TMS Muse of the Week: Vivien Leigh
(Laszlo Willinger)
While watching Vivien Leigh’s final film, Stanley Kramer’s Ship of Fools (1965), about a month ago, I realized the star might truly be the best actor from the old Hollywood era to attempt accents for characters. The legend goes that when the raven haired beauty was cast as Scarlett O’Hara in her breakthrough film, Victor Fleming’s Gone with the Wind (1939), a Daughter of the Confederacy uttered at the official Atlanta premiere: “Better an English girl than a Yankee.” If you watch the screen adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel, you’ll notice the leading lady is pretty much the only actor actually making an effort to sound southern. Clark Gable and Olivia de Havilland use their real voices and Leslie Howard didn’t even bother hiding his natural British dialect. But Vivien wasn’t just another Hollywood starlet. She was classically trained at RADA in London, and was locally popular in both West End and other stage productions as well as UK produced feature films. When she auditioned and screen tested for Scarlett, the man behind the epic production—producer and studio head David O. Selznick—assumed she might be too much of an ‘English rose’ for such an American character. But Selznick’s own brother and talent agent, Myron Selznick, was apparently convinced enough, as he introduced Vivien to David the day she arrived in Los Angeles with: “Hey, genius, here’s your Scarlett O’Hara.”
Up until the whole world knew the face and name of Vivien Leigh in December 1939, those paying attention to her across the pond might have recognized her from William K. Howard’s costume drama Fire Over England (1937) and Jack Conway’s college set comedy A Yank at Oxford (1938). Or for her roles in various stage interpretations of Will Shakespeare classics, like ‘Hamlet’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ both in 1937. A large amount of press she received throughout her career was for her professional and romantic relationship with frequent co-star Laurence Olivier. The famous pair led many projects in the theatre and cinema, most of which were Shakespearean or other famous period pieces. The point is, Vivien was very, very English. So it was a huge testament both MGM and Selznick International had enough faith in her to take on the most beloved female protagonist in US literature. Not only did she win over audiences everywhere, but she won Best Actress at the Oscars, and 12 years later won the same prize for another famous southern female character, Blanche DuBois in Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).
(MGM Pictures / Warner Bros.)
The thing people always note about Vivien is that she was the proper, posh thespian most known for playing two women from the American South. Scarlett alone would have made Vivien a part of film history, but Blanche solidified her as a legend. It’s funny when you look up the few on-camera interviews with Vivien and hear her distinct English accent compared to how her voice sounds as Scarlett and Blanche. In most of the other Hollywood productions she appeared in, like Ship of Fools and Jose Quintero’s The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961), she has a standard American accent as well. The latter was also the second Tennessee Williams adaptation Viv co-starred in after Streetcar. While not as impressive film wise as the B&W classic, it shows that the dark-haired lady clearly had a handle on how to play the playwright’s signature female protagonists.
Fans discovering Vivien’s legacy are usually surprised by how short her resume is. Only 19 films in 30 years, with twice as many stage credits. Of course there are various reasons for this. One was because Vivien always loved the theatre more than screen acting, like most actors of her generation. Another was her tumultuous relationship with Olivier, which ended in 1960 after 20 years of marriage involving many heated episodes, separations and affairs. The actress was also a mother to daughter Suzanne [b. 1933] from a previous flawed marriage, on top of being medically diagnosed as ‘manic depressive,’ or more likely bipolar by today’s standards. Because of her intense mood swings and depressive episodes, this occasionally affected her career decisions, such as having to drop out of William Dieterle’s Elephant Walk (1954) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)—yet another Williams adaptation. Still, despite her troubles, Vivien successfully won a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical for David Shaw’s 1963 Broadway production of ‘Tovarich’ along with her two Oscars. She sadly died in 1967 at 54 from tuberculosis after smoking her whole adult life, but her presence still lives on in cinema. We’ll never know what her live performances were like for NYC and London revivals of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ (1940), ‘12th Night’ (1955) and ‘MacBeth’ (1955), but we still have her films in between GWTW and Streetcar, most notably Mervyn LeRoy’s romantic drama Waterloo Bridge (1940) and Alexander Korda’s period romance That Hamilton Woman (1941).
Whether as a feisty, strong-willed southern belle in Civil War era Georgia or a recently unemployed schoolteacher on the verge of a breakdown in 1940s New Orleans, Ms. Leigh had the range and versatility Hollywood stars have been chasing ever since her prime.