What's really surprising about VIVIEN LEIGH is that she was chosen to play Scarlett O'Hara after what was really an unimpressive and veddy British appearance in A YANK AT OXFORD, sporting pencil thin eyebrows of the period and wearing unflattering hairdo and dowdy clothes. Nothing in that performance could have induced anyone into thinking she could be transformed a year later into Scarlett O'Hara. Selznick himself confesses that he was not even sure after seeing her in the costume epic, FIRE OVER ENGLAND.
And as the narrator so rightly observes, she began her British film career as "a not very successful actress." The remark is fully understood when clips are shown of her first British films.
Of course, all that changed once she did GWTW and WATERLOO BRIDGE, but by then she had been given the Hollywood glamor treatment that successfully made over her looks, a credit to the studio make-up artists as well as the astute Hollywood cameramen who photographed her. It's almost as if the Vivien Leigh of Great Britain left her British look and manner behind when she turned to tinsel town. Perhaps she was already a split personality in the making.
Not exactly the sort of in-depth biography Miss Leigh deserves and on that score it is unsatisfying. It is superficial at best.
But then, she was a very complex person and her life became a constant struggle with inner demons brought on by drugs to combat her illnesses. Some day, hopefully, a fuller, more truthful examination of her faults and virtues will become available to give us a better understanding of this fragile British actress who had her most famous roles playing Southern American women. Too bad Olivia de Havilland wasn't contacted to add something to the backstory of GWTW. De Havilland has been known to say that Vivien was "very much like Scarlett" in real life. Her secretary, Sunny Lash, said the same thing. Like Scarlett, Vivien could be "very cunning and always got her own way".
And as the narrator so rightly observes, she began her British film career as "a not very successful actress." The remark is fully understood when clips are shown of her first British films.
Of course, all that changed once she did GWTW and WATERLOO BRIDGE, but by then she had been given the Hollywood glamor treatment that successfully made over her looks, a credit to the studio make-up artists as well as the astute Hollywood cameramen who photographed her. It's almost as if the Vivien Leigh of Great Britain left her British look and manner behind when she turned to tinsel town. Perhaps she was already a split personality in the making.
Not exactly the sort of in-depth biography Miss Leigh deserves and on that score it is unsatisfying. It is superficial at best.
But then, she was a very complex person and her life became a constant struggle with inner demons brought on by drugs to combat her illnesses. Some day, hopefully, a fuller, more truthful examination of her faults and virtues will become available to give us a better understanding of this fragile British actress who had her most famous roles playing Southern American women. Too bad Olivia de Havilland wasn't contacted to add something to the backstory of GWTW. De Havilland has been known to say that Vivien was "very much like Scarlett" in real life. Her secretary, Sunny Lash, said the same thing. Like Scarlett, Vivien could be "very cunning and always got her own way".