The Vintage Bride: Vivien Leigh, Part Two

When Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier first met, they were both married to other people: Vivien had married Leigh Holman, a barrister, in 1932 and Olivier had married Jill Esmond, an actress, in 1930. After carrying on an affair for some time, Vivien and Larry finally decided to leave their respective spouses and move in together, in 1937. However, they weren't able to obtain divorces from Leigh Holman and Jill Esmond for another three years.

Marriage rumours started following the couple around as early as September, 1939. Photoplay jumped on the wedding train, too, with this imaginative drawing of what Vivien Leigh should wear for the ceremony. They called it a navy blue with pink accents, dinner costume of faille taffeta that will be a stunning addition to any trousseau after the ceremony. 

"I feel that when a man loves a woman and vice-versa, there isn't much sense in keeping it quiet," Vivien Leigh said in a newspaper interview. In January, while Vivien was vacationing at Lake Arrowhead, the divorce proceedings finally began.

Vivien's mother, Gertrude Hartley, weighed in on the future Oliviers, "After the divorces, they will be happy as larks. They adore each other. After all, that's all that anyone can demand from life."  Olivier and Leigh's respective divorces became absolute later that year in August.

"To us it is apparent that we are planning to marry fairly soon," said Olivier.

Now that they were officially divorced, they could, at last, become Mr. and Mrs. Olivier. Vivien and Larry decided to keep their upcoming marriage, and all of its details, a secret. The only people who knew in advance were Ronald Colman and his wife, Benita Hume. Benita even went to her jeweller and purchased Vivien's wedding ring, as a ring for herself, so as to not arouse suspicion for the happy couple. Garson Kanin was then drafted as best man and Katharine Hepburn as maid of honor.

On Thursday night, August 29, Vivien, Larry, Garson Kanin and Katharine Hepburn drove to Santa Barbara. The ceremony was held at the San Ysidro resort ranch belonging to Ronald Colman and/or Mr. and Mrs. Al Weingand (I've never looked into the ownership of the ranch, so depending on which newspaper article or biography you read, the owner somewhat varies).

As soon as Thursday became Friday, at 12:01 am on August 30, 1940, the couple were married by Judge Fred Harsh. They exchanged wedding vows outside, in the garden, facing east toward England.

"Larry and I sat talking about whether or not we really should get married and then we arrived and stood outside in the open air facing England and it was one minute past midnight and we were married. The service was cut so short by the judge that all we did was to say the 'I do's,'  I wanted to say 'I love, honour and obey' and I kept complaining that the judge was cutting my best lines but all he said was 'I now pronounce you man and wife. Bingo!’" -Vivien Leigh

Apparently, Olivier had told Judge Harsh that they wanted a very short ceremony. "Okay. I'll give you the shortest ceremony you ever saw," the Judge reportedly replied.

According to Katharine Hepburn's biographer, Christopher Andersen (An Affair to Remember), the ceremony itself lasted for only three minutes. "The justice of the peace, by now thoroughly sloshed, kept calling Vivien 'Lay' and the groom 'Oliver.'" 

Strangely enough, though they'd been part of the wedding planning, the Colmans didn't attend the nuptials. Instead, they went out on their yacht and waited for the newly married Oliviers to join them. The happy couple didn't arrive until after 3:00 am and then celebrated with a small white cake and champagne. Vivien and Larry spent their honeymoon on the Colmans' yacht before returning to Hollywood.

One reason, that Vivien and Larry snuck away from Hollywood for their wedding, was to avoid the hoopla they thought the press would bring to the ceremony. However, they did such a great job of hiding their elopement, they began to fear that no one would discover their secret.

In 1960, Ronald Colman recalled the events of that weekend. He reported that the newlyweds were slightly anxious that their nuptials had yet to be reported on the radio.

“By 9 o’clock (in the evening on August 31st) we might have been described as definitely fidgety. After all, there’s not much point in having a secret the other fellow doesn’t want to know.

‘We certainly pulled it off, didn’t we?’ I said.

‘We certainly did,’ said Larry gloomily, downing some apple pie.

“At 10 o’clock, thank goodness, the story broke and thinly disguised relief was plain on every face.

‘Too bad,’ said Larry heartily.

‘Too good to last,’ sighed Vivien, with an incandescent smile.

‘Well, that’s the way it goes,’ remarked Benita wittily. After that, we had a very happy ending.”

The Oliviers had nothing to worry about as word of their nuptials had been reported earlier in the day in the newspapers. By the time the couple returned to Hollywood, they had made headlines around the world and were greeted with a press conference, from which these pictures originate. The caption on the above picture reads: Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh having won freedom from former mates say it with smiles as Mr. and Mrs. O. Honeymoon is now over.

