Vivien Leigh

by Anne Edwards

  Angel—my Angel— This is altogether very painful and miserable sitting here without my darling. We have been in the air about ten minutes. The plane is quite empty. I have been looking at your pictures—the one of you at 20—just a very little younger than you are now! And then the one with a very large beaker of some dubious liquid in a garden in Buenos Aires—I also have lots of your cards and letters—I cling to them because they make you seem not so far away— Oh, my darling—it is difficult to know what to hope for. When shall we be together again? You have been so adorable during these last months in spite of all the pain you have been in [he suffered a bad back], and I admire and love you and oh how I miss you already—so what the coming weeks and months will be like I fear to think.

  She was met at the airport by Abel Farbman, Ted Tenley, Radie Harris, Delbert Mann, and several other friends and driven to the Dorset Hotel, where a suite had been reserved for her. There was a cable waiting from Jack to reassure her, and all the welcoming committee came up to her suite for sandwiches and drinks while Trudi unpacked. Radie stayed on for a time. But finally Vivien was alone.

  “I have taken a pill,” she wrote Jack, continuing her letter, “because I want to have a proper sleep and know I should be awake fretting and missing you so dreadfully otherwise and I have a script conference at noon.”

  The letters flew back and forth across the Atlantic in the same passionate profusion as when she had been separated from Larry before doing Gone With the Wind—at least a letter every day and sometimes two or three. Her letters reaffirmed that she was uneasy about appearing in a musical. But Vivien’s appetite for loving admirers seemed as insatiable as her appetite at times was for food. She had not changed since she was a little girl at Roehampton, a young woman married to Leigh, or Olivier’s wife. Even if she had to remind herself (and the letters helped in this way), she wanted to be assured that love was hers just for the reaching out. She wrote Jack the next evening:

  Angel Darling— I have been longing for the day to finish so that I could write to you. Abel arrived at noon and we talked over the script. Delbert Mann [then the director] at 2:30—I had a session with him over it—then to the office with the lot of them to hear the new songs! and new ideas!—oh, dear—one wonders how anything ever gets settled. I came home (great Heavens!)—back! at 6:30 bewildered as to how I should ever get through it. I feel so alien to this medium and not at all sure of what is right and what is not. Everyone seems to have a different view of what they believe right for a musical—they all have the experience I lack ... I feel utterly lost and wish only for news of you— Sweet—sweet one—you were naughty to put that lovely pressie in my pocket but I do thank you—what an angelic—generous thought—I hope you are alright in the flat with Mrs. Mac and Poo Jones—are they treating you kindly and fondly? My sainted boy—goodnight—I love you—I love you so deeply—I read your letters all of the time to give me courage— How dearly and clearly you write—unlike your most loving—Angelica.

  She then added, “Do you think Poo Jones misses me at all? I do him dreadfully—please play an extra game with him for me.”

  She was never left alone except to sleep. The daytime hours were filled with learning the songs (“They really are pleased with my voice isn’t that comforting?”) and the dances (“Byron Mitchell is taking me to buy some dancing shoes—I am truly frightened. I do not think they really realize what they are in for!”) and deciding on an interpretation of the role.

  Evenings were spent with good friends like Tennessee Williams, Arnold Weissberger, Milton Goldman, and Radie Harris. Noël Coward was in town, and that gave her great delight. Dining with him one night, she took a torn letter from her wallet. “You sent this to me when I was in Netherine Hospital during my breakdown,” she told him. “I’ve never gone anywhere without it since.”

  Weekends she spent with the Dietzes at Sands Point. She wasn’t drinking to excess, but she could not stop smoking. Her sleeping pattern was the same. Even with the aid of pills she never slept more than four to five hours. Trudi appeared about eight a.m., but by that time Vivien would have finished the Times and done the daily crossword, written Jack, and already had her breakfast sent up from room service.

  Vivien begged Milton Goldman, the agent and her good friend, to see if he could find a play for Jack to do in New York, now that his work on the Huston film was complete. Then she rang Kay Brown to see what she could do. With each day she grew more fearful that she would not be able to withstand the pressures of the actual production without him.

