Did Vivien Leigh play any happy characters?

She loved tragic characters. Scarlet O’Hara, Anna Karenina, Blanche DuBois, etc.

(^.^) and Mrs. Treadwell Ship of Fools (1965) her last film

She played many comic roles on stage, but few on film. "Storm in a Teacup" with Rex Harrison is one (1937).

She played a very lovely thief in the film before gone with the wind. so charming and naive. don't understand why she love tragic role so much later..

She did "The Prince and the Showgirl" on stage with Olivier, but had to give up the role to Marilyn Monroe when the film was made. She was in her forties and not aging particularly well, she just looked too old to be a showgirl.

Cinema is about drama.

Comedy is ephemeral.

[quote] Did Vivien Leigh play any happy characters?

Yes, it was 1936.

[quote] "Miss Leigh acts very prettily as Jenny Mere and tackles the ballet with considerable verve".

Perhaps she most identified with tragic aspect of those figures. Especially later in life. She'd struggled with mental illness (Bipolar Disorder?) most of her life. Later, she drank heavily, developed Tuberculosis, and dealt with that before it eventually killed her. All that on top of the divorce from Olivier.

Perhaps she was paid by American moguls who said 'Do this!' and 'Don't do that!'.

Perhaps American moguls said frilly English girls playing frothy comedies isn't big box office in Peoria.

[quote] "Perhaps she was paid by American moguls who said 'Do this!' and 'Don't do that!'."

Perhaps.

in Movies, Vivien either - becomes a prostitute and goes mad

-goes mad and kill herself

-goes mad, becaomes a prostitute, and kill herself.

I love her to death but she's a total boner killer

R12 = Rhett Butler.

I thought about that the other day,OP. The only role I know her from is Gone With the Wind. I don't think anyone else could have captured Scarlett O'hara the way that she did. She really did bring her to life.

[quote] Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This is the first line of Vivien's happy movie from '48.

She aged very quickly due to mental illness and substance abuse. When Olivier made Hamlet in 1948, he deemed Vivien (then 35) too old-looking to play Ophelia and replaced her with Jean Simmons, who at 18 was a dead ringer for a young Vivien. Didn't do Vivien's mental health any good.

Jean Simmons was luscious and a stunning beauty, but Vivien was still incredibly beautiful in '48 and hate Olivier and his chronic insecurity for depriving us of her Ophelia on film.

Olivier was too jealous of Vivien to put her in a movie with him, after he discovered that she blew him off the water in lady Hamilton. He thought his Nelson was the greatest performance of all time

No, Ophelia should be young and gormless, beauty isn't enough she has to come across as too young to deal with the shit in her life.

In the 1940s, Leigh read as so intelligent and elegant that she seemed incredibly sophisticated onscreen, she was well cast as Anna Karenina but well. The one thing Ophelia can't be is sophisticated.

Vivien wasted too many good years on stage when she was meant for film. Her weak voice meant she never had the success as a stage actor she desired, but she was luminous on camera in way Olivier could only dream about. But she wanted Larry and went where he went, even leaving sunny Hollywood, which was beating down her door with great offers after GWTW, to do stage in dreary war-torn Britain. Those years of deprivation in the UK aggravated her lung condition and led to her later struggles with TB.

She desperately wanted the part of the second Mrs. DeWinter in Olivier's Rebecca, but the studio rightly decided that she would never be convincing as that mousy character. She'd have been a great Rebecca if they'd done flashbacks (IDK if they did since I haven't seen the film).

Vivien Leigh did portray Ophelia onstage several times, though, so she had one in her.

Leigh's audition for "Rebecca" is on youtube, and she's godawful. She was an excellent actress but her range wasn't infinite, she couldn't play a timid little mouse because she was fearless and knew she was beautiful, and had no idea what being a timid little mouse was like.

Which again, argues against casting her as Ophelia, it's just that Opelia is the only role for a young woman in "Hamlet" so of course she wanted it.

Shaw's Cleopatra (1945). Although the comedy is leaden, the shoot a nightmare, and the end result a total bore.

Olivier was the most overrated actor ever on film. I detest all of his work (except Marathon Man) .Vivien had 'IT' . Like Marilyn. The cameras loved her,even in Streetcar . That closet queen must have had some good dick to dazzle her so much.I cant see it,but you never know. I think Vivien could have kept right on acting into old age.The camera would have always loved her,even old and wrinkled. I love GWTW ,but to be honest I never liked Howard or Gable in it.

