Larry kept every correspondence, bill, contract, etc., dating back decades before his death. After he passed, his widow, Dame Joan Plowright, sold these records to the British Library for a sum of roughly $2 million. It is now referred to as the Laurence Olivier Archive. With the fairly recent (2005) release of Terry Coleman's official authorized biography simply titled Olivier, fans the world around were able to get a glimpse into the obsession that fueled the famous couple's turbulent marriage. Here, for the first time on the web, are excerpts from those letters, as well as other correspondence between Larry, Vivien and outsiders pertaining to their relationship. Much of this text comes from Terry Coleman's book.
The first time Vivien and Larry had been separated since becoming an official couple two years prior, was in 1939 when larry grudgingly accepted the part of Heathcliff in Samuel Goldwyn's Wuthering Heights. Viv, who wanted to play Cathy (and Larry, who said he wouldn't have it any other way), refused the supporting part of Isabella, and stayed on in London to do A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Old Vic. Larry miserably boarded the Normandie for New York on November 5, 1939, Vivien's 25th birthday.
Unable to get his love off his mind, Olivier started writing her, day by day, during the five days of the crossing. By the time he reached New York, the letter stretched to thirty-two pages. On the first morning out he told her he had changed his cabin because it only had a shower, not a bath. 'You,' he wrote, 'were to have had the bath, if you remember.'...Among Olivier's fellow passengers on the Normandie were Noel Coward, Leslie Howard, herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle. He told Vivien there had been good luck cables from, among others, Sybille (his sister)--'Extravagant bitch on my money.' He was depressed. He kept weeping, calling himself Vivien's 'worshiping seducer'. When he changed cabins he was offered the number sixty-nine, which he declined, thinking she might not have liked that. He was offered one on the southern, sunny side of the ship but chose the one on the starboard northern side to be facing her way. He drank hard. Before lunch on the second day out he had three vodkas and four champagne cocktails, with more champagne afterwords. He telephoned her each day and they shouted themselves hoarse for what he called 'three heart-breaking minutes'.
The Normandie docked in New York at Midday on 1 November and he went to the Gotham on Fifth Avenue at 55th Street. There he took a phone all from her in which she sounded 'so terribly miserable and hurt.' Next day they talked again:
'Oh my darling little loveling I do adore you so. You're so original. The way you make absolutely no attempt to hide your darling feelings is so adorable! I hope you've noticed what a healthy regard I have for your anger! I've spent thousands of pounds in the last few minutes assuring myself that you aren't displeased with me. Oh my sweet that sounds ungracious...The girls just phoned up and told me the last phone call cost $105! And more yesterday I think. It really would be cheaper to come out my dove. After all nearly 50 quid for two days, half hour each day of desperate gabbling--when we could H--ave each other for less than that!'
When Vivien was forced to live separately from Larry during the filming of GWTW, she was often miserable and hysterical (this can be attributed to a number of factors including a very difficult work schedule). Larry had gone to New York to make a name for himself on Broadway in No Time for Comedy, during which he kept up lengthy correspondence with his now fiancee. He missed her as much as she missed him and would wear a carnation in his underwear during every performance and then send it to her in each letter. She, in turn, sent him a pair of her knickers. Yet even this could not tide over their burning desire for one another. More lengthy, heated telephone calls followed during which they often argued; Vivien was exhausted from filming. After one such call, Larry wrote a long, detailed and illustrated letter expressing his anguish and apologies. Here is an excerpt:
"O God how dreadful--half an hour of absolute madness again. What is happening to us pussey? Hey? Something's gone so wrong and it only becomes apparent on the phone. O darling dear I am so sorry we're getting so horribly spoilt. It's just insanity, that's all...I'm always reproached with having a gay time and I'm not having any such thing...On the phone when it costs a fortune--you willfully misunderstand and distort what I've said and construe it all in the best way to keep up the quarrel longest. O baby we're getting so depressed we must try not to...It feels that I have learned to expect 'trouble' somehow, and I find myself rising from my cave, with smoke coming out of my nostrils before my cue. So please forgive me my dear one. [here he drew a dragon in a cave on the left confronting a hissing, arched-back cat on the right] We mustn't let misunderstandings heap up--dear darling o please forgive me--the truth is we've been so miserable and frustrated and tired and aching and bored for so long that we've temporarily lost our senses of humour."
