Vivien Leigh's Last Feel: Why John Merivale Failed to Save the Hollywood Legend

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When people talk about Hollywood legend Vivien Leigh, they usually mention Gone With the Wind, the film that brought her worldwide popularity, and Laurence Olivier, the actor, with whom she spent 20 years in marriage. Vivien Leigh really called him the love of her life, but the last, most terrible 7 years she spent not with him. The name of John Merivale in articles about the actress often does not appear at all, and it was he who was next to her at the time when she was left alone with her misfortune …

Vivien Leigh has been married twice. Lawyer Herbert Lee Holman was engaged to another woman, but 19-year-old aspiring actress Vivian Mary Hartley was not in the least embarrassed. At their very first meeting, she announced that she would marry him by all means, and easily carried out her plan. But Holman did not marry a screen star, but an unknown young girl who, in his opinion, was supposed to be engaged in housework and raising their daughter. But soon after her birth, Vivian hired a nanny for her, and she focused on her acting career. And already 5 years after the wedding, she announced that she was in love with another person and wanted to divorce. A reminder of her first marriage has always remained part of her husband's name - "Li", which became her creative pseudonym.

Her new chosen one, partner on the set Laurence Olivier, was married, but Vivien Leigh did not see this as an obstacle to their relationship. Only 3 years after the beginning of their romance, they managed to get a divorce from their spouses. When Laurence Olivier took her down the aisle in 1940, he got a completely different Vivian - a world-famous star who had received an Oscar for Gone with the Wind the year before. They spent more than 20 years together, but their happiness could hardly be called cloudless - it was overshadowed by the spouse's creative jealousy of his wife's incredible success in Hollywood and Vivien Leigh's bipolar disorder, which developed after the treatment of tuberculosis with drugs with side effects.

When Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier divorced in 1960, she left this marriage as a completely different person. There is practically nothing left of the former glory. After starring in the film "A Streetcar Named Desire", for which the actress received her second "Oscar", she almost did not act in films. In cinematic circles, she had a bad reputation - legends were circulating about the unbearable character of Vivien Leigh, scandals on the set and uncontrollable fits of rage. Her beauty faded, and rumors of inappropriate behavior frightened her colleagues. In 1953, the actress was forced to undergo treatment in a psychiatric clinic, where at that time they fought with manic-depressive syndrome with the help of electroshock therapy. At this time, her husband had another woman, but they officially divorced only after 7 years.

At the age of 47, the Hollywood legend was left all alone, alone with her misfortune, forgotten by all fans, crushed and desperate, drowning grief in alcohol. But John Merivale needed her like that. He had known her for many years, their fates crossed more than once, but there could be no talk of a romance before - Vivien Leigh was completely absorbed in her feelings for Laurence Olivier. And John already then said: "". There were also many events in his life, he built a successful career in theater and cinema, was married to actress Jen Sterling, but after 7 years this marriage fell apart.

In 1959, Vivien Leigh and John Merivale played together in Duel of Angels on Broadway. Then they both finally realized that their meetings were not accidental, and that they both needed each other. Since then, he called her Angelica, from the word "angel". Probably, only a loving person could see the angel in her then. Many doubted that Vivien Leigh had sincere feelings for John, because she never tired of repeating that Laurence Olivier was the man of her life, and when asked if she wanted to live life differently, she answered: “".

At the same time, Vivienne was the initiator of their romance with John. At first, their relationship was friendly, and the actor did not even dream that they would go beyond this framework. He told: "".

Although in her house there were still photographs of Laurence Olivier everywhere, she wrote very tender letters to her new chosen one: "".

She was in many ways unfair to him, and he certainly did not deserve the words that Vivienne once said: "". John Merivale was next to her in the most difficult period, when everyone turned away from her, and managed to accept what she was - with nervous breakdowns, prolonged depression, fits of rage, drunken tantrums. He tried to surround her with care and make her life as easy as possible, becoming her husband, friend, nurse, and psychotherapist.

When, at 53, Vivienne burned out from a relapse of pulmonary tuberculosis, refusing hospitalization and another course of treatment, in the success of which she no longer believed, many felt that the actress simply could not live without Laurence Olivier. And only a few said that John Merivale and his selfless love actually, probably, after a painful divorce, extended her life by another 7 years …

2 years before her departure, Vivien Leigh appeared on the screens for the last time. Her heroine Mary uttered the words that the actress herself could have said: "".

She often compared herself to Blanche Dubois from the movie A Streetcar Named Desire, but most viewers associated her with the heroine from Gone with the Wind. Vivien Leigh and Scarlett O'Hara: Find 10 Differences.