Vivien Leigh exhibition comes to York

WHEN Vivien Leigh was a star she was stellar. Regal, almost, glamour personified and an inspirational figure during the dark days of the Second World War. Indeed Leigh and her husband Laurence Olivier were the Burton and Taylor of the 'forties and 'fifties.

Now the story of Britain's first academy award winning actress is being told at Treasurer's House.

Vivien Leigh portrait by Sasha.

The exhibition Public Faces, Private Lives runs until mid December and is the first major display of objects from Leigh’s personal collection since her private archive of some 10,000 items was acquired in 2013 by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).

It is also the first time an exhibition organised by the museum will be shown at a Trust property.

Most famous for her role as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, Leigh enjoyed a distinguished career spanning 30 years and each room in Frank Green's York home is devoted to a particular facet of her work, showing letters, scrapbooks, photos, film scripts and costume sketches, many of which have never been on public display before.

Vivien Leigh with Marlon Brando. Picture courtesy the Victoria and Albert Museum

V&A curator Keith Lodwick says Vivien Leigh has an enduring appeal and remains one of the great luminaries of stage and screen.

"The archive is a magnificent and intact record that provides a fascinating insight into her personal life and career," he says. "Although a small rotating selection of material has been on display at the V&A since we acquired the archive in 2013, we are delighted that so many of its highlights can now be seen.”

Indeed so. This is a who's who from Hollywood's heyday with costume sketches by Cecil Beaton, home snaps of luminaries such as Lauren Bacall and Noel Coward, not to mention scripts on which Leigh added her own handwritten notes.

But that didn't always go down too well, as another fascinating display, showing how Leigh prepared for her roles, tells us.

"Bernard Shaw wrote the screenplay for Caesar and Cleopatra and she asked to change one line," says Keith. "He replied 'No! I don't change lines for anyone, don't be an idiot.'

"He was rude to everyone."

A Streetcar Named Desire is widely regarded as Leigh's best stage performance, and annotated notes about her approach to dealing with the play’s controversial themes of mental illness, homosexuality and rape are on display. Other exclusive pieces include correspondence with director Elia Kazan, costume designer Lucinda Ballard, and playwright Tennessee Williams, who called her ‘the Blanche I had always dreamed of.’ The film version was the first to feature jazz in the soundtrack, and you can hear it playing in the room featuring Streetcar Named Desire. Another thing you notice is how much the architecture of Treasurer's House adds to the theatricality and atmosphere in this most glamorous of exhibitions. Take the Blue Drawing Room, a luscious setting with its glittering gold mirrors for Becoming Scarlett, the section given over to Gone With The Wind. Don't miss Leigh's scrapbook; it's one of 19 chronicling her career.

And what a career it was. she grew up in India and soon became a wife and mother. But domestic life didn't appeal. Leigh was determined to become a stage performer and told her husband 'I'm going back to RADA to complete my training', That was in 1933 and must have been quite shocking back then.

Leigh's debut was in a support role, but she immediately caught the audience's imagination and the programme was reprinted with her picture on the cover.

"She had the sort of overnight success people dream about, almost by accident," says Keith. "The next morning the press were saying a star is born."

Interestingly all the pictures were of her with her child and in the exhibition we discover many other things about Leigh’s own life, that made it as tumultuous as Scarlett herself.

"Gone with the Wind makes her an internationally recognised figure and by that point she is a bigger film star than Olivier," says Keith. "Indeed on the poster for Lady Hamilton, It's Vivien Leigh above his name. He was very jealous of her."

The cause, no doubt, of many a tempestuous, and passionate domestic row. And it didn't help that she was also a much better movie actor.

"Olivier was ever so mannered and applied stage techniques to film," says Keith. "Leigh didn't, she understood the camera."

The trouble is she was desperate to be as big a West End star as her husband. It seems England's golden couple found the opposite fame to the one they wanted.

That said, Leigh actually starred in more plays than films and is one of the few actresses to have played Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. As such the exhibition holds a variety of memorabilia from productions including Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Then there is the double-height Great Hall which gives a sense of grandeur to the costume Leigh wore as Cleopatra, which is aptly set on a small stage where visiting actors and actresses would perform plays when they came to stay at the house.

Other glamorous theatre outfits she wore include a stunning red Christian Dior gown from Duel of Angels (1958) and the head dress from her role as Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1937).

The exhibition also delves into the couple's private lives at Notley Hall in Buckinghamshire, where Leigh threw some of the greatest parties of the day, apparently to Olivier's chagrin, with everyone who was anyone in attendance. Just take a look at the guest book, which has been digitised to allow visitors to turn the virtual pages of the book.

Perhaps the most fascinating exhibit is the stereoscopic colour photos, which offer a rare, intimate insight into Leigh's life away from the silver screen. You can view them in a 3D slide show, as they were intended to be seen.

Clare Alton-Fletcher admires exhibits from A Streetcar Named Desire. Picture: Matt Clark

“We’re delighted that fans of Vivien Leigh, film and theatre will be able to see the exhibition in this unique historic house setting in York," says Clare Alton-Fletcher, exhibition manager at Treasurer’s House.

"Frank Green often hosted actors and actresses at his home. Although Vivien Leigh herself never visited the house, earlier stars who did included Lillie Langtry and Ellen Terry who were two of her inspirations to become an actress."

Now, in spirit at least, Leigh, is Mr Green's guest for the next three months. He would most certainly approve.

Vivien Leigh: Public Faces, Private Lives is at Treasurer’s House until December 20. Visit the website for opening days and times. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/treasurershouse or telephone 01904 624247.

Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire, showing at City Screen, York, on October 4 at 8pm

CITY Screen, York, is marking the Vivien Leigh exhibition by showing Elia Kazan’s 1951 hothouse adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire on Sunday, October 4.

The 8pm screening will be preceded by a talk by Dr Sarah Olive, from the University of York, on the theme of The Prime Of Vivien Leigh?

Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter were all awarded Oscars opposite fellow nominee Marlon Brando in Kazan’s adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play, which Kazan had directed already on Broadway.

Leigh plays Blanche Dubois, a fading Southern belle who is obliged to seek shelter with her sister-in-law in a tenement in New Orleans when her husband's death reduces her circumstances.

Neurotic, wistful and desperately clinging to memories or fantasies of prosperity and refinement, Blanche's presence provokes uncontrollable tensions, especially with brutal, virile brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski (Brando).

On the day of the screening, the Vivien Leigh cocktail will be available in City Screen’s Riverside Bar.

Tickets for A Streetcar Named Desire (12A) can be booked online at picturehouses.com/cinema/York_Picturehouse or on 0871 902 5726.