by Anne Edwards
She would rather, she argued, play Cleopatra, and she had heard that Gabriel Pascal was planning a film production. Perhaps he could be convinced to put it on stage first. Olivier made inquiries, but Pascal was not interested in such a proposal. He wanted to bring Caesar and Cleopatra to the screen, and though he agreed that Vivien would make a fine Cleopatra, his arrangements with Shaw gave the author casting approval.
Vivien then decided to play the role of Jennifer Dubedat, feeling if she proved to Shaw she could bring life to the part, he would agree to cast her as Cleopatra, which—in spite of its being a film project—she wanted more and more to do. Olivier spoke to Hugh Beaumont, who was the managing director of H. M. Tennent Ltd., and he undertook the production. The West End was still badly affected by the raids, so the decision was to tour the show until it was feasible to bring it into London. The Doctor’s Dilemma went into rehearsal (under the direction of Irene Hentschel and with Vivien playing opposite Cyril Cusack) in August and opened in Manchester in September 1941. It was the beginning of an excessively long and successful tour. On October 14 they were in Leicester and Vivien wrote Leigh:
Leigh Darling . . . thank you for the cheque last week. Surely you have sent quite enough now! [She was being reimbursed by Leigh for her outlay on Suzanne’s care.] ... I went riding for the first time in four years the other day at Blackpool with the result that I can still only move about with great difficulty! And my performance is not quite such a graceful one! Thank you for the criticisms of the play—they are all quite right—and of course the sympathy must be with Dubedat—that is where Cyril fails a bit, but he is such a good actor he will probably improve all the time. I speak slowly in the first act because I think it gives the weight and maturity Jennifer requires.
We broke the record at Blackpool—which was satisfactory—and this is a beautiful theatre to play in—rather like the St. James.
I’m dying to see Citizen Kane.
Lots of love darling, Viv.
Traveling in a caravan once again, the Oliviers moved from the creaky Victorian house in Warsash to a small, cozy bungalow at Worthy Down. Vivien had developed a cough, and they thought it might come from the drafty rooms of the larger and older house. She was pale and painfully thin, but she joked away Olivier’s concern and continued to commute each night after the play opened in London on ill-heated, blacked-out trains, creeping exhausted into bed, unable to sleep, reading her way through the nights with Dickens’ novels, which she had just rediscovered. At dawn Olivier would try not to disturb her as he rose, made his breakfast, and then journeyed by motorcycle to the airdrome.
One night in Stratford, when the show had been touring, there was a mix-up after the performance and they missed the last train home. Vivien, along with George and Mercia Relph, who were also in the company, finally managed to get a lift from a farmer who was going their way. It turned out he had been to the play and he began, on being asked how he had enjoyed himself, to tell his passengers what a miserable time he had had, giving them several solid minutes on how lousy it was in every possible way, vehemently adding, “And as for that knock-kneed bugger in the second act—” At which George Relph swiftly inserted “That was me,” and the man without any hesitation said, “Marvelous!” This became one of Vivien’s favorite stories, and she would tell it in front of George imitating his grimace at the farmer’s duplicity.
It was fortunate that they found things to laugh about, because each day brought depressing news: war reports, the death of friends, the destruction of familiar and loved places. The entire world seemed under the pall of death, destruction, and anxiety. Whitehall emphasized the importance of keeping up morale, but even Olivier was feeling the weight of frustration. “So many millions of people trying to feel something they don’t feel or trying not to feel something they do,” he wrote.
Vivien was on tour for six bone-chilling months, finally coming into the West End and opening at the Haymarket with excellent reviews on March 4, 1942. Two weeks later, Cyril Cusack took ill. For a week Vivien played opposite his understudy, and then Peter Glenville replaced him, shortly thereafter being felled himself by jaundice. John Gielgud then stepped in for a week.
Shaw was frequently at his London flat in Whitehall Court during the thirteen-month run of the play, but he did not attend a performance of The Doctofs Dilemma, as it was his invariable rule never to see his own plays past rehearsals. But Hugh Beaumont managed an invitation for Vivien to meet Shaw at his flat. By now both she and Pascal had agreed that if Shaw consented she would play Cleopatra in Pascal’s film.
