by Anne Edwards
When Leland Hayward had visited, he had discussed with her the possibility of her appearing in a play, La Contessa, that Paul Os-born had adapted from a work of Maurice Druon’s. Osborn had spoken many times with Vivien about this project during the preceding year. Druon’s novel had been called The Film of Memory, and it was based on the extraordinary life of the Marquesa Casati, who had died only nine years before. The Contessa—with her white face, orange hair, and eyes rimmed with black tape—had been a famous personality of the 1920s. When she lived at the Palais Rose, near Versailles, where she kept tame leopards and panthers as domestic pets, she used to give enormous parties and not surprisingly ran through several fortunes. The play was financed by Seven Arts Productions, a film company, and it was thought that it might have strong film potential providing it was a successful play.
The play, with Vivien as the Contessa Sanziani (the fictional name for the Contessa), looking exquisite in gowns Bumble had designed for her, previewed on a Tuesday, April 6, 1965, in Newcastle under Helpmann’s direction. Helpmann told the press, “This is not a play of ideas. It is nothing to do with kitchen sinks. It is a romance.”
“Well nobody is going to quibble about that assessment,” the critic of the Newcastle Daily Express said the morning after the opening. “It is in fact as stylized and as conscientiously romantic as a novelette—but it is a quite impossible play.”
On the tenth of May Vivien wrote Cindy Dietz from Manchester:
My Darling Cindy,
It seems forever since I heard from you. I think about you and miss you. You will have heard from Paul [Osborn, the author] of our troubles. He was so dear and helpful when he was here, and I am so deeply hurt for him over the disappointment. It just doesn’t seem to be the sort of play they want to see here at this time. Anyway, when I think of the years and work he put into it, it is heartbreaking. I do hope all his present ventures will make up for it in some measure. I simply do not know what I shall do next. This is the last week and of course it is distressing playing on knowing we are not going in [to London].
The show closed in Manchester and Vivien returned to Tickerage. On August 20 she wrote Cindy:
My darling Cindy—I did not come over for the Ship of Fools premiere for a number of reasons. Principally because of having to be available to see whatever characters turned up for Tickerage—moreover film premieres are not my idea of bliss! I read and read plays old and new but so far have found nothing I really find fascinating enough to do. I do not care for this enforced idleness one bit.
Ship of Fools had had one of the most gala invitational premieres in Hollywood history, almost equal to that of Gone With the Wind. Vivien received good personal notices, but the film was considered pretentious and a bore. Just the same, Vivien flew to Paris on November 1 to receive an Étoile Crystal, awarded her for her performance as Mary Treadwell. She again wrote Cindy:
I have forgotten if I told you I had been asked to play Madame Van Meek in the joint American-Russian film on the life of Tchaikovsky. Naturally I am fascinated by the idea of such a venture and await the English script daily.
The project never materialized, but she waited during a beautiful autumn at her beloved Tickerage Mill.
Today Jack and I are at Tickerage—no guests—a gentle rain—a rather cross swan gliding by on the mill pond—the labrador and the poodle chasing each other across the lawns. Yet Sunday was a divine autumn morning—a summer mist and the wild life on the lake doing their balletic best. We both said—if only Cindy and Howard were here.
Although Vivien no longer seemed disturbed by the gibes of critics, neither was she content—though she adored each blade of its grass and each fallen petal of its flower gardens—to retire to Tickerage. As she had long ago told Maureen O’Sullivan, “I am going to be a great actress.” And this was still her lifelong dedication.
Chapter Thirty-two
Winston Churchill had died short months after visiting Vivien at Tickerage. Then Olivier became seriously ill and Vivien was beside herself with worry. It was doubtful that she would ever be capable of cutting the cord that bound her to Larry. Simply the very fact of his existence was a source of energy for her to draw upon. He had committed many unkind and hurtful acts toward her since Joan had entered his life. Indeed, there had been strained and difficult times dating back to their Australian tour before his meeting with Joan. Still, Vivien blamed Joan for her loss and felt that this was Larry’s greatest betrayal of her. What appeared to be petty incidents—the luring of Vivien’s maid one time to the Oliviers’ staff; his staying with Joan at Margalo Gilmore’s New York flat, where Vivien and Larry had been so happy—took on great significance to her. By this time all their painful years together had faded away and she remembered only the golden ones of their great passion for each other.
