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Vivien Leigh

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   Vivien Leigh
   from the film Fire Over England (1937)
   Born    November 5, 1913
           Darjeeling, West Bengal, British India (now India)
   Died    July 8, 1967
           London, England
   Academy
    Awards Best Actress
           1939 Gone With the Wind
           1951 A Streetcar Named Desire

   Vivien Leigh ( November 5, 1913 – July 8, 1967) was an English actress.
   She won two Academy Awards playing " southern belles": Scarlett O'Hara
   in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named
   Desire (1951), a role she had also played in London's West End. She was
   a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her
   husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles.
   During her thirty-year stage career, she played parts that ranged from
   the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic
   Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady
   Macbeth.

   Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from
   being taken seriously as an actress, but ill health proved to be her
   greatest obstacle. Affected by bipolar disorder for most of her adult
   life, she gained a reputation for being a difficult person to work
   with, and her career went through periods of decline. She was further
   weakened by recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, with which she was first
   diagnosed in the mid-1940s. She and Olivier divorced in 1960, and Leigh
   worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from
   tuberculosis.

Early life and acting career

   Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, British India to
   Ernest Hartley, an officer in the Indian Cavalry who was of English
   parentage, and Gertrude Robinson Yackje, who was of French and Irish
   descent. The family relocated to Bangalore, where Vivian Hartley made
   her first stage appearance at the age of three, reciting "Little Bo
   Peep" for her mother's amateur theatre group. Gertrude Hartley tried to
   instill in her daughter an appreciation of literature, and introduced
   her to the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard
   Kipling, as well as stories of Greek mythology. An only child, Vivian
   Hartley was sent to the "Convent of the Sacred Heart" in Roehampton in
   England, in 1920. Her closest friend at the convent was the future
   actress Maureen O'Sullivan, to whom she expressed her desire to become
   "a great actress".

   Vivian Hartley completed her later education in Europe, returning to
   her parents in England in 1931. She discovered that one of Maureen
   O'Sullivan's films was playing in London's West End and told her
   parents of her ambitions to become an actress. Both were highly
   supportive, and her father helped her enroll at the Royal Academy of
   Dramatic Art (RADA) in London.

   In late 1931 she met Herbert Leigh Holman, known as Leigh, a barrister
   thirteen years her senior. Despite his disapproval of "theatrical
   people", they were married on December 20, 1932, and upon their
   marriage she terminated her studies at RADA. On October 12, 1933, she
   gave birth to a daughter, Suzanne, but felt stifled by her domestic
   life. Her friends suggested her for a small part in the film Things Are
   Looking Up, which marked her film debut. She engaged an agent, John
   Gliddon, who believed that the name "Vivian Holman" was not suitable
   for an actress, and after rejecting his suggestion, "April Morn", she
   took "Vivian Leigh" as her professional name. Gliddon recommended her
   to Alexander Korda as a possible film actress, but Korda rejected her
   as lacking potential.

   Cast in the play The Mask of Virtue in 1935, Leigh received excellent
   reviews followed by interviews and newspaper articles, among them one
   from the Daily Express in which the interviewer noted "a lightning
   change came over her face", which was the first public mention of the
   rapid changes in mood that became characteristic of her. John Betjeman,
   the future Poet Laureate, also wrote about her, describing her as "the
   essence of English girlhood". Korda, who attended her opening-night
   performance, admitted his error and signed her to a film contract, with
   the spelling of her name revised to "Vivien Leigh". She continued with
   the play, but when Korda moved it to a larger theatre, Leigh was found
   to be unable to project her voice adequately, or to hold the attention
   of so large an audience, and the play folded soon after. In 1960 Leigh
   recalled her ambivalence towards her first experience of critical
   acclaim and sudden fame, commenting, "some critics saw fit to be as
   foolish as to say that I was a great actress. And I thought, that was a
   foolish, wicked thing to say, because it put such an onus and such a
   responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn't able to carry. And it
   took me years to learn enough to live up to what they said for those
   first notices. I find it so stupid. I remember the critic very well,
   and have never forgiven him."

