"I first set eyes upon the possessor of this wondrous beauty on the stage at the Ambassador's Theatre, where she was playing n Ashley Dukes's The Mask of Virtue, in which she had attracted considerable attention--though not, at the time, chiefly on account of her promise as an actress. Apart from her looks, which were magical, she possessed beautiful poise; her neck looked almost too fragile to support her head and bore it with a sense of surprise, and something to the pride of a master juggler who can make a brilliant maneuvre appear almost accidental. She also had something else: an attraction of the most perturbing nature I had ever encountered. It may have been the strangely touching spark of dignity in her that enslaved the ardent legion of her admirers." 'We shall probably end up fighting. People always get sick of each other when making a film."--Larry to Vivien on the first day of shooting Fire Over England at Denham Studios
"We could not keep from touching each other, making love almost within Jill's vision."
"I never thought it was possible to love anybody so much or quite so completely, or that anybody should be so wonderfully abundant and prodigal to me in everything I've wanted most. As we have settled down and become firmer in our minds, and more peaceful in our hearts, our life together has become so unbelievably beautiful. We have been through a terribly difficult two years...but I really believe that our love will justify itself in the end."
"Just look at Vivien tonight. If David doesn't fall for that, I'll be surprised."Larry to Myron Selznick when they took Vivien to the set of Gone with the Wind
"It is difficult to make a decision to work apart, but I believe we were wise to make it, and that it will bid more for our ultimate happiness to choose to work (even if we don't like it very much) at the expense of our temporary personal happiness."Larry to Gertrude Hartley in 1939
"I couldn't explain to him or make him understand that I was never able to believe that I would ever really come, even the day I left I couldn't believe it; but I'm beginning to believe it now alright--always in my mind there has been the sort of hope, the self-deceiving "telling myself" that I would see you again soon, that somehow you would come out here, somehow I would get to New York--even if we had to meet in space we could and would do it."Larry in a letter to Vivien when he was in Hollywood starting on Wuthering Heights and was depressed because she wasn't there.
"In 1947 my contentment seemed full to overbrimming. I have everything, I would boast, so much more than anybody could deserve: the love of my life, more perfect than anyone could dream of..."
"If I should die, think only this of me..." "I could not live without my Vivien Leigh."Larry and a friend passing the time by writing poems back and forth during the war
"We never converse. We only confer."
"Look at her, shaking those little hips." "How you must love her." "Right now I do not love her mind, but her body, yes. Actually, we're trying to have a baby."Larry to his son, Tarquin in 1956 while watching Vivien walking outside with her cat
"She was brilliant, and in my opinion the best Cleopatra ever. She was radiant and beautiful and shone through the lines as if they had been specially written with her in mind...Vivien and I were sailing, we were set in the galaxy, and fortunately everyone wanted to see us."
"I wish to God that I could support that strength with the confident assurance of alrightness between V and me, but terrible sham it is, I do not honestly feel I can do that."Larry in a letter to Vivien's mother offering his condolences about the death of Vivien's father, Ernest
"I will miss Vivien every day of my life."Larry to Hester Olivier (his sister-in-law) at the end of his marriage to Vivien
"This, this was love. This was the real thing. And that voice; I had forgotten how lovely her voice was."Larry to his son, Tarquin shortly before he died
"It always made me so angry when people said Vivien Leigh wasn't talented. A person has to have talent to be beautiful on the stage or on the screen."
Vivien on Larry
"I'm not going to let any film offers from Hollywood or plays on Broadway attract me away from my own country. My place is here beside Larry."
"I think he is the perfect husband."Vivien in 1946
"The stern reality is that Anna Karenina starts next month and so does Hamlet for which Larry's hair is now an alarming ginger en route to being a ravishing blonde. It is also of an unusual cut which frightens the children in the village!"Vivien to Bernard Berenson
"There has been a heat-wave during which I have to pretend I was living in Moscow during deepest winter!--covered in velvets and sables and corseted down to 19 inches. I thought this last would gain me some sympathy when I told Larry. But not a bit of it. He too is corseted and pretending it's winter in Elsinore! It really does seem a strange way of earning a living sometimes."Vivien to Bernard Berenson in 1947
"Goddam Larry is fucking his Ophelia - I'm losing him to a bloody child. I was barely out of my teens when Larry started fucking me."Vivien to a friend in 1947 (note: Larry actually did NOT have an affair with Jean Simmons)
"I realize that the memories I cherish most are not the first night successes, but of simple, everyday things: walking through our garden in the country after rain; sitting outside a cafe in provence, drinking the vin de pays; staying at a little hotel in an English market town with larry, in the early days after our marriage, when he was serving in the Fleet Air Arm, and I was touring Scotland, so that we had to make long treks to spend weekends together."Vivien in 1953
"Leigh taught me how to live, your father taught me how to love, and Jack taught me how to be alone."Vivien to Tarquin Olivier
"We were young, we were beautiful, and we lived for each other. It was a selfish seizure that burned itself up. One must not fool oneself."On the end of their marriage
"Lady Olivier wishes to say that Sir Laurence has asked for a divorce in order to marry Miss Joan Plowright. She will naturally do whatever he wishes."