Though she wrote letters of apology for her behavior during a manic phase, and though she confessed to Jack her fear of madness, she otherwise never discussed her “illness,” nor did she speculate on how her behavior during the illness might have been too much for Olivier to live with. She could, after all, be the most refined and tasteful woman—the woman he fell in love with—but she could also be incredibly vulgar, downright sluttish. She could be the quietest and most companionable of creatures, and she could be a wild, uncontrollable madwoman. She could be the kindest and sweetest and most thoughtful of people, and she could be cruel. Olivier had not been able to cope. Neither had Trudi, who by this time seemed to have faded away. And at times even Jack, who loved her perhaps more than Olivier had, because he had entered their relationship with full awareness of the fierceness of her illness, despaired of their future together. Yet Vivien refused to admit to herself that Olivier had left her because of her condition. She was convinced she would never have deserted him no matter what he had suffered. It was Joan, all Joan’s fault, and she would never forgive her—though she still had no bad words for Larry.
She had written Cindy that she was not able to go to the States for the Ship of Fools premiere because she had to be available “to see whatever characters turned up for Tickerage.” Few did turn up in the autumn of 1965. Vivien had lost weight and was not at all well. There was a cold sore on her lip that refused to heal, and she suffered extreme coughing spasms. Her tuberculosis was reappearing, but she refused to accept the seriousness of her condition.
Inactivity was the most painful state she could endure, and so it was with great exultation that she agreed to tour the east coast of Canada and the States as Anna Petrovna in a production of Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov. It was adapted and directed by John Gielgud, and the cast included Jack, Roland Culver, Jennifer Hilary, Ronald Radd, Edward Atienza, and Dillon Evans, with Gielgud in the title role.
On December 21 Jack wrote Cindy Dietz from Eaton Square:
Have you heard the charming news that Vivien and I are coming to New York? I suppose you must have. I have been told that Radie devoted a paragraph or was it a whole column [in the Hollywood Reporter] to the fact that V was to play in Ivanov. What a pity she took it upon herself to cast her in the wrong part! Poor Radie. She’s always putting her foot into it. We are rehearsing quite hard and finding it quite impossible either to learn or to act. V is obviously going to be exquisite in the part though her performance is being forged on the anvil of total despair.
A constant battle had raged between Radie and Jack, and both got in their licks against the other whenever they could. Radie had known Vivien from the days of her first arrival in the States and through the casting of Gone With the Wind and the halcyon days when the Oliviers had been one of the most romantic couples in the world, and she never was able to accept Jack in Olivier’s place.
On December 29, 1965, Vivien wrote Cindy:
The present arrival date is February 3rd, but we have not settled where to stay in New York during the two weeks rehearsals. They will be pretty hectic, I imagine, as quite a hunk of the cash will be needed. We are rehearsing whenever possible here. I spent Christmas with
the whole family [Gertrude, Jack, Suzanne, Robin, the three children, and Leigh]. Very noisy it was! But great fun too!
The play had been produced the preceding season in London with Yvonne Mitchell in Vivien’s role of Ivanov’s Jewish wife who is dying of tuberculosis, and Claire Bloom in Jennifer Hilary’s role of the young heiress intent on marrying Ivanov once he is a widower. Vivien need not have worried about the show’s capitalization, because the venture had cost Alexander Cohen, its producer, only about $65,000 to import from London, and he had recovered that in its pre-Broadway tour (New Haven, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and Toronto). They were on a limited engagement that was to extend until June 11 if business warranted.