Read about Vivien's wedding to Leigh Holman here.
Read about Olivier's wedding to Jill Esmond here.

Next Sunday's vintage bride will be Vivien's daughter, Suzanne Holman Farrington.


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On Top of the World

Vintage Article from April 1940

(Author's name not given)

During those long months when "Gone with the Wind" was in production, the film colony never got to know Vivien Leigh. She led the life of a recluse. Then she conquered the screen as Scarlett O'Hara; and became free to make a second conquest of Hollywood.

I watched Vivien enter the Trocadero with a dinner party this week- and heard the gasp go round the room. For her beauty is lit by a brilliant vitality that puts all your blonde beauties in the shade.

Vivien trailing her scarlet chiffons, with sprigs of white lilac tucked into that black upswept hair, and her slanting green eyes glittering against her magnolia-white skin puts a new emphasis upon glamour.

Today she radiates success- in her shining eyes and glowing smile. Small wonder that she bewitches the hardest people in the world. For she is the heroine of romance-- romance in her film triumph: romance in her colorful private life.

Now that "Gone with the Wind" is released, the story of Vivien's initial discouragement can be told. She created Scarlett O'Hara in an atmosphere of exacting work, work and then more work. Energetic and impatient, she was at the studio at 7 o'clock every day and drove herself home to her modest apartment every evening. Producer David O. Selznick and director Victor Fleming were marvellous to her, she says, but she was thoroughly homesick.

The demands of her work may have a good deal to do with this- she had no chance to visit old friends or make new ones: no chance to enjoy the many pastimes to be found in or near the film town.

Occasionally she dined with Ronald Colman and his wife (Benita Hume). Her sole recreation was swimming at the George Cukor home on Sunday afternoons; she was most upset when Cukor, who had directed the opening scenes of "Gone with the Wind," was replaced by Fleming. She takes every opportunity of stressing the debt that Scarlett owes to Mr. Cukor.

On the set she lunched in her dressing-room - rarely having a guest. And constantly there was the pressure of outside opinion- the doubts and criticisms of the people who had waited three years already to see "Gone with the Wind"-and who wondered if she could make it.

It was a tremendous responsibility- carrying- largely on her shoulders the burden of success- or failure. Money problems are not supposed to worry stars. But Vivien, shrewd, intelligent, knew that a fortune- a fortune of a million pounds sterling- was sunk into the picture.

Her private life was complicated by her love for Laurence Olivier -the English star whom she had followed to Hollywood to see. If Vivien had never made that romantic visit- she would not have become Scarlett O'Hara. But she left her home, and her small daughter, Suzanne, in London. Vivien's husband, Leigh Holman from whom she was separated, was still her husband. Olivier's wife, Jill Esmond, was in London too.

Then both tremendous problems were resolved. "Gone with the Wind," as I have already told you, is the biggest success in screen history. And two divorce suits begun in London have left the way open for marriage between Vivien and Laurence Olivier.

Now Vivien is embarked upon her MGM drama, "Waterloo Bridge." Laurence is in the same studio, making "Pride and Prejudice” with Greer Garson.

Success as Scarlett; happiness as Vivien Leigh: the English star is now on top of the world.

 

A Tribute to Larry: May 22, 1907 - July 11, 1989

Today is the 25th anniversary of the passing of Sir Laurence Olivier. Many have called him the world's greatest actor. Indeed, he mesmerized theatregoers and movie audiences alike, for six decades with his stellar performances.

Whether on stage or in a movie, from breaking the rules on Romeo and Juliet, from capturing every woman's imagination as Heathcliff, to his Academy Award winning Hamlet, to alternating nights between Shaw and Shakespeare, Caesar and Antony, Laurence Olivier gave himself fully to each role and inhabited those characters he played. 

Peggy Ashcroft and Laurence Olivier in Romeo and Juliet

"Larry's Romeo was denigrated by every critic but one- St John Ervine- was proof of their blindness to the challenging and original road he was taking, and was to make his own, in the classics. Happy Days indeed!" --Peggy Ashcroft

Wuthering Heights

"But an actor was there, an actor one had never seen on the screen before. The embers took fire; light blazed; with delighted astonishment one saw a new Olivier. The role of Heathcliff might have been made for him." --Dilys Powell


Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennett and Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice

"Good looks are not sufficient, or even great talent. Laurence Olivier has both. Tall, dark, and handsome, he is a splendid actor. But, in addition, that certain magic spark in a player's personality must have the power to bring out all the sweet yearnings of an adolescent and to make older women behave in a very silly fashion." --John Davies


While in costume for Hamlet, Olivier receives his Oscar for Henry V from fellow actor Ray Milland

"He was a brilliant runner of theatres, a brilliant man of the theatre, a brilliant impresario, a very great film director, and remains the greatest actor of his generation." --Peter Hall

Olivier with his second wife, Vivien Leigh; photo by Angus McBean

"I believe Laurence Olivier to be the greatest actor of our time."