"I had a choice. Either to be an actress or to be Larry's wife. If I had decided just to be Larry's wife, I'm sure I'd still be married to him."Vivien to Peter Wyngarde
"When you've lived with a man for 25 years, you don't just suddenly stop loving him. I miss Larry terribly."
"I'd rather have lived a short life with Larry than face a long one without him."Vivien to Radie Harris shortly before she died
"I will always feel married to Mr. Olivier, in one way or another."
Friends and co-stars on the Oliviers
"She doesn't care a bugger about that child, only corrects its manners, and shows no affection whatever. She spent the whole time simply torn with anxiety of whether could go to you or not, or whether you were fucking someone else or not! You!! One cannot help feeling that Vivien has a rather shallow outlook on that question! I suppose that when a girl has fucked a bit herself she finds it difficult to understand constancy. One of your great qualities I should have thought. We did our best to convince her anyway."Helen Spencer, a former fling of Larry's, writing to him in Hollywood about how Vivien had come to visit with Suzanne
"They both came to our wedding and they were incandescent. They were so in love and it was wonderful to see them. I always say I spent my honeymoon at the Gate Theatre because directly after we were married--on the Monday they were rehearsing again. Vivien was ravishing in it. I don't think anybody has ever given Vivien enough credit for her performances. She was a thundering good actress."Elspeth March
"She used to play it up a bit and flirt with other men in the company just to make him jealous because he used to sit there watching her rehearse and he would embarrass everyone by getting erections."Terence Morgan referring to the 1948 Australia tour with the Old Vic
"They were enchanting, so much in love. It was one of their best times. They liked it to be seen. It was not a secret love affair."Rachel Kempson
"Larry was number one for her. Scarlett O'Hara was number two. I never saw two people so happily in love in my life and it was a delight to be around them."Sunny Alexander
"Vivien is almost incredibly lovely. Hollywood is at her feet. She knows if all else fails she has merely to go out there to make a fortune. meanwhile she can experiment and indulge her fancies in the theatre...She is madly in love with her husband--who adores her--and is convinced he is a much greater person than herself."Cecil Beaton in 1942
"He (Larry) also wanted to appear with Vivien Leigh because he was very much in love with her. But his love was second--a close second, but still second to his obsession with acting the great parts."Peter Glenville about Larry's frustration of not being able to act much while serving in the Fleet Air Arm in 1942
"Because of the intensity of the feeling that she was displaying both in her body and in her voice, I half expected at and moment a Freudian slip of the tongue. Mark Antony...Larry Olivier. For I was to hear exactly the same intonation so often when she was speaking, off the set, no longer of Cleopatra's great love, but of her own."Godfrey Winn visiting on the set of Caesar and Cleopatra, 1944
"What I felt about Larry is that he was a giant in show business, THE giant. But as a man he was very light. Vivien was not light in that way at all. From one room to another he could switch his temperament. This is one of the actor's great talents. Vivien was a very strong woman, very intelligent, very streetwise, very generous. Larry was not really interested in people, you see. He would observe someone, thinking that would make a good something for Shylock, but he was picking up mannerisms; he wasn't wondering what that person was like. He was a very light, amusing man, and he was very patient...he hated being alone, and if he was going to eat in a restaurant someone was dragged along, and you could have a perfectly ordinary conversation as if he wasn't the greatest actor in the world."--Peter Hiley
"The marriage had been heaven the first ten years - hell, the second. Now it was over. He felt such concern for her, such pain at the ending of all. But he knew he would not survive if he did not get away" Lauren Bacall
"It was the last age of ellegance and nobody in the theatre today has the time, energy or money to live on that scale." -- Rachel Kempson
"The trouble with Vivien was she absolutely adored Olivier. She worshipped him. But when she was with him, she couldn't resist needling him like a bullfighter with a bull. She couldn't resist trying to keep him up to her scratch and Larry couldn't do it."Colin Clark
"In Poland Alan Webb ot very drunk and had gone staggering off into Warsaw. I'd packed all his clothes and kept a seat for him on the plane. He came in: 'I don't sit next to fucking spear carriers. I'm a star.' Olivier was sitting with Vivien and said, 'Don't worry. I'll go and sit next to David. You go and sit next to Vivien.' There were little things like that. I was very surprised when it all went crash. I think in many ways she took him for granted. She couldn't believe it when he met a younger woman who he thought was the cat's whiskers."David Conville
"She continued to worship him [Larry] as the greatest living actor and Wyngarde remembered that, before every performance, 'in the wings just before her entrance she would pause and there was that little gasp of breath as if to say: 'This one is for you.'"
