Churchill's Connections

Vivien Leigh

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1913-1967
Vivian Hartley
UK actress

  1. Introduction
  2. Stories
  3. Biographical summary
  4. See also
  5. Further reading
  6. References

1. Introduction

Vivien Leigh (original name Vivian Hartley) is best known for her Oscar-winning roles in Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), and for her marriage to actor Laurence Olivier. After drama school, she became a stage actress and was soon signed on a movie contract by director Alexander Korda. Churchill was an admirer of both Leigh and Olivier. Leigh was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1944 and had bipolar disorder. She took up painting as a therapeutic hobby, inspired by Churchill. She and Olivier divorced in 1960 after twenty years of marriage and Leigh died from tuberculosis in 1967, aged 53.

2. Stories

  • Vivien Leigh and Churchill first met on a film set in 1936 when she was a little-known actress.
  • Leigh and Olivier supported the war effort with their stage and movie skills.
  • Churchill gave Leigh a painting of roses, from which she took daily inspiration.
  • The Oliviers’ equivalent of Chartwell was Notley Abbey in Buckinghamshire, southeast England.
  • Vivien Leigh and Churchill both loved cats and took their favourite pets with them on their travels.
  • Vivien Leigh was escorted out of the House of Lords for interrupting a debate about funding of the arts.
  • Vivien Leigh had bipolar disorder and Churchill is often said to have had suffered from depression.

Vivien Leigh and Churchill first met on a film set in 1936 when she was a little-known actress.

Churchill had got to know the British film producer Alexander Korda in 1934 and visited him at his Denham Studios in Buckinghamshire in 1936. Korda was filming Fire Over England (1937), the first of three movies in which Leigh was paired with Laurence (‘Larry’) Olivier, and introduced Churchill to Leigh. Korda had signed her on a five-year film contract in 1935 after seeing her perform on stage.

The on-screen love affair between Leigh and Olivier in Fire Over England spilled over into real life. In 1940, they obtained divorces from their spouses (lawyer Leigh Holman and actress Jill Esmond) and married the same year on a ranch in Santa Barbara, California. The ceremony was attended only by their hosts and two witnesses, one of whom was Olivier’s friend Garson Kanin, a screenwriter. Such was the secrecy that the other witness, actress Katharine Hepburn, did not know whose marriage it was when she accepted Kanin’s request to attend with him.

While watching Fire Over England, Hollywood movie agent Myron Selznick thought that Leigh would be ideal for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). His brother David O. Selznick had started filming it while still conducting an extensive ‘search for Scarlett’ in which around 1400 actresses were interviewed. Leigh was in Hollywood at the time, accompanying Olivier who was filming Wuthering Heights (1939). Myron introduced Leigh to his brother, who soon cast her in the lead role.

It is not clear when Churchill first met Olivier, but he attended many of his performances over the years, particularly Shakespearean, sometimes distracting the actor on stage by speaking the lines himself. He would often book three seats: one for himself, one for his daughter Mary, and one for his hat and coat.

Theatre critic Kenneth Tynan wrote to Olivier, comparing him to Churchill: ‘How like you the old bastard is! The passionate maddening love of detail; the concentration that can wither people by simply ignoring their presence; the sudden changes of subject; the sudden focusing on apparent irrelevancies; the love of anecdote and quotation … the brutally realistic assessment of human motives; the impatience; and the patience.’1

Leigh and Olivier supported the war effort with their stage and movie skills.

Churchill understood the power of movies as a propaganda tool and included Korda, Leigh and Olivier in his efforts to draw the USA into World War II (see Alexander Korda). Korda’s movie That Hamilton Woman (1941), with Leigh and Olivier in the lead roles, was viewed by some critics as ‘bad history but good British propaganda’.2

Leigh attended war benefit events, provided theatre entertainment to embattled Londoners and did a three-month tour to north Africa in 1943, performing to troops. The show, produced by John Gielgud and including actress Beatrice Lillie, travelled from Gibraltar to Cairo and was seen by General Bernard Montgomery, General Dwight Eisenhower and King George VI. The king made a special request for her to recite from his favourite poem, The White Cliffs (1941) by Alice Duer Miller. She was diagnosed in 1944 with tuberculosis, then had a miscarriage after slipping on a marble floor while filming George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (1945).

During the war Leigh’s daughter from her first marriage, Suzanne Holman (later Farrington), moved to Vancouver, Canada, to stay with family. Born in 1933, Suzanne was raised primarily by a nanny, her father and her grandmother Gertrude Hartley while Leigh focussed on her career. Leigh visited her once in Canada but caused a publicity storm which resulted in Suzanne having to change schools.

