Vivien Leigh Quotes

I find suggestion a hell of a lot more provocative than explicit detail. You didn't see Clark[Gable] and Vivien[leigh] rolling around in bed in Gone With The Wind, but you saw that shit eating grin on her face the next morning and you knew damned well she'd gotten properly laid.

I'm not a film star, I am an actress. Being a film star is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity.

My birth sign is Scorpio and they eat themselves up and burn themselves out. I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don’t pretend, and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.

I hope my life will prove a useful & good one, to many people." - Vivien Leigh

Life is too short to work so hard.

I'm not young. What's wrong with that?

I know everyone has to face periods of despondency and that one must not always trust everyone, or else one can be very hurt. At the same time, I have learned who really are my friends, and that can be very comforting, and gives one confidence for whatever lies ahead." - Vivien Leigh to Godfrey Winn, 1964.

I hope that's a good thing,' I said, thinking he might say I reminded him of a film star- then we'd actually have something in common. I was hoping for Anne Hathaway or Julia Roberts, and not the obvious Vivien Leigh. Even Angelina Jolie would have done, though I'd never quite forgiven her for stealing Brad's heart. Talking of Brad, was Sean starting to resemble him too? No, he could never be a Brad, a Matthew McConaughey maybe at a push, but never a Brad Pitt.

It seems right now that all I’ve ever done in my life is making my way here to you.’ I could see that Rosie could not place the line from The Bridges of Madison County that had produced such a powerful emotional reaction on the plane. She looked confused. ‘Don, what are you…what have you done to yourself?’ ‘I’ve made some changes.’ ‘Big changes.’ ‘Whatever behavioural modifications you require from me are a trivial price to pay for having you as my partner.’ Rosie made a downwards movement with her hand, which I could not interpret. Then she looked around the room and I followed her eyes. Everyone was watching. Nick had stopped partway to our table. I realised that in my intensity I had raised my voice. I didn’t care. ‘You are the world’s most perfect woman. All other women are irrelevant. Permanently. No Botox or implants will be required. ‘I need a minute to think,’ she said. I automatically started the timer on my watch. Suddenly Rosie started laughing. I looked at her, understandably puzzled at this outburst in the middle of a critical life decision. ‘The watch,’ she said. ‘I say “I need a minute” and you start timing. Don is not dead. 'Don, you don’t feel love, do you?’ said Rosie. ‘You can’t really love me.’ ‘Gene diagnosed love.’ I knew now that he had been wrong. I had watched thirteen romantic movies and felt nothing. That was not strictly true. I had felt suspense, curiosity and amusement. But I had not for one moment felt engaged in the love between the protagonists. I had cried no tears for Meg Ryan or Meryl Streep or Deborah Kerr or Vivien Leigh or Julia Roberts. I could not lie about so important a matter. ‘According to your definition, no.’ Rosie looked extremely unhappy. The evening had turned into a disaster. 'I thought my behaviour would make you happy, and instead it’s made you sad.’ ‘I’m upset because you can’t love me. Okay?’ This was worse! She wanted me to love her. And I was incapable. Gene and Claudia offered me a lift home, but I did not want to continue the conversation. I started walking, then accelerated to a jog. It made sense to get home before it rained. It also made sense to exercise hard and put the restaurant behind me as quickly as possible. The new shoes were workable, but the coat and tie were uncomfortable even on a cold night. I pulled off the jacket, the item that had made me temporarily acceptable in a world to which I did not belong, and threw it in a rubbish bin. The tie followed. On an impulse I retrieved the Daphne from the jacket and carried it in my hand for the remainder of the journey. There was rain in the air and my face was wet as I reached the safety of my apartment.

Shaw is like a train. One just speaks the words and sits in one's place. But Shakespeare is like bathing in the sea - one swims where one wants.

The movie Waterloo Bridge (1940), starring Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor, was a stern defence of British decency and values.

I once told a very serious writer/poet I knew about how obsessed I was with various women’s lives. I think I was talking about Vivien Leigh at the time, as I was working on a book dealing with former screen legends, that I have since abandoned. Or perhaps the mad wives. I don’t know. This poet was very serious, very pure. Derrida in the AM. Pronouncing his name correctly. That sort of thing. She fixed me with some look - this was maybe 7 years ago - and said - more than a bit dismissingly - oh, you’re very interested with lives. Or maybe she said: Oh, you’re very interested in these women’s lives. And I said, yes, I guess I am. I remember feeling guilty—like this wasn’t a writerly thing to be interested in, the subject of others’ lives. That this was gossip. That being unliterary, somehow. This devouringness. I have since realized that most of the works I’m interested in, are about absolute obsession with other people’s lives, often real-people’s lives, and these works become unserious biographies, avant-garde acts of gossip, while still working within the structure of the novel.

Vivien (spelled the same way as Vivien Leigh, lucky thing) was quite possibly the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen. She had a heart-shaped face, deep brown hair that gleamed in its Victory roll, and full curled lips painted scarlet. Her eyes were wide set and framed by dramatic arched brows just like Rita Hayworth's or Gene Tierney's, but it was more than that which made her beautiful. It wasn't the fine skirts and blouses she wore, it was the way she wore them, easily, casually; it was the strings of pearls strung airily around her neck, the brown Bentley she used to drive before it was handed over like a pair of boots to the Ambulance Service. It was the tragic history Dolly had learned in dribs and drabs- orphaned as a child, raised by an uncle, married to a handsome, wealthy author named Henry Jenkins, who held an important position with the Ministry of Information. "Dorothy? Come and put my sheets to rights and fetch my sleep mask." Ordinarily, Dolly might've been a bit envious to have a woman of that description living at such close quarters, but with Vivien it was different. All her life, Dolly had longed for a friend like her. Someone who really understood her (not like dull old Caitlin or silly frivolous Kitty), someone with whom she could stroll arm in arm down Bond Street, elegant and buoyant, as people turned to look at them, gossiping behind their hands about the dark leggy beauties, their careless charm. And now, finally, she'd found Vivien. From the very first time they'd passed each other walking up the Grove, when their eyes had met and they'd exchanged that smile- secretive, knowing, complicit- it had been clear to both of them that they were two of a kind and destined to be the very best of friends.