I can't image anyone but Gable as Rhett, but I agree Howard was all wrong for Ashley. Ashley in the book is only a few years older than Scarlett and dazzlingly handsome in a fairy tale prince way. Errol Flynn wanted the part of Ashley and might have been an interesting choice, though it's hard to imagine him playing the older Ashley's weary idealism.

I'd have loved to see Vivien take a crack at Madame Bovary.

R26 my objections to Rhett being played by Gable are his voice and the fact that while not an ugly man,he did not meet the description of Rhett in the book. Hes a fine enough actor,but not brutishly handsome. The less said about Howard the better.

The 80s sequel Scarlett is a dumpster fire, but it's true that Timothly Dalton was probably closer to the book version of Rhett in terms of looks.

Instead, we got the perfectly dreadful Jennifer Jones, R27.

It would've been wonderful if she did a few sophisticated film comedies. She performed in Noel Coward and Thornton Wilder comedies, on stage.

Jones only got that part because David O. Selznick was obsessed with her. Their marriage was a horrorfest that ruined both of them and their careers. Great podcast about it here.

Leigh would have been great if they'd made a film of Private Lives.

Even Scarlett functions as a comic relief character at times in GWTW. She had fantastic timing.

Leigh could have been Queen of Hollywood during the war years--I wonder if she wasn't unstable and obsessive even at that point in her life, to give all that up to go play freezing-cold regional theaters in bumfuck England with Larry.

Would give an arm for their plan to film Macbeth to have come to fruition.

I would’ve loved to see her in a movie with Cary Grant.

Leigh would have been great in the Joan Fontaine role in Suspicion.

Her TV version of Skin of our Teeth is on YouTube (at least it was a few years ago) and she was funny and sexy, post-Streetcar.

"It would've been wonderful if she did a few sophisticated film comedies."

Except that Hollywood wasn't making sophisticated comedies during the 1940s, in the years after "GWTW" when she could have been Queen Of Hollywood, Hollywood was making pro-war propaganda movies or colorful fluff with Betty Grable, And Leigh was British and sophisticated and a damn good actress, she wouldn't have fit into fluff. And of course in the post-war years, she wouldn't have fit into Film Noir or technicolor spectacles either. No, Hollywood didn't really have that much to offer her, they probably would have made her into the new Gargo, the beautiful tragedienne who made "women's films", and she was capable of so much more. I don't blame Leigh for doing what she wanted, instead of going Hollywood.

Leigh could have ruled for the entire 1940s, and there were plenty of good adult films made during that time, such as Suspicion (already mentioned), Casablanca, Gaslight, The Lady Eve, Saratoga Trunk, The Razor's Edge, Leave Her to Heaven, Spellbound--a lot of the films Ingrid Bergman did, Vivien could have done.

If Vivien had gone off to England to have a fulfilling career I wouldn't question the decision, but she was miserable with Larry in England, and she never completely fulfilled her potential as a film actress because she burned bridges in Hollywood when she skipped out on her contacts after GWTW. In particular, she pissed of Selznick, who promptly filled her spot with Bergman. Interesting to think if Vivien had stayed in Hollywood, Bergman might have remained a little-known Swedish actress.

[quote] except Hollywood wasn’t making sophisticated comedies in the 1940s

Um, R40 …. tell that to Preston Sturgis, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder

Could you imagine Leigh in Casablanca ?!? I love Ingrid ,of course , but I bet Viv would have given Elsa a whole new dimension.

Bogart had ferocious chemistry with cool, ladylike women. He and Leigh would have been dynamite.

[quote] Bogart had ferocious chemistry with cool, ladylike women

Such as whom? Hepburn?

[quote] Vivien … never completely fulfilled her potential as a film actress because she burned bridges in Hollywood when she skipped out on her contacts after GWTW. In particular, she pissed of Selznick…

But Selznick owned Vivien until 1946.

Anyone who wanted to use Vivien had to pay Selznick to use her.

He didn't really own her, though. She signed a 7-year contract and fulfilled very little of it after GWTW by pleading the need to return to the UK for war work. It's why he was pissed off.

Hepburn (Kate and Audrey), Bergman, Bacall, Mary Astor, Myrna Loy, etc. etc.

[quote] Leigh would have been great if they'd made a film of Private Lives.

Q: Why has no one made a film of Private Lives?

A: Because all the clever wit is contained in the first act and the remaining two acts burble on towards a rather uninteresting anti-climax.

?

^ Norma was incapable of light comedy.

Slapstick, perhaps, but not light comedy.

The word 'perhaps' occurs six times in this thread. That is a signal of our ignorance.

Norma is a delight in Private Lives. She and Robert Montgomery have great chemistry.

Norma was an 'Idiot's Delight' in Private Lives.