"To have seen her [Vivien] and Larry together in their prime was to have glimpsed a kind of divinity." --Noel Coward (1974, 1967)

Olivier and Vivien Leigh as the title characters in
 Antony and Cleopatra

"There are at least three qualities which explain the Olivier phenomenon. The first, of course, is sheer talent. The next quality is sheer animal magnetism. Third, I suppose, is ambition. No question but that Larry has had colossal ambition." --Anthony Quayle

As Archie Rice in The Entertainer

"No man has graced his profession better than Larry Olivier has graced ours. He represents the ultimate in acting. He's the actor's most admired actor." -- Cary Grant 

"In an interview with the Daily Telegraph Magazine, Joan Plowright recalled one night when Ingmar Bergman and Olivier 'talked about both having ministers for fathers and what effect that had on them. A certain amount of guilt complex. And maybe this compulsive need to work. An ingrained need to work. An ingrained sense of service.'" --from Olivier by Logan Gourlay

Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman

"It is difficult for me to believe that he is gone- what a rich legacy he leaves behind- not only of his brilliant talents and extraordinary range of achievement, but the memory of his own vital, courageous personality, his determination and power as performer, manager, director and defier of lightning, the originality of his approach to every new and challenging venture, his physical bravery, not only on the stage but in the valiant way in which he faced his few failures and defeats, and above all his refusal to give up when he became so ill." --John Gielgud

Larry was married three times during his lifetime, all actresses: Jill Esmond (1930 to 1940), Vivien Leigh (1940 to 1960) and Joan Plowright (1961 to 1989 (his death)). He fathered four children, sadly none with Vivien, though she did suffer two miscarriages during their marriage. Olivier won multiple awards for his acting and directing, including two special Oscars.

In Hollywood, he has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In London, there is a life sized statue of Olivier outside the Royal National Theatre and a commemorative stone for him at Westminster Abbey. Additionally, the Laurence Olivier Awards for acting are given out annually in his name.

In Memoriam 1913 - 1967

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Vivien Leigh, who passed away at the young age of 53, from tuberculosis. She worked hard her entire life to be successful at her craft. For myself, and many others, she is the world's greatest stage and screen actress.

From the child who announced she would not sing, but recite; to the starlet who captured the world's imagination as Scarlett; to the award-winning actress who gave herself completely to each of her roles; today, we mourn the world's loss and celebrate the life Vivien lived.

Vivian Mary Hartley and her mother Gertrude Hartley

Vivien was born in India, in November 1913, to British parents. At the age of 6, she was sent to a convent school in England and only saw her parents sporadically over the next few years. It was here that Vivien made the decision to one day become a great actress.

Vivien on her wedding day to Leigh Holman

In 1932, Vivien married Leigh Holman, a barrister, at the age of 19. The following year, she gave birth to her only child, a daughter she named Suzanne. Shortly after her daughter's birth, Vivien returned to the acting world. Her breakout role came from the play, The Mask of Virtue, as the courtesan Henriette, in 1935. Her uncommon beauty combined with her mesmerizing performance turned the critics on their ears and they dubbed her the Fame In A Night girl. Film companies took note and the offers poured in for her choosing. Vivien accepted an offer from Alexander Korda's company, London Film Productions, for 50,000 GBP for five years.

The Mask of Virtue

Shortly after this, she began a torrid affair with a married actor named Laurence Olivier. This affair culminated with the two of them leaving their respective spouses in 1937, so they could move in together and live as a couple. In August 1940, after obtaining divorces, and after they each had made cinematic history (Larry as Heathcliff and Vivien as Scarlett), the two married quietly in California.

Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier

World War II broke out and the Oliviers, being very patriotic, returned home to England. Vivien said, I know London is not the safest place in the world right now, but it is still my home and that's where I want to be. 

Part of Vivien's war service included going on a tour with ENSA, which is the British version of the USO. In 1943, Vivien, along with several other performers, went to North Africa to visit the troops. They toured several locations and even performed for the King of England. Among her performances, she did a special recitation mocking her character Scarlett O'Hara called The Terror of Tara.

The Doctor's Dilemma

In addition to her film roles, Vivien often portrayed characters on the stage, tackling numerous plays, including a few by Shaw and Shakespeare. She said she preferred being on the stage to making movies, a sentiment shared by Olivier. When she and Olivier were asked if they had ever thought of quitting the stage, the couple replied, Often, but it's an idle dream.

