The Secret Life Of Vivien Leigh

Vivi and Lee had long battled bipolar disorder, but when filming Ship of Fools, one episode ended in an utterly horrific turn. Although she would be known as the ultimate Southern belle, Lee was actually born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, India, in 1913 to a Scottish father and an Irish mother, although some sources say that her mother may have also been Armenian or Indian. To succeed in Hollywood, Lee would keep that part of her heritage secret. When she was six years old, her parents shipped her off to an English boarding school where she didn’t see her own mother for two long years. Since she couldn’t confide in her parents, she revealed her dreams to her school friends; she said she’d be a great actress someday. She was right, but she didn’t realize the awful toll that Hollywood would take on her.

In the 1930s, Lee fell head over heels for Herbert Leigh Holman, a lawyer who was 13 years older than her. Even though she had been studying acting at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she dropped out to be with Holman. The mismatched couple got married on December 20, 1932, and unfortunately, their honeymoon phase wouldn’t last long. Lee gave birth to her daughter Suzanne a mere 10 months after she and Holman walked down the aisle, at just 19 years old. As Lee started to act, her agent told her that Vivian Holman simply wouldn’t do. After rejecting several cringeworthy suggestions from her agent, Lee took her new last name from her husband’s middle name. She also changed Vivian to the much more sultry Vivien. With her new name, she was ready to claw her way to the top of Hollywood no matter the cost.

In 1935, Lee got her big break at 22 years old. She booked the role of the risqué Henrietta in the scandalous play The Mask of Virtue. Her performance received standing ovations and widespread critical acclaim, launching Lee’s whirlwind ascent to Hollywood’s top tier. During the play’s run, she attended another play starring England’s most exciting new actor, Laurence Olivier. Little did she know that trip to the theater would change her life. As Lee gazed at Olivier, she told her friend she was going to marry him, ignoring the fact that A, she was already married, and B, so was Olivier. Vivien Lee was one gutsy lady. After Laurence Olivier bowed to the adoring crowd, Vivien paid him a sneaky visit in his dressing room. After introducing herself and chatting with the up-and-coming thespian, Lee coyly kissed him on the neck as she sauntered out of the room. Obviously, he was smitten.

After her star turn in The Mask of Virtue, Lee immediately signed a huge contract with a producer and made a big-budget movie called Fire Over England. The movie was a major coup for Lee’s career, but the real appeal wasn’t the script; it was the co-star, none other than Laurence Olivier. It didn’t take long for the actors to strike up a passionate affair. Olivier and Lee started out as co-workers, then became friends, then lovers. On paper, they shouldn’t have been together; both were married with young children, but the heart wants what it wants, I guess. Olivier left his wife and toddler son less than a year after he met Vivien Lee. Because neither of their spouses would give them a divorce, the new couple had to keep their relationship a secret.

In 1937, Vivien Lee had the world at her feet, with her career on the upswing and a handsome actor by her side. She seemed unstoppable until mental illness reared its ugly head. When Lee played Ophelia on stage in Hamlet, she had a bipolar episode. As Laurence Olivier stepped into her dressing room, Lee started screaming at him, then immediately stopped as though nothing had happened. Sadly, her illness would only get worse. That same year, Lee broke her ankle and recovered in bed, passing the time by reading Margaret Mitchell’s epic romance Gone with the Wind. When she found out David O. Selznick planned to make a movie of the novel, she told her agent to make sure she got an audition. Selznick knew that Lee was an incredible actress, but found her too British to play Scarlett. After a soft letdown, he figured he’d never hear from her again. He was wrong. Lee pursued the role with, as Olivier said, demonic determination. Luckily for Lee, Selznick’s older brother Myron was Olivier’s agent. Myron knew that Lee would be perfect for the part and set up a meeting with his brother. She impressed the director with an incredibly wild screen test and ultimately won the role.

