Here are twenty interesting facts about the actress who starred as Scarlett O’Hara—the beautiful, one-eyebrow raising Vivien Leigh. (As always, feel free to shout out more facts you might know about, or point out any inaccuracies you might notice.)
There’s never been another like her.
1. When she began working with a talent agent at the beginning of her career, her married name was Vivian Holman. Her agent wanted her to change her name to “April Morn.” She instead chose Vivien (changed spelling) Leigh, after her husband Herbert Leigh Holman.
2. Vivien Leigh and Lawrence Olivier met and fell in love while filming Fire Over England in 1937. They were both married at the time, and continued their affair until their respective spouses granted them divorces. Leigh and Olivier were married in 1940. Katharine Hepburn was one of only two witnesses.
3. Vivien and her ex-husband Leigh Holman remained close throughout her life.
4. Vivien Leigh was quoted as saying that she never forgave the first critic who gave her a favorable review and called her a “great actress” because it put what she described as “such an onus and such a responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn’t able to carry.”
5. She ultimately won the role of Scarlett over Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett, who had been narrowed down for the part.
6. Both Scarlett O’Hara’s and Vivien Leigh’s parents were French and Irish.
7. In the famous “I’ll never be hungry again” scene in Gone With the Wind—the part where Scarlett snarfs down a radish, then vomits—the vomiting noises had to be recorded by Olivia de Havilland. Whether this was because Vivien Leigh could not produce a realistic enough retching sound OR refused to do it because it wasn’t ladylike remains a point of dispute.
8. Vivien Leigh was paid between $25,000 and $30,000 for her role of Scarlett. (Clark Gable was paid $120,000 for his role as Rhett Butler.)
9. The actor who played Beau Wilkes (Melanie and Ashley Wilkes’ young son) in Gone With the Wind would later say that Vivien Leigh was very kind to him and was “one of the loveliest ladies” he had ever met.
10. Vivien Leigh was 25 when she filmed Gone With the Wind. The actress who played her mother was 28.
11. Vivien Leigh, a British actress, won two Oscars—both for playing the part of Southern belles: for Scarlett O’Hara/Gone With the Wind and Blanche DuBois/A Streetcar Named Desire.
12. Tennessee Williams (author of A Streetcar Named Desire) said that Leigh as DuBois was “everything that I intended, and much that I had never dreamed of.”
13. Vivien Leigh later said that it was playing the role of Blanche DuBois that finally “tipped me over into madness.”
14. Vivien Leigh suffered from bipolar disorder for years. Olivier later wrote about it extensively in his autobiography, and referenced many ways in which the illness hampered both her career and personal contentment, and their relationship. He wrote “Throughout her possession by that uncannily evil monster, manic depression, with its deadly ever-tightening spirals, she retained her own individual canniness – an ability to disguise her true mental condition from almost all except me, for whom she could hardly be expected to take the trouble.”
15. Leigh and Olivier divorced in 1960. She would later say that she “would rather have lived a short life with Larry [Olivier] than face a long one without him.”
16. Leigh reportedly had disproportionately large hands, and wore gloves frequently to cover them up. (Leigh was 5’3″)
17. Vivien Leigh was regarded as one of the most beautiful actresses of her time, and both Olivier and George Cukor lamented that her acting talents were often overlooked by her beauty. Cukor said that Leigh was “the consummate actress, hampered by beauty.”
18. Tuberculosis, from which Leigh had also suffered for years, was the ultimate cause of her death.
19. As a publicity maneuver, fans of Gone With the Wind (the book) were asked to vote by ballot as to who should play Scarlett in the movie. Out of hundreds of ballots, Vivien Leigh received one vote.
20. After Gone With the Wind premiered, The New York Times summed up how perfect she’d been for the role: “Miss Leigh’s Scarlett has vindicated the absurd talent quest that indirectly turned her up. She is so perfectly designed for the part by art and nature that any other actress in the role would be inconceivable.”
And I say amen to that.
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