Hey, I saw the reblog about the two books about Vivien Leigh. Your tag suggested, you don’t like them much. But could you recommend a good biography or book about her? She’s so fascinating and it’s been a long time since I read about her :) Thanks in advance. ❤️
Even after sixty years I still consider Alan Dent's A Bouquet the most accurate and compelling portrait of Vivien in print. I have three copies and would be happy to send you one if you have trouble finding it.
From a fannish point of view, I've always had a soft spot for Gwen Robyns' Light of a Star. It has some inaccuracies and the author isn't always honest but I think it can be read more or less uncritically, purely for enjoyment's sake - I get that not everybody wants to read a biography of somebody they love or admire with their scholar's hat on.
John Russell Taylor's coffee-table book is definitely under-rated, and Angus McBean's Love Affair in Camera is also a must-have. So many of the photos and quotations in the latter have been widely shared on tumblr and other platforms over the years that it might seem less revelatory now, however.
Of course, every fan has their own individual impression of Vivien and will be drawn to whatever writing reflects that. It's also a rare book that doesn't contain inaccuracies of some kind. My issue is that these inaccuracies have seldom ever been corrected. To give some examples:
Bean's book opens with the assertion that "Vivian … was easily starstruck." However, the only stage performer Vivien professed to idolise was George Robey, and in fact decried the idea of celebrity-worship. This was particularly true of Hollywood star worship: she remained almost completely aloof from Hollywood society during the making of GWTW, and even Garbo appears to have been uninteresting to her. (In contrast, Greta is said to have seen Vivien in GWTW four times.) If looking for an apt description of the spiritual course to which Vivien adhered throughout most of her life and career, 'stagestruck' is by far the better choice, as revealed in this passage from Felix Barker's biography:
"Vivian loved the opera, and her mother was sharply reproved when, after nearly eight storm-racked Wagnerian hours, she ventured a little flippancy at the expense of the soul-searching arias of Amfortas at the end of Parsifal. Vivian, who throughout the performances had been leaning forward in the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, turned round quickly. 'Please, Mother!' she said severely."
Next, in an early passage from Alan Strachan's book, he claims that Vivien's mother's family name (Yackjee) was 'often sanitised' to Yackjé in order to disguise its Armenian roots. This is cribbed almost word-for-word from Hugo Vickers' biography and there is absolutely no evidence of its being true. Catholic Armenians enjoyed a relatively respectable position in Calcutta society at the time in which Gertrude and Ernest (Vivien's mother and father) met each other, and marrying across ethnic lines seems to have carried less of a stigma than religious ones. The idea of Gertrude styling herself as 'Yackjé' calls to mind W. C. Fields in The Bank Dick and is patently absurd.
Both these examples show a preoccupation by the authors with public facades and false appearances, which ties in to the idea of Vivien leading a 'double life'. Frankly, this is one of the laziest biographical tropes imaginable and seems equally rooted in the most tired of Hollywood clichés: the silver-screen siren with a secret self, her star persona polished to perfection while masking a private life at dramatic odds with her public image. The only trouble as this might be applied to Vivien is that she spent less than two years of her entire career in Hollywood, and was never a product or a prisoner of the studio system like so many of her contemporaries. Selznick made various attempts to control her career--describing her as an 'exotic plant' and forbidding her from acting in plays he deemed harmful to the image he wanted to craft--but Vivien resolutely resisted his proscriptions, choosing the freedom of the stage over the constraints of stardom again and again. Few actresses seemed less concerned with becoming a filmic personality or cultivating a singular screen image, and the spotlight she sought in life was not a place to hide but to reveal.
There's a little known story from the making of GWTW that speaks volumes. Vivien was attending a costume fitting for the famous burgundy ball gown that would sear itself into cinematic history and forever bind she and Scarlett in the public imagination. All around her the room churned with activity: wardrobe assistants fluttered like birds, tugging gently at the gown's sumptuous folds and smoothing its silk velvet sheen. One knelt at her feet, delicately arranging the sweeping hem. Another adjusted a comb in her hair, careful not to disturb the perfect swell of curls. The famous plume at Vivien's neckline quivered with each breath she took, alive with tension. This was history in the making and the culmination of Vivien's most long-cherished ambition. Yet, as multiple hands shaped her into a cinematic icon, Vivien remained decidedly aloof. Instead, her thoughts were on a book she'd been reading in her moments off set: Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The novel's depiction of poverty and starvation--happening only a few miles from where the film was being shot--made a deep impression on the actress, and caused her to view the inflated pageantry around her as more grotesque than glorious.
Many of the most illuminating facts about Vivien are to be found in such marginal moments as this. Like most people, her nature consisted of more than just simplified dualities, but multiplicities. I personally believe that the best book about her is still to be written. While recent works may appear well-researched, they rely too heavily on pre-determined narratives and lack what De Quincey defined as the true quality of scholarship: "an infinite and electric power of combination"--breathing fire into what would otherwise be dry relics and fusing forgotten echoes into something alive, pulsing, and whole.
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