The first time 22 year-old Vivien Leigh saw the man who was to become the love of her life, he was playing Anthony Cavendish in a West End play directed by Noel Coward called Theatre Royale. The dashing young man was 28 year old Laurence Olivier, a rising star on he London stage. He had dark, curly hair and chisled facial features. The mixture of good looks and obvious potential talent had overcome Vivien, who declared to her friend next to her "That's the man I'm going to marry." It was a bold statement, but a rather ridiculous one. Vivien was already married--to a barrister named Leigh Holman, as was Olivier--to another promising stage actress named Jill Esmond. This did not seem to bother Vivien, however, who reportedly told her friend "It doesn't matter. I shall marry him. Wait and see."

Vivien did not go unnoticed by Olivier, who had first seen her around the same time. He described in his autobiography, 'Confessions of an Actor," what he felt the first time he saw her:

"I first set eyes upon the possessor of this wondrous beauty on the stage at the Ambassador's Theatre, where she was playing in 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."

It was in the Grill Room at the Savoy Hotel on London's West End where they first formally met. The Savoy was a hot-spot for the who's who in London theatre, and Larry had gone to dine with Jill Esmond while Vivien was dining with a man named John Buckmaster, with whom she had an on and off fling in the mid 1930s. No sparks flew at the time, the Oliviers later recounted to Felix Barker in 1953, but they would, very shortly.

In 1936, top British film producer, Alexander Korda, paired Vivien and Larry in their first film together: the Elizabethan swashbuckler, Fire Over England. Larry was cast as Michael Ingolby,a young man hired by Queen Elizabeth to infiltrate the Spanish Armada's fleet. Vivien played Cynthia, the Queen's lady-in-waiting, and Michael's love interest. On the first day of filming, Vivien commented to Larry while waiting outside the self-help lunch room, that she found it nice thy were to work together. Larry replied with: "We shall probably end up fighting. People always get sick of each other when making a film."

Larry's prediction that day was quite the opposite of what actually happened. As filming went on, they found each other spending more and more time together when cameras weren't rolling. Felix Barker wrote in his book, The Oliviers, "As time went by they both discovered that a day when the other was not 'on call' and so not at the studio was curiously dull and empty...It was a film which took a long time to shoot, and at the end of fourteen weeks when Olivier's last scene was finished and he was free to leave the studio for a holiday, Vivien Leigh was very much in his thoughts, and he had become the center of her universe." During filming, Olivier's wife, Jill Esmond, had given birth to their son Tarquin, but Larry and Vivien's affection for each other was too strong to ignore. This marked the beginning of a torrid love affair that would last for nearly three years.

After performing in separate plays--namely Hamlet at the Old Vic for Larry, and Bats in the Belfry and Because We Must for Vivien--the two were again paired in a film at Denham Studios. The First and the Last (21 Days Together was the American release title), directed by Basil Dean, featured Larry and Vivien as a couple who have 21 days of "freedom" after Olivier's character, Larry, is accused of murder. The script was written by Graham Greene, a solid indicator that it should have been a successful film. It was not. During filming, however, Vivien and Larry took three weeks in Denmark to perform Hamlet with the Old Vic for the Danish Tourism Board. Tyrone Guthrie Directed, and Vivien took over the role of Ophelia from Cherry Cottrell, who wasn't available after the end of the official season. It was Vivien's first foray into serious classical theatre, a venture she would strive to succeed in, with Olivier's assistance, for the next two decades.

Upon their return from Elsinore, Larry and Vivien left their respective spouses and moved into Durham Cottage in Chelsea, a suburb of London. By now, their heated affair was public property. Because Leigh Holman and Jill Esmond refused to grant divorces for another two years, as well as other problems that came with starting a new life when still married to someone else, both Larry and Vivien used work as a respite from the stress of their present situation. Olivier played MacBeth for the first time opposite Judith Anderson, and Coriolanus for the Old Vic repertory season, two plays which launched him to stardom in the theatre world.

The summer of 1938 was to be the most peaceful and most fondly remembered by Larry and Vivien for the rest of their relationship. It was the last summer of peace and tranquility before the War, and the last before they both reached such heights in their fame that there would be hardly any privacy from press and fans. In July, Larry and Vivien drove down through France in Vivien's old Ford V8 to a little own on the coast where they roomed at a small hotel called the Calanque d'Or. Friends such as Jon Gielgud and Binkie Beaumont, Peggy Ashcroft and Glenn Byam Shaw would sometimes meet with them for a swim and good conversation.

It was during this vacation that Larry first received word from Hollywood director, William Wyler, about Producer Sam Goldwyn's idea of making Wuthering Heights, and would Larry like the part of Heathcliff opposite Merle Oberon's Cathy? Larry did not want to go to Hollywood without Vivien, and Vivien did not want the supporting part of Isabella, stating she had been in half a dozen British films already, and was more suitable for a leading role. But after a second Visit from Wyler at Durham Cottage in London, Vivien could see that Larry actually liked the part. After a long and heart-felt discussion on the matter, Vivien assured him that they'd only be apart for a matter of a few months. In the meanwhile, she'd be busy on stage in Serena Blandish and the Old Vic revival of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Larry's good friend, Ralph Richardson, told him that a bit of fame was good, and supported the decision of Larry going back to Hollywood. It would be Larry's second attempt at conquering the screen after having been sacked from the film Queen Christina by Greta Garbo in 1933. Larry had left Hollywood with a bitter taste in his mouth, but this time, he would prove a huge success. He sailed for New York on the Normandy on November 5, 1938; Vivien's 25th birthday.