Vivien had never handled an interview better. Not once did she mention the role of Cleopatra, but from the moment she stepped through Shaw’s sitting-room door she acted the Persian kitten. Just before the interview came to a close Shaw mischievously “suggested” she should play Cleopatra, and waited for her reaction with a bemused expression. She lowered her head demurely and then looked up at him with a humble expression to ask him if he really thought she was ready for such a great role. Shaw pulled back and stroked his beard, finally declaring that it hardly mattered because Cleopatra was a role that played itself.
Pascal had many production problems, so Vivien had several months free after The Doctor’s Dilemma closed. Once again the Oliviers moved, this time to the small village of Fulmer in Buckinghamshire, to a house called “Hawksgrove,” which Noël Coward had previously occupied. To Olivier’s great disappointment the Fleet Air Arm was doing exceptionally little with his services. Yet his conscience would not permit him to ask for his release unless it was to do something worthwhile. After considerable thought and many meetings with film people, he decided he would go forward with a film version of Henry V if he could produce and star in the production and retain control. From the start of these negotiations he had taken it for granted that Vivien would play Katharine. Olivier cabled Selznick for permission, and he cabled back that he would not consider such a thing.
Actually Selznick had been cabling her with various suggestions for roles for over a year, all of which Vivien refused, including a production of Jane Eyre that Selznick thought Vivien would like because he had suggested in the cable that little Suzanne might appear as young Jane.
Olivier cast Renée Asherson in the role of Katharine; and early in 1943 Vivien accepted Hugh Beaumont’s offer for her to join a theatrical company that included Beatrice Lillie, Dorothy Dickson, and Leslie Henson to entertain the Eighth Army in North Africa. Vivien had not wanted to leave Olivier, but he was completely occupied with work on his film and was to be on location in Ireland for a long spell. She had not been well, and both of them attributed it to the dampness in England, which was bound to be even worse in Ireland. Six weeks in the sun seemed a grand opportunity for her to regain her health and still to be doing something that she could consider worthwhile.
The revue was called Spring Party. She recited Clemence Dane’s heroic poem “Plymouth Hoe,” Lewis Carroll’s “You Are Old, Father William,” and sang a satirical song about Scarlett O’Hara. The men loved her, and she sweltered with the company under the North African sun from Gibraltar to Cairo, giving sometimes as many as three performances a day and appearing before General Eisenhower in Algiers, General Montgomery in Tripoli, Generals Spaatz and Doolittle in Constantine, and before His Majesty King George VI in Tunis on the terrace of Admiral Cunningham’s villa overlooking the Mediterranean.
She adored the bazaars and would dash off between performances to search for bargains. The Miramare Theatre in Tripoli was not more than a hundred yards from the Arab quarter. Before one performance, she came rushing back to the theatre carrying several yards of a deep crimson material and swept it out before the other members of the company with pride. No one was impressed. “Oh, well,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, “I can always sell it to Pascal for Cleopatra!”
But the sun had not benefited her as she had hoped it would. By the end of the tour she was thinner by fifteen pounds, but at least her cough seemed t
o have disappeared. Olivier cabled her that Pascal had gone to Hollywood to find a leading man for the Caesar and Cleopatra film, and she flew home feeling in higher spirits than she had been in for a long while.
Their reunion was a joyous one. Olivier was extremely pleased with the work on Henry V, and at last she had time to devote to simply being Mrs. Laurence Olivier. It was nearly summer in Britain. She worked in the garden and was surrounded by the kittens Tissy had given birth to in her absence. It seemed sure that Larry would not have to face serious danger, Leigh was safe, her father fine, Gertrude (though complaining) quite comfortable, Suzanne doing well, and Tarquin responding beautifully to medical treatment in Los Angeles, where he and his mother were now living. To add to her joy, she became pregnant. The doctor felt she should not be attempting a film role at this time, but she argued that she never felt stronger or happier or more confident in her life.
