vivien leigh

Happy Birthday, Vivien Leigh

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vivien leigh leads the way in my dorm room collage of inspiration/beauty

Vivien Leigh

5 November, 1913–7 July, 1967

“I read a book called ‘The Martyrdom of Man’ and I underlined a passage then which I came upon the other day. I think of it often because perhaps what is lacking today is the time just to sit and wonder.

“The lines say what I feel and what I hope.

“They are : ‘And the artists shall inherit the earth and the world will be as a garden.'”

It’s strange how much of an effect Vivien Leigh has had on my life.  Vivien Leigh via Gone with the Wind opened my eyes and mind to an entire world of classic cinema that I would have otherwise never have given a chance.  It is because of Vivien Leigh and a bit later Laurence Olivier that I started vivandlarry.com, and it is because of Vivien Leigh that I’m living in London right now getting my Master’s in Film and fulfilling a dream I’ve had for years.

For me, Vivien is more than just a fascinating person.  She had the courage and determination to set lofty goals and follow through with them despite opposition and disappointment.  She was legit, she lived with her heart, and she followed her passions.  That is so inspirational to me, and I know I’m not the only one who feels the same way.  I’ve been lucky enough to meet some amazing fellow fans through this website (looking forward to meeting more at the Viv and Larry London meet-up in May), and I think it’s wonderful that she still touches generation after generation through her films and personal story.

If Vivien Leigh were alive today, she’d be 97 years young, and I’m sure she’ be thrilled to know how much she is still loved by so many around the world.  Despite the personal anguishes and illness that plagued her later life, and despite cinema not being her favorite mode of artistic expression, her films continue to be seen and loved long after her death.  People still remember and praise her positive qualities: talent, beauty, and kindness.  That’s a legacy not many famous people can claim.

I really love this quote by David Niven that appeared in Alan Dent’s book Vivien Leigh A Bouquet, and I think it sums things up perfectly even though I never knew Vivien:

“I’ll never forget her arrangements. Nor her love for Alex Korda. Nor all those cats. Her ridiculous laughter, her fabulous generosity of heart, and her guts in adversity.”

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Cinema Experiences: Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail

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Austrian actress Anny Ondra as Alice White

Consider this a new feature here at the vivandlarry.com blog.  I’m going to write about my classic-film-going experiences here in London; not films I watch as part of my course, but films I see at the BFI or elsewhere on my own time for fun!

Halloween always brings a handful of classic horror films back onto the big and small screens.  This Halloween, I went with my friend Riikka to see Alfred Hitchcock’s last silent film/first sound film Blackmail at the Barbican Centre.  The film stars Anny Ondra as a saucepot named Alice who ends up murdering a suitor after he tries to rape her.  Her boyfriend, a detective at Scotland Yard, finds one of her gloves at the crime scene–a piece of evidence that would prove her involvement.  The couple is then blackmailed by an ex-convict who saw Alice that night.  Also appearing in the film are Charles Paton and Sara Allgood (whom fans of Vivien Leigh may remember as Emma Hamilton’s silly mother in That Hamilton Woman).

Blackmail was the last film Hitchcock directed in the 1920s, and was also filmed for sound around the same time, as talkies were just coming into existence.  Like many early films of directors who would turn out to be the best in the business, Blackmail was very popular at the box office, but not so much with critics.  However, the film uses techniques and motifs that would later become standard in Hitchcock films: staircases, chase scenes, people falling off buildings, etc. It also featured several well known locations in London such as the British Museum and Whitehall (complete with view of Trafalgar Square).

Currently, the British Film Institute (BFI) is raising money to restore all 9 of Hitchcock’s remaining silent films, with Blackmail getting one of the first digital make-overs.  The print was gorgeous and crisp.  Audience members also got a huge extra treat:  the BBC Symphony Orchestra played Neil Brand’s complete new score for the film live on stage while the footage ran behind them.  It was extraordinary!  Usually silent films are accompanied with a guy and his piano, but this was the real deal.  Brand, an expert in scoring silent films was inspired by the music of frequent Hitchcock collaborators Bernard Herrmann and Miklos Rozsa.  I think the most mind blowing thing for me was that the orchestra managed to keep exactly on track with the film, without being able to see the images in front of them.  The live music really added an extra dimension of excitement to the film and made it seem very of-the-moment.

I wouldn’t be lying if I said this was the best cinema-going experience of my life up until this point.  It was absolutely fabulous!

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The Vivien Leigh and Jack Merivale Papers

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I don’t talk about Jack Merivale on vivandlarry.com very much at all, mostly because he came after Laurence Olivier in Vivien’s life and since the site focuses on Vivien and Larry, Jack has always been sort of peripheral.  But in this instance I think he deserves some space of his own.

Today I had the opportunity to look through the Vivien Leigh/Jack Merivale papers at the BFI Library in central London.  These papers, among those of many other British film luminaries, are held in special collections and are only viewable by appointment after having purchased a BFI membership and library card.  As a researcher of Vivien Leigh or anyone else in the film world, really, the BFI and other similar archives are essential to getting an in-depth, inside look at someone’s life and career.  The project I have been working on for ages (I think I’ve mentioned it here before in passing) has required extensive archival research, particularly of photographs.  The Leigh/Merivale collection only had a handful of photos related to Vivien, but the rest of the material was equally as fascinating.