R30 I thought Jennifer Jones was great in Madame Bovary. That character was not particularly a good fit for Vivien, though, at all. I don't think she was ever in contention for it, in fact the original choice was Lana Turner (!).

Also, Scarlet O'Hara is not a "tragic" character by any stretch of the imagination.

Margaret Mitchell herself thought Selznick had assembled the perfect cast - though on seeing the film a second time she had some reservations about Leslie Howard, not that he was wrong for the part but that she thought his performance wasn't that great, and it isn't (though it's fine). He was phoning it in, a bit.

[quote] Madame Bovary.

I haven't read the book. I thought she was a silly misbehaving wife who engaged in fantasies while married to a provincial doctor .

[quote] That character was not particularly a good fit for Vivien, though, at all. I don't think she was ever in contention for it

I bet it was mentioned by Sir Alexander Korda in the 30s. He loved casting his stars in prestigious literary vehicles.

I don't know if MGM had to pay copyright to use the book in 1948.

[quote]I haven't read the book. I thought she was a silly misbehaving wife who engaged in fantasies while married to a provincial doctor.

R54 What is your point? Nobody was talking about the book. I don't get what you're trying to say. Did you the film(s) made from the book?

I wouldn't call her a "silly, misbehaving wife". She's dissatisfied and discontented, having been born into a lower social class but having dreams of rising above her lot in life, based on a lot of the romance novels she's been fed. She's somewhat like a woman today who would be led by the internet or social media to think she deserves a better life, but when she seeks out this romance and adventure, she's still discontented because there's no fulfillment in it.

[quote] She's dissatisfied and discontented, …having dreams of rising above her lot in life…

That's the same as Scarlett O'Hara.

R26, casting the dazzling Errol Flynn as Ashley, while more faithful to the novel, would have thrown the movie off balance. The audience would want Scarlett to end up with Ashley, whereas with Leslie Howard we are left wondering ‘Why is she obsessed with [italic]this[/italic] guy?’

Personally, I was always attracted to Leslie Howard, so it was not a problem for me.

R58 Scarlett O'Hara didn't have dreams of rising above her lot in life. What are you talking about? Emma Bovery was the daughter of a farmer who married a poor doctor.

[quote] Scarlett O'Hara didn't have dreams of rising above her lot

1. She knew she didn't want to spend her life pulling radishes out of the soil. 2. She knew that Frank Kennedy wasn't good enough for her.

R61, Scarlett was not trying to rise above her station: she was trying to survive. Antebellum Scarlett was at the top of the social hierarchy and surrounded by eligible young men. There was a shortage of those postwar for obvious reasons.

OT, but, while I'd often read the words, "It took my breath away" when reacting to overwhelming beauty, I actually never had that experience myself until I saw Robert Taylor in close-up in "Waterloo Bridge".

Holy Crap, by far, I think he's the handsomest Old Hollywood male movie star.

Too bad Taylor lacked charisma and spark, two things Clark Gable had in abundance, even though Gable wasn't as handsome as Taylor.

Plain and simple, Gable is exciting to watch. Taylor can't compete with that.

[quote] when she seeks out this romance and adventure, she's still discontented because there's no fulfilment in it.

We all know Scarlett would have divorced Rhett after ten years of marriage.

I wish she could have been a guest on one of Lucille Ball shows. That would have been fun.

Was she ever on Hee-Haw?

^ No, R65. They would have had nothing to say to each other.

They may have both used some English words common to both but there was massive gulf between her English world of culture and the American.

......

R67 And here are John Gielgud and Vivien Leigh at Disneyland.

Scarlett wasn't trying to rise above her lot in life, she was someone who was damned well going to hold onto the privileges she was born into, even if a fucking war and the economic collapse of the Confederacy tried to ruin her lifestyle!

As for Bovary, I think Leigh could have done a damn good job of it, and she might have been a better fit for the role than Jones as she was a better actress and far lovelier. Emma Bovary is a bit like Blanche DuBois, as both characters have a too-active fantasy life, and seem to be about to move into their castle in the sky. And Leigh aced Blanche DuBois.

It would have been cool to see Viv and Larry on the Lucy Desi Comedy Hour.

Well, Jennifer Jones did play it and today it's considered one of her best performances as well as the best Emma Bovary on film. Vivien Leigh didn't play it so you're free to speculate.

[QUOTE] Errol Flynn wanted the part of Ashley and might have been an interesting choice, though it's hard to imagine him playing the older Ashley's weary idealism.

Errol could actually play that quite well.

