Unseen letters, diary entries, illuminate life of Vivien Leigh
Oct. 12, 1933: ‘Had baby — a girl’
Their romance was one of the most scrutinized of the 20th century.
Married for 20 years, at the height of their careers, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier were the pre-eminent celebrity couple of their era.
Now, newly available correspondence has shown their sometimes tempestuous relationship in a more intimate and tender light. The documents are contained in the previously unpublished archives of the actress, which have been passed to the Victoria and Albert museum in London by her grandchildren, to mark the centenary of her birth.
The files contain hundreds of letters, telegrams and photographs, chronicling the couple’s grand love affair. They became lovers while both were married to other people and they had to conceal their relationship initially. The files show how, in telegrams, Olivier often used the name Andrew, or Kerr, or left them unsigned, to avoid exposure.
The correspondence also shows the tenderness between the two. In a love letter near the beginning of the relationship, he uses the pet names “O Woosshing” and “Woolley Lambkin” and also includes a sketch of them bathing at Brighton.
Between April and June 1939, while Olivier was playing in No Time for Comedy in New York and Leigh was shooting Gone with the Wind in Los Angeles, a total of 40 letters and telegrams were exchanged between the couple. In one letter, she wishes him luck on an opening night: “My dearest sweetheart, my love is with you every second and I know tonight will be a great triumph for you my darling boy, your proud and adoring Vivien.”
The files show how the letters continued after their divorce in 1960. The archives also cover the period in which she suffered periodic bouts of deep depression. After each of these phases, she would make efforts to apologize to anyone she had upset and the files contain dozens of such examples. Among the documents are also letters sent by Olivier to Leigh’s mother, Gertrude Hartley, expressing his concern for his wife’s well-being. The actress had a reputation among some for being difficult to work with, but the files show her to be dedicated and committed to her roles.
The archives contain more than 10,000 documents, only a quarter of which have so far been researched. Among the collection are personal diaries kept by the actress between 1929 and her death in 1967, as well as her annotated film and theatre scripts, press clippings and several awards.
In one diary entry, on Oct 12, 1933, she simply writes: “Had baby — a girl.”
Born in Darjeeling, India, and educated in Europe, Leigh won two Academy Awards for her roles in Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Yet she has received almost as much attention for her personal life and relationship with Olivier. She was married to him from 1940 to 1960, and the couple starred together in several plays and films.
Keith Lodwick, theatre and performance curator at the V&A, said: “In these archives, Leigh really emerges from the shadow of Olivier.
“She can be seen as a serious performer in her own right. We see her resilience and dedication to the art and craft of acting and determination to play a wide variety of roles.”
A selection of material from the archive will be on display from the autumn.