"There was so much love between the two of them. If it hadn't been for her illness those two would have remained together for the rest of their lives. But his nerves started to go. At first Larry refused to go saying, 'I can't abandon a person when she needs me.' But he had to do it."Irina Tennant
"Tony Quayle had this wonderful theory that they had made a pact with the devil. He said 'You can have everything, all the riches, and you will be King and Queen of the theatre but there's only one condition: You must stay together for the rest of your lives.' That was the kind of feeling there was--that they were bound together irrevocably because it was THE great love affair. Like the Windsors they could not part."Maxine Audley
"Larry Olivier really didn't approve of my marrying Elizabeth. What he said to me was this: 'I went from Vivien Leigh to Joan Plowright and you have gone from a Joan Plowright in Sybil to a Vivien Leigh with Elizabeth. And that is the wrong way around.'"Richard Burton on Larry's warning his about marrying superstar Elizabeth Taylor in 1964. Burton and Taylor would be divorced and married...twice and indeed gained a status with the public very much like Larry had with Vivien
Two remembrances by Stewart Granger (thanks to Laura S. for typing these out)
'Johnny and Mary Mills invited me to a New Year's Eve party and I arranged to pick up Larry and Vivien. Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer, in order to save petrol, which was still rationed. Johnny chose to offer the most peculiar mixture of drinks at this bash: rum cocktails following by some rather sweet champagne. No one was partaking too freely but dear Vivien, thinking that Johnny would be hurt, downed large quantities of this bilious mixture with disastrous results. On the way home she started to get very sick and, as the Mills lived way out in the country, the Great West Road was dotted by Vivien's upchucking all the way home. We dropped off Rex and Lilli and eventually a very pale and shaken Vivien was helped out of the car by Larry.
"Oh, my God, where's my purse?" she moaned. "I've lost my purse with all those lovely presents."
Over the years Larry had given her a valuable jewel-encrusted compact, lipstick holder and cigarette case. We searched the car fanatically, but no bag. Vivien must have dropped it during one of her excursions into the bushes - but which bush? She had been throwing up at frequent intervals along thirty miles of freeway. We dismissed all thoughts of searching for her missing property and Larry accompanied a now sobbing Vivien into their house. On the way back I suddenly had a vision of the handbag lying in a gutter. I saw it clearly. It was now about four in the morning and I asked Rushton (his driver?) if he would mind going back to take a look, and we set off, keeping our eyes glued to the other side of the road. We drove for miles and I beginning to think my psychic flash had been wishful thinking when there was the bag, exactly as I'd pictured it. I leapt out, half expecting everything to have been stolen, but to my amazement it was all there.
We drove home triumphantly and at lunchtime the next day I called Vivien to offer my sympathies. When she tearfully told me what a terrible hangover she had and how awful she felt about her loss I said I would be over as I had a small New Year's gift for her. I arrived with the bag covered in layers of tissue paper and hidden in a box covered in ribbons. Vivien took it rather half-heartedly and slowly started unwrapping it. I went into the next room where Larry was dejectedly sipping black coffee. As he was telling me how he'd warned Viv not to drink those bloody cocktails we heard a scream.
"My bag! My Jewels! Jimmy! Jimmy, where did you find them? Larry, look, they're here - they're all here." After profuse thanks and kisses I went home glowing with the success of my little miracle.'
'I found myself listening to Larry analyzing his feelings about divorce. He would go out riding over the ranch all day and come back in the evening and tell us his thoughts. He still loved Vivien but had fallen in love with Joan Plowright. Vivien had given Larry a pretty hard time recently, but their twenty years together couldn't just be dismissed. Larry told us how absolutely miraculous his marriage had been for so many years but that during the last five he'd gone through hell with Vivien's illness and strange behaviour.
I'd known them from the beginning when I had been that nervous young actor reading for the part with Vivien at the Gate Theatre in 1938. Only five years before I had experience the horror of Vivien's nervous breakdown and realised the effect this must have had on him but I also knew how much Vivien adored him. We tried to advise but mostly listened as he reasoned things aloud. I, of course, was inclined to advise against the divorce knowing what it would do to Vivien.
"Can you really be happy, Larry, knowing that you're making someone you love utterly miserable?"