[QUOTE] casting the dazzling Errol Flynn as Ashley, while more faithful to the novel, would have thrown the movie off balance. The audience would want Scarlett to end up with Ashley, whereas with Leslie Howard we are left wondering ‘Why is she obsessed with this guy?’

Not after Captain Blood and Robin Hood they wouldn’t. They’d want him with Olivia deHavilland.

I don't want to disrespect the distinguished Datalounge queens but this man named Emanuel Levy maintains that

[quote] Minnelli thought that Jones was too light for Bovary… Given the choice, he would have preferred an actress like Vivien Leigh.

Emma Bovary is a farmer's daughter educated above her station, with just enough beauty and manners to catch a doctor husband. He's a fool and a mediocre doctor, but he is still a catch. Emma is not content with the comfortable, dull little life he gives her and fantasizes about running away with a rich, handsome lover who will adore her, worship her, and make her life a fairy tale. This leads her into adultery, bankruptcy, and eventually self-destruction. At the very end, she realizes that the only man who adored her in the selfless way she craved was her dull, inarticulate husband. But by then, it's too late.

Yeah, I think Vivien could have aced that role, as it combines aspects of Scarlett and of Blanche, her two most iconic roles.

The story of Emma Bovary's messy love life was reused in David Lean's disastrous 'Ryan's Daughter' in 1970.

[quote]Scarlett wasn't trying to rise above her lot in life, she was someone who was damned well going to hold onto the privileges she was born into, even if a fucking war and the economic collapse of the Confederacy tried to ruin her lifestyle!

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that Scarlett is the only person keeping her family from starving and living in destitution in the aftermath of the war. Apart from Scarlett and Mammy the rest of the household at Tara don't seem very capable of looking after themselves.

Also the second half of the film makes it clear that Scarlett is well aware that the life she once enjoyed as the spoiled daughter of a wealthy Southern planter is gone irretrievably. She knows she can't go back to that vanished world and uses every asset at her disposal for surviving the new postwar reality. For someone who never had to work a day in her life I think Scarlett does rather well for herself and her dependents after the war.

[quote]Not after Captain Blood and Robin Hood they wouldn’t. They’d want him with Olivia deHavilland.

This is another problem with casting Errol Flynn as Ashley. His on-screen chemistry with Olivia would distract from the main narrative and make Scarlett too unsympathetic. Audiences in 1939 wouldn't have liked anyone trying to break up THAT couple. The movie doesn't work if you make Scarlett irredeemable. She's a selfish unscrupulous character whom we really ought to dislike but whom we can't help admiring and perhaps feeling a bit sorry for: as Rhett says, she throws away happiness with both hands.

If you define happiness as life with Rhett. Despite his professed adoration of her, he had a habit of leaving her at inopportune moments to go pursue the drinking, gambling, warring, and whoring he loved so much. Ironically, he seemed to love Scarlett the way she loved Ashley--as an idealized figure always out of reach. As soon as she professes true love for him, he's out the door.

Scarlett would have been better off divorcing him, going back to Tara, and marrying some hunky young farmer she could boss around.

Leslie Howard phoned it in because he really didn't want to do the part. He only agreed because the studio offered him a chance to direct if he agreed to play Ashley. He is definitely better in other parts, like The Petrified Forest and Pygmalion.

Without Scarlett, the O'Haras would have turned out a lot like some of her other planter friends, who devolve back into poor farmers within five years. There is a scene in the book where she talks about visiting two of her former friends, now a married couple, who are living on a tiny farm, barely eking out a living, with dirt on their faces and under their fingernails. The husband is partially disabled from the war but doing the best he can, and the wife has already had a couple of kids. Scarlett thinks that in another generation, they'll have completely forgotten they were ever rich and cultured. She's determined not to be like that and not to lose Tara.

One of the reasons she steals her sister's fiancé is she knows he's making money, but that her sister won't help the family or save Tara if she gets to marry him. Scarlett takes him away from Suellen without a second thought.

Jennifer Jones was character actress material if that but Selznick was determined to put her in every leading part he could. Vivien would have been much better as Emma Bovary.

Ryan's Daughter may have been a bit overblown but it certainly wasn't disastrous. The worst David Lean film is better than most other directors' best. And the 70mm cinematography was one for the ages,

R74 Levy's work about Minnelli is full of errors, it's almost worthless.

Beyond The Forest was definitely based on Madame Bovary - the book, anyway. Note that Rosa Moline is married to a country doctor and has an affair with a powerful local man who's the counterpart to Rodolphe Boulanger in Bovary.

