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Laurence Olivier: Vivien Leigh
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Laurence Olivier saw Vivien Leigh in The Mask of Virtue in 1936, and a friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. While playing lovers in the film Fire Over England (1937), Olivier and Leigh developed a strong attraction, and after filming was completed, they began an affair.[12]
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Signed to a Hollywood contract by RKO in 1931, