Author: Kendra

link love

Classic Film Link Love #2

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Welcome to the second installment of Classic Film Link Love!  I’ve started following quite a few new classic film blogs since Link Love #1 was posted a few weeks ago. One of them is the Classic Movie Blog Association. I’m really excited to be participating in their Classic Movies of 1939 Blogathon in May! I’ll be talking about one of my all time favorite films, The Wizard of Oz, as well as the little-talked-about Tim Whelan film Q Planes, starring Laurence Olivier, Valerie Hobson and Ralph Richardson. Watch this space!

And now, to get down to business, here are some of my favorite recent classic film blog posts from around the interwebz.

  • Meredith shines the spotlight on Virginia Grey, one of Clark Gable’s many young starlet conquests, over at Dear Mr. Gable.
  • The Mythical Monkey (who writes about the movies) paid tribute to the great Charles Chaplin on his birthday by sharing one of Chaplin’s famous silents, The Gold Rush. If you haven’t seen this film, I highly recommend popping over to watch it. It’s hilarious, and is the source of the famous bread roll dance scene.
  • Sarah at And…Scene! made a great post about vintage ads featuring classic film stars. My favorites are David Niven promoting First National travelers checks and fat Orson Welles for Paul Masson Cabernet Sauvingon. I was recently introduced to the wonders of Orson’s drunken Paul Masson commercial outtakes on youtube, and have to say it might be the greatest thing ever.
  • Laura gives a glowing review of one of my all-time favorite films, Frank Capra’s Oscar-winning It Happened One Night, over at City Lights.
  • Tom at Motion Picture Gems is doing a series about historical small town movie theatres. I love old theatres. They have such a sense of history, and they usually screen older films. I’d take one of these over the multiplex any day. Do you have an old theatre in your town?
  • Page wrote a fabulous post about the beautiful silent film star (and one of Vivien Leigh’s favorite actors) Ramon Novarro over at My Love of Old Hollywood.
  • Jnpickens shoed us how she decked out her room and office space with old movie memorabilia (glad I’m not the only one who does this) over at Comet Over Hollywood. Do you have classic film memorabilia on your walls?

That’s all for this installment of Classic Film Link Love. Until next time!

the oliviers theatre

Celebrating William Shakespeare

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Hamlet at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore, Denmark, 1937. Vivien Leigh as Ophelia, Laurence Olivier as Hamlet

Since his death on April 23, 1616, William Shakespeare has continued his reign as the most famous playwright of all time. Countless film adaptations, not to mention stage performances, have been made of his work. In the 20th century, no one was more famous for staging Shakespeare than Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. They performed in seven of the Bard’s most famous comedies and dramas during their 23 year relationship. Some of their joint endeavors were better critically received than others, but their command of the language and ability to surprise and move audiences proved successful. Actor Peter Wyngarde once said of Vivien and Larry: “The Oliviers brought speech to the English stage. Vivien was visual and Larry was oral. She learnt about ‘the word’ from him.”

Though Laurence Olivier almost unanimously received praise across the board for every Shakespeare play he ever did, critics were harder on Vivien. This was especially true of The Observer critic Kenneth Tynan who seemed determined to point out that Vivien was not in the same league as her husband when it came to the classics. Despite such reviews, Larry thought otherwise, saying in his book On Acting that Vivien was perfect for Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, and was the greatest Lady Macbeth he’d ever seen. He would know.

Romeo and Juliet, New York, 1940. Laurence Olivier as Romeo, Vivien Leigh as Juliet

Richard III, Australian Old Vic tour, 1948. Laurence Olivier as Richard, Vivien Leigh as Lady Anne

Antony and Cleopatra, London, 1951. Vivien Leigh as Cleopatra, Laurence Olivier as Mark Antony

Twelfth Night, Stratford on Avon, 1955. Vivien Leigh as Viola, Laurence Olivier as Malvolio

Macbeth, Stratford on Avon, 1955. Laurence Olivier as Macbeth, Vivien Leigh as Lady Macbeth

Titus Andronicus, Stratford on Avon, 1955. Laurence Olivier as Titus, Vivien Leigh as Lavinia

the oliviers

FBFF: Inspiration

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I recently joined a great google group called Fashion Beauty Friend Friday, run by Katy of the blog Modly Chic (discovered through the always lovely Casee of The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower). Most of the people in this community are fashion bloggers and although vivandlarry.com isn’t classified as a fashion blog, I thought the weekly sets of questions Katy posts in the group were really great, and knew I wanted to be part of it. FBFF is a weekly thing, but I decided I would participate when the questions were more relevant to blogging in general rather than strictly fashion. Hopefully it will allow readers to get a more personal glimpse of the girl behind vivandlarry.com.

