Vivien Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley on the 5th of November 1913 in Darjeeling, British India, the only child of Ernest Richard Hartley and Gertrude Mary Frances. Her father was a British broker born in Scotland, while her mother was a devout Catholic of mixed Irish, Parsi Indian, and Armenian ancestry who grew up in an orphanage after her family was killed during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. At the age of three, Vivian made her first stage appearance reciting Little Bo Peep for her mother's amateur theatre group, and by the age of six, she was sent to the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, Middlesex. There she met future actress Maureen O'Sullivan and expressed her desire to become a great actress, a dream that would be interrupted when her father removed her from the school. The family traveled through Europe for four years, attending schools in Dinard, Biarritz, San Remo, and Paris, where Vivian became fluent in both French and Italian before returning to Britain in 1931. Her early life was marked by a rich cultural tapestry and a deep appreciation for literature, including the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, and Rudyard Kipling, which her mother instilled in her from a young age.
The Name And The Screen
In 1931, Vivian met Herbert Leigh Holman, a barrister thirteen years her senior, and despite his disapproval of theatrical people, they married on the 20th of December 1932, causing her to terminate her studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She gave birth to a daughter, Suzanne Holman, on the 12th of October 1933, but her true calling emerged when friends suggested she take a minor role in the film Things Are Looking Up. Her agent, John Gliddon, believed that Vivian Holman was not a suitable name for an actress, and after rejecting his many suggestions, she adopted the professional name Vivien Leigh. Alexander Korda initially rejected her as lacking potential, but after seeing her in the play The Mask of Virtue, he signed her to a film contract. The playbill revised the spelling of her first name to Vivien, and she quickly gained attention, though she later recalled her ambivalence towards her sudden fame, feeling that critics were foolish to call her a great actress before she had the time to learn the craft. Her early career was marked by a rapid change in mood, which one Daily Express interviewer noted as a lightning change over her face, the first public mention of the mood swings that would become characteristic of her.The Scarlett Obsession
In the autumn of 1935, John Buckmaster introduced Leigh to Laurence Olivier at the Savoy Grill, and they began an affair while acting as lovers in Fire Over England, even though Olivier was still married to Jill Esmond and Leigh to Herbert Holman. Leigh read the Margaret Mitchell novel Gone with the Wind and instructed her American agent to recommend her to David O. Selznick, declaring to a journalist that she had cast herself as Scarlett O'Hara. Selznick initially thought she was too British, but after a screen test organized by George Cukor, he was convinced, noting that she was the Scarlett dark horse. The filming of Gone with the Wind proved difficult, with Leigh quarreling with director Victor Fleming and working seven days a week, often late into the night. She missed Olivier, who was working in New York City, and on a long-distance telephone call, she declared her hatred for film acting. Despite the challenges, the film won ten Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Leigh, and she became an instant star, though she later stated that being a film star was a false life lived for fake values and publicity.