He wrote on for more than two hours, telling her news about their friend Tony Bushell in England and drawing her a minutely correct map, street by street, of Manhattan between Central Park and 47th Street...He stopped at 4:40 am, writing that he was going to take her in his arms, and went to bed.
He was soon woken by a call from Sunny (Alexander, Vivien's Hollywood secretary). Vivien had taken an overdose (of sedatives, probably sleeping aids). Sunny had found her staggering around naked and tripping over the furniture. She managed to make her way to the shower where she turned one cold splash and then fell into Sunny's arms. How Sunny managed after that is unclear. Vivien did recover after a long sleep.
At lunch time the next day Olivier, having dealt with the crisis from a distance of 3,000 miles, resumed his letter to her:
"Darling baby oh sweet little tiny baby girl, I do love you so. O how terribly touching you are , I do adore you Vivien my daring little girl. O but I ought to be sooooo cross with you. Urrrgh Urrrgh! How dare you take four pills like that you hysterical little ninny (and I know perfectly well you knew people would get alarmed and ring me up and put the fear of God into your poor old larry at five o'clock in the morning). Urrrgh! Bend over--yes, take your drawers down--no, lift your skirt up--now then:--Smack! Smack! Smack! -!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!!!!! Yes--Eleven!! Naughty pooossey. Now you come here and I'll kiss it and make it better--Oh my Vivling. What did your poor three friends think, hey? Poor Sunny was demented. I'm afraid you lead your loving ones one hell of a dance and that's terribly naughty. You're awfully spoilt yes you are, and it's all because you're so pretty. Ah poor pussey that's enough isn't it? Hey? Oh my dear true love I do adore you and love you so put on a brave front my own like this [here he drew an elegant cat holding an umbrella]. True blood, stout hearts and grey herrings and pretty pussies and Larry's carnations, and beloved, O beloved Vivlings, don't give way in front of the common herd like this."
Sunny wrote him the next day saying Vivien was much better. She did not think she realized what she had done or that the sedatives she had taken were so strong. She would make sure she got no more. Vivien had been a perfect angel for the past twenty four hours and was very sorry for doing such a stupid thing. She, Sunny, had telephoned the studio and said Vivien was ill. She ended: "Try to keep happy in love. I get so upset when things aren't right, and Vivien is impossible--or need I tell you?"
Above is the telegram Larry sent to Viv on their second anniversary of living together.
After GWTW finished filming, Vivien was expected to fly to New York to meet Larry. Two weeks before she was scheduled to arrive, he wrote to her:
"I do not think there is a solitary second when my mind is not completely buried in you. You are really on my brain--I suppose if you happened to represent something dangerous I should be locked up--but no it's not quite like that. I am not always thinking sweetly of you. I am thinking angrily or indignantly or sulkily, quite often, but I am never not thinking of you. More often than not I am just worried about you, concerned and distressed about my baby lamb being tired or unhappy--and of course often it is with mad, mad passion and sometimes it is naughty, sometimes, only sometimes is it dirty or even sadistic...You are all over me, in sorrow or in joy, all of the time--O yes in drunkenness too, in conversation, in work, with every breath and heart-beat."
During the war, when Vivien and Larry, now married, were back in England, they were again separated for a long period of time. In late 1943, after serving duty in the Fleet Air Arm, Larry went to Ireland to film Henry V. At the same time, Vivien decided to join up with a troop of Old Vic players and head off to entertain troops on a North African tour. She wrote to him on location though the mail was very slow. One such letter from Algiers said:
"Oh darling I miss you so dreadfully. I think I will die with joooy when I see you. I call to you so many times in the day and night and I hope I hear you saying "Baba" (a nickname they had for each other) to me too--dearest most beloved love. I kiss you and kiss you and surround you with my adoration...Your Vivling FOR EVER."
