Her remarkable intelligence and awareness is described in excellent depth so as to convince readers that she absorbed everything she encountered, alchemized it internally, and gave it back with love. The book's content is immaculately researched, honest yet nonjudgemental toward the wild drive it took for Vivien Leigh and Olivier to become legendary theatrical stars. I slowed the word speed in order clarify the British accent. I'm not sure the story would be appealing to a reader not eager to be submerged in that setting. The time spands golden decades of British theater and film, weaving in countless persons in hers and Laurence Olivier's circle.

I learned from the author that so was Vivien Leigh during her remarkable life and career.

© Houghton Library, Harvard University.ġ4 hours long. Revealing new aspects of her early life as well as providing glimpses behind-the-scenes of the filming of Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire, this book provides the essential and comprehensive life-story of one of the 20th century’s greatest actresses.įront cover: Angus McBean Collection, MS Thr 581. Using previously unseen sources from her archive, recently acquired by the V&A, he sheds new light on her fractious relationship with Laurence Olivier, based on their letters and diaries, as well as on the bipolar disorder which so affected her later life and work. In this ground-breaking new biography, Alan Strachan provides a completely new full-life portrait of Leigh, covering both her professional and personal life. Yet she was also a talented theatre actress with West End and Broadway plaudits to her name. As Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche Du Bois she took on some of the most pivotal roles in cinema history. Vivien Leigh was perhaps the most iconic actress of the 20th century. Winner of the Society for Theatre Research Book Prize 2020 Bloomsbury presents Dark Star by Alan Strachan, read by Alasdair Buchan.