He played Romeo to her Juliet, Antony to her Cleopatra. And not only on the stage. Off-stage, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh carried on a tumultuous twenty-year romance that rivaled any they ever portrayed in a play. Dubbed 'the King and Queen of the theater' by fellow actor John Gielgud, they were truly show business royalty, as dazzlingly glamorous a couple as had ever captured the fancy of an adoring public. He was Heathcliff. She was Scarlett O'Hara. That two such romantic icons should also be husband and wife seemed like Hollywood fantasy. In the end, that fantasy was too good to be true.
It was love at first sight, at least for Leigh. As a 22-year-old starlet in 1935, she saw Olivier on the London stage and was instantly enthralled by his brilliant star power-and brooding good looks. 'Someday I am going to marry Laurence Olivier,' she told a friend, with the same conviction she'd later announce, 'I shall play Scarlett O'Hara' - years before landing the part. Such bold declarations were typical of the headstrong Leigh, who always knew what she wanted, and usually got it.
For Olivier, the attraction was almost as immediate. He too had first seen his future love on the stage and had been struck by her 'magical looks' and 'beautiful poise.' Quite simply, these two completed each other. Olivier inspired Leigh; he was her hero, her mentor, her soulmate. He shared her artistic aspirations, and moved her to aim even higher. In turn, she inspired him. This beautiful, sensual, witty woman not only sparked his intellect and libido, but also his personality.
Eventually Leigh returned to work, but she never regained her stature as Olivier's superstar equal. When he was knighted in 1947, she fell further into her husband's shadow. This was more than a blow to her ego. Vivien's fading fame cut right to her heart
But even if Leigh could have settled for second billing in their marriage, fate and her own frail health intervened. In addition to her physical ailments, Leigh began to suffer serious mood swings that were later diagnosed as manic-depression. One night she'd be the hyper-active life of the party; the next she'd be lost in dark clouds of despair. With their once idyllic home life in upheaval, Olivier increasingly sought refuge in his work at the theater.
And yet they stayed together more than ten years afterward, as if clinging to the memory of the great passion that had flamed so brightly and then burned out - as if each realized that the other had indeed been the love of a lifetime. Then too, they were bound by a public who still saw them as the King and Queen. So they carried on as 'the Oliviers,' successfully performing together on stage, while living ever more separately at home.
Their marriage would endure another miscarriage, more bouts of manic-depression, and less meaningful opportunities for the now middle-aged Leigh. Finally, in 1957, it was Olivier who could no longer continue. By then he'd become involved with actress Joan Plowright. He left Leigh in 1958; they divorced in 1960. Olivier married Plowright three months later.
She also found romance with actor Jack Merivale, a friend since 1940. But her manic-depressive interludes never really left her, nor did her incipient TB, which fatally flared up again in 1967. She died at her home on the night of July 7. Hearing the news in his hospital room, where he was being treated for cancer, Olivier immediately discharged himself, and rushed to Leigh's deathbed. 'I stood and prayed for forgiveness for all the evils that had sprung up between us,' he later wrote. 'It has always been impossible for me not to believe that I was somehow the cause of Vivien's disturbances.'
But if Leigh had ever shared that belief, she had long since forgiven him. She would go to her grave still loving Olivier, telling writer Radie Harris shortly before her death that she'd 'rather have lived a short life with Larry than face a long life without him.'
Olivier would outlive Leigh for 22 years, during which he remained devotedly married to Plowright. Yet in the end, it was clear that he'd never gotten over Vivien either: In 1986, a visitor to his home found the 80-year-old Olivier sitting alone, watching Leigh in an old film on television. 'This, this was love,' he said, in tears. 'This was the real thing.'