Duel of Angels

Larry and Vivien remained married until 1960. After her divorce, Vivien continued to act and made her final two movies, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and Ship of Fools. She also went on a world tour with her companion, Jack Merivale. Marriage rumours circulated around the two, but those rumours were in vain.

Jack Merivale and Vivien, 1961

Late Friday night, on July 7, 1967, Vivien was found in her bedroom by her partner, Jack Merivale. He recalled, And I... looked in the bedroom and there she was, asleep, with Poo Jones curled up beside her. And I went into the kitchen to make myself some soup out of a tin. I had that and I went back into the bedroom, and she was lying on the floor. So I tried to wake her, with no result, and then she wasn't breathing so I tried mouth to mouth resuscitation, what I knew of it, and no result whatsoever. Then I was pretty sure she was dead." (from Hugo Vickers' biography, Vivien Leigh).Vivien had passed away, leaving this world far too soon, at the age of 53.

Vivien Leigh, 1965

Saturday night, July 8th, London's theater district went dark for an hour in tribute to this great lady.

At her memorial service, her good friend Emlyn Williams read the following lines from John Donne:

She, to whom all this world was but a stage.
Where all sat hark'ning how her youthful age
Should be employ'd, because in all she did
Some Figure of the Golden times was hid.
Who could not lack, whate'er this world could give,
Because she was the form, that made it live.


Rest in Peace, Vivien.



All the World's Going to Love This Lover

Motion Picture Magazine, 1932

by Elisabeth Goldbeck

He looks a bit like Ronald Colman, which isn‘t exactly an accident— but that's where their resemblance ends. Laurence Olivier is younger, livelier and more impulsive- and he’s had all sorts of acting experience. Moreover, he’s desperately in love- and acts it on the screen. Can you think of anything that will hold him back?

Laurence Olivier up to now, has been known to movie fans chiefly as the man who looks like Ronald Colman. Great prophecies for his screen future have been made on the basis that he's a younger and livelier edition of the reticent Ronnie. He has just turned twenty-four.

Naturally, Laurence hates this kind of publicity, though he admits that on the screen there is a striking resemblance between them. This came about because Laurence played Ronald's part in Beau Geste on the London stage.

The English public had been mad about Colman in the picture version, Laurence explained, so the producer thought, in his whimsical way, that it would be well for me to look as much like him as possible. He told me to do so, and first of all to grow a mustache and cut it like Colman's.

This he did, with the aforementioned results. But it would be too bad if Laurence were to be regarded as a claimant for Colman's honors. He has too much charm and individuality and talent of his own to deserve such a fate. And, moreover, the two men are really not in the least alike— except for that general similarity which all well-bred Englishmen seem to have.

Laurence is taller, and slimmer, and more impulsive, and livelier, and not one-tenth as mysterious. His eyes are blue, instead of brown. He's happily married, and didn't have any parental opposition to his stage career, and he's gregarious and accessible. Really not at all like Ronnie— except in a great yen for England.

His Most Surprising Habit

 He has an air of complete indifference, an isn't-it-all-silly manner, as if everything he said and did were quite by accident, with no serious intent. He alternates between an attitude of patience and bursts of extravagant enthusiasm that cause him to throw himself around, gesticulate, give imitations, and then suddenly subside into his former inertia. Nothing in his conversation may seem to account for these wild changes of mien. It's as if an electrical connection were made, and after sparkling a moment, abruptly broken. He seems completely flexible in mind and body. And he has that disarming characteristic of many young Englishmen—in the very nicest way, he assumes that the world is his oyster.

Laurence has been married for a year and a half to Jill Esmond (who made her talkie debut as Ruth Chatterton's daughter in Once a Lady), and they're terribly in love. The press agents don't want the public to know of the marriage, because they're afraid the fans won't be properly thrilled when Jill and Laurence are teamed on the screen. But if the public knew how romantic they are in private, they'd be more thrilled than ever.

For instance, here's a typical episode in the life of the romantic Oliviers. They decided to go fishing at Catalina Island. Not having much money, they borrowed some from the butler. They missed the boat, and with a total capital of sixty-three dollars, they flew over to the island.