I took a couple steps away from him and stopped in front of a framed colored poster of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable from the movie Gone with the Wind. I studied the pair, Gable with his mysterious mustache and Leigh in her red ball gown. I’d become a fan of the classic, partially because of my mother’s suggestion that I looked a lot like a younger Vivien Leigh, with my dark wavy hair and sea green eyes. And as usual, I’d believed her for a little while.

January 22: Dr. Marianne Kris calls her colleague Dr. Ralph Greenson, asking him to attend to Marilyn, who is having anxiety attacks. Greenson is well known because of patients such as Frank Sinatra, Peter Lorre, and Vivien Leigh. The psychiatrist begins work with Marilyn, visiting her in her bungalow, in an effort to reduce her reliance on drugs, advising her to rely for prescriptions only on him and an internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg.

It was Ernie Haller, who had photographed Bette Davis in Jezebel and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, who was solely responsible for the visuals in Mildred Pierce, said Crawford. "Ernie was at the rehearsals. And so was Mr. [Anton] de Grot, who did the sets. I recall seeing Ernie's copy of the script and it was filled with notations and diagrams. I asked him if these were for special lights and he said, 'No, they're for special shadows.' Now, that threw me. I was a little apprehensive. I was used to the look of Metro, where everything, including the war pictures, was filmed in blazing white lights. Even if a person was dying there was no darkness. But when I saw the rushes of Mildred Pierce I realized what Ernie was doing. The shadows and half-lights, the way the sets were lit, together with the unusual angles of the camera, added considerably to the psychology of my character and to the mood and psychology of the film. And that, my dear, is film noir." "Mildred

Again. This was the year in which a million people crowded into Atlanta—still alive despite the ashes to which David Selznick had reduced it—for the ceremonial opening of Gone With the Wind. Confederate flags flew everywhere, and hawkers peddled Rhett caramels and Melanie molasses and Tara pecans, and when Vivien Leigh heard a military school band bleating “Dixie,” she said, “Oh, they’re playing the song from our picture.” There was a grand unreality about all the festivity, this celebration of defeat in a war long finished, as though nobody could understand that a much larger struggle had already begun. That September, a group of Selznick’s technicians had been carrying out one of their last tasks, filming the title itself—Gone With the Wind—pulling the camera along on a dolly so that each word could be framed separately, when Fred Williams, the head grip, turned on his radio and heard that Britain had declared war on Nazi

brain plays evil tricks on its inhabiting spirit. Slowly overwhelmed by the struggle, the intellect blurs into stupidity. All capacity for pleasure disappears, and despair maintains a merciless daily drumming. The smallest commonplace of domestic life, so amiable to the healthy mind, lacerates like a blade. Thus, mysteriously, in ways difficult to accept by those who have never suffered it, depression comes to resemble physical anguish.

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I also bought an evening dress suit from a secondhand clothing store in Charing Cross Road. It was double-breasted and in a very heavy, uncomfortable material, and I looked, frankly, stupid in it, but it was the only one I could afford. Miss Leigh announced to us one day that Gone with the Wind was going to be rereleased theatrically, and she requested the pleasure of our entire company at the premiere, which would be my first. And so, also for the first time, I had to wear that tux in public. I had by this time bid farewell to my friends and moved out of the boardinghouse, to slightly nicer digs that were walking distance from the London Coliseum in St. Martin’s Lane. This meant that I would not need to get out of a taxi and walk the red carpet—I knew that I looked idiotic in my tuxedo and wanted to keep a low profile. Inside, there was a champagne reception before the film in the upstairs bar, and my castmates had a field day making fun of me and my shit suit. Evidently, Miss Leigh caught sight of this scene and took pity on me. For all of a sudden, her boyfriend, John Merivale, was at my side, whispering into my ear that he was going to be sitting on one side of Vivien at the screening and that she had requested that I sit on her other side. I was already besotted with her, and this act of kindness only intensified my feelings. The capper was that, once I was seated beside her, I addressed her as “Miss Leigh” and she took my hand in hers. “Patrick,” she said, “you are to call me Vivien.” My erstwhile Irish roommate was right: The memorable experiences were already piling up. One more happened that evening. The film had been running for about an hour when Vivien—I still couldn’t quite believe I got to call her that—turned to me and again took my hand. I could see that she was crying. “I am so sorry, Patrick, but I am going to have to leave,” she said. “So many of these dear people I worked with are now dead, and it is making me so sad. I hope you enjoy the rest of it.” And off she went into the night.

Here, for the first time in half a century, Vivien beheld the Himalayas, the soaring mountains that had towered over the Darjeeling house where she was born in 1913. She was awed by what she saw, by the “peaks of blue white you think must be clouds,” as she told Merivale. And yet, this close to her childhood haunts, she chose not to go on to Darjeeling or Calcutta, the towns where she had been brought up and where she had spent her idyllic first years And so she never visited the homes Ernest and Gertrude had built; never viewed their summer villa in the shadow of Mount Kanchenjunga; never strolled through the Bengali estate that had been her parents’ pride and joy.