Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier

Destination: Hastings

By Kendra + August 19, 2012

This week, summer finally decided to come to England! Planning ahead for trips in the UK is difficult because the weather is always unpredictable. But with temperatures in the high 80s yesterday, you can bet all I wanted to do was be somewhere near a beach. Brighton is the usual hot spot, but last time I went there, my friends and I had to stand in the aisle the for the entire journey because the train was so jam packed with beach-goers who had the same idea that we did. I wanted a beach without the crowds and a little variety as far as things to do and see.

East of Brighton, along the coast between Eastbourne and Dover, is the ancient town of Hastings. Hastings dates back to the 6th Century, although it’s claim to fame was the Battle of Hastings in 1066 when William the Conquerer invaded from France and killed the last Saxon King, paving the way for the Norman Conquest of England. There are still remnants of the Normans’ time in Hastings, most notably the ruins of Hastings Castle overlooking the sea. In the early 1800s, it became a smuggler’s port, with natural and hand carved caves in the cliffs below the castle where smuggled goods would be hidden. The caves also served as an air raid shelter during WWII when the town took hits from German bombs. Although not as industrious as it once was, Hastings is still an active fishing town with a seaside full of carnival rides and other tourist attractions.

I went with my friend Robbie. Our three goals were to eat seafood and visit the castle and smuggler’s caves. It turns out that even on a Saturday in August, Hastings’ two biggest attractions close at 5pm. The most happening seafood restaurant was also booked out for the evening. So we made do with pints in the Pump House pub and a walk along the mostly empty beach at sunset, and you know what? It was a damn fine substitute if I do say so myself. A wonderful way to spend what has surely been the hottest day this summer.

Hastings can be reached on the Southwest train services from London Victoria and London Bridge.

All photos © Kendra Bean and are linked to my Flickr account.

london photography

Exploring London: Kew Gardens

By Kendra + July 14, 2012

I realize that this is only the second post in my “Exploring London” photography series. There are reasons for this: time and rain, rain, rain. The sun has chosen a few scattered days to grace us with its presence, but on the whole, this summer has been wet and miserable. I’m definitely missing the heat back in California right now. Needless to say, I haven’t had many opportunities to take my camera for a spin.

Two Saturdays ago, however, I went out to west London for a long walk around the famous Kew Gardens. It’s a bit pricey (£14.50 for an adult), but you only live once, as they say. I was armed with my 50mm f/1.4 lens, which is brilliant for photographing people and nature up-close. The extremely high f-stop lets in an abundance of light and throws out the background. It’s by far my favorite lens to use.

Kew Gardens, or The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, is a large open space out by Richmond that contains the world’s largest collection of living plants. There are various greenhouses scattered across the expertly landscaped park that house a variety of plants from different climates. Also in the park are several beautiful, historical buildings. I found Kew Palace to be the most impressive, aside from the fact that you have to pay extra to go inside, which I chose not to do. The 17th century architecture reminded me much of Drayton Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, which my friends Maggie, Kasia and I visited as part of our Gone with the Wind roadtrip through the South in 2009. Other notable features at Kew include the Japanese Pagoda, Victorian Palm House, the Orangery, and Queen Charlotte’s Cottage, a 16th century garden retreat complete with thatched roof. Sadly, my lens was fixed-with, making it difficult to photograph buildings.

While I was in Kew, I had hoped to take a photo of the Q Theatre where Vivien Leigh made her first-ever stage appearance in a play called The Green Sash. Alas, it was torn down in the late 1950s and replaced with a block of flats.

Kew Gardens can be reached via the London Overground and the District Line trains to Richmond.

essays vivien leigh

A useful life: Remembering Vivien Leigh

By Kendra + July 7, 2012

Vivien Leigh

November 5th, 1913 — July 7th, 1967

Vivien Leigh’s death was shocking in its unexpectedness. The last few weeks of her life had been spent on mandatory bed rest. Friends and loved ones poured in to 54 Eaton Square to visit, noting that her bedroom resembled the Chelsea Flower Show– a rose bower fit for a queen. She had battled chronic bouts of tuberculosis several times over the years, always bouncing back with characteristic optimism. No one had reason to believe she wouldn’t recover this time. The script of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance sat on her bedside table. She was set to star opposite Michael Redgrave as Agnes, a middle-aged upper-class socialite who feels herself on the brink of madness. Had the play come to fruition, those who knew her might have pointed out the similarities between actress and character. And Vivien may have acknowledged the truth in these words in some way before plunging ahead. After all, life’s experience, she said in 1960, was the best tool an actor could have.

The press mourned the loss of “the greatest beauty of her time”; her colleagues mourned an actress with grit and determination; moviegoers around the world mourned a luminous star, the eternal Scarlett O’Hara; and those who knew her well–and many who didn’t–mourned for a woman who, despite the shadows that often threatened to overwhelm her, enriched their lives in a profound way by simply being present.