The papers were donated to the BFI by Merivale’s wife Dinah Sheridan, whom he married after Vivien passed away, and they contain letters from Vivien to Jack (in her always difficult to decipher handwriting)–letters from the Civil War centenary/GWTW re-premier in Atlanta talking about drinking mint juleps and eating at “Aunt Fanny’s Cabin”, from New York, from India, from everywhere.  It seems she and Jack traveled solo about as much as she and Larry had previously–hundreds of condolence letters from Vivien’s friends and fans after her passing, letters from Larry Olivier to Jack on the eve of his and Vivien’s divorce, a psychiatric report from a couple different psychiatrists, and a few photographs of Vivien in the late 1950s.

Knowing to some extent what Vivien went through in her struggle with bipolar disorder, I’m really glad she had Jack to just…be there when she obviously needed someone to keep an eye on her.  I think he was a gentle and kind soul, a genuinely good guy, and just what she needed at the end of her life after all she’d been through with her divorce from Larry and life in general.  I know Larry was grateful for Jack’s presence in Vivien’s later life.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Vivien Leigh lived such a full life in such a short time, but the letters from her famous friends and fans after she passed away are a true testament to just how much she gave to the world.  Jack got letters from Lauren Bacall, Celia Johnson (who I didn’t know was even friends with Vivien), Cole Leslie, Binkie Beaumont, Rachel Kempson, Diana Cooper, Deborah Kerr, Ursula Jeans and Roger Livesey, John Mills, David Niven, and Victor Stiebel, among others.  In these letters, many of her friends mentioned how they knew she loved him very much and how he made her happy in the last few years of her life and enabled her to carry on as long as she did.  And he responded to every single letter that was sent to him.  Jack Merivale, I salute you.

The archive is nowhere near as extensive as the Olivier archive in the British Library, but for what it’s worth, I thought it was informative and obviously lovingly cared for.  If you’re ever doing a project on Vivien Leigh’s later life, this is a good place to start.

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Fandom and Academia

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I had an epihpany today.

I came to London to study for my MA in film because I’m currently interested in British cinema of the 1940s, and of course I got into the whole subject area through my fascination of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier: two of Britain’s most famous film stars.  However, I’m always hesitant to incorporate my interest of these two into my written work at school because, well, I’m always afraid professors will take one look at my paper and say “What are you doing?  This isn’t ‘academic’ enough.  This isn’t what film studies is about.  How did you get into this school?”  Shouldn’t I be writing about the French New Wave or Italian Neo-Realism and the real “artsy” stuff?  Is talking about Vivien Leigh the equivalent of talking about Lord of the Rings or Twilight?  I’ve always been afraid that might be the case since film students and scholars seem to keep the notion of fandom on the hush.  It’s like, let’s talk about Godard and not mention how much we love Star Wars.

I had a meeting with my British film professor this afternoon to discuss my final paper for the class.  I said I was interested in looking at some films (Olivier’s Hamlet and Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes) as related to concept of film as art and “quality” cinema in the 1940s.  In talking it through, I realized that it might be a lot to handle for a 15 page paper.  My tutor asked whether I was interested in textual analysis of certain films or more interested in a historical approach.  I immediately said historical approach.  What really fascinates me is the whole notion of how and why these films were made, the political and social constructs of the time, and how they were received.  And stardom, let’s not forget stardom. 

When I talked to my personal tutor last week, and told her of my purpose for coming here and what I wanted to do with my degree and my life career-wise, she said I totally should incorporate my passion for certain films and stars into my work if I can (well, I was definitely planning to incorporate them into my dissertation, anyway).  But I’ve always been a bit sketchy about it.  I mean, it’s popular cinema.  But when I was discussing my British Cinema paper today, I kept referring to my interest in certain films and the Oliviers in that context, and my course tutor said he didn’t understand why I was acting like my academic work and my obvious passion for the Oliviers had to be two different things.  Because they don’t.  If I want to write a paper about Vivien Leigh, why shouldn’t I?  I said “I don’t know, I always thought it wasn’t academic enough.” And he said it IS academic, and I know a lot about these things, so what I need to do is make sure I focus on specific questions that I can make arguments about in my writing so that it doesn’t end up being a biography, and if I want to use “Larry and Viv” as the means through which to answer these questions, that’s perfectly well and good. 

It was so nice to get confirmation about it being okay to write about the things I’m passionate about in an academic setting!  HUZZAH!  So instead of writing about Hamlet and The Red Shoes, I think I will write about Henry V, Hamlet, and Shakespeare in British film in the 1940s–how J. Arthur Rank marketed these two films, the differences in reception and how they were made.  Or something.  I’m hoping this Olivier colloquium on Saturday will give me some good ideas.  I’m so glad it’s acceptible to be both totally nerdy and smart (har har) at the same time!

I also got to borrow a neat little book called J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry!  I’m off to go read!

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Inside the National Theatre Archive

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This afternoon I had the great pleasure and opportunity to visit the National Theatre Archive to lend a hand with some video footage for next weekend’s Olivier’s Shakespeare: Violence and Memory colloquium and reception.  It started with meeting author Terry Coleman (Olivier the authorized biography) for tea on Tuesday at the Royal Academy of Art.  He will be presenting at the reception, and, being a visitor of vivandlarry.com, he knows my appreciation for Sir Laurence and asked if I’d like to help with some media.  I said “yes,” so he put me in touch with Gavin Clarke, the archivist at the National Theatre in London.

The NT Archive isn’t housed at the actual theatre on the South Bank, but rather at the National Theatre Studio in The Cut, right next door to The Old Vic, and the old offices occupied by the likes of Laurence Olivier and other executives were in Aquinas Street right behind the building.  This is because the National Theatre Company was based at The Old Vic until the NT on the South Bank was completed in 1976.
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