"My God, Jimmy, why do you think I'm hesitating?"
Jean on the other hand was urging him to go ahead and marry his Joan if he really loved her, as no one should sacrifice their own happiness to protect the feelings of somebody else.
The day before he was due to leave, Larry came and told us he'd reached a decision. I held my breath while I waited to hear what he would say. He decided to divorce Vivien. My heart sank as I saw the pleased look on Jean's face. Larry thanking us for our patience, advice and hospitality. He then said something I'll never forget. "It was really seeing you two together, how much you loved each other, that made me decide I wanted that kind of happiness too."
Larry married his Joan and became a happy family man. Vivien never recovered from the divorce. She knew that Larry had every reason to leave her and was quite right to take the step he had, but she loved him and missed him until the day she died.
"He used to phone a lot in the early days...His car pulled up in front of the house and we were up on the first floor bedroom and I said to her: 'Oh! he's here. Quick. You'd better go down."' And she said, 'Oh no! I can't.' And she was like a little schoolgirl and here I was, old enough to be her daughter and I was saying, 'Miss Leigh you must go down.' And then his voice came up the stairs: 'Vivien, are you coming down, or am i coming up?' I nearly ran straight down into his arms--the voice alone. She just took off like a little schoolgirl meeting her boyfriend. Oh, it was beautiful, and they walked by the lake together."
Hester remembers them sitting together on the sofa, like in times gone by. Only a sharp telephone call from Joan Plowright broke the mood and caused him to return to London. And then came the return of the man described by Adelaide as the "fellow with the camel hair coats."
Actor Jean-Pierre Aumont remembers the Oliviers:
"It was in 1936 or '37. I ws having dinner in a restaurnt in Soho with ony Bushell, and English actor with whome I had just made a film. Standing opposite us and escorted by a man who was clearly older then herself was the most ravishing creature that can be imagined: immense eyes that passed from melancholy to the most ironic vairety, a little insolent nose, and an oval shaped face lenthened by a frail neck. 'Un cou blanc, delicat, qui, de la neige, effacerait, l'eclat.'
"She wasn't paying any attention to us, and still less to her companion. Pursuing some interior dream, she sometimes glanced briefly toward another table. At the table sat a blonde woman and a younger man whose dark, romantic looks were marked by something intense and secret. I said to Tony 'That young woman and that man sitting at the other table are madly in love with each other.'
"He burst out laughing. 'That's a Frenchman for you. They think only of love! It so happens that I know both of them very well. Her name is Vivien Leigh. The man she is with is her husband. The young man at the table is Laurece Olivier and he is with his wife. As far as I know, Larry and Vivien have never even met. Ah! these Frenchmen!' And he laughed again.
"Whether they had met or not didn't really matter. Their love shone across the restaurant. It was to last more than twenty years.
"..In 1943, Claude Dauphin and I found ourselves in England. Larry and Vivien invited us to Slough, a hamlet with a certain damp charm situated near London. Vivien had abandoned Hollywood, and all the glory of stardom which she no longer cared about, to share with her compatriots the ordeal of the Battle of Britain. Larry was on leave from the Navy. He was directing Henry V and playing the principal role in it. At midnight we left them. London was blazing under the bombardments. All my life I will remember the frail silhouette of Vivien as she accompanied us under the porch roof, looking serious and serene, nestled in her husband's arms, and illuminated by the reddish flashes that signaled that a 'V-I' had just destroyed another district in London.
"As time went by, my friendship with the Oliviers grew, and so did my admiration. Whenever I could I went to see them, whether they were playing together or separately...At the begining, Vivien had to fight against her exceptional, aristocratic beauty. It took London critics a long time to accept her as a real actress: she looked too refined, too elegant, too insolently seductive. Nevertheless, they had to admit that she sometimes equaled the man she loved. She played with him like a mouse with a cat, notably in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. But at the same time that her talent and fame began to be recognized, her health began to wane. The tuberculosis she thought she had cured reappeared, and her emotional stability was affected by it. She could no longer stand to be apart from Larry. While she was making a film in Ceylon, she had to interrupt the shooting to return to London, because of a nervous collapse. The birth of a child, which she had so intensely desired, was refused her. Destiny was avenging itself.
"In 1957 the Oliviers came to the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre to play Titus Andronicus and to receive the Legion of Honor, which Vivien would wear proudly on all her dresses till she died. Taking advantage of their day off, Vivien, Larry, marisa and I left for Touraine. At every stop Vivien would go into a shop and ask in perfect French, 'How's Mme. Dupont? And little Pierre, how's he doing in his studies?'