It’s difficult to name a star who was as universally loved as Vivien Leigh. She had her detractors, it’s true. Many were jealous when she ran off with the most coveted role in film history. Others were quick to point out her learned, rather than natural, acting abilities. Once Kenneth Tynan and his ilk came onto the scene in the 1950s, Vivien became a virtual moving target for criticism all because she dared to act opposite the love of her life and her greatest mentor, who also happened to be England’s Greatest Actor. But for every jealous barb thrown her way, for every negative review or misunderstood tantrum, there were ten people willing to stand up for her, to protect her and to comfort her. “To know Vivien was to love her,” Terence Rattian eulogized in the New York Times, “to have loved Vivien was also to have been loved by her, and loved with a true devotion and a passionate loyalty that might well put your own wavering emotion to shame.”

Peter Finch once said that when Vivien walked into a room, all eyes immediately fixated on her. It wasn’t just her beauty. She had an aura–an intense magnetism that drew people in, and it is perhaps this quality that accounts for the legions of fans she has retained and continues to attract. Forty five years after physically departing this world, Vivien lives on in the film roles she made immortal. Whether clawing her way back to the top as civilization crumbled around her in Gone with the Wind, or fighting and ultimately succumbing to the harsh realities of the present in A Streetcar Named Desire (and many other roles in her 19-film career), Vivien had the unique power of immediacy which has kept her performances fresh– and thus helped keep her in the spotlight– long after many other stars of her generation have faded from memory.

Writing about Vivien today on the anniversary of her death, I contemplated how to give new life to a post I’ve made every year since this site launched. What is there to say about Vivien Leigh that hasn’t been said already? And then I remembered a letter I’d read recently while doing research for my book. On the eve of her divorce from Laurence Olivier, Vivien gave voice to her anxieties about the future, writing that she hoped her life would prove useful–to many people.

If only she were alive today to witness the lasting effects of her legacy.

laurence olivier

Carrie: The best Laurence Olivier film you’ve never seen

By Kendra + June 28, 2012

This post is part of the William Wyler Blogathon currently hosted by The Movie Projector. Spoiler alert: proceed with caution!

In 1950, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier returned to Hollywood after a 10-year hiatus. In the intervening years, much had changed for Scarlett and Heathcliff. They were married in late 1940 and almost immediately sailed for England, leaving the luxurious life behind for one of buzz bombs and gas masks. During the war, both rose to prominence on the London stage and Olivier also became one of Britain’s most revered film directors by successfully bringing Shakespeare to the screen. He became the youngest ever Actor-Knight in 1947, and the following year he and Vivien achieved legendary status in the eyes of the public when they led a successful Old Vic tour of Australia and New Zealand. When they again stepped foot on California soil, they were no longer Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh but The Oliviers, a combined cultural icon idolized by fans and fellow actors alike.

Vivien had been lured back to Tinsel Town to play Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire and Olivier had come to offer support. Playing the role on stage for nine months had drained Vivien and they didn’t want to risk a long separation. Looking for a challenge to fill the time, Olivier signed on to star in the film adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s controversial turn of the century urban novel Sister Carrie. The film reunited Olivier with director William Wyler, who had been instrumental in helping the actor appreciate the film medium during the grueling making of Wuthering Heights in 1938/39.

Carrie Meeber (Selznick discovery Jennifer Jones, who was married to the producer at the time) is a young girl from Wisconsin who leaves home at 18 in search of the American Dream. On board the train to Chicago she meets the suave and slightly creepy Charles Druet, who takes an immediate interest in her solo status and fresh looks. Carrie stays with her sister and her Swedish husband in a tenement flat on the wrong side of town and finds work in a shoe factory to help pay the rent. But her cheerful outlook quickly sours and she ties of the monotonous labour and meager pay. After suffering an injury-by-sewing-machine, Carrie is fired from her seat in the assembly line and turns to Druet out of desperation. But instead of helping her find a job, Druet just makes her his kept woman.

On the first evening of their relationship, Druet tells her to meet him at Fitzgerald’s, the swankiest restaurant in Chicago. There she meets the proprieter, George Hurstwood (Olivier). Hurstwood, though middle-aged, immediately takes an interest in Carrie and we soon learn that he’s got a sad life at home with his grown kids and gold-digging harpy wife. Soon George is taking Carrie to the theatre and showing her a bit of culture with some extra benefits on the side. But George is good at keeping secrets. Carrie only finds out about his wife and family after she’s fallen in love with him, and is convinced he’s just using her as a cheap toy.

George’s love for Carrie is real enough and he asks his wife for a divorce. She refuses and threatens to ruin him, but George won’t be blackmailed. Instead, he accidentally embezzles a large amount of cash from the safe at Fitzgerald’s and under the pretext of Charles Druet’s (fabricated) illness, convinces Carrie to run away with him to New York where they can marry. It’s not long, however, before George’s secret is discovered, bringing about an onslaught of consequences for both of them that results in Carrie’s rise to success–albeit not happiness–as an actress and George’s rapid descent into poverty and his eventual suicide in a homeless shelter.

