"My first reaction on seeing Vivien Leigh was one of stunned disbelief. I’d thought her beautiful on screen, but was totally unprepared for the personal impact." -- Bernard Braden

"I suddenly remember another time at Notley when my beloved chum Kay Kendall was staying there, and was one evening behaving rather tiresomely, picking and niggling and being naughty in general. And Viv suddenly said, with the sweetest, blinding smile, and that soft pussy-cat voice: "Katie darling, if you are trying to pick a quarrel with me, don't. I shall win." And that was that! Later they both went out in a punt on the lake and fell in, or something, I don't remember in detail, but there was laughter flooding through the garden, and they were having a hell of a time pulling the punt back to the bank." -- Dirk Bogarde

"She was a lovely, generous, darling friend, and I will miss her always."-- Noel Coward

“She had a lifelong devotion to the theatre, and determined to work there diligently through the years in order to reach the heights which she afterwards achieved. Though in her first big success, The Mask Of Virtue, she had taken the critics and public by storm, she knew that her youth and beauty were the chief factors of her immediate success, and she was modest and shrewd enough to face the challenge of developing herself so as to find the widest possible range of which she was capable.” -- John Gielgud

“I was in a position to see the extent of her genuine interest in other people and her delight in giving pleasure… I always felt that in whatever age or class she had been born, she would have found prominence in one role or another - that bright star would have come to the fore.” -- Peter Hiley

"My acquaintance with the lovely Vivien Leigh was one of those friendships that endured over the years, sometimes many yeaars passing without our meeting. My most vivid memory of her was when I was in London, and suffering that infuriating affliction of losing your balance. Not serious, but a long bore! I was in bed at the Connaught Hotel, and the phone rang and it was Vivien, who said: 'Darling, here we are, both of us in bed! Isn't it ridiculous?' We shared the same doctor, and it was he who hastened over to me to inform me of her death. He was affraid I would hear it on the tv or radio...She was without a doubt the most exquisitely beautiful woman ever. I wish I had spent more time with her in my life." -- Deborah Kerr

"As a beauty, she was at the top of the tree. She never went through an unbeautiful phase." -- David Niven

"I'll never forget her arrangements. Nor her love for Alex Korda. Nor all those cats. Her ridiculous laughter, her fabulous generosity of heart, and her guts in adversity." -- David Niven

"I liked her reliability, her staightforwardness, and her good manners which sprang from a lucid impersonal interest in people." --Athene Seyler

“Only England could have produced her. She was the perfect English rose. When the door opened and she was there, she was so terribly good-looking. She had such an exquisite unreality about her.” -- Diana Vreeland

 

     

 
 
the photo booth: 23,000 images and counting.

tcm in august

• current contest

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• rare images of vivien leigh and laurence olivier for the gallery
• vintage and modern magazine/newspaper articles
• fan photos from vivien leigh and laurence olivier-related destinations in london, hollywood, or elsewhere

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launched: april 8, 2007
version: 4.0