"Even though I knew she had taken this same trip several years before, I was astounded. I didn't know that wherever she went she always inquired, with a passionate concern and curiosity, about the health and problems of everyone, whether it was the mayor or the postman. She had an incredible memory and always remembered last names, first names, and family affairs. That year, she made her attentive and benevolent inquiries throughout the province of Touraine, like a sovereign visiting her vassals.
"Chenonceaux was inaugurating its Son et Lumiere show. All four of us went to see it. There were no other spectators. Silent, we sat watching the spledors which emerged from the darkness. Larry had his arm around Vivien; they were at times illuminted by a red reflection which reminded me of those hellish flames in London thirteen years earlier."
In March 1957, when I was in Zakopane I got the sensational news that Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company from Stratford would come to perform in Teatr Polski. Arnold wrote to me:
One day suddenly Mr. Patrick Donnell from Stratford visited me in the theater. He came to Warsaw to sign a contract with the Ministry for the performance of Laurence Olivier in Teatr Polski (18-21 June). He took a tour of the theater and the next day came another official from the British Council. I regretted you weren’t in Warsaw, as I wanted to invite them over to our house.
Early in the spring Mr. Donnell came again to settle down organizational matters and he also instructed us on the etiquette. Laurence Olivier had been knighted by the Queen so he should be addressed as Sir Laurence (not Sir Olivier), while Vivien Leigh should be address as Lady Olivier or Miss Vivien Leigh (not Mrs.).
June arrived and the long awaited performance of Titus Andronicus by the English actors. It is one of the lesser known Shakespeare tragedies, allegedly written in his youth. It’s a bloody drama, so brutal that at times it resembles grotesque. It is a story of a Roman general Titus Andronicus (played by Laurence Olivier) and his revenge on the wicked Queen of Groths, Tamora (played by Maxime Audley), her sons and her lover Aaron (Anthony Quayle). Titus’s revenge was justified: with the help of Aaron, Tamora murdered his sons, while her sons had earlier raped his daughter Lavinia (Vivien Leigh) and cut off her tongue and hands. Titus’s revenge was equally sophisticated: he arranged for Tamora’s sons to be killed and later had a pâté prepared and served at a dinner given for the queen and her lover. The dinner went as planned until the queen learned what the pate was made from… Titus first took pleasure in watching the queen’s reaction and then killed her, her lover, and later out of pity, the maimed Lavinia and eventually himself. In the final scene one could see only a table surrounded by bodies of the main protagonists.
Of course, this kind of melodrama required a skilled hand of director and art director and artistry on the part of the actors, so as not to make it tacky. Such was the show prepared by the Stratford Company for the big tournee on the continent. Everything was served with exquisite taste, with no naturalism, in a poetic and fabled way. So, when Lavinia appeared on the stage, raped and maimed, her long, white airy dress was not stained with red paint, but only long pieces of red ribbons hanging from her neck and arms symbolized her suffering.
After the premiere there was a reception prepared by the Ministry of Culture in Hotel Europejski, where the artists were staying. It was the first opportunity to get to know the principal actors, as they were seated at the same table. Whereas Vivien Leigh was charming and could carry a conversation wonderfully (she spoke six languages so Arnold spoke with her in French as he did not speak English), Sir Laurence seemed to be in a bad mood. It was difficult to find contact with him; he did not seem interested in anyone or anything. When he finished the main course he got up, excused himself as being tired and left. He tried to persuade Vivien Leigh to go too, but she smiled sweetly and refused. Then Olivier, leaded to Quayle, who was seated next to me and said something strange: “My rambling rose will stay until dawn… and even then she’ll look wonderful.” Quayle nodded as if with compassion.
I understood the sense of those words much later. At the time of the tournee the Oliviers’ marriage started to crumble as a result of Vivien’s maniac attacks, occurring periodically. In Warsaw Vivien was in the manic and alcoholic phase – paroxysm of this phase occurred inevitably, then she would lose control over herself. After that, she would plunge into a period of deep depression.
Of course, we did not know about any of this, and that’s why we couldn’t understand Olivier’s behavior, or understand why a great actress Maxime Audley, playing the queen, was not invited, upon decision by the Company’s director, to any of the events planned in which the main actors participated. Later it turned out that they did not want to provoke Vivien Leigh in any way, because on the train between Belgrade and Vienna, or Vienna and Warsaw, she had a fit because Audley had supposedly received a better dressing room than her. Audley had to hide in the train lavatory.
In between dances, Vivien told Arnold graphically and wittingly about her youth in India. She was an absolute lady and a seducer in one. If Laurence Olivier was the king of actors, than Vivien Leigh was the goddess of beauty, charm and love. There was a tense moment when Vivien’s gold cigarette holder disappeared from the table. Arnold was very mad and started an investigation among the waiters, but Vivien asked not to worry about this incident.
