photography vivien leigh

Tickerage Mill: A private view

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Tickerage Mill farm

A view of Tickerage Mill from the farm owned by Vivien Leigh

Last week I posted some rare candid images of Vivien Leigh taken by Jack Merivale that showed the woman behind the star image; photographs her fans would likely never have seen had Merivale not graciously lent them to one of her biographers. Several of them showed Vivien at her recently-purchased home Tickerage Mill. The photos in today’s post highlight the same setting. These, however, were intended for public consumption.

British actor Dirk Bogarde told journalist and biographer Alan Dent how Vivien came to own Tickerage in early 1961:

When Vivien had left Notley she once came down to my house, and felt utterly sad because she no longer had a garden…she adored mine, which was rather marvelous. Suddenly she said: “I want a little house…with a view like this, but by water…on a lake or a stream…and with trees…” and I had seen the exact house three days before. I told her, and she was off in a flash and found it to be the very place of her idea…that’s how she got Tickerage Mill. I had wanted it very much for myself, but it was a bit too far from town, I thought, and too small for me. Viv was instantly at home there.

In the summer of 1962, Vivien invited professional Surrey-based photographer Thomas A. Wilkie to photograph her at Tickerage. She had been away for a year and was only now settling in and making the Queen Anne-style house in Sussex a true home.

The photos are part of a larger set that was intended for a magazine but, to my knowledge and the current owner’s, were never published. I first came across the original prints in a famous theatre ephemera store in London back in 2005. I was a college student at the time and couldn’t afford the asking price. “Vivien isn’t cheap, you know,” the shop owner said to me. I went away believing I’d never see them again, so it was a great surprise when Terence Pepper from the National Portrait Gallery asked me to come in and meet a local collector called John who had some Vivien photos to donate for an upcoming exhibit, and there they were. John inherited the photographs from a friend who recently passed away, and I am so grateful to him for letting me share some of them  here at vivandlarry.com.

The photos offer an intimate glimpse into Vivien’s home and, like Jack Merivale’s snapshots, show a woman making the best of life after her divorce from Olivier. So many of Vivien’s endearing qualities come through in these pictures: her love for animals, her exquisite taste in interior design, her love of work, and her loyalty. I especially love the photo of her and her dog, Sebastian. It’s not perfect, and she probably wouldn’t have approved it for publication, but the expression on her face is adorable.

Inside Vivien Leigh's Tickerage Mill

I just love this centuries old fireplace. It reminds me of a cozy English pub.

Tickerage Mill sitting room

Tickerage Mill sitting room

The sitting room

Vivien Leigh at Tickerage Mill 1962

 Talking about her upcoming musical, Tovarich

Vivien Leigh and her dog Sebastian

Playing with her poodle, Sebastian – a gift from Jack Merivale

Vivien Leigh and her gardner at Tickerage Mill

“Gardening – my great love.” Talking to Cook, who was head gardener at Notley Abbey for eight years and left there in order to remain in Vivien’s service.

Vivien leigh at Tickerage Mill 1962

I simply love this photo

vivien leigh

Vivien Leigh through Jack Merivale’s lens

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Vivien Leigh at Rottnest IslandVivien Leigh leaving Rottnest Island during a break in the Old Vic Australian tour of 1961

 There were literally tens of thousands of photographs taken of Vivien Leigh throughout her lifetime. London society and stage photographer Vivienne (née Florence Entwhistle, mother of Anthony Beauchamp who photographed Vivien on the cusp of fame) said that Vivien Leigh was “an artist-photographer’s dream” because of her near-flawless facial features and willingness to be manipulated in order to get the perfect shot. There were studio portraits for stage and film, always depicting the character she was playing either on or off-screen. There were press photographs taken at functions or when she was out and about. But in these photos she was always Vivien Leigh the star; the public figure. Photographers who were allowed in to her home came with her permission, and even then the Vivien Leigh persona was always in place.

What makes candid photographs like the ones below so special is that they show the real Vivien Leigh, the woman  those close to her had the privilege of knowing and loving. Vivien was an intensely private person. She didn’t shop her private photos around like many celebrities do today.  We rarely see photos of her and Laurence Olivier at Notley Abbey, for example. Olivier’s son Tarquin told me he doesn’t remember his father or Vivien ever carrying a camera around in those days. And if they did, the photos remain in a private collection. This changed when Vivien became involved with Jack Merivale in 1960. She had purchased a 35mm Stereo Realist camera in the 1950s and Jack took it up as a hobby, snapping Vivien while traveling and relaxing at Tickerage Mill with friends and family.

With the exception of one, the photos in this post were taken by Jack Merivale between 1960 and 1962 when Vivien was transitioning into a new life after her difficult divorce from Olivier. He captured a woman making the best of things, happiest in the company of friends. These were originally published in black and white in Hugo Vickers’ biography of Vivien and they offer an intimate and rare glimpse into Vivien’s private world. I thought it would be a treat for visitors of vivandlarry.com to be able to see them here in color.

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Vivien Leigh: First Cousin to Cinderella

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Vivien Leigh Cinderella story

First Cousin to Cinderella

By Maude M. Miller
Hollywood magazine, September 1939

*Donated to vivandlarry.com by Meredith

A pair of green eyes gazes steadily but with a suggestion of good-natured defiance at the huge man with the lazy smile and the green shirt, otherwise known as the Assistant Director.

“So you want to be an actress? And you’d like some dialogue? And you think it’s as simple as all that…?” The smile seemed to become lazier and the green shirt greener.

Maybe it was a reflected glare from the green eyes of the speaker. We shall never know. Not that it matters now. If, however, glances could wither, the green-shirt-owner would have had a faded garment as a souvenir of the occasion.

“I am an actress. And I shall have some dialogue.”

Green-eyes was not boasting. She had no idea of being bombastic or difficult. Assurance was hers by the Divine Right of Youth. By the unquestioning faith that her word would be believed, and that her wishes fulfilled because they were both worthy of fulfilment.

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Vivien Leigh makes her debut on TV

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Vivien Leigh and George Devine in The Skin of Our Teeth 1959

Making my bow on TV

by Vivien Leigh (as told to D.H. Cousins)
TV Times, March 13, 1959

Television is like a tinder-box that fires imagination, and to an actress this can only be a challenge.

Though, of course, it will never oust the theatre, television has the advantage of reach, and brings to acting the immediacy, the now or never, the win or lose inevitability of, say, the Wimbledon tennis finals, the Derby or the Cup Final.

Unlike film-making when, if a scene is not quite right the director orders a re-take, in a television performance the director can no more call “cut” than a tennis umpire can sponge out the score. In both tennis and television, the play goes on with all the excitement of immediate, concentrated effort.

Fortunately, the comparison with Wimbledon ends here – the actors are not (or should not be!) competing against one another.

There is no denying, though, that to an actress television is a challenge, and who could resist a challenge?

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