Laurence Olivier and his wife, Jill Esmond

Which Proves They're in Love

We couldn't afford the good hotel, said Laurence in one of his illuminated moments, so we stayed at a lovely little dump where we just slept— got nothing, not even a cup of tea. We couldn't afford meals, because we wanted to go deep-sea fishing the next day— and that costs money. So we caught some sand-dabs, and took them into a little restaurant and asked them to cook them for us. We just acted as if they were accustomed to do that sort of thing. The next day, we went out in a boat and I caught a marlin. It was swell. I did everything wrong, the boatman was furious with me, and I didn't deserve to catch it. In the midst of it, Jill held it while I put another reel in the camera. Later we hired a motor boat and ran into a school of porpoises, leaping about. We headed right into them and took motion pictures. That night we caught more dabs and took them in to be cooked.

After a couple of days of that, they came back to civilization, broke, sunburned, and very apologetic because the fish weighed only ninety-seven pounds. You know you have to be in love to do things like that. We had a swell time, Laurence was really flashing now, because we made our own fun. We do that wherever we go.

His Father Advised the Stage

The Oliviers met while appearing in a play together in London, where Laurence had been acting ever since he left school. He was born thirty miles from London in the English countryside, and his father was a reverend. Just an ordinary country parson, as Laurence explains. He went to public school at Oxford. And he sang in a choir in London— the same choir in which Ralph Forbes sang. All English actors started out as choir boys, it seems. Ralph, Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, Anthony Hushell, and the rest. They all gathered at Olivier's house one night recently and sang anthems and masses, which they all knew by heart— the most extraordinary Hollywood gathering you ever saw.

At his father's suggestion, strangely enough, he became an actor. He had always wanted to be one, so he worked hard, both at training school and in stock companies, around London. From then on, he always worked. He never missed a week. Consequently, young Olivier has a list of past experience that is simply appalling to the Hollywood mind, and cannot be assimilated all in one dose. It's best just to say that he has had amazingly thorough training, in every conceivable type of part, from irresponsible youth to dashing old roues. Of late, however, he has specialized in the romantic kind.

He was the original Captain Stanhope in the London production of Journey's End, and played in Noel Coward's Private Lives both in London and New York. It was during the New York run of the latter that both he and Jill received picture offers. Laurence couldn't decide offhand whether to accept RKO's proposition or not. His indecision passed for caginess, and each time he hesitated they made him a better offer, until at last, with no lawyer to guide him, he signed a contract with all sorts of desirable provisions and promises, and plenty of leeway for returning to the stage each year, if he had the urge.

His Screen Career to Date

Laurence was to have had his screen start as Pola Negri's leading man in her comeback picture, A Woman Commands. But with one thing and another, production was delayed, so he was rushed into the romantic lead of Friends and Lovers, opposite Lily Damita. And then, just when the Negri picture was ready to start, he contracted jaundice. When he bleached out, they loaned him to Fox for The Yellow Ticket, in which—perhaps because he was English— he seemed to make Elissa Landi act more natural than in any previous picture.
  

Westward Passage

And that's about all, sighed Laurence, lapsing into his patient mood, except that I think American cops are unbearably rude. It wasn't hard to rouse him, once that subject had been mentioned. It's very hard for English people to get on with a certain kind of American. It's mostly the lower classes. They seem to resent the English. These Irish cops, for instance — and all cops do seem to be Irish— hate Englishmen. If a traffic cop stops you, when he finds you're an Englishman, he becomes hard-boiled and says insulting things that he wouldn't be allowed to say in England. It must be because of our accent. They think anyone who has one is trying to be high-hat. Many Americans are annoyed because the English speak their language in a way that they can't understand. They forget that, after all, it's the English language— spoken the way it was originally spoken.

How Americans Amaze Him

Another reason some Americans resent us is because so many undesirable English people have come here and represented themselves as being typically English— very high-hat and ill-mannered poseurs, who have prejudiced everyone against us. Just as we think of the typical American as a millionaire, very crude and noisy, with a long black cigar in his mouth, and horrible manners. Some Americans have manners so much better than the English that they make me feel, 'What should I do now? How should I act?' But most English people have no conception of what a nice American is like. 

What amazes Laurence most is the casual way in which Americans are always traveling to the end of the earth and back. My home is only thirty miles from London, he said, but when my family goes up to London, they take days to prepare. They pack and fuss and stew and get as excited as if they were going around the world. The whole house is in an uproar. I wish you could have seen their faces when I first told them I was going to America. They all had a stricken look, as if I were about to be lost forever. I kept saying, 'It's only four days across, you know,' but they regarded it as a frightful journey.

And, of course, now that I'm in California, they haven't the remotest idea where I am. This is just too far for their imaginations. It's all very hazy and mythical. If I am any prophet at all, Laurence will be in the mythical land for some time to come. He is exactly the hero you pictured in a hundred English novels. You can forget about the resemblance to Ronald Colman. Young Mr. Olivier will get along on his own merits.