Happy Birthday, Vivien Leigh

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Vivien Leigh in “The Mask of Virtue,” the West End production that made her a sensation in 1935

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Review of “The Mask of Virtue,” calling out Leigh’s performance

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Vivien Leigh, again, in “The Mask of Virtue”

4 years before Gone With the Wind, which introduced Vivien Leigh to the world, she was plucked out of obscurity in London for a production of The Mask of Virtue, in which she played a small but important role.

Vivien was totally green as an actress, naive, but she captivated people in her audition. There was something about her, that was obvious, something appealing, and her beauty was the kind that stopped you in your tracks.

The general consensus was that they should cast her, even though they thought her voice was awful. It needed work. They worked with her on it rigorously. She was an apt pupil (something important to remember about her, as the excerpt below will show).

Vivien Leigh had an unhappy life, in many respects, and she was tortured by insecurity and fragility, and the details are well-known so no need to go over that here. But what she had, as an actress, was not just beauty and talent (although she had those too), but a willingness to learn, to try to rise to the challenge, even if that process was somewhat embarrassing at first (as it often is, even with great actors). You don’t get it “right” immediately, even if you are cast well.

Along those lines as an example: Sidney Lumet tells some great stories about directing Katharine Hepburn in Long Day’s Journey. She was a legend at that point, and he was young. From the first day, she set out to test him, seeing how much she could get away with. A common thing with huge stars and newbie directors. She insisted that the first reading be at her house. She had set a table, and placed herself at the head. Lumet knew that it was a defining moment, and so he said, “I prefer to sit at the head of the table.” Hepburn, a tough old warhorse, respected his mettle, and conceded that ground. Respect must be earned, you see. But one of the stories I really love, that will connect to Leigh, is that during the first read-through, everything was going along nicely (or so Lumet thought). He was overwhelmed by the cast at that table, and the three men were open to his input on this or that moment. He wasn’t sure about Hepburn, though. Would she even allow him to give her direction. Maybe 3/4s of the way through the script reading, there was a pause, and Hepburn said, in a small voice, from her corner of the table, “Help??” It is a huge thing for an actress of her stature and caliber to admit she needs help (and that was actually one of her qualities that helped her be what she was. She accepted help from Hawks to get the screwball vibe for Bringing Up Baby. She forced herself to go on tour with a Shakespeare production because she was afraid of doing it. And etc.)

SO. Recognizing that you are not “all that,” even when you are a big star, is a huge deal. But it’s difficult, too, for younger actors. Younger actors, surrounded by professionals, can get intimidated and shut down. Or, worse, defensive. Or, even worse, they try to rise to the occasion, but are unable to do so. Or, even worse worse, they don’t even realize they need help. It’s a common thing with young inexperienced actors.

Vivien Leigh was different. She accepted all the help she could get. She allowed them to say to her her voice was bad, and she worked hard to overcome it, doing everything they told her. She knew she couldn’t compete with her experienced co-stars, and so she asked questions, accepted their help and guidance, rejected none of it. She was on the verge of being fired at all times because her performance was not up to snuff. And she knew it. People were helpful, but at some point the show might have had to go on without her. A terrifying situation, one that would sink many an experienced actress. And there was rapid improvement during the rehearsal process. Once she started learning, she couldn’t stop. And she altered her “instrument” to such a degree that it was able to fill up the theatre, play the role, and actually BE on that stage with those veterans.

And who dominated the good press when it opened? Vivien Leigh.

The excerpt below from a biography of Vivien Leigh talks in detail about that process for Leigh, and I find it so admirable. Imagine being told “Your voice is terrible” and NOT shutting down emotionally/physically about it. Imagine nodding your head and knowing you needed to improve. Imagine being surrounded by people who are frustrated with your performance. And then imagine sticking to it and figuring it out. It’s such an important quality to have for any successful person. Leigh would face that again and again in her career, but it was there from the start. I might even say you either have it or you don’t. It’s a character thing.