Meeting Laurence Olivier

   Leigh with Laurence Olivier in Fire Over England (1937), their first
   collaboration
   Enlarge
   Leigh with Laurence Olivier in Fire Over England (1937), their first
   collaboration

   Laurence Olivier saw Leigh in The Mask of Virtue, and a friendship
   developed after he congratulated her on her performance. While playing
   lovers in the film Fire Over England (1937), Olivier and Leigh
   developed a strong attraction, and after filming was completed, they
   began an affair. During this time Leigh read the Margaret Mitchell
   novel Gone with the Wind and instructed her American agent to suggest
   her to David O. Selznick, who was planning a film version. She remarked
   to a journalist, "I've cast myself as Scarlett O'Hara", and the film
   critic C. A. Lejeune recalled a conversation of the same period in
   which Leigh "stunned us all" with the assertion that Olivier "won't
   play Rhett Butler, but I shall play Scarlett O'Hara. Wait and see."

   Leigh played Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet in an Old Vic Theatre
   production, and Olivier later recalled an incident during which her
   mood rapidly changed as she was quietly preparing to go onstage.
   Without apparent provocation, she began screaming at him, before
   suddenly becoming silent and staring into space. She was able to
   perform without mishap, and by the following day, she had returned to
   normal with no recollection of the event. It was the first time Olivier
   witnessed such behaviour from her. They began living together; Holman
   and Olivier's wife, the actress Jill Esmond, each having refused to
   grant either a divorce.

   Leigh appeared with Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore and Maureen
   O'Sullivan in A Yank at Oxford (1938), the first of her films to
   receive attention in the United States. During production she developed
   a reputation for being difficult and unreasonable, and Korda instructed
   her agent to warn her that her option would not be renewed if her
   behaviour did not improve. Her next role was in St. Martin's Lane
   (1938) with Charles Laughton.

Achieving international success

   Olivier had been attempting to broaden his film career; despite his
   success in Britain, he was not well-known in the United States and
   earlier attempts to introduce him to the American market had failed.
   Offered the role of Heathcliff in Samuel Goldwyn's production of
   Wuthering Heights (1939), he travelled to Hollywood, leaving Leigh in
   London. Goldwyn and the film's director, William Wyler, offered Leigh
   the secondary role of Isabella, but she refused it, saying she would
   only play Cathy, a role already assigned to Merle Oberon.

   Hollywood was in the midst of a widely publicised search to find an
   actress to portray Scarlett O'Hara in David O. Selznick's production of
   Gone with the Wind ( 1939). Leigh's American agent was the London
   representative of the Myron Selznick Agency (Myron was David's
   brother), and in February 1938 she asked that her name be placed in
   consideration for the role of Scarlett. That month, David Selznick
   watched her two most recent pictures, Fire Over England and A Yank at
   Oxford, and from that time she became a serious contender for the part.
   Between February and August, Selznick rented all of her English
   pictures, and by August he was in negotiation with producer Alexander
   Korda, to whom Leigh was under contract, for her services later that
   year. On October 18, Selznick wrote in a confidential memo to director
   George Cukor, "I am still hoping against hope for that new girl." Leigh
   travelled to Los Angeles, ostensibly to be with Olivier. When Leigh met
   Olivier's American agent Myron Selznick, he felt that she possessed the
   qualities his brother David O. Selznick was searching for. Myron
   Selznick took Leigh and Olivier to the set where the burning of the
   Atlanta Depot scene was being filmed, and introduced Leigh. The
   following day, Leigh read a scene for Selznick, who organised a screen
   test and wrote to his wife, "She's the Scarlett dark horse and looks
   damn good. Not for anyone's ear but your own: it's narrowed down to
   Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett and Vivien Leigh". The
   director George Cukor concurred and praised the "incredible wildness"
   of Leigh, who was given the part soon after.

   Filming proved difficult for Leigh; Cukor was dismissed and replaced by
   Victor Fleming, with whom Leigh frequently quarrelled. She and Olivia
   de Havilland secretly met with Cukor at night and on weekends for his
   advice about how they should play their parts. She befriended Clark
   Gable, his wife Carole Lombard and de Havilland, but she clashed with
   Leslie Howard, with whom she was required to play several emotional
   scenes. Adding to her distress, she was sometimes required to work
   seven days a week, often late into the night, and she missed Olivier
   who was working in New York. She wrote to Leigh Holman, "I loathe
   Hollywood.... I will never get used to this – how I hate film acting."

   In 2006 de Havilland responded to claims of Leigh's manic behaviour
   during filming Gone with the Wind, published in a biography of Laurence
   Olivier. She defended Leigh, saying, "Vivien was impeccably
   professional, impeccably disciplined on Gone with the Wind. She had two
   great concerns: doing her best work in an extremely difficult role and
   being separated from Larry [Olivier], who was in New York."