On June 12, 1944, just six days after the Allies’ invasion of Normandy, the cameras began to roll at Denham Studios, with Claude Rains as Caesar. Shaw came to watch them shoot one day at Denham. “I pity poor Rank [Arthur Rank, the producer]. The film will cost a million,” he said rather prophetically, for the film eventually cost over £1,300,000 ($5,200,000 in 1944 dollars). He allowed no alterations in the script unless he wrote them. After he saw Claude Rains, he himself decided that the actor could not be described by Cleopatra as being thin and stringy. He wrote Vivien a card from his house in Ayot St. Lawrence:
Your Claudius Caesar is not rather thin and stringy (I have just seen him); so will you say instead: “You are hundreds of years old; but you have a nice voice, & C.” I think this is the only personal remark that needs altering; but if there is anything let me know. G.B.S.
Vivien answered that she was certain she could make the original lines believable by the way she spoke them. Shaw answered immediately and with annoyance:
No. Rains is not stringy, and would strongly resent any deliberate attempt to make him appear so.
Besides “you are hundreds of years old” is a much better line, as it belongs to the childishness of Cleopatra in the first half of the play.
I never change a line except for the better.
Don’t be an idiot.
G.B.S.
Why don’t you put your address in your letters?
The film became increasingly difficult. The weather had turned unseasonably cold, and she had to go from the warmth of a small electric fire she kept in her dressing room to a frigid open field in Cleopatra’s filmy gowns and attempt to create the feeling of the stifling heat of an Egyptian summer. Six weeks after the film began she became violently ill. She was rushed to the nearest clinic, but it did no good. Her baby was lost. After a few days of recuperation she went back to complete the film. She played the banqueting scene where Cleopatra orders the murder of Pothinus with a new maturity, and in the close-ups Pascal was taken aback by the unexpected passion in her face.
Chapter Sixteen
Larry and Vivien were the golden couple. A youthful beauty clung to them. They were the hope of the war years. England was bleak, gray, and forbidding in its wartime desolation. Faces wore grim expressions. Women dressed like men. Gone was the splendor, the panoply of the crown, the lavish balls one could read about if not attend, the resplendent military parades. A great number of Londoners ate canned Spam for Christmas. But then, just when the golden days before the war seemed lost forever, Larry and Vivien exploded in the public eye, seeming to be the two most beautiful people in the world. They gleamed with incandescent vitality, radiating charm. Everyone wanted to read about them, to see their pictures in the papers, to meet them, and to be a member of their large group of friends and even wider circle of acquaintances. In public, Vivien kept up an air of gaiety. To the unobservant she remained a dream, an apparition from the past. But Pascal had seen the truth reveal itself on the screen, and it has severely shocked him. There was something frightening in her eyes, something that made one fear for her more than for oneself.
Vivien became acutely depressed at the end of filming on Caesar and Cleopatra. Larry did not understand it but could easily attribute it to the strain of the work she had just completed, the loss of the baby, and world conditions in general. He was empathetic but did not take Vivien’s depression too seriously. Then one night they were dining alone at home, chatting quite pleasantly, when her mood suddenly and terrifyingly shifted. She began to pace like a caged lioness who had just had her cub taken from her. Her voice changed, becoming strident and harsh; and when he tried to calm her she turned on him, first verbally and then physically. He was at a loss for what to do. She was for the first time a complete stranger to him and he could not think whom to call to help her. After a time that felt like an eternity but was actually no more than an hour, she crumpled into a heap and sobbed hysterically on the floor, not letting him come near her. When her attack of hysteria was over she could not recall what she had done or said. It terrified them both; and immediately after, she was childlike in her need to compensate. They were still totally in love, and the effect on Olivier of such an attack was overwhelming. In her hysteria she was accusatory, shrewish, saying mindless, hurting things—almost totally paranoid.
