The sad life of a remarkably beautiful and talented woman.
Vivien Leigh always wanted to be an actress, but it was the stage that was her natural element, not motion pictures, which served merely as a way to earn a living. Gone With The Wind was the exception -- that was the role everyone wanted. And for the rest of her life she remained Scarlett O'Hara to the entire world.
This account leaves me with the impression that her love for Laurence Olivier, already married to another woman, began as an obsession in the strictest sense of the word and remained an unhealthy need until the day she died. His world-wide prestige as a stage actor, as a titan of the theater, remained always a goal she could not equal but yearned for; possibly it seemed the only way to be worthy of a place by the side of this heroic figure. He was in truth her entire existence.
Surprisingly, the major flaw Vivien Leigh had to contend with was her voice, which was too light and high-pitched to be ideal for the theater. Nevertheless with her beauty and passion and with his enormous prestige as an actor and director, this husband and wife became for decades the reigning theatrical couple in Europe as well as the United States and as far away as Australia.
Whenever they performed in motion pictures, together or separately, it was merely as a means of supporting their extravagant lifestyle and providing for the children from their first marriages, his son and her daughter. Vivien was never a doting mother, nor Olivier a doting father, and both children remained essentially strangers to them while they pursued their acting careers all over the world.
The war years were spent in Hollywood making propaganda films for England though they were not announced as such. At the end of the war they returned to a devastated and impoverished country and continued their careers enduring all the hardships of theater life at that time. But nothing warned them of the horrors soon to be visited upon them with the worsening of Vivien's emotional disturbance, diagnosed as bipolar disorder.
It tormented them for the rest of their lives together. The alternation of hope during her quieter, depressive periods and of horror, violence, and despair during the manic episodes inexorably wore on Olivier's patience and endurance. In the end he gratefully turned her care over to another man whose disinterested devotion would have qualified anyone for sainthood. Eventually a divorce freed Olivier to marry again.
Adding to her misery, Vivien suffered for years from tuberculosis and it was this that culminated in her death while she was still in her early fifties.
This biography provides an easy-to-read, straightforward account of her remarkable but doomed life with a man of immense fame and distinction.
In his treatment of his afflicted wife Olivier does not appear to have been unkind and in the end he dragged himself from his sickbed to sit beside her body until she was removed for cremation.
A sad ending to a life of so much brilliance.
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Top reviews from other countries
Bart
A story of strength and will power over adversity
Reviewed in Australia on September 4, 2017
Kindle Customer
What a difficult woman!!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 29, 2014