   Gone with the Wind brought Leigh immediate attention and fame, but she
   was quoted as saying, "I'm not a film star – I'm an actress. Being a
   film star – just a film star – is such a false life, lived for fake
   values and for publicity. Actresses go on for a long time and there are
   always marvellous parts to play." Among the ten Academy Awards won by
   Gone with the Wind was a Best Actress award for Leigh, who also won a
   New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.

Marriage and joint projects

   In February 1940 Jill Esmond agreed to divorce Olivier, and Holman also
   agreed to divorce Leigh, although they maintained a strong friendship
   for the rest of Leigh's life. Esmond was granted custody of Tarquin,
   her son with Olivier, and Holman was granted custody of Suzanne, his
   daughter with Leigh. On August 30 Olivier and Leigh were married in
   Santa Barbara, California, in a ceremony attended only by their
   witnesses, Katharine Hepburn and Garson Kanin.

   Leigh hoped to star with Olivier and made a screentest for Rebecca,
   which was to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock with Olivier in the
   leading role, but after viewing her screentest Selznick noted that "she
   doesn't seem right as to sincerity or age or innocence", a view shared
   by Hitchcock, and Leigh's mentor, George Cukor. Selznick also observed
   that she had shown no enthusiasm for the part until Olivier had been
   confirmed as the lead actor, and subsequently cast Joan Fontaine. He
   also refused to allow her to join Olivier in Pride and Prejudice
   (1940), and Greer Garson took the part Leigh had envisioned for
   herself. Waterloo Bridge (1940) was to have starred Olivier and Leigh,
   however Selznick replaced Olivier with Robert Taylor, then at the peak
   of his success as one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's most popular male stars.
   Leigh's top-billing reflected her status in Hollywood, and despite her
   reluctance to participate without Olivier, the film proved to be
   popular with audiences and critics.

   She and Olivier mounted a stage production of Romeo and Juliet for
   Broadway. The New York press discussed the adulterous nature that had
   marked the beginning of Olivier and Leigh's relationship, and
   questioned their ethics in not returning to England to help with the
   war effort, and the critics were hostile in their assessment of the
   production. Brooks Atkinson for the New York Times wrote, "Although
   Miss Leigh and Mr Olivier are handsome young people they hardly act
   their parts at all." While most of the blame was attributed to
   Olivier's acting and direction, Leigh was also criticised, with Bernard
   Grebanier commenting on the "thin, shopgirl quality of Miss Leigh's
   voice." The couple had invested almost their entire savings into the
   project, and its failure was a financial disaster for them.

   They filmed That Hamilton Woman (1941) with Olivier as Horatio Nelson
   and Leigh as Emma Hamilton. With Britain engaged in World War II, it
   was one of several Hollywood films made with the aim of arousing a
   pro-British sentiment among American audiences. The film was popular in
   the United States, but was an outstanding success in the Soviet Union.
   Winston Churchill arranged a screening for a party which included
   Franklin D. Roosevelt and, on its conclusion, addressed the group,
   saying, "Gentlemen, I thought this film would interest you, showing
   great events similar to those in which you have just been taking part."
   The Oliviers remained favourites of Churchill, attending dinners and
   occasions at his request for the rest of his life, and of Leigh he was
   quoted as saying, "By Jove, she's a clinker."

   The Oliviers returned to England, and Leigh toured through North Africa
   in 1943, performing for troops before falling ill with a persistent
   cough and fevers. In 1944 she was diagnosed as having tuberculosis in
   her left lung, but after spending several weeks in hospital, she
   appeared to be cured. In spring she was filming Caesar and Cleopatra
   (1945) when she discovered she was pregnant, but suffered a
   miscarriage. She fell into a deep depression which reached its nadir
   when she turned on Olivier, verbally and physically attacking him until
   she fell to the floor sobbing. This was the first of many major
   breakdowns related to manic-depression, or bipolar mood disorder.
   Olivier came to recognise the symptoms of an impending episode –
   several days of hyperactivity followed by a period of depression and an
   explosive breakdown, after which Leigh would have no memory of the
   event, but would be acutely embarrassed and remorseful.

   She was well enough to resume acting in 1946 in a successful London
   production of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, but her films of
   this period, Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) and Anna Karenina (1948), were
   not great successes.

   In 1947 Olivier was knighted, and Leigh accompanied him to Buckingham
   Palace for the investiture. She became Lady Olivier, a title she
   continued to use after their divorce, until she died.

