I am admittedly one of Vivien Leigh‘s biggest fans. Like 90% of them, I saw it for the first time when I watched Gone with the Wind, initially a washed, grainy copy where it already stood out as a unique beauty, but after seeing the restored versions, even more so. Vivien was one of the greatest actresses of all time, who saw her on stage, Brazilian Theatre critic Barbara Heliodora said she was spectacular as described. Vivien’s life could have been full of success, but that beauty hid a pain that was only made public in the late 1980s. Since then, with the perspective of how much she suffered, I have only become an even greater admirer of her. On November 5, 2023, she would turn 110 years old. Let’s talk about her again here in Miscelana, of course.
10 years ago, on her centenary, the National Portrait Gallery had a beautiful exhibition and I was in London to see it in person. I am always moved when I look at her life and her legacy. Vivien, the woman, was a person unanimously loved by friends, with an education and empathy that won over everyone who was lucky enough to know her. Delicate, caring, and genuinely interested in people, even though she was the star she was, she never changed the way she treated people. I read many biographies of actresses as, or less, famous than her. None of them lived with fame without being affected by it at some point. What was determined to be problematic for Vivien was her mental health, which was beyond her control. And even so, she didn’t stop working.
There are so many great performances in cinema that just talking about Scarlett O’Hara is not enough. If compared to the film that won her second Oscar, A Streetcar Named Desire, we see how much in 12 years she has evolved as an actress. I consider this to be her most iconic performance, even if I love Waterloo Bridge more. Yes, Blanche DuBois was too close to her reality, but it is disrespectful to say, as I said myself, that Blanche “was” Vivien, it is too simplistic. In 1951, when she made the film, Vivien was just 37 years old and already struggling with bipolar disorder. In those times, it was not correctly diagnosed and called “manic depression”. The treatment was electroshock, and the actress was misunderstood and mistreated, even though she remained active and proud. If we’re going to talk about Vivien as Blanche, it’s because she truly understood the character’s pain and that’s why there was no other like her in the role (and I’ve seen Cate Blanchett and it’s difficult to be as good as her).
Throughout her successful career, Vivien suffered abuse from a relationship that turned toxic with Laurence Olivier, was persecuted by the press that humiliated her in comparison to her husband, and also suffered from ageism. She made 19 films, but after she completed 40, only three. She died in 1967, aged just 53.
The Vivling series, which is a proposal to bring Vivien’s life to a generation that doesn’t know her, is still in development. I still hope that her story is well told, she deserves it.
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