Happy 100th Birthday to Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh was heralded as one of the great beauties of her time, won two Best Actress Oscars (especially impressive since she starred in only 19 films), and was the wife of one of the most celebrated actors of the century, Sir Laurence Olivier.

Despite all of the above, to most she was simply Scarlett O’Hara. When she died at only 54 years old, many of the world’s headlines proclaimed “SCARLETT O’HARA DEAD!” I’m sure she would have cringed at that headline. Not that she wasn’t proud of hving played Scarlett, but the role became suffocating in a way that she couldn’t escape. Vivien was always Scarlett and sometimes she didn’t want to be; she was pigeonholed far too early.

I attend many Gone with the Wind events here in Georgia and I will be the first to say that GWTW fans are nothing if not passionate. I am, of course, one myself–don’t get me wrong. One time I was talking about Clark and saying how if he had lived to be an old man he would have never attended GWTW anniversary celebrations. This shocked the group of women I was speaking to, who thought that surely I was wrong, that surely Clark Gable would have loved to be thrust in front of excited GWTW fans who wanted nothing but to talk about GWTW and Rhett Butler. Which shows how little those women knew of Clark Gable the man–the man whose filmography has 66 films and an Oscar five years before GWTW. But I digress.

One woman noted that positively Vivien Leigh would attend GWTW events if she was still alive. She was only a few years older than Olivia de Havilland, who blissfully is still with us. The women excitedly talked about how glorious that would have been for Vivien to have attended the events, talking to fans, scrawling autographs and answering questions. Never. Would. Have. Happened. I personally think that Vivien would have been much like Olivia is today but even more reclusive, maybe answering a fan letter or two, but not many, and keeping to herself in London, declining all requests for interviews or to appear at this film festival or in that DVD documentary. The fan letters she would answer would probably not be ones from ardent GWTW fans, but ones which asked questions about her stage career.

Vivien was gorgeous and extremely talented; a multi-faceted person who faced many a heartbreak and died way too soon.

Happy Birthday to Vivien Leigh: little Vivian Mary Hartley, Vivian Holman, Lady Hamilton, Scarlett O’Hara, Myra Lester, Lady Olivier, Cleopatra, Anna Karenina, Mary Treadwell.

…There was never any feud between Vivien Leigh and me during the filming of “Gone with the Wind” or at any time thereafter.

Hollywood goes just as much to extremes when it comes to male and female stars cast together as it does on any other subject. Get a man and a woman in a picture together and you are immediately reported as either fighting or romancing. The fact that in eighty per cent of your pictures you have no emotion about the beautiful creature opposite you, other than an interest in her acting ability, is never printed. Yet that’s the truth more often than not.

As for any possibility of Vivien Leigh’s falling in love with me I knew that was out from our first glance. For never have I seen any girl more completely in love than that one is—with Laurence Olivier. It’s as visible as a Neon sign that she can’t think or talk of or dream about anything or anyone else on earth—except when she’s on the set. When she’s on the set, she’s what a good actress should be. She’s all business.

As for my falling in love with her, I’m sure that could have been plenty pleasant except that, added to her lack of interest in me, I didn’t have any heart to give away, either. Mine was staked out to that Lombard girl who is mighty beautiful and brainy…

I’ll be truthful about it, however; I’ll confess that the first time I saw her I doubted that Vivien could really play Scarlett. That reaction shows I’m no casting director. But, accustomed to the more abandoned and superficial personalities of Hollywood girls, Vivien seemed too demure to me, at that first meeting, for the vivid, relentless Scarlett.

David Selznick introduced us to each other at a dinner party at his home. Vivien was wearing a very plain, tailored dress. She’s much tinier in real life than she appears on the screen, and since she uses little make-up she has a very young, unsophisticated air. Besides, she had all the fires banked that evening and that Olivier guy was her escort.

Now I know I should have stopped to consider all that. But having seen Vivien only in “A Yank at Oxford”, in which she didn’t have a lot to do, I just looked at her that first evening at David’s and wondered if that keen-minded producer had gone haywire when he signed her.

I knew he hadn’t the first day Vivien and I got on a set together. ~Clark Gable

Celebrate Vivien Leigh today…

Watch TCM (US) all day today for Vivien’s films!

You can preorder the Vivien Leigh Anniversary Collection  on Blu Ray.

And pick up a copy of the new book celebrating a century of Vivien, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait written by the fabulous Kendra Bean.