Paula Laurence and Ethel Griffies joined the show during its New York rehearsals. Gielgud greeted his company on the vast old stage of the Broadway Theatre (the company was only to rehearse there and open at the Shubert) beaming and trim in a bright sports jacket. Vivien entered punctually and stood in the center of the stage looking breathtaking in a raspberry wool suit. No time was wasted. The stage floor was taped, the rehearsal furniture in place, the cast was shown a picture of their set, and the rehearsals began.
They opened at the Shubert in New Haven on February 21 to good notices. New Haven was bitter cold and there was a terrible wind the entire time they were there, which kept them confined either to the Hotel Taft or to the theatre, which adjoined it. New Haven, of course, had wonderful memories for Vivien and Jack. It is where their love first bloomed, and Vivien felt quite elated to be there. But the cold was penetrating and she suffered chills and fever from the very onset of the tour.
The weather in Boston was sunnier, and Vivien and Jack even hosted an outing to Marblehead. Ethel Griffies, who was eighty-eight years old at the time, tripped over a chair in her hotel room the day of the Boston opening and broke a rib, yet went on that night strapped up and obviously in pain. Katharine Cornell came back after the performance. “Does it hurt?” Miss Cornell queried.
“Only when I speak,” Miss Griffies replied.
Paula Laurence was relieved to hear the game Miss Griffies singing “Avalon” in her dressing room in Philadelphia, the next stop on the tour. “How nice to hear you singing again,” she shouted over Miss Griffies’ strident voice.
“The last time I played this theatre/’ the grand old performer recalled, “I not only sang but I did high kicks, and I was seventy!”
They stayed at the Hotel Sylvania in Philadelphia, which at the time also sheltered José Greco and his dancing gypsies, the casts of The Trojan Women and Any Wednesday, a visiting symphony orchestra, and the Harlem Globetrotters. But the Ivanov cast was closely meshed, and they remained together during their off-hours. Vivien, as she had always done in the past, entertained individual members of the cast nightly. It had been a precedent that she and Larry had begun with Romeo and Juliet.
Snow and rain plagued them in Toronto, and by the time they reached Washington, Jack was concerned that Vivien might not be able to continue on. But Vivien persisted.
They opened at the Shubert in New York on Tuesday evening, May 3, 1966, to a glittering, star-studded first-night audience after a three-hour rehearsal demanded by Gielgud (who was forever changing exits and entrances and bits of business as well as readings). A good deal of coughing and restlessness was heard from the audience. Clearly the show was slow, at times downright boring. The critics had seen a preview performance the previous night, as Alexander Cohen had insisted on an opening night curtain of eight-thirty, which meant they would have missed the last act if they were to meet their newspaper deadlines. But the play was as much lacking in dash opening night as it had been in preview.
Vivien’s role hit terrifyingly close to home, and she would often at the end of the play and her final confrontation scene be shaken and have difficulty casting off the mood it engendered. Hers was a relatively small part, and as one reviewer said, “When she is off-stage the play too often falters.”
During the five and a half weeks the play ran in New York, Vivien and Jack stayed in a house at 160 East Seventy-second Street that belonged to Joan Fontaine—Vivien having exchanged living quarters so that Fontaine remained at Eaton Square in London during the New York run of Ivanov.
Jack wrote to Cindy on July 27 from London:
Our homecoming was made hectic and hideous by the discovery that some precious things were missing from the flat. [There had been a burglary.] Poor V was distracted as some of them belonged to Larry. So the insurance people and the CID have been in and out and made our life rather miserable. But there is one bright bit of news to relate. The new gardener and his wife have turned up trumps. The garden at Tickerage has never looked better and the inside of the house was as clean and orderly as I have ever seen it.