Back when Technicolor was on movie screens it was was not super-sharp the way digital restorations are. Leslie Howard's wrinkles are noticeable in GWTW now, but they weren't in the original release (they weren't even obvious in the 70mm Eastman color re-release of 1967, which is what most of us saw in the 70s).

The other thing is that before the internet (and before all the books about the movie) most of us had no idea about the ages of the actors, in GWTW. Same with any other film. A small amount of people probably looked them up in the almanac. In general we were much more accepting of what we saw; today everyone is an expert and/or a critic.

Leslie Howard was cast because people saw him as an idealist, a poetic, dreamer type, based on some of his performances (not all, of course). He wasn't cast because he was the *exact* physical type, though he was blond and soulful-looking. Errol Flynn would have been very badly miscast. He was a dashing, strong, virile, adventurous type.

Yeah, Errol Flynn couldn't play soulful, dreamy, or poetic to save his life! If he'd been cast, the story would have changed to that of two alpha males fighting over a woman, and Scarlett might have faded into the background.

I, of course, always thought that Tyrone Power would have been a good Ashley, he could play dreamy and poetic, and make them sexy, and he was in his mid-twenties. Of course he wasn't blond and would have looked nightmarish with dyed hair, but Selznick could have done worse than to have two brunette men in the movie. They were very different physical types, it still would have worked.

R24, here's Vivien leigh's ass crack

"Vivien was a nympho and I'm a premature ejaculator" . Laurence Olivier

^ That quote is gossip retailed by a utterly unreliable, foul-mouthed person of no importance.

the best parts of this dreck are in the 2 min trailer

Ty Power was not an ashley, Ty Power was a Charles Hamilton. It should've been Leigh, Gable, Fontaine, Cooper as Ashley, McDaniel, Butterfly ,De Haviland (as India Wilkes) , Power (Charles), Oscar Polk, Lana Turner as Emmy Slattery and Mae west as Belle. Than the movie would have been successful

Vivien could play comedy and even sing a little... a least enought to win the Tony Award!

Even being too old and phoning it in, I really like Leslie Howard in GWTW. He brings a gravitas to the part that a younger less experienced actor wouldn't have given and he's pretty effortless (except for a few moments.) He balances the film well.

Leslie was very charming in a movie with Joan Blondell and Bogart. It's a charming movie and Howard was a terrific comedic actor. There are jokes about the Howard/Bogart bromance in it, that we need to explore here. Bogie called his daughter Leslie Howard Bogart FFS. Even Cary Grant didn't dare call his daughter Randolph Scott Grant. These guys were in love.

R94 He named his daughter after Leslie Howard because Howard refused to do the movie of The Petrified Forest unless Warner Bros cast Bogart (who was in the play, with Howard). Warner Bros wanted to cast Edward G. Robinson, one of their big box-office stars at the time.

Bogart had a failed movie career and had gone back to the stage, where he had his first real recognition and success as an actor in the play. Because of Howard's generosity, Bogart got a Warner contract which eventually led to him becoming one of the biggest stars in the world, instead of a footnote in theater and film history.

Leslie Howard was a much better actor than most of the people mentioned as his possible substitutes. He was also attractive in both an intellectual and physical way as opposed to just a Hollywood hunk.

Vivien was in "A Yank at Oxford" with Robert Taylor with whom she would later co-star in "Waterloo Bridge" in 1940. It wasn't a tragic film but Vivien was only a supporting character and although it was an MGM film, it apparently didn't impress Selznick.

R92 Hey, thanks for answering the question! It's too bad that time stamp, or whatever it is, blocks her footwork almost the whole time. Why do some old videos have to have that? Also - wow, Ed Sullivan, I forgot how bad a host he was, of his own show. How many words did he stumble over in that intro?

full movie.

Vivien played happy ending girls in her early movies. STORM IN A TEACUP is unwatchable, she was very artificial in A YANK AT OXFORD, better in FIRE OVER ENGLAND, intriguing in 21 DAYS, and very good in SAINT MARTIN'S LANE apart from the wobbling cockney accent; But my favourite perf of hers pre GWTW is in DARK JOURNEY. it's one of my all time Leigh performance, she seems so intelligent , mysterious and beguiling in that one. Lovely

R16

1. Selznick wouldn't allow Vivien to play in those 'rom-com' scenes in 'Henry V'.

2. Larry knew quite well that Vivien was too sophisticated to play Ophelia. He screen-tested Clair Bloom but the role went to Rank contract-player Jean. I don't think Vivien was upset— despite your unfounded last assertion.

She was almost cast as Maria in The Sound Of Music. She filmed the opening scene on the mountain top, but she kept tripping on her feet and was winded because of the high altitude.