s playing,” he replied.

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “Then I don’t know.”

  “Oh, well, darling, do ring us up when you are finished and come and spend a weekend.”

  It was the first indication anyone had that Vivien and Olivier did not intend to return straightaway to California.

  When his play closed at Ridgefield, Merivale rang up. “I’ve done it. I’ve finished. It’s closed,” he announced.

  “Oh, how lovely,” Vivien commented. “When can you come and see us?”

  “Tomorrow?” he asked awkwardly.

  “How marvelous.”

  The house at Sneden’s Landing was a converted barn, but to describe it as such would be highly misleading. Set high and regally over the Hudson River, it was probably the most elegant converted barn extant. The original exterior of weathered shingles had been retained. But inside, the soaring walls and expansive ceilings had been wallpapered with gold flocking between the old and massive rough-hewn beams, and the rooms furnished with magnificent Georgian antiques. One side of the immense living room was formed of glass sliding doors that led out to a terrace with a sweeping view of the countryside and the Hudson. The main bedroom suite shared this view but was dominated by two magnificent antique four-foot-high carved wood Chinese figures set in pale gray shell-domed niches in the wall.

  Larry and Vivien liked to entertain in the library-study, a Renaissance room lined with books and filled with crimson accents—damask drapes and couches and chairs, deep red Persian rugs, and Chinese porcelain objets d’art in the same vivid colors. There were also photographs of all Miss Cornell’s friends wherever space permitted—Noel, the Lunts, Vivien, and Larry. The famous faces smiled, the artful torsos posed from polished deep mahogany wood tops framed in shiny silver. It was an imposing room, but Vivien and Larry commanded it with ease and made their guests feel instantly comfortable.

  The evening that Merivale arrived for the weekend the Oliviers were alone. They dined and the three of them had “done very well” on martinis and wine and then moved to the library, where Larry sank rather heavily into a chair to study aerial navigation. (He was working to get a pilot’s license in order to be fairly qualified when he returned to England.)

  “Oh, well, if Ba [her nickname for Olivier] is going to do that, you and I will play Chinker Checks [Chinese Checkers],” Vivien told Merivale. They sat down at a game table, but Vivien, who had always been unbeatable, seemed distracted.

  “Look, if you let me get another one there, I shall win,” Merivale warned at a point in the game where she looked to be losing. “You had better get them all out.”

  “What absolute nonsense. Don’t be silly,” she snapped. “You have to let me out sometime.”

  “Look, I promise you I don’t,” Merivale insisted. “I’ll put it there and that one will stay there until I am all across the board and there will be no ladder for you and I shall win by yards.”

  “Absolute nonsense,” she repeated. “Play your own game. Don’t tell me how to play.” Her voice was edgy and her hands tapped the table nervously. She did not seem like the gay, glittery Vivien he adored. Something about her appeared “off,” “different,” and Merivale now felt uncomfortable and had second thoughts about his presence for the weekend. He was aware, of course, that they had lost a good deal of money in Romeo and Juliet and that that could account for what was beginning to seem a contentious atmosphere. Perhaps, he speculated, she was piqued that he, as a non-investor in the production, was not affected by the play’s losses. Yet, such an attitude did not fit the generous Vivien he knew. He glanced over to Olivier, who was still totally involved in his book and unaware of any personality change taking place in Vivien. Yet Merivale was certain some change had occurred. He continued with the game exactly as he said he would and he won.

  How dare you invite yourself down here and then cheat at Chinker Checks!“ Vivien shouted, turning on him.

  “What do you mean—cheat?” he asked, pride injured and yet trying to deal with the situation in a straightforward manner. “I’m not cheating and I told you what was going to happen.” She glared across the table and mumbled some obscenities. He turned to Olivier for help. “Larry, do calm her down,” he begged.

  Olivier appeared aware of the crossfire between the two for the first time. He put down his book. “What in hell is going on?” he asked.

  A look of terror crossed Vivien’s face and for a moment she was near tears. “Don’t try to come between us,” she accused Jack hysterically. “We’ve been together for four years now and nobody’s going to come between us.”

  “I’ll leave,” Merivale said, rising to go.

  “There isn’t a train until nine in the morning,” Vivien informed him.

  “That’s a bit early, isn’t it, darling?” Olivier interrupted.

  “Well, there’s one at nine-thirty,” she relented.

  “Right. I’ll be on it,” Jack said.

  “Good!” she agreed.

  He excused himself and went directly to his room, but he was unable to sleep. Something troubled him. The sound of Vivien’s voice, the curious look in her eyes, th
e sudden waspishness of her personality. It was as if the woman he had just played Chinese Checkers with was not the same woman he knew—the glittering, charming, always polite and beautifully mannered Vivien.

  The next morning he was awake before either of them. He now decided that they had all been drunk the previous night and the chances were that his host and hostess would not even remember the quarrel. Stilly on the chance that they might, he sneaked out of the house as quietly as possible to avoid any further confrontation.

  Chapter Fourteen

  More than anything, Vivien wanted to be like Larry, to absorb into herself all the qualities that made him who and what he was. She was so caught up, so dazzled, so constantly astonished by him that she was certain that he was unique, a genius. All the early years of her life had been filled with friends who were followers. With Olivier she was the follower. Never once did she doubt his superiority. Trying to live up to it threw her at times into complete panic. She could not understand what was happening to her. She would find she could not tolerate her friends, that she would turn savagely against those she loved, but she never turned against Larry.

  Olivier attributed her short bursts of irrationality to an intolerance to alcohol and to nervous exhaustion. They did not alarm him, if only because he was too busy. Nothing seemed too much for her to do to please him. She continued to be the charming hostess, the most considerate guest, and such disasters as the evening with Jack Merivale were bizarre exceptions. The failure of Romeo and Juliet was a great disappointment to both of them. They had lost their entire savings, but more serious to Olivier was the disservice they may have performed to Shakespeare, whom he considered “the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.”

  Neither of them wanted to return to Hollywood. It was the theatre that Olivier felt had true depth, actual physical depth, and where it was possible to portray a group of human beings as they really were. There was something about theatre—something that involved an audience and something that could almost devour an actor. It was a dangerous and exciting game, and there was nothing else quite like it. He loved more than anything else in the theatre the challenge of the great roles like Henry V, Macbeth, Coriolanus, and Hamlet. Great roles were “like cannibals,” and to survive them was a thrill almost unequaled by any other experience in life—a thrill he wanted Vivien to share.