by Anne Edwards
Macbeth opened on a Tuesday night, June 7. Once again there were more than a thousand words by The Times critic containing praise for Olivier and only two lines about Vivien. “Miss Vivien Leigh appears as a small, baleful, gleaming Lady Macbeth but her looks and her voice are disconcertingly at odds.”
They all spent the following Sunday at Notley, Finch included, where they gathered together all the Sunday papers to read the reviews.
Tynan had written in the Sunday Observer, “Last Tuesday Sir Laurence shook hands with greatness, and within a week or so the performance will have ripened into a masterpiece.” He ended his review by stating, “Miss Vivien Leigh’s Lady Macbeth is more niminy-piminy than thundery-blundery, more viper than anaconda, but still quite competent in its small way. Macduff and his wife, actor-proof parts, are played with exceptional power by Mr. Keith Michell and Miss Maxine Audley.”
Vivien was furious at Tynan’s slighting review of her performance. But Olivier did not turn his anger on the young critic this time. To the contrary, he was becoming quite interested in him and commented on the young man’s obvious intelligence. It wasn’t long before Tynan was a frequent guest at Notley, and Vivien was forced by her own instinctive good breeding to treat him as graciously as her other guests, a gesture made more difficult after his review of Titus Andronicus.
Tynan wrote, “Sir Laurence Olivier’s Titus, even with one hand gone, is a five-finger exercise transformed into an unforgettable concerto of grief. This is a performance which ushers us into the presence of one who is pound for pound the greatest actor alive.” He then notes that “Maxine Audley is a glittering Tamora. As Lavinia, Vivien Leigh received the news that she is about to be ravished on her husband’s corpse with little more than the mild annoyance of one who would have preferred foam rubber. Otherwise, the minor parts are played up to the hilt.”
It did not seem to help that The Times critic thought she had played Lavinia “with statuesque pathos,” certainly not as long as Tynan was in Larry’s camp. Her condition was becoming treacherously shaky. One night she went with Maxine Audley to see John Gielgud in King Lear and cried throughout the performance. The fear of madness was beginning to obsess her, and the company was concerned that she might collapse before the end of the season.
Everyone was relieved when the season ended. Vivien, Finch, and Olivier went to Notley. Vivien was feeling incredibly insecure. She had let Larry down. Somehow she should have been able to reach down inside herself for a deeper and newer understanding of Viola, a more tortured Lady Macbeth, a Lavinia who rose to greater stature. But she was forever fearful of digging deeply and perhaps unleashing some of her own private passion. If she did that, then where would it end? How could she stop the flow?
Once they were home, Larry retreated to the library and his voluminous correspondence and plans for the future. He did not appear threatened by Finch’s presence. An aura of Victorian forbearance pervaded the ancient halls of the Abbey and everyone was impeccably polite. Vivien’s nerves were at the very edge. If she wanted and expected Larry to create a row about Finch she was wrong. A few days later she packed a bag and without a word to Larry boarded a train with Finch, planning to run off with him. But as she sat in the first-class compartment staring out the window at the countryside she began to panic. Part of it was the extreme claustrophobia she suffered at times, but apparently she also had second thoughts about leaving Larry and feared that, in fact, he would not come after her.
A few moments later she pulled the emergency cord and left the train with Finch. They returned to Notley, where Vivien rang Gertrude and asked her to join them.
Then she collapsed into one of her terrifying attacks of hysteria.
Chapter Twenty-four
Vivien held friendship to be one of the most important elements of life, and few people could number more intimates. She corresponded regularly with thirty or more “dear friends,” never forgetting their birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, opening nights, and celebrations. She adored flowers. Notley was always filled with massive bouquets in each room, as were Durham Cottage and any hotel room she ever slept in. She keenly loved sending flowers for any occasion, always in beautiful and elegant profusion.