The shoot for Gone with the Wind was a complete night. Production dragged on for months on end, with Lee regularly working grueling 16-hour days. Over the course of filming, the studio had to hire not one, not two, but three separate directors to helm the cursed project. Unsurprisingly, the cast was miserable too. Lee worked almost twice as long as her co-star Clark Gable and made about a fifth of his paycheck. Both actors were sure that the movie was going to be a huge flop. Not quite. Not only was the movie not a flop, it’s still the highest-grossing movie of all time adjusted for inflation. It also led Lee to Hollywood’s greatest achievement; at just 26 years old, she took home the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Sadly, that joyous night would take a chilling turn. Winning an Oscar is a huge deal for an actor, so it makes sense that Olivier would be a little jealous of Lee’s achievement. According to Olivier’s son Tarquin, on the couple’s way home, Olivier grabbed Lee’s Oscar and could barely keep himself from whacking her with it. He later confessed that he was insane with jealousy. Despite the scary ride home, 1940 was a happy year for Lee and Olivier. By August, they had divorced their former spouses and were an official couple at last, but they made a huge sacrifice to be together. As part of their divorce agreements, they both had to give up primary custody of their children. They had a secretive wedding, with Katharine Hepburn acting as the matron of honor.

Olivier and Lee’s first joint venture was a complete bust. The couple invested over $10,000 into a stage play where Olivier would be Romeo and Lee would perform as Juliet. Unfortunately for them, the production was a total failure, and they lost a tremendous amount of money. After that, their once unbreakable bond began to show signs of strain, and it didn’t help that Lee’s bipolar disorder had plunged her into a world of terror. As her agent said, she’d become furious and her voice would turn hard, rasping, contemptuous, but her eyes were the worst; they would transform into the cold eyes of a stranger. After fits like this, Lee would black out; she’d have no recollection of yelling and would feel incredibly afraid, embarrassed, and remorseful.

In 1943, while volunteering for Allied troops in North Africa, Lee fell ill. It wasn’t until 1944 that she was finally diagnosed with tuberculosis. She spent some time in the hospital, and doctors thought that she’d recovered, but years later, they’d realize that they made a fatal mistake. After clawing her way back from the brink of death, Lee planned to revive her film career in 1944, only to star in flop after flop. She couldn’t get a role she desperately wanted in her husband’s movie Rebecca, then she unwisely turned down the lead in Pride and Prejudice. She was distraught, and things would only get worse. While filming Caesar and Cleopatra in 1945, one scene called for Lee to run across a freshly polished floor. She fell while pregnant. The accident caused her to miscarry, which in turn led her to fall into an extreme depression.

Bipolar disorder also made Lee’s libido skyrocket, leading the actress to have intense, uncontrollable intimate urges. She would regularly cheat on her husband by sleeping with strangers, taxi drivers, and delivery men in an effort to satisfy her desires. While Lee and Olivier were touring in Australia, Olivier happened to discover a hot new talent, the young actor Peter Finch. Excited, he immediately hired Finch to join him on stage. How did Finch repay Olivier for his big break? Well, he promptly slept with his wife. By the time 1948 rolled around, it’s said that Olivier was so exhausted by Lee’s endless mood swings and insatiable bedroom drive that he was relieved that she found someone else. From Lee’s perspective, 1948 was a grueling year; her marriage was falling apart, her bipolar disorder was becoming more intense, and she was struggling with other health issues. She suffered from extreme insomnia and would sometimes struggle with basic impulse control.

At the same time as Lee’s personal demons were making her miserable, she was also playing the role that would solidify her place in Hollywood history. As a trained stage actress, Lee jumped at the chance to act in Tennessee Williams’s new tragedy A Streetcar Named Desire. Her performance as Blanche DuBois earned rave reviews, but the role took a horrible toll on Lee’s mind. Few characters are as tragic, as desperate, or as doomed as Blanche DuBois. After inhabiting Blanche’s fractured psyche for over 300 performances, Lee admitted that playing the role tipped her into madness. When Hollywood decided to adapt the play for the screen, Lee once again had to fight for her seat at the table. Even though the director didn’t think she’d be right for the part, Lee convinced him. During filming, Marlon Brando apparently wanted to strike up an affair with his glamorous co-star. According to him, the only reason he didn’t pursue her was because of his friendship with Olivier. Lee picked up her second Academy Award for her performance, but as with her last Oscar, she would go from victory to complete despair in a painfully short time.