As it was very late, Arnold decided to go home. Vivien stayed with a group of younger Polish and English actors. As Olivier had predicted – she stayed up all night dancing and drinking. Then she went up to her room, took a bath, slept about 2 hours and at nine she came to breakfast, smiling, radiating her beauty and charm. She told us that she had a great time after we left, dancing with a young actor, Andrzej Lapinski. She was particularly thrilled when he dropped to his knees in the middle of the dance floor and gently bit her big toe. Did it really happen like this? Today, only Mr. ?api?ski could remember.
We agreed with Vivien Leigh to take her to Zelazowa Wola and Nieborow, while Laurence Olivier did not feel like going. In Nieborow we bumped into the Mr. And Mrs. Lorentz, who invited us for dinner at their table. Their always interesting and funny: Lorentz had many funny anecdotes to tell and the time flew very quickly. After dinner, he showed us the palace and the garden and suddenly Vivien released, that she was late for the evening performance. She was clearly worried. We rushed to the car, Arnold told the driver to go as fast as possible. Vivien kept saying over and over as if to herself: “Larry will be mad at me. Larry will be worried. Larry wants me to be in the theater at least half an hour before the performance.” Arnold tried to calm her down, but felt awkward himself. Vivien tried to put on the make-up in the car, but it was not easy because of bumps in the road. Suddenly her small hat flew out of the open window into the road. Arnold wanted to stop, but Vivien insisted on going. And then came a surprise: even though we were going very fast, a small car caught up with us and a nice man handed us the hat. He was very surprised when he found out that he rescued the hat of Scarlett O’Hara! Scarlett sent him a kiss. Everything ended well because we arrived on time.
After the third performance we served dinner at our home. The night was warm and with the scent of lime-trees. All windows opened onto a garden, the house was full of flowers and the Oliviers and Peter Brook felt right at home. But they were most happy about ice cubes in whiskey! It turned out that the fridge in the hotel room was broken and in this hot weather they could not drink anything cold.
Time flew quickly and we realized it was three in the morning. At the end the guests wrote in our guestbook. Laurence Olivier composed a little poem. Meanwhile Peter Brook drew the final scene from Titus Andronicus, with a table surrounded by corpses with a caption: “Thanks for a marvelous pate”. Well, I had actually served a French pate as entrée… Vivien wrote a quote from Shakespeare… “use all gently” and added: “as you have healed us – with affection and gratitude – Vivien Leigh.” The Oliviers asked us to visit them in England and Vivien added mysteriously: there is one thing missing in this house. I’ll send it when I’m back in London.
I was very curious what it could possibly be, I had no idea what she had in mind. She did not forget. After a couple of weeks we received a big wooden box form a well-known London company Fortnum and Mason, selling clothing as well as some finery. It was filled with olives, used for Martinis. I have to admit, we were quite disappointed, but we were thrilled with a book by Kenneth Clark The Nude sent by Vivien on behalf of both of them.
Finally the day of departure of the English company came. A special plane from London was supposed to come, but it had a 3 hour delay. We were sitting in the airport lounge, tired. Vivien Leigh I think had never before looked as great. Her pastel coloring was emphasized by a lavender chiffon dress and pearls and amethysts. We heard she again danced and drank all night. She ordered whiskey. As it was not available, she ordered vodka with ice. Again there was no ice, and she watched stunned, as this delicate and fragile creature managed to drink warm vodka, at 10 am in 30 degrees Celsius! She was holding flowers and traditional dolls. I gave her two bottles of home made black current wine, which she liked before. Olivier added: she’ll be drinking it on the plane, but she’ll look fabulously in front of tv cameras when we land! Vivien only smiled.
In September 1957 we spent an unforgettable day at the Oliviers’ estate Notley Abbey in Buckinghamshire. During their stay in Warsaw Vivien had told us so much about this place that she successfully kindled our interest. After the filming of Henry V, fascinated by this role, Laurence Olivier decided to buy the 13th century notley, even against Vivien’s will. It remembered not only the times of Henry V, but was also equipped by this king. The notley functioned as such until Henry VIII liquidated all cloisters. The buildings had long stood empty, before they were turned into a manor. When Olivier bought Notley Abbey, the estate was falling apart and was not equipped in any of the modern conveniences.
For the day of our visit at the Oliviers, the Polish Ambassador kindly lent us his driver and an Embassy car. The road to this big gray-stoned building complex led through pastures and meadows. The estate spanned approximately 70 hectares and consisted also of farm buildings, garages, a barn, stables etc. In order to have a tax relief, the Oliviers established a farm, managed by Sir Laurence’s brother. The house itself consisted of 22 rooms. The Oliviers sacrificed a couple of years and all their savings to turn this historic monument into a comfortable home.