   By 1948 Olivier was on the Board of Directors for the Old Vic Theatre,
   and he and Leigh embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand to
   raise funds for the theatre. During their six-month tour, Olivier
   performed Richard III and also performed with Leigh in The School for
   Scandal and The Skin of Our Teeth. The tour was an outstanding success,
   and although Leigh was plagued with insomnia and allowed her understudy
   to replace her for a week while she was ill, she generally withstood
   the demands placed upon her, with Olivier noting her ability to "charm
   the press". Members of the company later recalled several quarrels
   between the couple, with the most dramatic of these occurring in
   Christchurch when Leigh refused to go on stage. Olivier slapped her
   face, and Leigh slapped him in return and swore at him before she made
   her way to the stage. By the end of the tour, both were exhausted and
   ill, and Olivier told a journalist, "You may not know it, but you are
   talking to a couple of walking corpses." Later he would comment that he
   "lost Vivien" in Australia.

   The success of the tour encouraged the Oliviers to make their first
   West End appearance together, performing the same works with one
   addition, Antigone, included at Leigh's insistence because she wished
   to play a role in a tragedy.

   Leigh next sought the role of Blanche DuBois in the West End stage
   production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, and was
   cast after Williams and the play's producer Irene Mayer Selznick saw
   her in the The School for Scandal and Antigone, and Olivier was
   contracted to direct. Containing a rape scene and references to
   promiscuity and homosexuality, the play was destined to be
   controversial, and the media discussion about its suitability added to
   Leigh's anxiety, but she believed strongly in the importance of the
   work. J. B. Priestley denounced the play and Leigh's performance, and
   the critic Kenneth Tynan commented that Leigh was badly miscast because
   British actors were "too well-bred to emote effectively on stage".
   Olivier and Leigh were chagrined that part of the commercial success of
   the play lay in audience members attending to see what they believed
   would be a salacious and sensationalist story, rather than the Greek
   tragedy that they envisioned, but the play also had strong supporters,
   among them Noël Coward who described Leigh as "magnificent".

   After 326 performances Leigh finished her run; however, she was soon
   engaged for the film version. Her irreverent and often bawdy sense of
   humour allowed her to establish a rapport with her co-star Marlon
   Brando, but she had difficulty with the director Elia Kazan, who did
   not hold her in high regard as an actress. He later commented that "she
   had a small talent", but as work progressed, he became "full of
   admiration" for "the greatest determination to excel of any actress
   I've known. She'd have crawled over broken glass if she thought it
   would help her performance." Leigh found the role gruelling and
   commented to the Los Angeles Times, "I had nine months in the theatre
   of Blanche DuBois. Now she's in command of me." The film won glowing
   reviews for her, and she won a second Academy Award for Best Actress, a
   BAFTA Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.
   Tennessee Williams commented that Leigh brought to the role "everything
   that I intended, and much that I had never dreamed of", but in later
   years, Leigh would say that playing Blanche DuBois "tipped me over into
   madness".

Continuing illness

   In 1951, Leigh and Olivier performed two plays about Cleopatra, William
   Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and
   Cleopatra, alternating the play each night and winning good reviews.
   They took the productions to New York, where they performed a season at
   the Ziegfeld Theatre into 1952. The reviews there were also mostly
   positive, but the critic Kenneth Tynan angered them when he suggested
   that Leigh's was a mediocre talent which forced Olivier to compromise
   his own. Tynan's diatribe almost precipitated another collapse; Leigh,
   terrified of failure and intent on achieving greatness, dwelt on his
   comments, while ignoring the positive reviews of other critics.

   In January 1953 Leigh travelled to Ceylon to film Elephant Walk with
   Peter Finch. Shortly after filming commenced, she suffered a breakdown,
   and Paramount Studios replaced her with Elizabeth Taylor. Olivier
   returned her to their home in England, where between periods of
   incoherence, Leigh told him that she was in love with Finch, and had
   been having an affair with him. She gradually recovered over a period
   of several months.

   As a result of this episode, many of the Oliviers' friends learnt of
   her problems. David Niven said she had been "quite, quite mad", and in
   his diary Noël Coward expressed surprise that "things had been bad and
   getting worse since 1948 or thereabouts."