Olivier took flying lessons in California with the intention of becoming a pilot in the war. He returned to the UK and joined the Fleet Air Arm in 1941 but caused severe damage to four aircraft during an emergency landing. He and the navy agreed that he could best serve his country through acting rather than flying. He made two propaganda films and undertook some narration for the Ministry of Information. He was then asked by the ministry to make Shakespeare’s Henry V (1944), which he did to great effect, both in terms of national morale-building and filmcraft, directing and producing as well as acting. It was one of Churchill’s favourite films.

Churchill gave Leigh a painting of roses, from which she took daily inspiration.

Leigh visited Churchill’s home Chartwell in August 1951 and was amazed by his paintings. She loved flowers and commented on a still life, Study of Roses (1930s). He stunned her by asking if she would like to have it and said he would send it for Christmas. It arrived in September, framed, with a letter saying, ‘I couldn’t wait until Christmas.’3

Nearly ten years later, she wrote to him, ‘I should like to show you where the painting you gave me hangs. It is in my bedroom dear Sir Winston and I look at it every day as I wake and every night as I go to sleep.’4

In a press interview she said, ‘Whenever I feel particularly low or depressed I look at those three rosebuds. The thought and the friendship in the painting is such a great encouragement to me […] and I have the determination to go on.’5

Churchill’s publication Painting as a Pastime (1948) inspired Leigh and Olivier to go on a painting holiday near Cannes in France. The following year she wrote to him, saying, ‘We think of you with such gratitude every time the brushes and paints are brought into action.’6

In 1950, after Churchill met Leigh at a stage performance, she wrote: ‘You were very kind and said that if I sent you my book [Painting as a Pastime] you would sign it for me, so here it is.’7 Churchill saw that it was a standard trade edition and conducted a search for a rare first edition in a special presentation binding, which was found. He signed it and sent it to Leigh, together with her own copy.

After Leigh died, her sole child Suzanne inherited the painting and books. When Suzanne passed away, the painting and the first edition of the book appeared at auction in September 2017, selling for £638,750 and £15,000 respectively. Included in the auction was a photo of Churchill in his painting studio with Study of Roses in the background. Also sold were a painting by Leigh, Italian Landscape, for £6,875, and her canvas artist’s bag with a wooden box of oil paints and a folding easel.

The Oliviers’ equivalent of Chartwell was Notley Abbey in Buckinghamshire, southeast England.

Their house Durham Cottage in Chelsea, west London, was badly damaged during the war while they were in Hollywood making That Hamilton Woman. They stayed in various temporary places and looked for somewhere less transient to live during renovations. In 1944 they saw a twelfth century abbey which was now dilapidated but when Olivier heard that it had been endowed by Henry V he was keen to buy it. As with the Churchills at Chartwell, the husband was enraptured but the wife had severe doubts because of the expense of renovation and upkeep. Many of the Oliviers’ friends, including David Niven, thought it was bad decision to buy it.

Over time it became a source of great pleasure for them both, a place of escape where they could pick and choose their company. They made many internal and external redevelopments, including planting numerous rose bushes. They would spend hours in the garden and, like Clementine, Vivien liked to have plenty of cut flowers in the house.

Eventually the cost of upkeep did indeed prove to be too burdensome, and the property was reluctantly sold in early 1960, shortly before the Oliviers’ divorce the same year. It was subsequently purchased by a company that uses it as a wedding venue.

In 1961, Leigh bought Tickerage Mill, near Uckfield in East Sussex, where she was visited by Churchill, Princess Margaret, John Gielgud and many others. She also had an apartment at 54 Eaton Square in Belgravia, London, which she shared with her companion, actor Jack Merivale. After she died from tuberculosis in 1967, aged 53, her ashes were scattered on the Tickerage Mill pond.

Olivier married actress Joan Plowright in 1961 and they settled in Royal Crescent, Brighton, overlooking the sea. By 1966, they had a son and two daughters. Olivier became Baron Olivier of Brighton in 1971 and stayed there until 1979, when they moved to Chelsea. In 1973 they bought a group of cottages in Ashurst, Sussex, making it a summer home called the Malt House, where Olivier died from kidney failure in 1989, aged 82. His ashes are buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, London.

Vivien Leigh and Churchill both loved cats and took their favourite pets with them on their travels.