Telegram sent from Gibraltar to Gerrard's Cross, Buckinghamshire on May 20, 1943:
Arrived my love missing you every minute arm better please take care your back don't worry about razor all devotion and adoration = Vivien Olivier
Telegram sent from Gibraltar on May 28, 1943:
All success to you my darling love Henry will conquer all I know my thoughts and most loving admiration are with you always = Vivien Olivier
Telegram sent from Larry to Vivien in 1943:
VL Rock Hotel Gibraltar
Darling, owing extraordinary delay all previous wires the following is roughly what I sent Saturday STOP. My love have spoken to Elsie and I feel you may have felt awkward on my account at thought postponing return yet another week STOP. But I want you to know if you feel you realy should play sun sites I shall understand STOP. But if you are really too exhausted to continue then think only of how much I want you home STOP. I am worries you may misunderstand this Baba I worship you and long for you but want you to feel alright your boy LO
Larry wrote to Vivien on June 15, 1944, the day before the sixth anniversary of the day she had left Leigh Holman for him. They were both still occupied in their current jobs (he filming Henry V and she on an extended leg of the African tour).
"I shall think of you so hard all tomorrow. Six years, it seems quite timeless altogether, just as it should...My Vivling I do thank you with all my heart for the undreamt of prize you have brought to me. You have sewn such a harvest in my heart my beloved." He explained that he was having much trouble convincing David Selznick, whom Vivien was still under legal contract to, to let Vivien take the part of Catherine opposite him in Henry V. He said to her, "David O.S. is being a bastard and has refused the government a second time. I'll probably have to give david your tits, my balls, our three kittens and all the takings."
She wrote to him the same day from Tunis saying that she was staying at the villa a German soldier had occupied before his retreat, and sleeping in the same bed. They'd performed at a vast theatre where the stagehands were French; it was nice to speak the language again. She wished she and Larry were living this together. And 'Oh, I drove the plane we flew in yesterday for fifteen minutes! How I thought of you...my heart's blood I adore you and love you."
Larry wrote telling her that this separation had been harder to bear than that of 1939 and Gone with the Wind, and he didn't know why. He had become fascinated with the horses they were using in Henry V, one of which was Blaunche Kynge, the horse Larry would later ride all around Notley Abbey after they moved in.
"I'll never forget these silent nights with just the rhythmical munching of the horses at their lines--it's most peculiar but they seem to keep time as they eat--it's funny, but all my harshly sublimated passions seem to have developed into a great fascination for these curious, nervous, shy, sweet and most beautiful creatures. I love them and can't keep my hands off them. I stroke their dear soft heads and think so hard of you and of their furry little chests that feel just like patting a little girl at San Remos' bottom."
All their letters to each other were opened, read, and resealed by the wartime censors, so they could not write as openly as they had in 1938 and 1939. Olivier was resorting to an allusion which would not have been apparent to even the most diligent censor. Vivien had been a schoolgirl at San Remo.
Shorly before the end of the War in 1945, Larry and Vivien bought Notley Abbey. At this time, Larry was performing with the Old Vic and Vivien had opened in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (directed by Larry). After VE Day, Larry's company set off on a victory tour around the continent. Vivien stayed to finish the Skin run. Larry often wrote to her. The first letter he sent to her at Notley began:
"GREETINGS
To the
Wonderously Beautiful
Dearest Beloved
Most Adorable
MISTRESS OF NOTLEYMy darling, I do hope this is the first letter you get at Notley. I spent a most fretful night sighing and longing for my mummy (Viv)." He told her about the visit to Belsen where, in the German extermination camp, twenty people a day were stilly dying from typhus. From Hamburg, where they returned for a second visit, he told her, "You do help me. 'The honour of the family' I always say just before I go on and cross myself with a V. I cannot live without you and I don't intend to bloody well try to ever again...You are my inspiration, my hope, my whole hope, the oxygen in my blood."
