The Great Debate

The Great Debate–Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and one of the most famous romances of the 20th C.

Posted October 2, 2008 from vivandlarry.com

While browsing videos on youtube a couple days ago, I was struck by a comment on an interview Laurence Olivier did with 60 Minutes in 1982. This was said comment:

Sure jerked Vivien Leigh around– ” But she was mentally ill…”– what a stereotypical dismissal of a human being. Abraham Lincoln was “mentally ill”. So was Winston Churchill. SO many others.
This is an interview of Olivier– but Vivien got a stereotyped back of the hand from 60 minutes with that glib dismissal.

Sorry, person who left that comment, but I’m going to use you as an example. Www.vivandlarry.com is about just that–Vivien Leigh AND Laurence Olivier–so I thought it would be interesting to have a sort of open forum about them as individuals and as a couple. I don’t mean to get on a soap box,and I know everyone has their own opinion, but I’ll share mine based on what I’ve read/watched/talked about with others and the perspective I’ve formed in doing so, and then maybe other people would like to share theirs. :)

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First, I know Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier did not have a happy ending, I know there were a lot of problems in their marriage including Vivien’s bipolar disorder; and I think their problems were heightened due to the fact that they were both extremely creative and successful people in a cut-throat business, and they were both work-a-holics. I know it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t smooth sailing, and neither of them were perfect people. Perhaps they were destructive to each other in that relationship and perhaps I’m just a romantic, but I can’t help but honestly think that they really were soul mates and they never quite got over each other. I mean 20 years of marriage in Hollywood is like a lifetime for “normal” people. That in itself has always set them apart for me from most of the couples in the business both from the past and today.

What I don’t understand is when I see people on message boards or youtube–wherever–saying that he was a bad choice for her, he never loved her, he was a jerk for leaving her because she was ill, etc. He stayed with Vivien for so much longer than a lot of people would have given their circumstance (both because of their professions and their personalities, and also because treatment for mental illness in the 1940s and 50s was so primitive that Vivien really couldn’t have gotten the proper treatment she needed even if she DID totally comply with doctors’ orders). But more than that, she loved him; she chose to pursue him and they both chose to leave their respective spouses for each other–something he surely wouldn’t have done if he wasn’t absolutely over the top for her because he was from a totally religious background and even after he did leave Jill Esmond he felt guilty. So how do any of us, as fans of either or both of them, who never knew them in real life, have the right to judge either of them or their actions? And if we are going to judge, why does there seem to be such a bias view against Laurence Olivier? She chose him, he meant so much to her and she never let people shoot him down in her presence even after it was all over. So why do so many feel the need to berate him?

It sure seems to me that even though Vivien was the one who actually had the mental illness, Larry also suffered with her as being the one person who was closest to her and knew her better than everyone else, and certainly he knew her better than any of us who just know about their lives via books do or ever will. Only they knew for certain everything that went on in their relationship. Only they can attest to the feelings they each had regarding each other and regarding the break up of their marriage (and well, they’re both dead). Certainly there must have been bitterness and regrets on both parts–Larry even admitted that he always felt responsible some how for Vivien’s troubles and it was impossible for him to think otherwise. But I don’t blame him for leaving. As Jean Simmons told him when he was trying to decide whether to ask for a divorce or not, why should he sacrifice his happiness for the sake of someone else’s? In my opinion, just because he left her, it doesn’t mean he ever stopped caring for her or even loving her. It doesn’t mean he was a jerk because he left her when she was ill and needed him. They were both unhappy in the end. In fact from everything I’ve read, it doesn’t seem like he ever really got over her.

I’ve recently been doing research about going to see the Olivier Archive at the British Library. In doing so, I was shown the link of the holdings in the collection where you can see what sorts of things are in the Archive. Among the things Larry Olivier saved are multiple photo albums, including several of just Vivien Leigh photos/studio portraits/etc. He also saved press clippings about Vivien up until the 1980s. This struck me as wonderful and it warmed my heart to read this. As you know, they divorced in 1960 and Vivien passed away in 1967. So the fact that he kept tabs on her even years after she died speaks a lot about his feelings for her, in my opinion. Don’t you think that if he didn’t care about her, or if he stopped caring all together after their break up, he would have somehow disposed of all that Vivien-related ephemera instead of keeping it? This archive also goes to show that there is a LOT about their relationship that most of us who haven’t had the opportunity to look through all of this stuff aren’t aware of. Sadly, as author Terry Coleman told me via email, most of this stuff (as well as the other half that Suzanne Farrington has in her possession) has never been published. So far, only Terry Coleman has published a book after having had access to that material, and his biography on Olivier, though it doesn’t quite get to the bottom of who he was as a person, is the only one that has gone that much in depth to the obsession and passion of their relationship based on actual evidence. So I think that while there are some really good biographies on both Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier (my personal favorites would be the Felix Barker one, the Hugo Vickers one, the Coleman one and the Alan Dent one), I really don’t think any of them has told the complete story.

Furthermore, both Olivier and Leigh were extremely private people in real life. Unlike some people today, they didn’t go around announcing that they had sex in the limo on the way to the awards show or anything like that. There was an air of mystery about them and they only let the public see certain aspects of their relationship. I really respect people who keep the details of their private lives private as much as they can, especially when they’re famous, and I think more people should take hints from these old Hollywood couples (see Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward–RIP Paul). Laurence Olivier never liked doing interviews, and even when he did so them, he was only willing to say so much about his relationship–especially what went wrong–with Vivien Leigh. In several TV interviews he makes it plain that he doesn’t wish to talk about her problems, that it’s hard for him to talk about it, even 20 years after she died it was still hard for him. I think him not talking about it showed a lot more respect to her than telling the whole world exactly what happened between them. As a couple, the Oliviers kept Vivien’s illness as much from the public as they could. Though he did talk about their problems in Confessions of an Actor, he never went out and wrote a tell-all book trashing her name and her memory. In fact if I remember correctly, I seem to remember reading something about him being angry when Anne Edwards published her Vivien biography because she was the first one to come out and say Vivien Leigh was bipolar. I know their marriage was a rocky one by anyone’s account, and the end of it was hard on both of them. As Lauren Bacall said about their relationship: “It was heaven the first 10 years, hell the second. Now it was over. He felt such concern for her and pain at the ending of it all, but he knew he had to get away. He wouldn’t survive if he didn’t.” I’m sure that for a long time Larry harbored mixed feelings. Guilt obviously, he admitted as much, probably bitterness, anger, sadness, everything. But I also think that in time all of those negative emotions did blow away and even though he remarried and had the family he always wanted, I think it’s a total credit to him that he could look back after all those years and say about Vivien, “That was it. That was real love.”

So in conclusion, just because a TV program or anything similar glossed over his relationship with Vivien or dismissed her or her illness with a “stereotypical backhand,” that doesn’t mean that Laurence Olivier ever did the same. I personally love them both, and I just don’t think it’s fair that Larry gets all the blame a lot of times. Relationships are a two-way street.

FIN. Sorry that was so long! Ahhh! But I am super curious to know what other fans think of that whole situation. I always find it an interesting and often times complicated discussion because both Olivier and Vivien Leigh were complicated people (but that’s why I think their story is so interesting)!

From http://vivandlarry.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/the-great-debate-vivien-leigh-laurence-olivier-and-one-of-the-most-famous-romances-of-the-20th-c/.