Vivien was ill, and though she would not admit it she did pay more attention to the doctor’s orders and rest more often than she had previously done. Yet she still had to fill Tickerage with her dear friends. On July 30 she returned there to celebrate World Cup Final Day with a host of them, Gielgud and Alan Webb among them, and to cheer England to a 4-to-2 win over West Germany. She then remained in the country for almost the entire winter, only traveling up to London on rare occasions. One time she decided the day had arrived when her little grandson Neville should be inaugurated into the grand family custom of tea at Brown’s. The six-year-old was picked up by his grandmother in the chauffeured car for the gala occasion. Jack met them directly after and Vivien was beaming and extremely proud, claiming Neville’s manners had been most exemplary and that he had to her delight invented a new dessert—ice cream with hard sauce—and his precocious taste convinced her that he would become a gourmet. Indeed she was so delighted that she insisted they repeat the rendezvous the following week at the same time.
Once again she picked the little boy up and drove him to Brown’s and once again Jack met them directly after. This time both Grandma and the child glowered at each other. It had been a terrible afternoon, and Neville had obviously behaved in a rather commonplace six-year-old manner. “He was beastly, simply dreadful. He sloshed his sauce all over the table, and spilled milk all over the tea sandwiches. I shall never take him to tea again!” she announced and, leaving the child on the curb, got into the back seat of the car. Jack helped Neville into the front and they rode without speaking to each other—the child as furious at Vivien as she was at him.
Vivien spent a quiet birthday, her fifty-third, with Jack, Bumble, and Leigh at Tickerage. She was again becoming restless, and everyone, fearing idleness might adversely affect her, was happy when she was asked to star in the London stage production of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, which was set to open on the road in late summer before coming into the West End early in the fall. She was terribly enthusiastic about the idea of doing a play in London, although she was not at all sure about the merits of A Delicate Balance. Michael Redgrave came by often and they would rehearse together.
She wrote Cindy on May 19, 1967:
I cannot understand the grand success of Gadgets book [Elia Kazan’s The Arrangement]. Noël has been here, which is always a joy. Actually well again thank heaven. I think—I think it all goes according to plan. I think I start rehearsals in July. But as all is not completely settled yet, I had better leave it at that. But it will be a great relief to be working again. Jack starts rehearsals for The Last of Mrs. Cheyney [playing the Gerald du Maurier part] on the 29th. They play Guildford for three weeks, and hope to bring it in. He is well and of course sends his dearest love. Beloved George Cukor is here preparing for Nine Tiger Men. He thinks there may be something in it for Jack. That is good news.
On May 28 Hamish and Yvonne Hamilton and Bumble were with her at Tickerage. The next day she wrote Jack at Guildford:
My Darling one—this is to tell you that you are going to be wonderful— Please try to enjoy it dear heart— All my thoughts and love are with you every minute. You are only wicked not to allow me to share tonight with you. I love
you. Your Angelica.
She returned to London that Monday, and Gertrude and Bumble were terribly alarmed at her weakened condition. She seemed suddenly to have lost a great deal of weight, her coughing spasms were worse, and Mrs. Mac said she was spitting up blood.
She was put to bed immediately and the doctor called. To everyone’s surprise, including Vivien’s, he told them the tuberculosis had spread to both lungs and that the state of her health was very critical. He begged Vivien to let him transfer her to the hospital, but she adamantly refused. The next day he tried to convince her again that she should go where she could get constant care and treatment. The answer was the same. It would take at least three months, he told her, of not moving from her bed for her to get well. She promised she would behave and take all the dreadful medications he prescribed, not to smoke or drink, to rest all the time, and to see people for only a few minutes each day. The last promise was the only one that she found almost impossible to keep.
On June 17 she scribbled a note to Cindy on the backs of two picture postcards (“Greetings from Long Island” in fire red over a map of the island, and a card from the Phillips Collection, Washington, with a photograph of Degas’ “Women Combing Their Hair”):
My Darling—isn’t this too silly—I am so cross— However everyone has been so kind and thoughtful and the play is only postponed mercifully. I am like a lying chemist shop. All sorts of perfectly repellent things to take. They say it will be three months—much shorter than the last time at least. I read and write and look at my play [A Delicate Balance] endlessly. Think of you and dearest Howard and how I would dearly love to see you, Your devoted Vivien.