When we drove up to the entrance we encountered Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier clearly perplexed. As it turned out, they had just come from a nearby town from shopping and the trunk in the car got jammed, so neither sir Laurence nor his butler could open it. Olivier, irritated, turned distressed to Vivien Leigh as if he was expecting an outburst: “Whatever is in there has to wait, nothing can be done!” But Vivien, instead of bursting out lowered her head and looked at her tips of her shoes for a couple of seconds, and then turned to our driver and talked with him for a while. The driver approached the jammed trunk, worked on it for about a minute and opened it. We were very proud of our driver and Vivien kindly thanked him. The crisis was over the Oliviers invited us inside.
The house was decorated with elegance and taste. Low-toned colors, furniture, carpets, everything of best quality. Valuable antiques, small paintings and artworks, a collection of old books indicated luxury. The Oliviers did their best to keep the characteristics of the original architecture. Huge drawing room, in beige and gold, with a fireplace was comfortable and inviting. The Oliviers showed us a collection of Shakespearian props associated with their roles for example, a spade that was used in Hamlet, Renaissance jewelry, framed autographs of famous personalities.
After dinner we were taken on a walk and tour of the estate in a Jeep. The garden was surrounded by old weeping willows, which led to the river, the lawns were surrounded by low hedges and all flowers were white. The effect was very nice, but a bit melancholic. Sir Laurence showed us his estate with pride of a true peer. On our way back we met his brother, on a tractor. We said goodbye to the Olivier with gratitude and sorrow.
Journalist Radie Harris remembers The Oliviers:
• Vivien was the first star I approached. I was longing to meet her, not only because she had won the most coveted role in screen history, wrestling it away from such well-known contenders as Katharine Hepburn, Mirriam Hopkins, Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Paulette Goddard and Lana Turner, but because Laurence Olivier, whom I already knew and adored, was so madly in love with her. Larry was starring on Broadway with Catharine Cornell in No Time for Comedy, and before I left New York, I had tried to reach him to alert Vivien about my arrival. I felt it would break the ice of our first meeting. But I was in such a rush to get off that i never got around to it. So when i arrived on the Gone with the Wind set, accompanied by the unit publicist, and saw her standing by herself, looking as beautiful as I had anticipated, but rather sad and remote, I had my little speech prepared: "Miss Leigh, you don't know me. But my name is Radie Harris, and I am a friend of--" I couldn't finish the rest.
"Yes, I know," she answered, her eyes dancing with excitement. "You are a friend of my Larry's. he phoned me to expect you." She threw her arms around me, and from that moment on, until the day she died, still worshiping Larry, we were soulmates.
• As soon as Vivien finished Gone with the Wind, she rushed to New York to see Larry in No Time for Comedy. I went to the matinee with her (she couldn't possibly wait until the evening performance) and after the first act we went around to Larry's dressing room. There, on the dressing table, were beautiful miniatures of Vivien in colors that matched the miniatures of him on her dressing table on the Coast. They clung to each other as if they were never going to see each other again. 'Really, darlings, you're going to see each other after the next act." I laughed.
"How long a wait is that?" Vivien asked anxiously.
"About forty minutes, Puss," answered Larry, and they embraced again as if they were already playing Romeo and Juliet.
• Vivien felt very passionately about the St. James being torn down. Larry felt strongly about it, too, but he was rather embarassed by Vivien's diatribes in public. When she led two protest marches, his cryptic comment was, "I'm thinking of changing my name to Mr. Pankhurst." He joined us later at the House of Lords, and while some of the dull debates were going on, we had tea with some of the peers in the private dining room. At five o'clock Larry reminded Vivien that she had a performance at the Stoll that night, but she insisted on staying on until she had made her speech even if it meant her understudy going on for her. Larry, realizing he could do nothing when Vivien was in one of these determined, willful moods, got up and left. I left with him. Much as I wanted to stay, I was due back at the hotel for an important appointment at six. Dottie Quayle had already gone, too. On the drive back Larry sighed, "I just can't keep up with Viv's schedule when I'm trying to do my job in the theatre."
I always believed that Larry and Vivien's marriage was by now heading toward the inevitable ending. I thought back to a lucheon I'd had with Larry at the Algonquin at which we discussed Herbert Marshall's divorce from Edna Best. Larry leaned over and put his hand in mine and said to me with a twinkle in his eye, "Well, there's one thing certain, my pet, Vivien and I will never get divorced because we know how much it would upset you!" He was kidding on the level. To me, Larry and Vivien were Romeo and Juliet, Heloise and Abelard, Tristan and Isolde and all the great lovers rolled into one. Only death could part them. Only death did--for Vivien.