  She threw herself into the hard work of the rehearsals and visited her old friend Leueen MacGrath as often as she could at her new home on East 62nd, as Leueen had Poo Jones’s sister and the two cats greatly resembled each other. Thanksgiving was spent with the Ka-nins (Garson and Ruth Gordon). Throughout this time she kept calling Goldman to ask, “Have you found something for Jack yet?”

  When they moved rehearsals from the rehearsal hall to the Broadway Theatre on December 11, Vivien wrote Jack:

  Great heavens! What a theatre—so ugly—but really it does not seem much bigger to me than the opera house in Manchester! Jean Pierre [her co-star] has a very large, low voice—Noelie says it is much worse than mine. I saw my dressing room at the theatre for the first time—it is indescribable—a most fearful battleship grey—a sort of passage—with odd walls jutting out—it makes the Royal Adelaide Theatre look like Versailles!

  Leigh was undergoing an operation back in England and, unable to put him out of her thoughts, Vivien had Jack call him and keep her informed. “Do visit Leigh. He would like that!” she urged. She corresponded with Leigh as she always did when she was away from England and kept him up to date on her life.

  They rehearsed straight through Christmas. It was Vivien’s first experience with the chaos of mounting a musical and the insecurity instilled by the removing and replacing of performers and crew. Just after 1963 was ushered in, they took the show to Philadelphia and Trudi wrote Ted Tenley:

  Dear Ted— How sweet of you to send me the wire for opening night. Many thanks. Well, I presume you have heard by now that they did not throw eggs or rotten tomatoes. In fact, the place roared with applause. The show still needs tidying up, but I am certain it can be done. Vivien and Byron’s Charleston stops the show every night and even though the reviews have been mixed, word of mouth must have been terribly good. In spite of bitterly cold weather and a transport strike the lines at the box office are tremendous, business is marvelous. Delbert Mann has left the show and we are expecting Peter Glenville any day now. With his reputation it should be no problem at all for him to straighten out those few weak spots. Vivien has lost a lot of weight and I am very concerned about her health. I hope she is strong enough to carry on for a long time. The play is so demanding. A lot of her friends are here for the premiere. Noël Coward, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, Radie and many more, and they unanimously raved about her performance. Noël had a lot to criticize but he really went overboard and I only hope Vivien does not take his words too much to heart.

  Vivien was, in fact, seriously ill in Philadelphia, but somehow she managed to conceal it. She had asked to have Dr. Conachy send her the pills she used to combat her periods of depression, and the bitter cold of Philadelphia heightened her false sense of exhilaration. She also began to drink heavily again.

  The show played Boston before going to New York on March 18, where it opened during a protracted newspaper strike, so the only reviews appeared on television. “First nighters rocked the rafters with spontaneous applause,” one reviewer reported. The show was a great hit and Vivien the jewel in its tinseled crown. It probably was just as well that the reviews did not appear in print, because artistically it was not a show that the critics could have lauded; but Vivien—as in Philadelphia—stopped the show doing the Charleston with Byron Mitchell, and she looked incredibly beautiful. Shortly after the opening she won the Tony award for her performance, and when the newspaper strike was over all the
critics were unanimous in their admiration of her charm and talent. Appearances were that it would enjoy a long run, but Vivien was not well and her friends were grateful when Jack joined her in New York to appear as a replacement in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Madison Avenue Playhouse until it closed on July 13. He arrived to find her in the worst state he had ever known her to be in.

  It was a difficult spring, and an even more trying summer. They moved into a lovely house with a beautiful garden that Gielgud had formerly sublet. Her friends still surrounded her. Although Tennessee was upset by the terminal illness of his longtime friend Frank Merlo, he still found time for her. He had loved her performance in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, considering it the best film translation of his work and Vivien his truest film heroine. Vivien seemed able to control herself in the presence of good friends like Noël Coward and the Dietzes, but lost control when she was alone with Jack, and often backstage at the theatre as well.

