“I started to rehearse Streetcar on 29 August 1949. I think I can say that I was helpful
to Vivien’s performance of Blanche; I hit on the practical notion that as by
changing one feature one can create a whole new face, so by the alteration of
one major characteristic, not hitherto associated with you, you can become
another person with a different personality. I noticed at the first rehearsals,
by the reactions among the company, that Vivien's unexpected, much deeper, much
rougher voice had impressed them. I watched, fascinated, the strange new person
that grew from this one dominant change of key. I thought, if her critics had
one grain of fairness, they will give her credit for being an actress and not
go on forever letting their judgment be distorted by her great beauty and
Hollywood stardom. As it turned out, they were not so bad as usual, but clearly
reluctant in their approval. Her colleagues and the public were unanimously
eulogistic in their praises.”—Laurence Olivier, describing directing wife
Vivien Leigh in a London production of A
Streetcar Named Desire, in Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography
(1982)
This passage speaks volumes about the relationship
between Sir Laurence Olivier and the
second and most famous of his three wives, Vivien Leigh, born on this date 100 years ago in India. You see the loving
protectiveness that sustained him through two decades of marriage to a woman he
correctly described to later lover Sarah Miles as “a manic depressive,
schizophrenic, nymphomaniac”; admiration for a fellow actor’s skill; an
emphasis on how external characteristics, rather than the dredging up of
personal experience, informs a role; and, perhaps, at least some competiveness
between the two (he was “helpful” to the performance of an actress who, he also
told Miles, “wasn’t good enough in the theatre [to be designated by the queen
as ‘Dame’]. She would never even bother turning up for her voice production classes.”).
Streetcar
came halfway through one of the most storied—and sad—marriages in film history.
(For the denouement, see my prior post on the making of The Prince and the Showgirl, set against the background of their crumbling relationship.)
The “Hollywood stardom” to which Olivier referred
came to Leigh as a result, of course, of Gone
With the Wind. She wasn’t exactly
right for the role of the Southern belle to beat all Southern belles (the
novel’s first sentence, after all, is, “Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but
men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were").
But with her kind of looks onscreen (in the words of friend Jesse L. Lasky Jr.,
“hair stirred by the breeze, eyes like fire opals beneath the circle of her
wide-brimmed black hat”), who would dare quibble? So she won the role, after
the most publicized talent search in movie history, along with her first Oscar.
The dominant characteristic of Scarlett is her
indomitability in the face of catastrophes that crush nearly everyone else near
and dear to her. Leigh made only nine more feature films after Gone With the Wind and, with the
exception of the younger, spirited half of Caesar
and Cleopatra (1945), none of the roles reflect Scarlett’s strength.
Her London triumph as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, along with her
central part in the greatest Hollywood blockbuster of them all in GWTW, gave her the leverage to win
the role in the film adaptation from the actress who originated Blanche on Broadway, Jessica Tandy,
and to take home her second Oscar in 1951.
But this film, like others in
these years, mirrored her offscreen stormy love life and fragile mental
condition. (Like Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning stint as the Joker in The Dark Knight, it raises the issue of
how far an actor with mental-health issues can go in exploring a dark role.)
The role of Blanche--fearful of losing youth and beauty--has to be among the most harrowing an actress can play. Ten years later,
another Tennessee Williams property would expose, even more pitilessly, Leigh’s
insecurity: The Roman Spring of Mrs.
Stone, about an aging actress who takes up with a young Italian gigolo.(Again, art seemed to mirror life: Leigh had an affair with her miscast co-star: Warren Beatty, already establishing a reputation as a lothario.)
A couple of years later, Miles, who had some unhappy
experiences with Leigh during the shooting of the film, met the actress again. It
soon became apparent that Leigh did not have a clue about her misbehavior to
the younger woman, and she apologized. At that point, Miles notes with pity, in a recent article in The Daily Mail, she glimpsed a “ravishing beauty now ravaged by life.”
No comments:
Post a Comment