Is there anyone more exquisite than Vivien Leigh?
Though she was more famous for her Hollywood roles and her love life, this English beauty was first and foremost a lady of the stage.
She was launched into international superstardom in 1938 when MGM's David O. Selznick awarded her the much sought-after role of Scarlett O' Hara in his production,
Gone With The Wind, ending a worldwide 2-year search for what is still considered to be
the female role of Classic Cinema (a search that included every starlet in Hollywood, including Lana Turner, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.)
For her work on the film, she won her first Oscar (pictured with David O. Selznick)
Twelve years later, she played literature's second most famous Southern Belle, Tennessee Williams' Blanche Dubois in the film version of
A Streetcar Named Desire, for which she won her second Oscar
Though both married at the time, she and the and the legendary Sir Laurence Olivier fell in love while filming
Fire Over England (pictured) together in 1936. They became the golden couple of their age, appearing together in both film and on stage, and capturing the public imagination with their beauty and ostensible passion for one another.
"She also had something else: an attraction of the most perturbing nature I had ever encountered. It may have been the strangely touching spark of dignity in her that enslaved the ardent legion of her admirers" -
Laurence Oliver
Though she was more famous for her Hollywood roles and her love life, this English beauty was first and foremost a lady of the stage.
She was launched into international superstardom in 1938 when MGM's David O. Selznick awarded her the much sought-after role of Scarlett O' Hara in his production, Gone With The Wind, ending a worldwide 2-year search for what is still considered to be the female role of Classic Cinema (a search that included every starlet in Hollywood, including Lana Turner, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.)
For her work on the film, she won her first Oscar (pictured with David O. Selznick)
Twelve years later, she played literature's second most famous Southern Belle, Tennessee Williams' Blanche Dubois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, for which she won her second Oscar
Though both married at the time, she and the and the legendary Sir Laurence Olivier fell in love while filming Fire Over England (pictured) together in 1936. They became the golden couple of their age, appearing together in both film and on stage, and capturing the public imagination with their beauty and ostensible passion for one another.
Her transcendent loveliness and natural poise earned her roles as some of literature and history's great beauties, such as Anna Karenina (pictured), Emma Hamilton, and Cleopatra.
"She also had something else: an attraction of the most perturbing nature I had ever encountered. It may have been the strangely touching spark of dignity in her that enslaved the ardent legion of her admirers" -Laurence Oliver
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