• The year before Titus Andronicus, while Vivien was playing in Noel Coward's South Sea Bubble, she discovered she was pregnant. She was forty-three and Larry forty-nine, and they were thrilled about this second chance. They gave a small celebration supper for a handful of their closest friends (it was to be kept from the press until Vivien left the cast). I've never seen Larry so ecstatic. 'Proves there's life in the old boy yet!' he chuckled as he and Vivien were toasted in champagne.
Vivien, looking divine in a white lace dress with a blue sash, smiled blissfully as she announced, 'Larry wants a daughter and he shall have one. We already have a name selected--Catherine, Catherine the Great.' But fate ruled otherwise. Vivien had a second miscarriage. Some friends felt that Vivien's schedule had been too heavy, though it was with her doctor's consent. 'We can't go on torturing ourselves by blaming ourselves,' said Larry. 'It was just foul luck.' They both knew it was their last chance. Even if Catherine had been born, I don't think it would have saved their marriage.
• In A Streetcar Named Desire, Vivien as Blanche DuBois had a line to say, 'Cruelty is unendurble.' In leaving Vivien after twenty-five years, Larry knew he was being cruel to be kind...to himself. He and Vivien had shared a love given few people in a lifetime. he could never stop being grateful for it. It was a chapter he must end. He couldn't continue with it and meet the demands of a consuming career that had already acclaimed him the world's greatest actor...
Before he returned to London, we lunched at the Algonquin, where so many years before he had kidded me, saying h would never divorce Vivien because he knew how it would upset me. Now, when he left to go to Bergdorf's to bring back a gift for Vivien, he said, his brown eyes clouding over, 'Take care of Puss for me. She needs a lot of spoiling.' For her fans all over the world, Vivien's and Larry's divorce also became a personal tragedy.
• On December 21, Vivien stood before Judge Ifor Lloyd in the London courts and was granted a divorce from Sir Laurence Olivier on the grounds of his adultery with Joan Plowright. The mink turban that framed her face couldn't conceal her eyes brimming over with tears or her gloved and pitifully held to her lips to conceal their trembling. The miracle that she thought would happen to save their marriage didn't materialize. It was over, irrevocably done with.
• After Larry and Joan were married, I got to know Joan with no self-consciousness. When she was in New York with The Entertainer and A Taste of Honey, I didn't see her out of loyalty to Vivien. But I make it a principle to never take sides in the divorces of my chums. If I did, with the turnover I've known I don't think I'd have many left! I didn't want to lose Larry, and Joan understood that Vivien didn't want me to either. Every contact with Larry was a contact for her and she would have firsthand news of him. She had outgrown her bitterness about Joan and that had also made it easier.
• Vivien never discussed death, except indirectly when she told me, 'I'd rather have lived a short life with Larry than face a long one without him.' On another occasion when I told her I had heard of a wonderful new fortune teller--we always used to go to them together and then forget what they said a half hour later--she said, 'I am no longer interested in my future. What's the point of it now?' I tried to tell Vivien that the torch she was carrying for Larry was for the lover and husband who had once been. He was a different man now, with different interests. She must reconcile herself to that fact.
• Shortly afterword came the sudden news that she had to be confined to bed because tests of her lungs showed the tubercular patch had not healed. But there was nothing to be alarmed about. rest would cure it. No one died of tuberculosis anymore!
"Isn't it too maddening!' she scribbled on her funny postcards. 'How I hate this silly business of being in bed! It means that the opening may be postponed (of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance in which she was set to co-star with Michael Redgrave), but Michael is starting rehearsals with me at home and I already know the script verbatim.' Having been eyewitness to Vivien's recuperative powers before, I felt sure she would hurdle this one, too, so I wasn't unduly concerned except about her capacity to rest. I wrote that i would jet back for her first night.
Then came another bolt out of the blue. Larry had cancer of the prostate. Joan Plowright made a frightening announcement to the press, but thoughtfully called Vivien before she read or heard the news elsewhere . Vivien was distraught and worried far more about Larry than about her own condition. Happily, with radium treatment, he was soon cured and was able to come by and see Vivien very privately and assure her she had nothing to worry about. The only thing that mattered was for her to take care of herself. But this time Larry wasn't at her side to help her husband her resources as he had during her collapse at Notley... She held court from her flowered canopied bed morning, noon and night, and her white and pink bedroom overflowed with every friend who was in London that hot summer of 1967. On her bedside table, next to her medicines, was the script for A Delicate Balance, and all the newest books. Larry was at her bedside too--in a beautiful silver frame.
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