Often in the mornings she would sit at her Queen Anne desk by the leaded glass windows of her bedroom at Notley and write eight to ten personal letters consecutively on her soft blue stationery and in her most-difficult-to-read but strong hand. She thought it a complete breach of good manners to dictate or type personal correspondence. “My Darling Sweet Cindy,” her letter to Lucinda Ballard Dietz would begin, “Dear, dear Master” to Noël, “Darling Leigh”—effusive terms of endearment were sent across the Thames, the Channel, and the Atlantic. Vivien did more than keep in touch, she maintained an involvement in all her friends’ lives. Depressions and happy occasions were shared, illnesses were discussed, disappointments were met with cheery support. There always seemed to be a special gift to buy, a wedding, a christening, a funeral to attend. Her flower bills were enormous, her postal charges exorbitant, as gifts, letters, and flowers were sent to Leigh, the Dietzes, Noël, Bobby Helpmann, Katharine Hepburn, George Cukor, Lynn Fontanne, Margalo Gilmore, Madeleine Sherwood, Cedric Hardwicke, Clifton Webb, Cyril Ritchard, “Sweet darling Maggie” and Jean-Louis, Radie Harris and Percy Harris and Arnold Weissberger, the Bogarts, the Harrisons, the Red-graves, the Millses, the Nivens . . . and, of course, Victor Stiebel, Kit Cornell, John Gielgud, Suzanne, Tarquin, Larry’s sister Sybille, his sister-in-law Hester, his nieces Caroline and Louise and . . . the list was endless.
Her vast correspondence helped fill the time of her intermittent periods of “convalescing,” though when she was working or enjoying good health she still kept it up. Contact with close friends was essential to her well-being. She had to feel that there were many loving thoughts being held of her. And she wrote everyone whom she thought might have been hurt by one of her attacks—humble letters begging forgiveness.
The gardens of Notley took a great deal of her time and energy. She still devoured books and she had also taken up painting (though not noticeably exceptional at it). Both she and Larry greatly admired Winston Churchill, who claimed that Lady Hamilton was his favorite film and that he had seen it many times. He encouraged Vivien to paint and had given her a painting he had done of three roses, and she had it hanging opposite her bed so it would be the first thing she saw upon awakening.
The closeness to Finch had for a time placed a strain on the marriage, but in actual fact the nature of Vivien’s illness and its ramifications were the major cause. When she had one of her attacks Larry was the worst person she could be with. For several years he had clung to the hope that some miracle would come along to change things. But that period had passed. He now carried around a deep ache of pity for her and for himself. She was a beautiful child whom he had loved, but things could never be as they once were.
In their private worlds both lived in the shadow of past memory for each other. The picture of Larry remained at all times by her bedside, and they would spend evenings in front of the open stone fireplace in the small garden room at Notley fondly recalling the laughter and tears of past experiences.
The year 1956 started off hopefully. She had not had an attack for quite some time and was in fine spirits. Then on January 22 Alexander Korda suffered a fatal heart attack. Vivien was distraught. Losing a dear friend was always a tremendous shock and threw her into instant depression. But Korda was more than a dear friend. He was her mentor, a man she looked up to with almost the same reverence and intensity as she did Larry. His death was a hard and difficult blow for her to take and set her back considerably.
About this time Olivier received a most unusual offer to direct and co-star in a film version of The Sleeping Prince, to be shot in England. Milton Greene, an American photographer and close friend of Marilyn Monroe’s, had bought the rights from Rattigan with plans for Marilyn to play the showgirl. Immediately the title was changed to The Prince and
the Showgirl. By the end of February Larry had made up his mind to go ahead with the film, but he did not tell Vivien of his plans. The reasons were perhaps two-fold—Vivien remained in a state of depression and he was concerned she would react badly to being replaced by the younger Monroe in a role she had created. If he played opposite, no matter what the considerations, it would certainly compound that injury. With the offer coming so soon after Korda’s death and at a time of her inactivity, he was incapable of dealing her yet another blow, though it would seem he was sufficiently self-oriented not to turn aside the project on her account.