In England at this time, Vivien had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. She did not tell Larry and he learned from the Lunts in Paris that she was ill. When he talked with her on the phone from Paris, she still would not tell him the full story. He wrote demanding to know what doctors had said.
"You know that whatever the dark thing is--that the slightest shadow across your life troubles me so much more than any harm to myself. You're the only person in the world who can make hideously selfish me love anyone more than I do myself. You know don't you my Vivien that if I try to save you disappointment or give you happiness it is only selfishness on my part really. Your sorrow is my worst fear...your life my life."
When she did tell him two days later, he told her his mind was at comparative peace. "I thank you for giving me the privilege of sharing trouble with you, for anything shared with you is a sacred joy and a noble glory," he told her. As soon as the tour finished a couple weeks later, he returned to England and after Vivien had spent some weeks in the hospital, swept her up for a holiday in Scotland. When they returned, Vivien was ordered on bed rest for months and Larry spent his weekdays in London doing rehearsals for the Old Vic's coming season. He denied invitations for weekends, saying, "My Sundays are always in the country, where I dash off like a gazelle to my girl."
Even in 1951, when they were separated by different Hollywood projects, he in William Wyler's Carrie (which he is fabulous in if you fans haven't seen it yet), and she filming on location in New Orleans for A Streetcar Named Desire, they still wrote one another. For the end scene in his film, Larry took in a bit of Method Acting and stopped eating as his character, Hurstwood did. He wrote to her:
"I don't feel all that hungry--just as if I'm dying. It's very good for Hurstwood right now...don't worry my darling it's doing me good really I think--the diet I mean. O my love I feel like a half cooked codfish thrown back into the sea when you're not with me...I love you so my heart's treasure--How I long for you and the sight of your lovely wonderful face--and not only that--for my sore boring eyes. Your boy."
Telegram from Larry to Vivien in Ceylon where she was filming Elephant Walk. This telegram would suggest that he really had little to no idea that Vivien had started a romantic relationship with Peter Finch while on location:
Darling it seems asking for the moon is a simple request compared to talking to you by phone STOP. Tonight I went to Leicester Square Theatre to accept a British Academy Award for Bogart but who do you think i found myself accepting it for who--no one but you for Streetcar. Bravo my precious lamb your very loving and proud boy.
In 1953, after Vivien had her breakdown, Larry wrote to his first wife, Jill Esmond (from Tarquin Olivier's book):
"25 March, 1953
Darling Jill
I am most deeply grateful to you for your most generous thoughtfulness in writing such a lovely letter to me. You were right in guessing that I do most desperately feel the need of friends just now. It has been a very bad time.
Getting her home was an incredible nightmare. As you may have gathered, she set up the strongest resistance, and of course as natrally follows when things go wrong, I was to her her worst enemy. She has suffered terribly and will be very ill for some time.
But none of the horrors of the last ten days compare to the feeling of relief that somehow the mission was accomplished and that she is now safe in, I believe, the best hands in England. No one can see her for a bit so I am taking the time to recharge the batteries against whatever the future may hold—just in fact what you prescribe.
I had the loveliest time with Tark. He was terribly sweet and dear to me and for the first time neither of us minded the silences in conversation. I think he sensed that all was not well with me."
In 1953 after the tour of The Sleeping Prince with Vivien, Larry wrote the following letter to his son, Tarquin (from Tarquin's book My Father Laurence Olivier):
My Darlink Boy [he starts a letter from Durham Cottage, 1 November 1953]
We've had a decent enough tour. V. is bewitching in the piece and I enjoy my part very much. The play is a very cunning piece of mechanism and a good evening seems to be had by most people. I think you'll enjoy it alright. It's light, of course, but has enchantment, absolutely no 'Message' and it's a great relief to me not to be appearing in something that the poor audience has come to more than half out of a vague sense of duty.