Screenwriting team Ruth and Augustus Goetz did well in keeping many of Dreiser’s themes in tact–namely the realism of human nature in the face of Victorian morals, and the hardships of working-class America in the early 20th century–but the film is otherwise firmly stamped with the red ink of the Production Code. In the Old Hollywood Rule Book there is a high price to pay for those who lie, steal, cheat, or attempt to have sex outside of marriage. Although all of the above are done with good intentions in Carrie, our characters are still punished for their misdeeds. As if it’s not bad enough that they have to live in squalid conditions straight out of an Upton Sinclair novel and George can’t find a decent job after being blackballed from every good restaurant east of the Mississippi, Carrie has a miscarriage and learns that her marriage to George is illegal because Mrs. Hurstwood never gave him that divorce. In the end, they both search for a little absolution but neither of them find it; we reap what we sew, even if we’re honest.

In addition to a compelling story, the real gem of Carrie is the acting. Olivier didn’t care much for Jennifer Jones during the making of the film and would often write to Vivien (while she was in New Orleans doing location work for Streetcar) expressing his frustration. Jones is good in the finished product but the highlight is Olivier who gives one of the best performances of his career. I find him quite astonishing when he’s playing an average guy (see also Term of Trial, The Entertainer and/or Bunny Lake is Missing). He often liked to tell the story of how Wyler brought him down a peg or two during the making of Wuthering Heights by criticising his pompous attitude. In Carrie, there is no room for theatrics. Olivier is forced to make the best of a character who is given no platform whatever to perform and he does it with heartbreaking aplomb. He even puts on a non-regional American accent and you can’t help but give him an A for his effort.

Although Carrie was nominated for two Academy Awards and Olivier received a BAFTA nod for his performance, the film is little known today. However, it is available in DVD in the States and, if you’re lucky, you maybe able to catch it on TCM on occasion. Don’t mistake it for Brian DePalma’s Stephen King adaptation. There are no buckets of pigs blood to be found here. Carrie is one of the hidden gems of both Olivier’s and Wyler’s careers. But perhaps the fact that it’s not well known is actually a good thing. Now you can all go discover this treasure of 1950s Hollywood cinema on your own.

Grade: A

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Afternoon tea with Renee Asherson

By Kendra + June 10, 2012

In 1961, a journalist asked Vivien Leigh why she found old people so fascinating. She responded by saying, “Their wisdom will do for a start; the fact that they’ve lived…What they say is so wise and good. They know what they’re talking about.”

Vivien’s words are so true. I’ve always loved old people, as well. They have the best stories–think of all the things people in their 80s and 90s have seen! My maternal grandmother was born in 1911 and I remember ringing her up when I was a kid to “interview” her for class projects about the Depression and the War. I was too young to appreciate what she had been through at the time. It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that my interest in history and the early half of the 20th century really melded together and blossomed into a passion. My grandma died not long afterward at the age of 94, and I have often regretted not having these conversations with her as an adult. In a way, I was given the chance to make up for my past lack of communication this afternoon when I had tea with 97 year old actress Renee Asherson.

The meeting was pure happenstance. Last week, a friend of mine gave me the number of Australian actor Trader Faulkner who acted in the Royal Shakespeare Company with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh during the 1955 Stratford season. He invited me around for a chat and was so warm and open, and most keen to help. We were speaking of our favorite actors and he mentioned Robert Donat, and that he knew his wife Renee Asherson quite well. I mentioned how I’d tried to get in touch with Renee a few months ago for this project so he rang her up right then and there and we made plans for tea. Small wold, indeed!

We showed up at a gorgeous flat near Primrose Hill and were greeted at the door by her caretaker and shown into the sitting room. There, in a comfy chair by the large window, surrounded by books and mementoes from a life well lived, sat the woman who starred opposite Laurence Olivier in Henry V and played Stella to Vivien Leigh’s Blanche in the London production of A Streetcar Named Desire. There was no mistaking her face.

Renee is remarkably sharp for nearing 100 and has a friendly, lively personality; the conversation was often permeated by her tinkling laughter. She had nothing but nice things to say about Larry and Vivien but I found her entire dialogue with Trader completely fascinating. She spoke about being born in Kensington and still remembering the bombs raining down during the war (WWI!); taking the early train from Marylebone to Denham and tramping through muddy fields from the station to report for work with Laurence Olivier in 1943; acting with Trevor Howard at the Old Vic; loving Gone with the Wind; being blacklisted from H.M. Tennant’s for complaining about her wig during a stage production at the Aldwych; doing the shopping in Thame with Vivien Leigh when she was invited to Notley for weekends; taking care of her husband Robert Donat when he was seriously ill with asthma in the mid-1950s. And the names that were dropped! It was like a book of who’s who of British film and theatre history! I was just happy to sit there and sip my tea, taking in the scene. They were having such a good time reminiscing, it was lovely to witness. I ended up showing Renee how my iPhone worked and we cooed over photos of my cat Coco, as every conversation with a famous person should end.

As Trader and I walked back toward Camden Town, I thanked him for taking me to see someone I’d wanted to meet for such a long time. He kindly reminded me that everything happens for a reason; that we’re put on this earth to help people. Perhaps, he said, wherever Vivien Leigh is right now, she’s giving me a gentle nudge in the direction of my goal.

Perhaps there are strange forces at work, but whatever happens, I feel very lucky to have had this experience.

*Photo via The Powell and Pressburger Pages

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