Author: Kendra

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Vivien and Larry at the Gone With the Wind Premiere

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Wednesday December 15 marks the 71st anniversary of the start of the 3 day Gone with the Wind premier in Atlanta, GA.  To mark the occasion, I thought it would be interesting to get some information about Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier at the premier.  So, I’m happy to introduce our guest blogger, Denise.  Denise is a freelance writer and marketing consultant based in NC.  She is the administrator for a Facebook fan page, GWTW…But Not Forgotten and devotes her free time to studying the book, film, and the people who were behind it all.  She is a fountain of GWTW knowledge and I encourage you to join her facebook page for daily trivia, photos, and other goodies related to everyone’s favorite Civil War epic.  Thanks, Denise!

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When David O. Selznick undertook the mammoth task of translating Margaret Mitchell’s 1037 page masterpiece into a workable script – he didn’t seek to achieve mere adequacy.  Everything had to be bigger, better, and grander than anything that had ever graced the silver screen.  From the sweeping titles to the magnificent costumes to the extensive script revisions…mediocre was not in his vocabulary.

And so too were Selznick’s plans for the premiere for Gone With the Wind.  Originally scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the Burning of Atlanta (November 15), production delays caused the premiere to be pushed back to December 15, 1939 and would be hosted at the real-life location of Gone With the Wind’s story – Atlanta, GA.  This was an unprecedented move to premiere a film outside of Hollywood or New York.

The grand event would be the very definition of Hollywood glamour and the three days of festivities would include receptions, luncheons, the Atlanta Junior League Gone With the Wind Ball, a benefit dance to support the Atlanta Historical Society, and of course, the movie premiere.  In attendance would be notable names such as Margaret Mitchell and her husband John Marsh, David and Irene Selznick, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, and of course, Vivien Leigh.
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Backstage with “The Happy Hypocrite”

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Theatre World goes backstage after the opening night of The Happy Hypocrite (1936) starring Ivor Novello, Vivien Leigh, Isabelle Jeans, and Marius Goring.

Ivor Novello was both amused and delighted to hear that he had so completely mystified the friends who crowded into his dressing room after his great first night triumph in The Happy Hypocrite at His majesty’s.  Many of them had thought he wore a mask when he made his first entry, but, actually, his startling transformation into the red-faced and bloated viciousness of “Lord George Hell” is due entirely to patient–and clever–make-up.  For the later scenes he had three different half-masks, which just leave his mouth and chin free, and, as he feels inclined at the moment, he wears one or other of them or else reveals his face.

He never puts on at all the complete mask which is brought on for the inspection in the early scene at the mask-maker’s shop.  Ivor, of course, had a special “cast” taken for this mask, and it seems to me that if only a supply of duplicates could be arranged they would be surely and eagerly bought up by his countless “fans.”

The youthful Vivien Leigh, who is such an adorable “Jenny Mere,” was proudly displaying for her dressing-room callers a gift from Ivor Novello of Coleridge’s poems bound in flame-coloured parchment.  She had a wonderful show of flowers, too, the most admired offering of all being a big oval mirror framed in closely-massed blue hyacinth blossoms and surmounted by a true lover’s knot of blue forget-me-nots and pink roses.  “And when the flowers die, what?–” began a practical friend; but before she could finish her query she got a poetically gallant reply from the young husband who had sent this gift to Vivien”  “Anyway, the mirror will always reflect a flower–my wife’s face,” he said.

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Celebrating the Southbank Show: Laurence Olivier

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In early 2010 after 30 years and 800 episodes, Melvyn Bragg’s Southbank Show came to an end. One of his most notable interviewees was Laurence Olivier (this interview was turned into the Emmy-winning documentary Laurence Olivier: A Life). In this clip from Celebrating the Southbank Show, which aired on ITV3 in September 2008, Melvyn Bragg reminisces about his experience interviewing Olivier, and the drunken day in Brighton that ensued.

Submitted to vivandlarry.com by Chris

[flv:http://vivandlarry.com/videos/larrysouthbank.flv]

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Vivien Leigh, the West End’s newest star

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“Words, but if one of them were true?”
by Vivien Leigh
The Theatre Illustrated Quarterly
Summer 1935

I have a pen in my hand.  It has started writing.  Why, only the Editor of this magazine and a stern-faced man called Sydney Carroll can explain.  I know I ought, when off the stage, to be invisible, to leave the world to guess my thoughts, if it wants to, which I hope, but doubt.  But as I respect my Manager and adore my theatre, and as I have a terrible fear of the press (though I think all pressmen dears, especially when they don’t ask me to talk about my baby), here I am, praying under my pen for just one smile and one word of forgiveness for stealing, with their interests in mind, into the greater limelight of the printed word.
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Flowers for Vivien Leigh

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Yesterday, in honor of Vivien Leigh’s birthday, I decided to get some flowers and take them to 54 Eaton Square.  I have to admit I was hesitant and felt a little strange doing it.  But I know from the Viv and Larry Facebook page how many people talk about going to Eaton Square when/if they go to London.  So, I decided to represent the fans at large.

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