We took the Bentley all around the country with us and motored from date to date, the sun obligingly shining for us every Sunday. We got caught napping in our ignorance one time. I had always imagined Manchester was right in the North and that Glasgow would be just a little run across the border; well, by way of the Great Lakes it turned out to be 270 miles! I thought I'd never stop driving. England is so surprisingly beautiful in unexpected places.
I must stop now, the sounds from the bathroom next door tell me Baba is ready for bed.
After Vivien's breakdown, the marriage between she and Larry was all but over. In his autobiography, Confessions of an Actor, Larry mentioned that after having electroshock therapy (EST), something changed in Vivien. Perhaps it wasn't visible to anyon else, but he could tell, she simply wasn't the same person. Unfortunately at that time, there was no civilized treatment for a disorder that was so largely misunderstood, and thus it was extremely hard to deal with, not only for the person suffering the disease but for those around them as well. As the years slipped slowly by, their happiness, along with Vivien's mental health continued to deteriorate until, in 1958, Larry left her for Joan Plowright. He could not go on in a marriage that had been a facade for the public for a long time. It seems like he had become more distant toward Vivien once he became more attached to Joan. In a heartbreaking letter dated November 2, 1958, Vivien wrote to him expressing her bitterness at their situation:
My dearest Larry–
This is the third letter I have written you today. You must forgive the fact that I make quick decisions. I believe they are the only true and instinctively correct way for people such as I am to express their feelings. Because I have had a day almost entirely on my own in bed & able to think without interruption of our whole situation I have come to the conclusion (a fearfully painful one) that a clean and ABSOLUTE break is the only path to follow. So I intend to divorce you on the grounds of desertion–mental and physical–as soon as both out present chores in the theatre & television are over and we are in any case separated. I did not want to have to do this until you had finished your work here but our telephone conversation tonight led me to think I was talking to a complete stranger–which is what you have CHOSEN to become. Your first letter has made is almost impossible for me to carry out my present arduous contact but I shall persevere to the best of my strength and ability.
I think our lives will lie in quite different directions. I feel confident I shall make my own life–you have ALWAYS made yours. I am sorry if this upsets your plans.
Though she had stated quite plainly in the above letter that she would divorce him, her feelings seem to have changed off and on during the next two years. In America doing the Jean Girardeux play, Duel of Angels in 1960, she wrote to him:
"Pussy-cat my darling, Whatever may happen let us be friends my dearest one. Conachy (her doctor) has done a very marvelous thing for me--and I am feeling as I have not felt for many many years. Perhaps all the interim mistakes have made just too much difference for our life together--I do not know--and you must leave it up to me to do what I think is best for the future in my own time. It will take a little while...one does not let twenty five years go lightly. I feel very deeply in love with Jack Merivale and very dearly grateful to him but it does not alter the fact tat I shall love you all my life and with a tenderness and respect that is all embracing--I understand very well how difficult--even impossible--it had become...Let us face that--Well, now that is accomplished and I hope my life will prove a useful and good one--to many people...Take care of your precious dearest self. My love, dear dear heart--Vivling."