   Leigh recovered sufficiently to play The Sleeping Prince with Olivier
   in 1953, and in 1955 they performed a season at Stratford-upon-Avon in
   Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus. They played
   to capacity houses and attracted generally good reviews, Leigh's health
   seemingly stable. Noël Coward was enjoying success with the play South
   Sea Bubble, with Leigh in the lead role, but she became pregnant and
   withdrew from the production. Several weeks later, she miscarried and
   entered a period of depression that lasted for months. She joined
   Olivier for a European tour with Titus Andronicus, but the tour was
   marred by Leigh's frequent outbursts against Olivier and other members
   of the company. After their return to London, her former husband Leigh
   Holman, who continued to exert a strong influence over her, stayed with
   the Oliviers and helped calm her.

   In 1958, considering her marriage to be over, Leigh began a
   relationship with the actor Jack Merivale, who knew of Leigh's medical
   condition and assured Olivier he would care for her. She achieved a
   success in 1959 with the Noël Coward comedy Look After Lulu, with The
   Times critic describing her as "beautiful, delectably cool and matter
   of fact, she is mistress of every situation."

   In 1960 she and Olivier divorced, and Olivier married the actress Joan
   Plowright. In his autobiography he discussed the years of problems they
   had experienced because of Leigh's illness, writing, "Throughout her
   possession by that uncannily evil monster, manic depression, with its
   deadly ever-tightening spirals, she retained her own individual
   canniness – an ability to disguise her true mental condition from
   almost all except me, for whom she could hardly be expected to take the
   trouble."

Final years and death

   Leigh photographed in 1958
   Enlarge
   Leigh photographed in 1958

   Merivale proved to be a stable influence for Leigh, but despite her
   apparent contentment she was quoted by Radie Harris as confiding that
   she "would rather have lived a short life with Larry [Olivier] than
   face a long one without him". Her first husband, Leigh Holman, also
   spent considerable time with her. Merivale joined her for a tour of
   Australia, New Zealand and Latin America that lasted from July 1961
   until May 1962, and Leigh enjoyed positive reviews without Olivier
   sharing the spotlight with her. Though she was still beset by bouts of
   depression, she continued to work in the theatre and in 1963 won a Tony
   Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in the Broadway
   musical Tovarich. She also appeared in the films The Roman Spring of
   Mrs. Stone (1961) and Ship of Fools (1965).

   In May 1967 she was rehearsing to appear with Michael Redgrave in
   Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance when she became ill with tuberculosis
   but, after resting for several weeks, seemed to be recovering. On the
   night of July 7, Merivale left her as usual, to perform in a play, and
   returned home around midnight to find her asleep. About thirty minutes
   later (by now July 8), he returned to the bedroom and discovered her
   body on the floor. She had been attempting to walk to the bathroom, and
   as her lungs filled with liquid, she had collapsed. Merivale contacted
   Olivier, who was receiving treatment for prostate cancer in a nearby
   hospital. In his autobiography, Olivier described his "grievous
   anguish" as he immediately travelled to Leigh's residence, to find that
   Merivale had moved her body onto the bed. Olivier paid his respects,
   and "stood and prayed for forgiveness for all the evils that had sprung
   up between us", before helping Merivale make funeral arrangements.

   She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered on the lake at her home,
   Tickerage Mill, near Blackboys, East Sussex, England. A memorial
   service was held at St Martin-in-the-Fields, with a final tribute read
   by John Gielgud. In the United States, she became the first actress
   honoured by "The Friends of the Libraries at the University of Southern
   California". The ceremony was conducted as a memorial service, with
   selections from her films shown and tributes provided by such
   associates as George Cukor.

Critical comments

   Vivien Leigh was considered one of the most beautiful actresses of her
   day, and her directors emphasised this in most of her films. When asked
   if she believed her beauty had been a handicap, she said, "people think
   that if you look fairly reasonable, you can't possibly act, and as I
   only care about acting, I think beauty can be a great handicap, if you
   really want to look like the part you're playing, which isn't
   necessarily like you."

   George Cukor commented that Leigh was a "consummate actress, hampered
   by beauty", and Laurence Olivier said that critics should "give her
   credit for being an actress and not go on forever letting their
   judgements be distorted by her great beauty." Garson Kanin shared their
   viewpoint and described Leigh as "a stunner whose ravishing beauty
   often tended to obscure her staggering achievements as an actress.
   Great beauties are infrequently great actresses—simply because they
   don't need to be. Vivien was different; ambitious, persevering,
   serious, often inspired."