While Larry was away, Vivien was doing very well on stage as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream opposite her friend Robert Helpmann's Oberon. In costumes by Oliver Messell, Vivien was called one of the two loveliest women on the London stage. The other was Morgot Fonteyn, the famous ballerina who was coincidentally playing the same role as Vivien was on the other side of town. She wanted to be with Larry though, and he was miserable without her by his side. The wrote to each other and spoke on the phone on a daily basis. Larry was not happy with his film. He had always thought film acting inferior to stage acting, and was not getting along well with Wyler, Goldwyn, or his leading lady. He would later recount in his book "On Acting," that Wyler made him see that he was a "pompous bastard" and that he was bringing his personal life to work with him. But at the time, it was very hard for him to put things into proper perspective.

It only took about a month and a half for Vivien to decide to take leave of her play and go see Larry in Hollywood. She was only supposed to be gone for a short period of time, but circumstance and a bit of good luck would keep her in America for nearly a year. Her reason for going to Hollywood was two-fold. She wanted to be near Larry, but she had also been building up the idea that she would play the most sought after part in films at the time: Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.

Vivien had read Margaret Mitchell's best-seller nearly two years before, and was determined that she should make the perfect Scarlett. It was an impossible notion. She was not at all known in America, and every major actress at all the major studios wanted the part. As luck would have it, producer David O. Selznick knew he had to have the right girl to play his heroine, and thus far, all he'd found was his neighbor, Paulette Goddard. Vivien had had portraits taken in London earlier that year in what she thought was a fashion reminiscent of Scarlett. Angus McBean mentions in his book, "Vivien a Love Affair in Camera," that he had been invited over to Durham Cottage after he had processed the photos. He and Vivien were looking through them when Larry came home from the theatre that night. Larry remarked that the photos were very good, but that she couldn't use one of them. Vivien asked why, and said that the photo he had pointed out was her favorite. Larry remarked, "because you're dressed up like a Javanese tart." Vivien sent the photo, along with several others, to Hollywood for Selznick's consideration.

In Hollywood, whatever disbelief Larry may have had over Vivien getting the part of Scarlett seems to have disappeared. He arranged a meeting with his Hollywood agent, Myron Selznick (David Selznick's brother) and the three of them went to watch the infamous "Burning of Atlanta" scene being filmed on the Selznick lot. Legend has it, David took one look at Vivien and knew then and there that he'd found his Scarlett (to read more about Vivien getting the role in GWTW in detail, see The Search for Scarlett).

Wuthering Heights wrapped around the same time that Gone with the Wind began shooting early in 1939. Larry had rented a house on North Camden Drive in Beverly Hills, but was more often over at the rented house on North Crescent Drive where Vivien was put during filming (in reality, these two houses are only a few streets away from each other). Due to David Selznick's vision of Scarlett being a "perfect little virgin" in real life, Vivien and Larry's adulterous affair, though quite well known to the public overseas, was frowned upon, and security was set up around the house so that photographers wouldn't see Larry going in or out.

With his film finished, Larry was soon hungry for work, and it was reluctantly arranged that he should go to New York and do No Time for Comedy at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway. The incredible strain of filming what was up to that point the most expensive film ever made, coupled with not being able to see Larry for months on end, was almost more than Vivien could bear. She drove through the film, working long hours every day so that it would be finished sooner and so she could go to New York and join Larry. Their need for each other was all consuming. In many Vivien biographies it is mentioned that David Selznick gave Vivien a long weekend so she could fly to Kansas City and rendezvous with Larry at a hotel. According to Vivien, they met in the hotel lobby, and then Larry took her upstairs where they "fucked and fucked and fucked all weekend long."

Once filming wrapped on GWTW, despite her exhaustion, Vivien boarded the first plane to New York to catch Larry in one of his last performances of No Time for Comedy. According to journalist and friend, Radie Harris, Vivien met him back stage and 'they clasped each other and clung to each other like a scene out of Romeo and Juliet." Together again, the couple went on holiday in England before sailing back together (along with Vivien's mother, Gertrude) for Vivien to shoot re-takes for GWTW and for Larry to prep for his upcoming film, Rebecca, with director Alfred Hitchcock.

That September, while yachting off Catalina with Douglas Fairbanks Jr, David Niven, and a few other friends they got word over the radio that Hitler had invaded Poland, and England had declared war on Germany. It was a turning point for everyone. David Niven was the first to go back to England and join the military. Douglas fairbanks Jr. would join the American army, and Vivien and Larry had some tough choices of their own to make. With two small children back in England, and work here in America, it was not an easy decision to stay in America. The British actors in Hollywood, Larry included, had been told that they would do more good in Hollywood making films to help the cause than they would back home fighting. For Larry this seemed appalling. "I felt like I was being denied my birthright," he said in a 1982 interview with journalist Melvyn Bragg. Never-the-less, he and Vivien brought their children to America (Tarquin and Jill Esmond came to Hollywood while Vivien's daughter, Suzanne and her mother went to stay in Canada for the duration of the war).

In December, 1939, Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta, Georgia with a three-day gala attended by more citizens than the entire population of Atlanta. Larry had been invited along "on his own business" (though he was really there with Vivien), and to promote Selznick's new film, Rebecca. The reception of the film was unlike anything anyone in movies had ever seen, and Vivien was at the center of all the attention. She had made a tremendous personal and critical success in a performance that is considered today to be one of the best of all time. Riding side by side on a fabulous wave of success, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, who were soon to be husband and wife, charged into the 1940s, a decade where they would rise to the zenith of superstardom both as individuals and as a couple on stage and on screen.

A Torrid Romance • The Fabulous Forties • The Turbulent Fifties • The End of the Affair