Leigh had many cats over the course of her lifetime, up to 16 at any one time. Her first feline companion slept next to her when she attended a convent boarding school at age six, with the permission of the headmistress. After marrying Olivier, she adopted Tissy, a black-and-white stray with different coloured eyes, which artist Roger Furse included in his portrait of Leigh. Others included the white Tiddly-iddly-iddly and a ginger tom called Christmas. In 1946, Olivier gave her a Siamese, New Boy, named after the New Theatre in St Martin’s Lane, London (now the Noël Coward Theatre), which led to a passion for the breed. Leigh wrote, ‘Once you have kept a Siamese cat you would never have any other kind.’8

New Boy travelled everywhere with the Oliviers, appearing in various press articles and photos, and was a regular on the set at Shepperton Studios. Unfortunately he was run over in 1948, after which Larry bought Vivien another Siamese, named Armando. Her final Siamese was Poo Jones, who also accompanied her everywhere, sleeping in her theatre dressing rooms while she was on stage, and travelling with her in her Rolls Royce and on the yacht the Queen Elizabeth. Poo Jones was next to Leigh when she was found by Jack Merivale shortly after her death. Some of her books on cats were included in the 2017 auction in which Study of Roses was sold.

Churchill had a wide range of animals and a particular fondness for cats, including Nelson, Smoky, Mickey, Tango and Jock. A photo of him patting the ship’s cat Blackie on board HMS Prince of Wales in 1941 with President Franklin D. Roosevelt was circulated widely in the world’s press. His main travelling companions were his poodle Rufus, sometimes seen in his car in London, and his budgie Toby, who would go on vacation with him to the French Riviera but disappeared through a Monte Carlo hotel window in 1960.

Vivien Leigh was escorted out of the House of Lords for interrupting a debate about funding of the arts.

Leigh and Olivier managed the St James’s Theatre in St James, London, from 1950. In 1957, a developer bought the property and obtained permission to replace it with an office block. Leigh and Olivier launched a campaign to save it, including Leigh walking along Fleet Street and the Strand with a message on a sandwich board, ringing a bell.

In July 1957, Leigh and Olivier visited the House of Lords to meet some of the members and to listen to a debate. Olivier left early while Leigh went to the visitors’ gallery, becoming angry about one of the speeches. She stood up and, against strict rules about silence, called out, ‘My Lords, I wish to protest against the St James’s Theatre being demolished’. Black Rod (a senior parliamentary offical) was sitting next to her and said, ‘Now you will have to go’, to which she replied, ‘Certainly, I have to get to the theatre’.9 She was playing in Shakespeare’s Titus Adronicus at the Stoll Theatre that evening and a newspaper commented the next day, with reference to the Lords incident, that her character Lavinia has her tongue cut out.

Three days later, she wrote to Churchill: ‘I love [St James’s] for many reasons one of the chiefest being that you were gracious and kind enough to come and see us in it. I have never forgotten that wonderful evening and so I am writing to ask you if you can do anything to help to preserve it.’10

Churchill replied, ‘My dear Vivien, I hope you will succeed in your defence of the St. James’s Theatre, though as a parliamentarian I cannot approve of your “disorderly” method. If a fund is needed … I shall be very glad to subscribe £500 to it [equivalent to £12,000 today]. … I thought your TITUS ANDRONICUS was a great presentation. … I very much enjoyed the evening, and especially seeing you again.’11 However, the campaign was unsuccessful and the theatre was demolished in December 1957.

Vivien Leigh had bipolar disorder and Churchill is often said to have had suffered from depression.

Initially some of Leigh’s rapid mood shifts could be attributed to an artistic temperament but it soon became clear to Olivier that she had a mental health condition. Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, was not well understood at the time. A contributing factor may have been her miscarriage in 1945. After a severe episode in 1953, Olivier had her committed to hospital in Coulsdon, Surrey. Standard treatment at the time included electro-convulsive therapy, which she would continue periodically for life.

As her primary carer, Olivier struggled with her behaviour which would alternate between clinginess and outbursts, mania and depression. Her infidelities complicated things further. Eventually they agreed to divorce in 1960, by which time she had been living for two years with Jack Merivale, her partner and carer until her death, with Olivier’s blessing.

The speculation that Churchill suffered from clinical depression or perhaps bipolar disorder was popularised after his death. His biographer Martin Gilbert later wrote: ‘From a careful study of the archives, and from long talks with Churchill’s colleagues, drink and depression seemed much exaggerated, yet much repeated (and embellished) in recent popular accounts.’12

Clementine insisted that although her husband was occasionally depressed, ‘he was not abnormally subject to long fits of depression’.13 His daughter Mary Soames said that the occasions on which he was depressed were when it would have been inhuman not to be so, such as after the Dardanelles. She thought that ‘rather a big meal’14 had been made of the issue. A detailed review in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2018 concluded that the ‘myth of the “Black Dog” as Churchill’s metaphor for severe clinical mood disorder is just that – a myth.’15 It was, however, a term that he used for his low moods, probably derived from a common phrase used by Victorian nannies for their charges’ grouchiness. He became more susceptible to them in his retirement after losing the high stimulation of his working life.

