Struggling with mental illness and a tumultuous marriage to Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh sought a comeback with the adaptation of hit play 'Streetcar Named Desire' — an exclusive excerpt from Stephen Galloway’s forthcoming book 'Truly, Madly'
After returning from a disastrous six-month tour of Australia — during which they hoped to rekindle their relationship — the Oliviers were in the midst of preparing a return to the stage when Vivien confronted Larry with a shattering announcement.
In early 1949, the Oliviers were sitting at home in England when Vivien spoke up. “It came like a small bolt from the blue, like a drop of water,” Larry recalled in his 1982 memoir. “I almost thought my ears had deceived me: ‘I don’t love you any more. … There’s no one else or anything like that; I mean, I still love you but in a different way, sort of, well, like a brother.’ “
The shock was profound. He “felt as if I had been told that I had been condemned to death.” The couple continued to have sex — as Larry ruefully observed, despite their new, nominally fraternal relationship, “occasional acts of incest were not discouraged.” But Vivien was entering a dark and frightening period of her life; she was coping with moods she couldn’t fathom, let alone control, even if she was beginning to recognize something was wrong.
Leigh and her husband, Laurence Olivier, arrive at New York’s LaGuardia airport in 1953 — Leigh had suffered an acute nervous breakdown in Hollywood and boarded the flight unconscious.
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