Noël, “the Master,” as they called him, seemed heaven-sent when he came to spend a weekend at Notley and talked about his new comedy, South Sea Bubble, hinting that he would love to have Vivien take the role of Lady Alexandra Shotter. Vivien, of course, asked to read the playscript. It was not good, but, as Larry said, it was still “the Master,” and there were some splendid moments of Coward’s brittle humor. Her decision to do the play, though, was more attributable to Larry’s great enthusiasm. Granted, with Vivien cast in a play, his own conscience about doing The Prince and the Showgirl was eased. But it also meant Vivien would be participating in a production that would not tax her as classic theatre did and that she would be appearing with Noël, who—like Leigh and George Cukor—was one of the people with whom she simply was never “naughty,” and with whom she felt secure. The play went almost immediately into rehearsals, for it was to open at the Lyric Theatre in eight weeks’ time.
With Vivien settled, Olivier flew to New York to meet Greene and Monroe. A press conference was held and it was so widely covered that full details reached Vivien in England. There were pictures of Marilyn clinging seductively to Olivier’s arm and wearing a tight black velvet sheath cut so low her breasts were almost entirely revealed. A reporter asked Olivier his opinion of Marilyn as a film actress. “She has an extremely extraordinary gift of being able to suggest one moment that she is the naughtiest little thing and the next that she’s perfectly innocent, and the audience therefore leaves the theatre gently titillated into a state of excitement,” he pronounced.
Not to be upstaged, Marilyn’s shoulder strap broke, and with a soft and seductive cry that made all eyes turn immediately to her, she saved herself from total exposure. One reporter was ungallant enough to ask if she had purposely broken the strap. She looked at him with wide innocent eyes and smiled, saying nothing.
South Sea Bubble was stale champagne to the critics when it opened on April 25, 1956. “Miss Leigh brings cool effrontery to the business,” said The Times critic. Still, as Olivier had noted, “it was the Master,” and so when Marilyn and her new husband, playwright Arthur Miller, arrived at the London airport at the beginning of July, the play was still running.
Vivien accompanied Larry to the airport to meet the newlyweds. The press stampeded them all, and one photographer was injured in the crush. The Oliviers drove with the Millers in a limousine to the country estate that they had rented for the American couple in Egham in Windsor Park, a thirty-car caravan of baggage (Marilyn had twenty-seven pieces) and press following them.
The two women could not be said to have “got on well” together. Marilyn was ill at ease. The chauffeur called Vivien “your ladyship,” the press “Lady Olivier,” and Vivien had an elegance along with her musical and beautifully articulated English accent that made Marilyn self-conscious.
It is difficult to imagine that Olivier did the film for any other reason than money. The script was charming, and Olivier had enjoyed playing the Prince on stage; but there seemed little advantage in terms of his own greater ambitions in doing the role over again. And he was almost immediately regretful that he had done so, for Marilyn was impossible to work with, attempting to bring to the screen her newly acquired Method approach to acting—which he abhorred—and bringing with her Paula Strasberg, her drama coach, for constant advice (none of which Olivier agreed with) on how to play a scene. She was invariably two, three, or four hours late on the set. Sometimes Miller would call in that she was ill and would not be able to work at all. It was unheard-of behavior in Olivier’s eyes, the height of unprofessionalism, and he thought of her as “a troublesome bitch.”
But it was Vivien not Marilyn who was in the headlines when The Prince and the Showgirl went before the cameras. She was pregnant after sixteen years of marriage and at forty-two years of age. She announced to the press that she would soon leave the Coward play, as the baby was due in five months. No sooner done than she was a daily visitor on The Prince and the Showgirl set. Maxine Audley was in the film and the two would chat on the sidelines. There were many ugly rumors floating about that Vivien was not pregnant at all, that she had announced the event to draw attention from Marilyn. “Why had she waited until she was four months along?” they buzzed. She remained her slim self and each time she came onto the set her detractors would be watching for “signs.”
Sitting with her feet up on another chair one day, she confessed to Maxine Audley, “The only trouble with being pregnant is that I have to have my feet up all the time and that bores me stiff. I guess I’m just not a maternal person, after all.”
Four weeks after the first press release, Olivier announced that Vivien had suffered a miscarriage and had been ordered to take a complete rest and not to see anyone.