   Leigh explained that she played "as many different parts as possible"
   in an attempt to learn her craft and to dispel prejudice about her
   abilities. She believed that comedy was more difficult to play than
   drama because it required more precise timing, and said that more
   emphasis should be placed upon comedy as part of an actor's training.
   Nearing the end of her career, which ranged from Noël Coward comedies
   to Shakespearean tragedies, she observed, "It's much easier to make
   people cry than to make them laugh."

   Her early performances brought her immediate success in Britain, but
   she remained largely unknown in other parts of the world until the
   release of Gone with the Wind. In December 1939 the New York Times
   wrote, "Miss Leigh's Scarlett has vindicated the absurd talent quest
   that indirectly turned her up. She is so perfectly designed for the
   part by art and nature that any other actress in the role would be
   inconceivable", and as her fame escalated, she was featured on the
   cover of Time Magazine as Scarlett. In 1969 critic Andrew Sarris
   commented that the success of the film had been largely due to "the
   inspired casting" of Leigh, and in 1998 wrote that "she lives in our
   minds and memories as a dynamic force rather than as a static
   presence." Leonard Maltin described the film as one of the all-time
   greats, writing in 1998 that Leigh "brilliantly played" her role.

   Her performance in the West End production of A Streetcar Named Desire,
   described by the theatre writer Phyllis Hartnoll as "proof of greater
   powers as an actress than she had hitherto shown", led to a lengthy
   period during which she was considered one of the finest actresses in
   British theatre. Discussing the subsequent film version, Pauline Kael
   wrote that Leigh and Marlon Brando gave "two of the greatest
   performances ever put on film" and that Leigh's was "one of those rare
   performances that can truly be said to evoke both fear and pity."

   Kenneth Tynan ridiculed Leigh's performance opposite Olivier in the
   1955 production of Titus Andronicus, commenting that she "receives the
   news that she is about to be ravished on her husband's corpse with
   little more than the mild annoyance of one who would have preferred
   foam rubber." He was one of several critics to react negatively to her
   reinterpretation of Lady Macbeth in 1955, saying that her performance
   was insubstantial and lacked the necessary fury demanded of the role;
   however, after her death he revised his opinion, describing his earlier
   criticism as "one of the worst errors of judgement" he had ever made.
   He came to believe that Leigh's interpretation, in which Lady Macbeth
   uses her sexual allure to keep Macbeth enthralled, "made more sense ...
   than the usual battle-axe" portrayal of the character. In a survey of
   theatre critics conducted shortly after Leigh's death, several named it
   as one of her greatest achievements in theatre.

   In 1969 a plaque to Leigh was placed in the actors' church, St Paul's,
   Covent Garden, and in 1985 a portrait of her was included in a series
   of postage stamps, along with Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Chaplin, Peter
   Sellers and David Niven to commemorate "British Film Year".

   The British Library in London purchased the papers of Laurence Olivier
   from his estate in 1999. Known as The Laurence Olivier Archive, the
   collection includes many of Vivien Leigh's personal papers, including
   numerous letters written by her to Olivier. The papers of Vivien Leigh,
   including letters, photographs, contracts and diaries, are owned by her
   daughter, Mrs Suzanne Farrington. In 1994 the National Library of
   Australia purchased a photograph album, monogrammed "L & V O" and
   believed to have belonged to the Oliviers, containing 573 photographs
   of the couple during their 1948 tour of Australia. It is now held as
   part of the record of the history of the performing arts in Australia.

Awards and nominations

   Year Award Work
   1939 Academy Award for Best Actress (won)
   New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress (won) Gone With the
   Wind
   1952 Academy Award for Best Actress (won)
   BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (won)
   Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama (nominated)
   New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress (won)
   Venice Film Festival - Volpi Cup (won) A Streetcar Named Desire
   1963 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical (won) Tovarich
                                     Awards
      Preceded by:
 Bette Davis
 for Jezebel           Academy Award for Best Actress
                       1939
                       for Gone with the Wind               Succeeded by:
                                                     Ginger Rogers
                                                     for Kitty Foyle
      Preceded by:
 Judy Holliday
 for Born Yesterday    Academy Award for Best Actress
                       1951
                       for A Streetcar Named Desire         Succeeded by:
                                                     Shirley Booth
                                                     for Come Back, Little Sheba
      Preceded by:
 (tie)
 Anna Maria Alberghetti
 for Carnival
 and
 Diahann Carroll
 for No Strings        Tony Award for Best
                       Leading Actress in a Musical
                       1963
                       for Tovarich                         Succeeded by:
                                                     Carol Channing
                                                     for Hello, Dolly!

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