3. Biographical summary

OccupationStage and film actress
CountryUK
CareerSmall stage and movie parts (1935). Signed by Alexander Korda to a five-year movie contract (1935). Two Academy Awards for Best Actress: as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Numerous stage roles with Olivier and independently. Co-manager with Olivier of St James’s Theatre, London (1950-57).
Born1913 in Darjeeling, West Bengal, British India (39 years younger than Churchill); birth name Vivian Mary Hartley; stage name Leigh was her first husband’s forename; Vivian was adapted to Vivien to be more feminine
FatherErnest Hartley (1882-1962), born on Isle of Islay, Argyll, Scotland; stockbroker
MotherGertrude Yackjee (1888-1972), born in Darjeeling, India
Siblings–
EducationAt age six: Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, southwest London, now Woldingham School, Woldingham, Surrey; various schools in France and Italy; Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), London (incomplete)
Spouses1. Herbert Leigh Holman (‘Leigh’), barrister; m. 1932, div. 1940
2. Laurence Olivier (‘Larry’), actor; m. 1940, div. 1960
RelationshipsLaurence Olivier while she was married to Holman; Peter Finch, actor; Jack Merivale, actor (1958 until Leigh’s death in 1967)
ChildrenWith Leigh Holman:
1. Suzanne (1933-2015), actress
With Laurence Olivier:
Miscarriage (possibly two)
Died1967 in London, aged 53; tuberculosis (two years after Churchill)
BuriedCremated at Golders Green Crematorium; ashes scattered on the lake of her summer home, Tickerage Mill, near Blackboys, East Sussex
ChartwellVisitors’ book: 1 recorded visit (August 1951); signed as ‘Vivien Leigh Olivier’
Other ClubNo (but husband Laurence Olivier attended as a guest)
NicknameVivling (father: Vivian + darling)
Height5′ 3½” (1.61 m)

4. See also

Movie industry personalities

  • Chaplin, Charlie
  • Korda, Alexander

Churchill and painting

Churchill controversies

  • Anti-appeasement
  • Lifestyle and health

5. Further reading

Vivien Leigh

Laurence Olivier

  • Coleman, Terry, Olivier: The Authorised Biography (Bloomsbury, 2005)
  • Ziegler, Philip, Olivier (Quercus, 2013)

Churchill and painting

  • Cannadine, David, Churchill: The Statesman as Artist (Bloomsbury, 2018)
  • Churchill, Winston S., Painting as a Pastime (Unicorn Press, 2013); also found in collected works, e.g. Churchill, Winston, Thoughts and Adventures, ed. by James W. Muller (Thornton Butterworth, 1932)
  • Coombs, David and Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and His Paintings (Unicorn, 2022)
  • Rafferty, P., Winston Churchill: Painting on the French Riviera (Unicorn Publishing Group, 2020)
  • Soames, Mary, Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter (HarperCollins, 1990)

Churchill and depression

6. References

1. Terry Coleman, Olivier: The Authorised Biography (Bloomsbury, 2005), p. [000].

2. Janet Moat, ‘That Hamilton Woman (1941)’, BFI Screenonline.

3. Sotheby’s, ‘Vivien: The Vivien Leigh Collection: Lot 245‘, Sotheby’s, 2017.

4. Vivien Leigh, letter to Sir Winston Churchill, 14th February 1961, The Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, CHUR 2/527A

5. Sotheby’s, ‘Lot 245’.

6. Vivien Leigh, letter to Sir Winston Churchill, 23rd May 1950, The Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, CHUR 2/174.

7. Sotheby’s, ‘Lot 245’.

8. Sotheby’s, ‘Vivien: The Vivien Leigh Collection: Lot 175‘, Sotheby’s, 2017.

9. Guardian, ‘A Cue for Miss Vivien Leigh’, Guardian, 1957.

10. Sotheby’s, ‘Vivien: The Vivien Leigh Collection: Lot 229‘, Sotheby’s, 2017.

11. Ibid.

12. Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey (John Wiley & Sons, 1994), p. 209.

13. Gilbert, p. 210.

14. Carol Breckenridge, ‘Leading Churchill Myths: The Myth of the “Black Dog”’, The International Churchill Society, 2012.

15. Ibid.