5 November: Vivien Leigh

Born on this date in 1913 was Vivien Leigh, actress best known as Gone With the Wind's Scarlett O'Hara. Here are some things you might not know about her.

1. Her birth name was Vivian Mary Hartley. She was born in India, the daughter of Ernest, an English broker. Her mother, Gertrude, was also born in India and may have been of Irish and Parsi Indian ancestry.
2. While known for her films, she was a stage actress too. Her first appearance on stage was at the age of three, reciting Little Bo Peep for her mother's amateur theatre group.
3. She knew from an early age that she wanted to be an actress, and attended RADA. However, during her time there, she met a barrister called Herbert Leigh Holman, known as Leigh Holman, who was 13 years older than her. Her studies suffered after she met him, and she left RADA when she married him in 1932.
4. Her first film role was as an uncredited extra in Things Are Looking Up.
5. Soon after that, her agent decided that Vivian Holman was not a suitable name for an actress and encouraged her to find a stage name. She could have been known as "April Morn" but in the end opted to change the spelling of her name to the more feminine Vivien and use her husband's name, Leigh, as her last name.
6. Although she and Leigh Holman had a daughter together and remained friends for the rest of Vivien's life, the marriage didn't last. In 1937 she started an affair with Laurence Olivier while they were playing opposite one another in Fire Over England. At first, neither of their spouses would grant them divorces so they had to live together in secret since the film industry back them was a lot less tolerant of that sort of thing than it is now. Leigh and Olivier finally married in 1940. They had a small wedding with only four guests. Katharine Hepburn was one of the witnesses. In 1947 Olivier was knighted and Leigh became Lady Olivier. After their divorce, according to the style granted to the divorced wife of a knight, she became known socially as Vivien, Lady Olivier.
7. She battled both mental and physical illness. She was diagnosed with TB in 1944 and although she seemed to recover from it twice, it would eventually kill her at the age of 53. She also suffered from what we now know as bipolar disorder. This could have dated from when she miscarried Olivier's child. Vivien herself claimed that playing Blance DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, a character on the edge of psychosis, pushed her over the edge. Whatever the trigger was, it made her difficult to work and live with, and contributed to her having several affairs, leading to the end of her marriage to Olivier in 1960.
8. She was determined to win the role of Scarlett O'Hara. She is reported as saying to a film critic, "I shall play Scarlett O'Hara. Wait and see." She did get the part, of course, at the age of 25. The actress who played her mother in the film, Barbara O'Neil, was only 28 at the time. The only problem for her was the scene where she had to throw up. The vomiting noises were recorded by Olivia de Havilland because Vivien either couldn't, or wouldn't, produce a realistic retching sound.
9. Leigh had a near-photographic memory. She knew all her lines after only one or two readings of a play.
10. She often wore gloves, because she was ashamed of her hands, believing them to be disproportionately large.

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