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SPEAKER_02: Hey, listeners. Rarely do I get to read an ad for a company that I've seen grow since inception. I'm so excited to tell you about Bev. Bev is breaking norms and changing drinking culture to empower women. 80% of adult beverage companies are still male-owned and operated, while 60% to 70% of the consumer is female. Bev is trying to change that. Bev has three canned wines that are crisp, dry, and a little fizzy. The fact that the wine is in cans makes it so easy to transport and take wherever you are. Get yours by going to drinkbev.com and use the promo code Jennie to get 15% off your order. Check it out. I promise it's really worth it. And you're supporting someone I love. Hello. From Wonder Media Network, I'm Jennie Kaplan, and this is Encyclopedia Wamanica. Today's leading lady is a British actress of stage and screen who achieved legendary status by portraying two of the most iconic roles in Hollywood history. During an illustrious, though all too short career, she was also a member of one of Hollywood's most beloved power couples, which put her in the constant glare of public opinion, even as she struggled with an increasingly debilitating mental illness. Please welcome Vivian Leigh. Vivian Mary Hartley was born on November 5, 1913, in Darjeeling, India, to Ernest and Gertrude Hartley. Her father was an officer in the Indian cavalry and later worked as a stockbroker. Vivian was the couple's only child. In 1919, the family moved back to England. Vivian knew what she wanted to do early in life. At just seven years old, she told a fellow classmate that she wanted to be a friend to her mother. She told her classmate that she wanted to be a famous actress one day. During her high school years, Vivian was pulled out of her London school to travel with her parents around Europe. She attended various schools in France, Italy, and Germany throughout the period and became fluent in both French and Italian. In 1931, the Hartley family moved back to England and Vivian enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. During her freshman year, however, Vivian met and fell in love with a barrister over a decade her senior named Lee Holman. They married in 1932 and Vivian dropped out of the Royal Academy. Her interest had diminished now that she was in a new relationship. In 1933, Vivian gave birth to a daughter named Suzanne. Two years after her daughter's birth, Vivian decided to get back into acting. In 1935, she took a small role in the film Things Are Looking Up and made her stage debut in the play The Bash. Vivian also hired an agent who suggested she change her name from Vivian Holman to a more suitable stage name, Vivian Lee. Vivian then began doing Shakespearean plays at the Old Vic in London, along with acting in a number of British films. It was there that she apparently first encountered the renowned actor, Laurence Olivier. The two would go on to enjoy both a highly beneficial collaborative acting relationship and a surprisingly public affair given the moral standards of the day and the fact that both were married. It was during this period that Vivian first began exhibiting symptoms of bipolar disorder, though they were not then recognized as such. Around that same time, Vivian read Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel Gone with the Wind. She decided that she absolutely had to play the part of Scarlett O'Hara in David O. Selznick's upcoming film adaptation. There was a widely publicized search to find the right actress to play the role. Hollywood icons like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn were in the running. Vivian was a comparatively unknown actress from across the pond who had yet to work on a single Hollywood film. Selznick watched her performances in two British films sent to him by her agent and was highly impressed with her acting. Still, he felt that she was way too British for the role of an American southerner, but Vivian wasn't about to give up. She traveled to Los Angeles for a two-week vacation to meet with Selznick in person and ended up reading a scene for a screen test that was so good she secured the role of Scarlett. Casting an essentially unknown actress as the lead in one of the largest Hollywood films of the decade was a serious risk. Even before shooting began, the movie was the most highly anticipated film in Hollywood history.
SPEAKER_04: I had a lie, steal, cheat, or kill, and God is my witness.
SPEAKER_01: I'll never be hungry again.
SPEAKER_02: The risk proved worth it. Vivian received wild acclaim for her performance. The film itself, which premiered in 1939, smashed box office records and won eight Academy Awards, including one for Vivian for Best Actress. We need to note here that Gone with the Wind, which tells the story of a wealthy white southern woman living during and directly after the American Civil War, is considered by many, including us, to be a highly problematic film due to its rosy depictions of American slavery, southern culture, the relationship between white landowners and the black people who they enslaved, and a strong centering of white victimhood as the primary plight of the Civil War. The popularity of the film increased a national sense of white nostalgia for the antebellum period, an era which was functionally and fundamentally dependent upon the blood, sweat, and tears of an enslaved people. That unfounded and highly insidious nostalgia is something that we're still fighting to this day. In 1940, after having finally secured divorces from their respective spouses, Vivian and Olivier finally got married. Not only was Vivian now one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, but the two of them together made for quite the power couple. They starred in films together and were followed everywhere by the paparazzi, though they took great pains to try to maintain their privacy. One of their reasons for wanting to stay out of the limelight was the increased deterioration of Vivian's mental health due to the mounting severity of both manic and depressive episodes. This put significant strain on the couple's marriage. In 1944, things took a turn for the worse when Vivian fell during rehearsal for Antony and Cleopatra and suffered a miscarriage. The tragic event increased the severity and frequency of Vivian's bipolar symptoms, which became progressively more difficult to manage and gave her terrible insomnia. She also suffered from a respiratory infection that was eventually diagnosed as chronic tuberculosis. In an attempt to find relief, Vivian underwent electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, which was one of the only treatments at the time for mental illness. She began self-medicating with alcohol. While Vivian continued to act in major roles throughout much of the 1940s, she didn't do anything that matched her success with Gone with the Wind. Then, in 1949, Vivian was cast as the iconic Blanche DuBois in the London production of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire. After performing the role on stage for nearly a year, Vivian agreed to star in the film adaptation. She starred opposite famed actor Marlon Brando. Vivian's performance in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire was revelatory.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever you are, I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.
SPEAKER_02: For her efforts, Vivian won a second Oscar, a New York Film Critics Award, and a BAFTA Award. It's believed that Vivian drew heavily on her own struggles with mental illness to give texture to her portrayal of Blanche DuBois, who herself is a woman suffering deeply from mental illness while hiding behind a cracking facade of Southern gentility. Vivian later said that the role may have actually contributed to her own mental illness, stating that the year she spent playing DuBois tipped her into madness.
SPEAKER_00: Get out of here! Quick, before I start dreaming! Dreaming!
SPEAKER_02: Dreaming! Ah! Ah! In the aftermath of this success, Vivian and Olivier made history by starring together in simultaneous theater productions of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. Both were put on in London, and both were massive critical and commercial successes. These successes were often overshadowed in Vivian's personal life by her continued struggle with bipolar disorder, which took a heavy mental and emotional toll. In 1953, her condition was exacerbated by the tragedy of a second miscarriage, which caused a breakdown and forced her to withdraw from the film she was working on. This episode bolstered her reputation for being hard to work with. This episode also increased the strain on Vivian's marriage to Olivier, which had become more and more tumultuous. The marriage ended in divorce in 1960, and soon after, both parties started new relationships. Vivian moved in with actor Jack Merrivale, and her condition seemed to improve for a time. During this period, she starred in a Broadway play for which she won her first Tony Award, and also starred in the Oscar-winning film, ''Ship of Fools''. In 1967, just before beginning rehearsal for a new play in London, Vivian fell seriously ill from a recurrence of tuberculosis. After a month in the hospital, she passed away on July 8th, 1967. She was 53 years old. But then the only interesting thing I think
SPEAKER_00: is to play as many different things as possible. I think typecasting and type acting is one of the menaces, really. If you're not gonna be surprised in life, it's a pity, I think.
SPEAKER_02: All month, we're talking about leading ladies. Tune in tomorrow for a special bonus episode brought to you by Care Of. Special thanks to my favorite sister and co-creator, Liz Kaplan.
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