To feel so unloved and unworthy to my existence here simply hurts.
B.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
GREAT ROMANCES OF OUR TIME.
LAURENCE OLIVIER & VIVIEN LEIGH...
When Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh went to Denmark to play in the Old Vic production of Hamlet in the summer of 1937, he was thirty and she was twenty-three, and they were in love. It had all begun like this: the actress had first seen the actor posturing joyously in the 1934 production of Theatre Royal. His own bounding vitality blended with every flamboyant moustache twitch. Oliver got his first glimpse of Vivien Leigh the following year, in a play called The Mask of Virtue. The plays greatest virtue seems to have been Vivian herself. Those who saw her never forgot the impact of exquisite fragility and vivacity. She filled the stage with a beauty that stunned the mind.
The two did not meet until sometime later. She was dining with a theatre friend, John Buckmaster, at the Savoy Grill in London. Olivier was at a nearby table. Over a lobster Newburg and a glass of Les Fore ts '34 they discussed the fact that Oliver had shaved his moustache.
"What an odd little thing Larry looks without it," observed Buckmaster despairingly.
"Not in the least Johnny!" Vivien protested. She wore the hint of a French hat perched low on her forehead, and all eyes in the room were on her and she knew it and was glad. She could feel Olivier's glance and of course found him madly attractive. "With or without the moustache," she insisted to Buckmaster. He then introduced the pair that were to become the most legendary couple in theatre history.
In a whirlwind romance, the pair were married in Santa Barbara at the bungalows of San Y sidro Ranch. The justice of the peace had not been told just whom he was expected to marry. When the time arrived and they hadn't shown, the justice suggested that plenty of couples got stage fright before facing the altar.
"Somehow I don't think this couple will get stage fright," replied the best man. At that moment, the sound of a car brought them to the terrace. In the moonlight, Larry and Vivien came up the steps. "My God, it's Scarlett O'Hara! Why didn't you tell me!" exclaimed the justice.
Soon after their storybook marriage, Olivier became the king of theatre, and Vivien, more in love with him than ever, desperately fought to share his throne. Then, shortly after her second Oscar from her performance as Blanche DuBois in the fim version of Tennessee William's A streetcar named Desire(1951), Leigh began to display the signs of the mental illness that would darken her life until the end. Olivier, terrified that he might lose his hold on all he had if he allowed Vivien's illness to take over his life, began to remove himself from his life with her.
Eventually the couple were divorced, yet Leigh died with a photograph of Olivier at her bedside and despite another marriage and great career success, Olivier always carried a deep ache of pity for her and for himself, and what they once were.
-Jesse Lasky Jr.
B.
When Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh went to Denmark to play in the Old Vic production of Hamlet in the summer of 1937, he was thirty and she was twenty-three, and they were in love. It had all begun like this: the actress had first seen the actor posturing joyously in the 1934 production of Theatre Royal. His own bounding vitality blended with every flamboyant moustache twitch. Oliver got his first glimpse of Vivien Leigh the following year, in a play called The Mask of Virtue. The plays greatest virtue seems to have been Vivian herself. Those who saw her never forgot the impact of exquisite fragility and vivacity. She filled the stage with a beauty that stunned the mind.
The two did not meet until sometime later. She was dining with a theatre friend, John Buckmaster, at the Savoy Grill in London. Olivier was at a nearby table. Over a lobster Newburg and a glass of Les Fore ts '34 they discussed the fact that Oliver had shaved his moustache.
"What an odd little thing Larry looks without it," observed Buckmaster despairingly.
"Not in the least Johnny!" Vivien protested. She wore the hint of a French hat perched low on her forehead, and all eyes in the room were on her and she knew it and was glad. She could feel Olivier's glance and of course found him madly attractive. "With or without the moustache," she insisted to Buckmaster. He then introduced the pair that were to become the most legendary couple in theatre history.
In a whirlwind romance, the pair were married in Santa Barbara at the bungalows of San Y sidro Ranch. The justice of the peace had not been told just whom he was expected to marry. When the time arrived and they hadn't shown, the justice suggested that plenty of couples got stage fright before facing the altar.
"Somehow I don't think this couple will get stage fright," replied the best man. At that moment, the sound of a car brought them to the terrace. In the moonlight, Larry and Vivien came up the steps. "My God, it's Scarlett O'Hara! Why didn't you tell me!" exclaimed the justice.
Soon after their storybook marriage, Olivier became the king of theatre, and Vivien, more in love with him than ever, desperately fought to share his throne. Then, shortly after her second Oscar from her performance as Blanche DuBois in the fim version of Tennessee William's A streetcar named Desire(1951), Leigh began to display the signs of the mental illness that would darken her life until the end. Olivier, terrified that he might lose his hold on all he had if he allowed Vivien's illness to take over his life, began to remove himself from his life with her.
Eventually the couple were divorced, yet Leigh died with a photograph of Olivier at her bedside and despite another marriage and great career success, Olivier always carried a deep ache of pity for her and for himself, and what they once were.
-Jesse Lasky Jr.
B.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
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