“We are bitterly disappointed and terribly upset,” he said. “The main concern now is Vivien. The important thing is that she should make a complete recovery.”
She had suffered more a mental than a physical collapse. There was ahead of them the slow agony of trying to learn to live with her illness, for Larry knew she was not just a neurotic or hysterical woman. She was a manic-depressive who had been diagnosed by more than one doctor as schizophrenic. Fortunately, she had suffered no serious lung flare-up, for as the doctors had explained to Larry, her tubercular condition aggravated the manic problem. To Vivien, who had so many times suffered extreme feelings of helplessness and terror, it seemed there was no escape. She went along with every effort to help her (drugs, shock, and psychotherapy), except suggestions that she return to the hospital.
It took the entire fall of 1956 for her to fight her way back from what she was terrified might be a final descent into madness. Although no one was quite sure what brought on her attacks, a pattern was beginning to show itself. First she would enter into a depressive phase, which was of gradual onset. She would become increasingly depressed, find it difficult to think and concentrate, lose her appetite and weight, be unable to sleep without help, and hold suicidal thoughts (though suicide did not seem an actual threat at the time). The manic phase would be of sudden onset. She would feel a marked elevation of mood and begin to lose her natural restraint and normal reserve. She would always turn on Larry, say whatever came to her mind, and suddenly lose judgment, reasoning power, and insight. Then severe claustrophobia would set in. She would tear her clothes off, feel the desperate need to jump out of a car, train, or plane in which she might be riding. The attention to impeccable grooming would disappear and she would slip into slovenly habits.
Dr. Arthur Conachy, who did not believe she was schizophrenic but diagnosed her as a manic-depressive, was the one doctor she truly trusted. In a report that traveled with her, in case she should be seized with an attack beyond the range of his London offices, Dr. Conachy wrote, “She develops marked increase in libido and indiscriminate sexual activity. These illustrations of her symptoms, particularly her overt sexuality, loss of judgement and persistent overdrive, make me feel, that for a person in her position, from the social and publicity consequences that arise from this, that her manic phase is much more undesirable than the depressed phase.”
He explained that during her most recent attack “I administered five electroconvulsive treatments under general anesthesia of sodium pentothal and with scoline as a muscle relaxant given by an anesthetist. I used a Shotter-Rich electronarcosis machine to avoid memory loss, but any good E.C.T. machine, providin
g it is certain that a convulsion has been triggered off, would be adequate.
“The one undesirable factor in this pattern,” he concludes, “is her tendency to take considerable and regular amounts of alcohol particularly in moments of stress. She refuses to modify this, but is in no sense an alcoholic.” It was a known medical fact now that liquor accelerated her attacks.
If Vivien was beginning to lose a foothold on her confidence, Olivier had begun to react to success with a complete confidence that he had never quite felt before. The public approved wholeheartedly of him. He had come to feel a certain hypnotic power over his audience.
At the time he felt a great need to appear in a contemporary play, and he spoke to the Royal Court’s George Devine to ask if John Osborne might be writing a new play that had a role for him in it. Osborne, in fact, was working on The Entertainer, and was stunned by “the King’s” request; but he sent him the playscript when it was complete. Vivien read it and immediately wanted to play the wife, if Olivier played Archie Rice. This was the early spring of 1957, and she had had several months to recuperate from her last collapse.
They no longer had Durham Cottage and planned to stop at the Connaught Hotel when they were in London. Osborne came over to the hotel to discuss the possibilities of Vivien being cast in the play opposite Olivier. “The trouble is that Vivien is too beautiful to play this kind of part,” Olivier kept saying. Then they sat around for hours debating the ludicrous suggestion (Olivier’s) that Vivien wear a rubber mask to make her look plain and ugly.
In the end she did not appear in The Entertainer (Brenda de Banzie took the part) and Olivier was greatly relieved. He was meeting a new challenge, breaking away from the world of Establishment theatre and Vivien’s world as well, and going it alone. It was the first time since before Romeo and Juliet that he had no other responsibilities than to be an actor, for once he was not playing with Vivien or directing her or himself.