  One night before going on she became more manic than anyone had ever seen her. Ted Tenley was there and helped Jack try to restrain her, but she fought like a tiger for nearly an hour, trying to hurl herself against the door and totally dismantle the room. That frightening catlike quality surfaced; and when she was at last subdued she sobbed and clung to Jack, and finally, looking like a small pussycat, she curled up terrified and horrified at the damage she had done in the room. On October 6, with Jack fearing she might truly be losing her sanity, and with Vivien in an even more progressed state of manic behavior, she played the Grand Duchess for the last time. Jack and Trudi took her under heavy sedation back to London and put her into Dr. Conachy’s care. After a longer than usual series of treatments, Jack and Bumble drove her back to Tickerage Mill, but it was winter and the trees were barren of leaves and the mill pond was frozen over.

  Chapter Thirty

  Vivien rested at Tickerage waiting for an early, early spring, waiting for the flowers to bloom, sharing the eternal hope with Jack that a miracle would happen and that she would never again suffer the indignities of another manic attack. Leigh’s steadying influence was more important to her than ever. They spent her birthday quietly with Leigh at his home, Old Manor Farm, in Zeals, Wiltshire, and returned to Tickerage for Christmas. The next day they drove to south Devon to spend the weekend with Olivier’s two nieces—Caroline and Louise, of whom Vivien was most fond, returning to Leigh’s to spend a night before traveling on to London and Eaton Square. New Year’s Eve they ventured across the Square to have a drink with Bobby Helpmann and Michael Benthall, and then over to another friend’s to greet the New Year, but they came home directly thereafter.

  “She’s really very well again now,” Jack wrote Ted Tenley. “Thank God, and we are off to Tobago on Tuesday for a month which should do her a world of good.”

  Tickerage—so beautiful in all seasons save for the bitter winds of winter—had grown depressing and lonely. The long road to the house was so icy and difficult to navigate that not even Leigh wanted to attempt it. Jack was concerned that loneliness and restlessness could trigger a recurrence of her condition, so he arranged for them to meet the Dietzes on the island of Tobago, knowing how much Vivien adored them and how impossible it would thus be for her to refuse. They had also visited the island once before on a short visit prior to the Australian tour, and she had been enchanted with it and enthusiastic about going back.

  They met Howard and Lucinda and stayed at the Arnos Vale Beach Hotel, which was set high on a hill that overlooked the unspoiled Robinson Crusoe beach and was surrounded by thickly greened trees and a wild profusion of exotic flowers. It was warm and the clear and limpid water revealed literally thousands of tropical fish beneath its rippling surface.

  One day they sailed over to a nearby island that was a bird sanctuary and which contained a large aviary boasting birds with all kinds of tropical plumage. The aviary was about to close when they arrived late in the afternoon and the ticket taker did not want to accept their entrance fee. Jack was livid and refused to turn away, so reluctantly they were allowed in. Called the “Oasis,” it had splendid gardens and rare and lovely birds. Vivien took a fancy to a large white cockatoo, which, according to the plaque outside its aviary, was supposed to be able to imitate human speech. Drawing as close to it as she could, she repeated over and over with full Shakespearean intonations, “Fuck the Oasis, fuck the Oasis, fuck the Oasis . .” for a solid and patient five minutes. Then, after a moment the cockatoo repeated in imitation of Vivien’s precise English pronunciation, “Fuck the O-a-sis, fuck the O-a-sis, fuck the O-a-sis ...”

  They returned to Tickerage Mill in March, in time for Vivien to begin the spring planting. Dr. Conachy had died, which came as a great shock to her, but she was placed in the care of Dr. Linnett, whom she respected. She and Jack spent a fairly idyllic early spring. They had no sooner arrived back from Tobago than she received an offer from Stanley Kramer to appear in Ship of Fools. She wrote Cindy Dietz in March, “Tomorrow I see Stanley Kramer about a film he is making this summer—it would be nice if it is anything interesting.”

  It apparently was, because a week later she wrote Cindy that the meeting with Kramer was interesting and the film sounded as if it might be possible. “I shall have the first draft in a week. Meanwhile I shall try to struggle through the 700 pages of the book!”