In 1953, Lee was set to star in a movie called Elephant Walk, only to endure a mental breakdown so bad that Paramount Studios replaced her with Liz Taylor. During her brief time on set, she became paranoid, her insomnia worsened, and she’d even hallucinate. Olivier hadn’t accompanied her to the shoot, so Lee found comfort in the arms of her co-star, none other than her ex-fling Peter Finch. After being fired from Elephant Walk, Lee boarded a flight back to LA. While in the air, she became so distressed that she felt a strong urge to escape, a moment that witnesses described as truly frightening. By this point, Lee was completely out of her mind. She would scream for hours in her dressing room until eventually being sedated and sent back to England. Once there, her husband Olivier felt that he only had one option left; he placed Lee in an asylum for three months, where she endured multiple painful sessions of electroshock therapy. Lee’s struggles should have been private, but then as now, word of a movie star’s breakdown was always going to get out.

Her marriage to Olivier had been through the ringer at this point. They managed to weather Lee’s affair with Finch, but their time was coming to an end. Audience members could hear the actors cruelly taunting each other during performances. Off stage, Lee made matters worse by fixating on scathing reviews. They accused Olivier of underplaying his roles so that he wouldn’t outshine his less talented wife. Olivier tried to convince Lee that that wasn’t true, but the damage was done. In 1956, 44-year-old Lee had yet another miscarriage, and like the last time she lost a baby, she fell into a horrible depressive spiral. Losing her baby while playing another tragic Shakespearean role proved to be a bad combination for Vivien Lee. While touring Europe for a production of Titus Andronicus, Lee had a breakdown. At one point, she went into a public park without any clothes on. Later, she flew into a rage and beat Olivier with a wet towel, leading him to throw her across the room. After almost 20 years with Lee, her latest breakdown proved to be more than Olivier could take. He left her and settled down with Joan Plowright.

Looking back, Olivier said that he would never love anybody as much as Vivien, but because of her mood swings, he couldn’t stay with her. With that, the once unbeatable couple went their separate ways. While Olivier was romancing Joan Plowright, Lee quickly fell into the arms of the actor Jack Merivale. He was well aware of her bipolar disorder and assured Olivier that he’d take care of her. With Lee in safe hands, Olivier officially divorced her in 1960. After the divorce, Olivier tried to stay amicable with his ex-wife. He wrote her a letter where he thanked her for handling their breakup nobly and bravely and beautifully, even though it must have been horrible for her. And after her marriage ended, Lee’s behavior became even stranger than usual. She once rented a car and became so upset by its color that she demanded to have it repainted. She also insisted on taking her Renoir and Picasso paintings with her everywhere she went. When she signed up to act in a play, she hoped the creative outlet would help; unfortunately, she was wrong.

In 1963, Lee starred in a stage musical called Tovarich. It was, in a word, a disaster. Lee had an intense breakdown that made her blank on her lines, sing songs up to three times too fast, and even assault her own co-stars while they were on stage with a full house watching. Her behavior was so uncontrollable that at one point, she had to be restrained and sedated. Even through immense pain though, Lee won a Tony Award for her performance. Vivien Lee had long battled bipolar disorder, but when filming Ship of Fools in 1965, one episode ended in a horrific turn. During an assault scene, Lee struck fellow actor Lee Marvin so hard with a high heel that it scarred his face. Because of this incident, Ship of Fools would end up being Lee’s final appearance on film. She didn’t have much time left, and unfortunately, what little she had would be deeply sad.

In the summer of 1967, Lee’s tuberculosis came back with a vengeance. As she lay in bed and attempted to recover from the illness, she got up to use the washroom and collapsed. By the time Lee’s partner Jack Merivale discovered her, she had already breathed her last. Even though Lee and Olivier had broken up seven years previous, the acclaimed actor rushed to see his ex-wife one last time. He helped Merivale organize Lee’s funeral and arranged for her to be cremated, with her ashes spread near her beloved home. When people heard of Vivien Lee’s demise, the London theaters paid her a heartbreaking tribute; each and every one turned out their lights for an hour to honor Lee’s memory. However, the most touching tribute belongs to Lee’s great love, Laurence Olivier. In the weeks before his own death, he reportedly watched one of her movies as he began to weep. He simply said, “This was love.” And Lee felt the same way about him. The actress once said, “I would rather have lived a short life with Larry than face a long one without him.” If you enjoyed this video please give it a like and subscribe for more videos.