Falling in and out of Love

Stephen Galloway’s  Truly, Madly is the biography of a marriage, a love affair that still captivates millions, is “the romance of the century”.  The golden couple whose admirers were enthralled by their private lives as by their stage and screen performances. They received over 1, 000 fan letters a week.  Vivien and Larry were two of the first truly global celebrities – their fame fuelled by the explosive growth of tabloids and television, which helped and hurt them in equal measure. Although they seemed to have it all and yet, in their own minds, they were doomed, blighted by her long-undiagnosed mental illness which transformed their relationship from the stuff of dreams into a living nightmare.

Truly Madly is the story of a couple who began as Romeo and Juliet roles, they went to play on the Broadway stage and ended up sparring as bitterly as Edgar and Alice in August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death.

Vivien Leigh was born in India and “abandoned” in an English convent school at the age of seven, Olivier lost his beloved mother when he was 12. Both made early marriages. Olivier to actress Jill Esmond; Leigh to the lawyer Herbert Leigh Holman. Leigh had a daughter, Suzanne, and Olivier a son, Tarquin, to neither of whom were close.  Both were conscience-stricken at breaking their marriages. Leigh rationalised saying “ To do it once forgivable, but never again.” Olivier was guilt-ridden all his life. The opening words of the memoir are “Bless me, Reader, for I have sinned”.

In 1934, a friend brought fledgling actress Vivien Leigh to see Theatre Royal, where would first lay eyes on Laurence Olivier, in his brilliant performance as Anthony Cavendish. She confided to a friend: he was the man she was going to marry. There was just one problem she was already married and so was he. After admiring each other on the stage, they fell in love during the filming of Fire over England. Galloway describes their passion “ Hands, lips, limps reached for each other with an urgency neither could control”. They were obliged to restrain themselves when they travelled to Hollywood for their breakthrough roles: Olivier in Wuthering Heights, Leigh in Gone with the Wind, although when news of their affair broke, it did not have the disastrous reputational impact.

Galloways focus on their films,  they acted together in Shakespeare and Sheridan, and Olivier directed Leigh in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Leigh’s performances were undermined by critic Kenneth Tynan, who accused Olivier of sacrificing his talent to promote his wife. Olivier however, blamed Tynan for “pushing Vivien over the edge”.

At the time Mary had bipolar disorder “We all thought she was just behaving badly” said actress Maxine Audley. Noel Coward suggested Olivier should have given her “a clip in the chops”.  As cracks in their marriage became chasms, Vivian began a tempestuous affair with Peter Finch and Olivier, a more temperate one with Dorothy Tutin.  When he was finally in love with Joan Plowright, Leigh finally gave him a divorce.

Galloway, however, paints a sympathetic portrait of a couple who loved each other too much and understood each other too little.

Truly Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and the Romance of the Century by Stephen Galloway Sphere £25, 416 pages.