  Noël Coward and Cole Lesley came to spend a week. Vivien wrote Cindy on March 15:

  Noelie has been here for a week which has been a huge joy. He is looking perfectly wonderful and seems really totally recovered from the horrors he has had to put up with. [He had been quite ill.] He is now painting huge canvases and Cole counted 422 pairs of feet in one! They are really very attractive (Canvases and feet!) and his pleasure in them is adorable. I am hoping to go and stay with him in Switzerland sometime this spring and am determined to pick up my brushes again. At last the country is starting to hint of spring. The wild daffodils are out at Tickerage and the anemones about to burst into bloom and if those rotten little bullfinches don’t nibble the blossoms it should be wonderful this year.

  She never did visit Coward, because she decided to accept the role offered to her by Kramer in Ship of Fools. On April 27, 1964, she wrote Cindy:

  How dear of you both to say I could come to you on my way through—but I very much doubt if I shall have the time. There seems to be so much to do before leaving. I decided on the film because I really think it might be interesting and the part though not well motivated very arresting in the book and with great possibilities. Kramer is the director and producer and I do think he is one of the very few one can look forward to working with. . . . Jacko has been playing the film star part in Mary, Mary in Windsor and very, very good indeed he was. . . . Jose [Quintero] whisked in and out of London. George [Cukor] came and visited. I saw him again just before he left. Larry has made the most glorious success in Othello. We go to see it tomorrow night. Today as I was picking daffodils and narcissus and forget-me-nots and tulips I longed for you to be with me. The sun was shining and it all looked lovely enough for you to see. God bless you. Vivien.

  Cindy had been relieved to see her on the island of Tobago, for she had looked rested and well. The last time Cindy had been with her, during the run of Tovarich, she had been “a poor little, exhausted, thin child—so exhausted, yet the same Vivien—for as worn and sick as she was she simply insisted she dress and go into town to buy personal presents for all the members of the cast and crew. And the same impeccable houseguest. Her bedroom never looked used and each night she would remember to carefully fold her soiled clothes and cover them with a beautiful square of lace-trimmed crepe de chine.”

  The Dietzes were two of the people with whom Vivien behaved well. Noël, Leigh, George Cukor and Howard Dietz were all older men, extremely knowledgeable, possessed of great charm and wit. (Dr. Conachy had fallen into the same category.) All were men who appeared to hold no sexual attraction for her, and with whom she never misbehaved.

  Merivale was
reassured to know that Cukor would be out on the Coast, because Vivien had to fly there alone. He was completing work on a television segment and could not follow for a few days. Cukor had moved her into a lovely house on Thrasher Avenue arranged for by Kramer and had taken enormous trouble to redecorate for her before her arrival. The house was set high up in the hills and overlooked all of Hollywood, and it was a breathtaking sight to Jack as he stepped into the living room the first night he arrived. “I think we ought to take out citizenship papers and stay here,” Vivien announced, but she dropped the idea by morning.

  Kramer had considered only two actresses for the role of Mary Treadwell in Ship of Fools—Vivien and Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn did not want to return to films at that precise time because Spencer Tracy (whom she had lived with for years) was seriously ill. Vivien was Kramer’s only other choice, and he was delighted that she had agreed to do the film. Her arrival had been set a week before the start of principal photography so that costume fittings would be completed in time.

  Jack wrote to Howard and Cindy on June 16, the day following her first day on the film:

  She is very well and seems much happier to be here than either she or I expected. The house is charming and the weather is perfectly dreadful. There’s a heated swimming pool which is like a sulphur pool giving off clouds of steam in the damp, chilly California mornings. Vivien off for the studio about an hour ago looking twelve and a half.

  Later that day on the back of the letter Vivien added:

  Oh, my darlings, what an adorable welcome! Yours were the first flowers I saw—amaryllis, white and blue, huge shasta daisies, peonies of all colors. Too lovely and your sweet note! I do thank you. I have been kept hard at work since the moment I arrived which is why I have not written earlier. Goodness how I wish you were here. There is a glorious spare room????!!!! The work goes well I feel. I like the script writer [Abby Mann] and he seems to like what I write so we get along well. George [Cukor] and Kate [Hepburn] have been saints. It’s so lovely to have each here. I have a charming chauffeur and a car, a sweet, French good cook who brings her cat which is nice.