It was the film that set Hollywood and Atlanta on fireplace. But for Vivien Leigh, who performed Southern belle Scarlet O’Hara, the earning of “Gone With the Wind” was hell on earth.
The movie would go on to come to be the best grossing motion picture of all time (altered for inflation, it boasted ticket profits of $1.823 billion), winning 10 Academy Awards in 1939. But it took a major toll on its 25-yr-previous female direct. Exhaustion and tension from long days and nights on the movie set experienced her having sedatives to calm her hysteria until one day, she accidentally overdosed.
At the time, Leigh was associated in an affair with English actor Laurence Olivier. The two had fallen head in excess of heels on the movie established “Fire Over England” two years right before her starring position as Scarlett. Leigh had deserted her partner, law firm Herbert Leigh Holman, and their newborn lady for Olivier — who had still left his wife, actress Jill Esmond, and their younger son.
“How dare you take four supplements like that, you hysterical very little ninny,” Olivier wrote to Leigh in a letter, owning read of her overdose. He also appreciated penning her hot letters, such as one particular that browse, “Urrgh! Bend over — Yes, get your drawers down – no, raise your skirt up – now then: Smack! Smack! Smack!,” in accordance to “Truly, Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and the Romance of the Century,” (Grand Central Publishing), out now, by Stephen Galloway.
Each big woman star in Hollywood — which includes Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn — had begged director George Cukor for the purpose in what was to be the largest movement photograph ever produced.
The position of Scarlett, Leigh hoped, would make her a authentic actress — and equivalent to Olivier, who was soaring creatively as a Shakespearean phase and movie actor.
Nearly as quickly as filming commenced in December 1938, the issues began with the actress, who experienced undiagnosed bipolar condition. In addition to unexpected crying and temper swings, she was plagued by other random maladies. Her eyes itched, and her skin was peeling from an allergy to the pink grime that experienced been imported from Ga to recreate the search of the South on the Hollywood established.
To make matters worse, her time period was late — and she feared she would need to have an abortion, as neither she nor Olivier experienced planned on acquiring kids alongside one another. Throughout down time on the established, Leigh invented a vile new game termed “Ways to Kill a Little one.” Pretending she was holding a baby in her arms even though driving, she would coo sweetly to the infant ahead of hurling it out the window.
Meanwhile Olivier, who was again on the East Coastline tests for a movie, was imploring her to send out him her underwear. “I am sitting down bare with just my elements wrapped in your panties,” he wrote to her. “My longing for you is so intense…”
Leigh appeared to be headed for a entire breakdown till producer David Selznick begged Olivier to check out and quiet her down. The couple fortunately escaped to Kansas Metropolis, the place they imagined they wouldn’t be regarded.
“I’m so grateful to you,” Leigh explained to Selznick on her return to the established. “Larry met me in the hotel lobby, and we went upstairs, and we f–ked, and we f–ked, and we f–ked the total weekend.”
“I’m so grateful to you. Larry fulfilled me in the resort lobby, and we went upstairs, and we f–ked, and we f–ked, and we f–ked the whole weekend.”
Vivien Leigh to producer David Selznick just after he granted her time off set with her lover Laurence Olivier
Leigh wasn’t the only a person on the verge of a anxious breakdown. The full team was suffering exhaustion from 3 a.m. wake-up phone calls and very long times.
Co-star Clark Gable arrived on established with his have problems, because he had no say in the function, owning been lent out by one more studio. He feared he wouldn’t grasp the southern accent, and Leigh’s sophistication created him come to feel like a rube, insecure around his little-town upbringing in japanese Ohio. His mood softened when he obtained a knitted sock from his latest wife to hold his genitals warm. The guidelines: “Don’t let it get cold. Deliver it home very hot for me.”
Olivier began placing much more stress on Leigh by writing to her that “Gone With The Wind” was heading to be an apparent catastrophe. “To make a achievement of your job in pictures is important for your self regard and our supreme pleasure,” he wrote the actress, who would go on to acquire Best Actress for the role. And if she failed, he instructed, “I am fearful you may perhaps turn out to be just — properly, dull.”
In its place, “Gone With The Wind” modified Leigh’s lifestyle for good and created her a celebrity, but the exhaustion and dim moods that overwhelmed her on set were being only the beginning.
She would afterwards endeavor suicide prior to obtaining an acute nervous breakdown and remaining hospitalized to undertake electroconvulsive treatment. She became a stranger to Olivier, the gentleman she at the time adored, and died alone at 53 in 1967.
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