Excerpt from Vivien: The Life of Vivien Leigh, by Alexander Walker:

She also had a realistic view of her own limitations and this, as well as Sydney Carroll’s obvious fondness for her company, probably reprieved her in those first few weeks of rehearsals for The Mask of Virtue. It was a small cast: Lady Tree, Jeanne de Casalis and Frank Cellier (as the Marquis) were all accomplished players. Vivien was a tremulous beginner. They took pity on her. The play’s construction as a chamber drama fostered a working intimacy between them all. They generously guided Vivien through the passages where her inexperience was shown up painfully. For two-thirds of the way, her role was relatively straightforward, personifying the putative chastity and purity that are used as bait for the nobleman; but the last third, when her duplicity is exposed, was much more taxing. Prostrating herself before the angry man, who is threatening to shoot her, she has both to beg forgiveness and declare that her love for him is genuine.

The intelligence with which she read her lines might well have seen her through, but the muted appeal of her naturally small voice caused the audience to come to her, to lean towards her, so to speak, so as not to miss a word. Almost without trying, she invited them into her confidence, thus concentrating their attention, while those virginal looks which had perturbed the play’s producers excited their sympathy.

In later years, however, Vivien was the first to admit that she had been very lucky in the direction she received from Maxwell Wray and her fellow players.

‘Every day during the three-week rehearsal they nearly fired me because I was so awful. I remember someone saying at the Ivy restaurant: “She’ll have to go – she is terrible.” I was lucky enough to wear a lovely pink dress, a lovely black dress and a wonderful nightdress … but I didn’t know what to do … One of the women in the play had to say to me, “I shall not make many demands on you,” and I said, “Not more than the gentleman, I’m sure,” and it brought the house down and I never knew why. I was that much of an ass. I suppose, though, I must have had some sort of timing to get the laugh.’

That was the naive side of Vivien, which some of her school friends had noticed: oddly, although she had a notable sense of often randy humour, she kept her professional innocence for quite a time – as one of her later films was to show.

Those who knew Vivien best have given accounts which suggest that her part in the play was a triumph of personality over performance – allied to the expectancy that Sydney Carroll had created over the preceding weeks. John Gliddon was present. ‘The play itself wasn’t of much interest. But Vivien charmed everyone. The second act curtain went up and there she sat as the prostitute charming the old man. She charmed the whole audience. You could feel her charm come over the footlights.’ Oswald Frewen agreed, though he waited for a week or so before going to see ‘the Vivling’, as he affectionately nicknamed the ‘dear little creature’. He found her deficient in exposing her own frailties – ‘She had to cry two times and she could not do so convincingly, looking merely bored – or even asleep! – when she laid her head on the table to weep.’ But he found her ‘natural sweetness and loveliness’ coming across strongly – and so, apparently, did everyone else.

By the end of the evening, the promise that Sydney Carroll had hyped, to use a modern idiom, had been converted into what Harol Conway, the Daily Mail‘s theatre critic, called the next morning, ‘one of the biggest personal ovations a newcomer has had on the London stage for quite a long time.’

The following forty-eight hours gave shape to Vivien’s fortunes and ambitions for years to come. Her parents and her husband had been in the first-night audience on 15 May 1935, and all of them, accompanied by friends, made up a table at the Florida, a fashionable night-club, until the first editions came off the Fleet Street presses. Vivien didn’t need to strain her eyes in the dim lights of the night-club in order to discern her triumph – it was writ in headlines. The critics praised her without exception and the reporters succeeded in extracting a news angle from her ‘discovery,’ so that it ran both in the review columns and on the news pages. A very powerful combination.

‘New 19-year-old Star,’ cried the Daily Mail. Harold Conway hadn’t waited for his enthusiasm to cool. He had gone straight to Vivien’s dressing-room to report (and create) the phenomenon. ‘A new young British star … arose on the British stage last night with a spectacular suddenness which set playgoers cheering with surprised delight … In a difficult leading costume role, her exceptional beauty and assured acting set the experienced first-night audience excitedly asking each other who this unknown actress was.’ The praise in the other papers was pervasive and unanimous. A sense of exhilaration was created by headlines and sub-heads like ‘New Star to Win All London’ … ‘Young Actress’s Triumph’ … ‘Actress Is a Discovery’.