Vivien finally consented to a divorce in December, 1960. Jack marivale broke the news to Larry that she had agreed. In response to the news, Larry wrote a beautiful but sad letter to Jack (found in the Anne Edwards Papers in Los Angeles) expressing his happiness for their relationship and his hope that now they could all be happy:
My dear boy,
A few minutes ago I finished your leter and something hapened to me that I don't remember happening bfore. I broke down and sobbed with relief at the purest kind of gratitude I have ever known. Thank you for giving me that. No need to tell you how happy I am for her, you, and for myself. It was so sweet of you to take such trouble to explain how it happened. I really had been able to divine something very like that but even if I had not or you had not explained it there could never be anything remotely like bitterness in my feelings for her. I have at times (had such feelings) but somehow they have always left me. Much to my misery I have found that though they went they left behind a feeling of betuity and growing despair which in time I know would disipate and destroy my faith. I felt the necessity then to search about to find some armour to fill in the gaps. The rest you sort of know or can imagine. The prospect of her and your future happiness fills me with the most unspeakable joy and at the same time releases me from those barbs that have so tormented my own hopes and dogged the beauty which is in my own reach. Oh God, to think we can all be happy and at the same time feel something like good gain. Well not actually courag yet anyway. oh God, keep her well, only watch if you don't mind this advice, for those little signs at first to something a little curiously inconsiderate in her dealings with you. Then make her happy as they say. God keep you as you are and all of u as firmly in His hand as we feel today.
Vivien attended the divorce hearing in London in December 1960; Larry did not--he was in New York. Though it may seem, according to many biographies, that this was basically the end between Larry and Vivien and that once it was done he completely cut her out of his life, but it just wasn't true. They had suffered separately and together for many years through illness, disappointment and betrayal, and yet as much as he needed to be free from the marriage for his own happiness, he knew she had been most unhappy as well. He later wrote in his autobiography that it has always been impossible for him not to believe that he had somehow been the cause of Vivien's troubles. This is the letter he wrote to Vivien just after the divorce was finalized and I think it really speaks of how much he always cared for her:
Darling, this is awky to write you will understand. but I know what a horror it must have been for you, and I want to say thank you for undergoing it all for my sake. You did nobly and bravely and beautifully and I am very oh so sorry that it must have been such hell for you, and I am dearly grateful to you for enduring it and setting me free to enjoy what is infinitely happy for me. Oh God Vivling how I do pray that you will find happiness and contentment now. I pray that I may take off from you some of your unhappiness on to myself and I must say it seems to work from this end as your unhappiness is a torment to me; and the thought of it a constant nightmare. Perhaps now it may be allowed to gently lift off and blow softly away. That's all for now...Your L.
As Lauren Bacall said in her autobiography, By Myself and Then Some, the Oliviers' marriage had been heaven the first 10 years and hell the second, and they had both felt so much pain at the ending of it all. Yet it seems to be a definite case of all of the anger and sadness and hurt fading over time, and what was left was mutual respect, kindness, and yes, even love. Larry and Vivien continued to write each other until she died in 1967. Some of Vivien's letters (found in the British Library) break my heart because it's as if she thought they were still together, but then, perhaps Vivien knew deep down she was his one true love.
Monday February 11, 1963 Boston Ritz Carleton
Darling Darling Larry–
You cannot ever know how very much your letter meant to me today–How really adorable of you to take time to write–when you have such a fearsome amount on your plate at this time. It was so lovely to have such a lot of news of you. I have been so really worryingly low and with your dear letter with me my spirits took a leap.
Thank you darling so very much.
There is an awesome amount of work to be done on ‘Tovarich’ some of it has not been written yet. The though of new (something) naturally alarms me dreadfully. It’s not a very POOR voice, darling I am told it’s in tune! I hardly drink at all either. That’s a good thing isn’t it? You are the wonderful one to be getting on all these committees–how fortunate they are to have you. I am sorry your piece was a disappointment after all your labour to give tells me you are just brilliant in it but they don’t seem to like the play…I send you all my love my darling. My thoughts are with you at the very least one hundred times a day and my dearest wishes, always.
God bless you my loveVivien
PS Please tell Dottie I will write soon. Good night darling dearest Baba
Excerpt of a letter to Larry at the National Theatre
My love my Darling,
Thank you for my birthday love--it absolutely completed a happy day--How sweet of you...I hear such wonderful things, longing to see you.
Your Vivien
Telegram from Vivien to Larry in 1966 when Orson Welles was playing Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons:
Think Orson totally wrong for Cardinal. Thrilled to have lovely letter at last all my love.
Vivier Favonia
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