1. Which celebrity (celebrities) do you look to for fashion inspiration?
I don’t think I’ve ever tried to emulate a particular celebrity with my personal style. Rather, my fashion has always been shaped by the territory.  This still holds true, even in London. In fact, my mom shipped over my favorite pair of Rainbow sandals just this week! I tend to look at celebrities not for fashion inspiration, but with admiration for their personal style. Vivien Leigh has always been the big one for me. I love the vintage look (modcloth is one of my favorite websites to buy clothes from) and she pulled it off to perfection. You can see what I’m talking about in the recent guest post I did about Vivien Leigh as a style icon over at The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower. I wish everyone still dressed like this on a daily basis.
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vivien leigh

Vivien Leigh as a Style Icon

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Yesterday, I was lucky enough to do a guest post at one of my all-time favorite blogs, The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower! Casee Marie’s beautiful site is “an honest exploration of writing as a cultural and lifestyle blog from the perspective of a fashion-conscious young woman practicing Parisian style in the American Midwest.” Casee also happens to be a fan of Old Hollywood and I’ve been lucky enough to have some amazing discussions with her on various platforms (livejournal, tumblr, facebook, etc) over the past few years. As The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower is part of the fashion blogging community, I decided to write about Vivien Leigh as a style icon. Many people talk about her films, her stage work and her personal life, but the topic of her personal style doesn’t come up that often, and it’s one of the many facets of Vivien that I find inspirational. Thank you for featuring me, Casee!

“Only England could have produced her. She was the perfect English rose. When the door opened and she was there, she was so terribly good-looking. She had such an exquisite unreality about her.” — Former Vogue editor in chief and style guru Diana Vreeland on Vivien Leigh

When people talk about vintage style icons, a few obvious names come immediately to mind: Louise Brooks with her trademark black helmet of hair, the ultimate 1920s flapper; Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, the epitome of 1950s elegance; Jean Shrimpton and her work with David Bailey, defining mod style in the 60s; Twiggy bringing thin to the forefront in the 60s and 70s. These women defined entire eras in fashion. But while I admire the prevalence of iconography, I’ve always found inspiration in someone else: Vivien Leigh.

Many people may not even be aware that Vivien Leigh was ever considered a “style icon”. She is usually not remembered so much for her designer clothes as the remarkable way she inhabited the characters she played. She was first and foremost an actress. Her fame was instant and all-encompassing. In 1935, at the mere age of 21, she took London’s West End by storm when she appeared as a 17th century French courtesan in a play called The Mask of Virtue. Four years later she achieved international film icon status for her portrayal as Margaret Mitchell’s unflappable Southern belle, Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Her status as one of the world’s most beautiful women lasted her entire life.

Although performance was her life’s passion, she also had amazing taste in clothes, art, music and interesting people. And she was stunning. Many of the world’s most famous fashion photographers shot her for the pages of Vogue and other magazines, including Cecil Beaton, John Rawlings, George Hoyningen-Huene, Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Clifford Coffin to name but a few. The designers she favored read like a laundry list of famous labels: Schiaparelli, Lanvin, Molyneux, Dior, Mainbocher, Balmain. If Vivien were alive and young today, we would never see her on the runway. She was only 5’3″. But “models” as we know them today did not come in to fashion until the mid-1940s. Prior to the arrival of Suzy Parker, Dorian Leigh and Lisa Fonssagrives, the women who modeled for Vogue were almost exclusively actresses or socialites.

Read the full post over at The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower (and follow Casee’s blog while you’re at it, it’s seriously beautiful!)

Vivien Leigh’s Tickerage Mill

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Vivien Leigh’s Tickerage Mill

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**Warning: This post is image-heavy

I woke up this morning with every intention of going to the library and studying. Instead, Sammi Steward and I took an impromptu trip to Sussex to snap some photos of Vivien Leigh’s final resting place. The weather was perfect: 65 degrees and sunny. What better thing to do on a sunny spring afternoon than go to the countryside?

We met up at Victoria Station and boarded the next train to Croydon where we changed (and missed the hourly train to Sussex by literally 30 seconds) and headed to Uckfield. Sussex is a beautiful area. I remembered how I’d loved it when I did a summer abroad in Brighton my junior year in college. How time flies! On the train down, Sammi and I were having a discussion about Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier something or another when suddenly, the man in the seat across from us said, “I take it you’re going to Tickerage Mill?” How did he know? Apparently our indoor voices aren’t that quiet. He introduced himself as Duncan, the mayor of Uckfield. He said his in-laws very nearly bought the house next door to Tickerage Mill, and was very kind in not only telling us the easiest way to get out there, but arranged a little meeting between us and his friend who runs the Picture House cinema in town–apparently it’s one of the oldest indie theatres in England. Duncan also told us a lovely story about his friend’s claim to fame: Said friend had been up in London for work and had had a few drinks before catching the train back home. As Uckfield is the end of the line, he was roused out of his nap by a shake on the shoulder and a man saying, “I think you’re getting off at Uckfield.” The man was none other than Sir Laurence Olivier on his way to visit Vivien Leigh (conveniently, Uckfield is just between Brighton and London), and he offered Duncan’s friend a ride home in his hired car. We knew Larry went to visit Vivien on occasion!

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