Vivien insisted she was not having a nervous collapse and refused to see a doctor to discuss the events of that evening. To the unsuspecting she remained enchanting, and as a pair they still seemed sprinkled with gold dust, even though it was the bleakest, coldest, grimmest winter since the war began. Travel was uncomfortable at best, at worst almost impossible. Taxes mounted astronomically. There were few luxuries and everyone suffered. Tensions, stress, coupons, queues, the petty tyrannies endured, and the lack of freedom were not easy to bear, even when people were united. The war with Germany was nearing its end and it looked as though life would soon return to normal. But Vivien was unsure of what returning to normal might mean on a strictly personal basis.
Selznick kept up his barrage of cables demanding that she return to Hollywood and honor her contract, but no film could help her overcome the tremendous inferiority she now felt toward Olivier. He was a genius, perhaps the greatest actor alive, and he had little respect for commercial film. Henry V was quite another art form. He worshiped greatness—Shakespeare, Chekhov, Sheridan, and men like Wellington and Churchill. Always men, always leaders, creators, sufferers. She was convinced she needed to achieve a stature of greatness for Larry to worship her. Nothing he said or did appeared to convince her that he loved and adored her simply for herself. She became convinced, indeed obsessed, that if she could rise to greatness on the stage—if she could compete in his arena and share his crown—then she would be worthy of his devotion, then she would have his veneration. She ignored Selznick’s cables when she could, and when she could not, she sent him polite clipped refusals. Pascal and Rank had paid him a handsome sum for her to appear in Cleopatra, and Scarlett had made everyone rich but herself. She felt no guilt or further obligation.
Someone sent her a copy of Thornton Wilder’s new play, The Skin of Our Teeth, in which Tallulah Bankhead had appeared in New York. She adored the play and was mad to play Sabina in London, certain that if Olivier would direct her it might be the role that would finally prove her stage worthiness to the world. Olivier had completed work on Henry V and liked The Skin of Our Teeth almost as much as Vivien did, but primarily he saw the project and their mutual involvement as a way to please Vivien. She was ecstatic in her discussions of Sabina, a woman who—whether she was in the kitchen, out winning a beauty contest, or following an army as a vivandiere—was the eternal Cleopatra and the supreme survivor of the ice age, the deluge, and “bloody war, north, east, and west.” Plans were begun to bring the play and Vivien to the West End.
On February 19, 1945, David Selznick sent this memo to Daniel T. O’Shea, Executive Vice President and General Manager of David O. Selznick Productions, Inc.:
To: Mr. O’Shea
February 19, 1945
IMMEDIATE
&
nbsp; There should be entire review of our dealings with Vivien Leigh. . . .
We consented to her stage appearance in Romeo and Juliet because of her and Olivier’s urgings, although this meant passing up having Scarlett O’Hara in other films. This endeavor seriously damaged her career and reviews were terrible. This is one reason why we are so fearful of another theatrical engagement prompted and participated in by Olivier, with possibility of further serious damage to our property.
We heeded Leigh’s urgings and pleas for a twelve-week leave of absence to go to England because we felt an Englishwoman should return to England during wartime and also because of her principal argument, which was that she might never see Olivier again, since he was planning on going into service. We made this gesture in good faith and at a loss to ourselves, as we did subsequent gestures leading to extensions and further leaves of absence. . . .
Olivier is no longer in service, and there is no reason why she should not return to America or at least make an attempt to do so; and it might be stressed that she has consistently refused to even consider any such attempt, although we have stood ready and still stand ready to make pictures with her that could have enormously beneficial effect on British-American relations, with a potential audience between fifty and one hundred million people throughout the world by comparison with the small number any play could reach.
Action was certainly “immediate.” Within three days, Selznick, through his British counsel, Sir Walter Monckton, petitioned for an injunction to prevent her from appearing in the play, likening her to an “exotic plant which must be exposed widely,” and claiming Selznick’s “right under contract” that they had signed in 1939 to decide what roles Vivien should be allowed to accept. In reply (though she did not appear in court), Vivien claimed that as a British citizen she faced possible drafting into a war factory if she did not act on the British stage. Selznick lost his bid to restrain her from doing The Skin of Our Teeth, and the play went into rehearsal.