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Vivien Leigh in “A Streetcar Named Desire”

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6 Responses to Happy Birthday, Vivien Leigh

  1. Stevie says:

    Oh God, she breaks my heart. The charm thing is such an amazing way in to this because her performance in Streetcar is the definitive example of charm spent, charm minus the helpful props of youth and beauty. Her Blanche without the desperation could’ve been a huge success in any drawing room in New York, Chicago, Atlanta . . . reminds me of the old Sophie Tucker adage, “From birth to 18 a woman needs beauty, from 19-35 a woman needs charm, and from 36 to 80 a woman needs money” (or something like that). You see in Vivien’s performance the Blanche that could have been if only Belle Rive were still a going concern: a woman of inate charm and intelligence. Thank you for this beautiful post.

    • sheila says:

      Stevie –

      // her performance in Streetcar is the definitive example of charm spent, //

      God, yes. “Spent.” It’s so tragic – because she knows it – she’s lost something. Forever. Vivien Leigh – who had actually LIVED that (as most extraordinarily beautiful women do, I imagine) – was courageous enough to PLAY that. Not an easy thing. And, as Williams observed – she brought Blanche to “unsafe places” – what a phrase.

      Also, it’s interesting, right, the word “charm.” What exactly does it mean? You know it when you see it. It’s an old-fashioned word, not used so much now – but I think it really illuminates much about Vivien Leigh – and probably many young actresses who suddenly get “the role” that will make them famous. Charm has a lot to do with that. And Leigh, with all her struggles with her voice and her insecurity in rehearsing that play, was able to let her natural charm come out. Like, there it was – and everybody felt it.

      Rather extraordinary.

      Leigh is such a touching figure to me.

    • sheila says:

      and thank you for that quote – I hadn’t heard it before!!

  2. Lovely post. Her performance in Streetcar is still the only thing I’ve ever seen in a movie that truly frightened me. I kept saying, “No, no. You can’t do that and walk away.” Of course I was seeing it nearly fifty years after she made it and thirty years after she died. Then a few years later I read her famous quote about how playing Blanche had “tipped me over into madness” and I knew she did not, in fact, walk away. The books that exist on her are pretty good (including Walker’s), but I REALLY wish somebody would do her full justice. If it happens it probably won’t be in a conventional bio…I think she’ll always drift just out of reach unless some first rate poet takes her on.

    • sheila says:

      NJ – There is some good stuff in the Walker book (and I think this Mask of Virtue section was my favorite part – because it required some real gumshoe work on the part of the author – tracking down sources, to really try to explain why this play production was so definitive for Leigh and made possible everything that came after).

      But I agree with you: she hasn’t quite had her day in court yet, at least not in terms of biography.

      There are the personal issues aspect of her life – her breakdowns, her marriages, the ECT treatments – all these horrible things – which of course are important, but they tend to “take over” any narrative. (Similar to Elvis – where the fact that he took amphetamines somehow seems MORE important than what he did in the studio at Sun Records on July 5, 1954. You know?) Like, yes, she had problems. Let’s talk about them. But also talk about the work!

      The recent Scott Eyman biography of John Wayne has that perfect balance. You get the life, you get the politics (and it’s very fair and even-handed – not like the commentary of so many liberals who sound just as intolerant as they accuse Wayne of being) – you get the marriages, you get an indelible image of him and Marlene Dietrich screwing standing up in a stairwell (Wayne admitted that one himself, later in his life – the most memorable sex he ever had – ha.) – BUT: Eyman also really analyzes and breaks down Wayne’s work as an actor, and how he developed, and what it was he brought to each role.

      Leigh deserves something like that. The personal life seems more interesting – but it’s NOT.

  3. Yeah, and there’s still so much of that “The Life Explains the Art” attitude out there. A six-hundred-page doorstop on what Viv and Larry had for breakfast after a lover’s spat in 1943 and how it surely informed their approaches to Carrie and Streetcar all those years later, we don’t need!

    But it does seem like more and more folks are starting to understand the need for bios about artists to take their ART as something that lives and breathes on its own…that the art is related to, but not bound by. the “facts” of a life, however spectacular those facts might be (and they don’t get much more spectacular than VL’s, which makes it the more puzzling that more hasn’t been done already). Happening more on both film and page, though, so I have hopes!

    And I really got to get that John Wayne bio. I have Eyman’s book on Ford on my reading list and I bet they’d make a nice pairing!

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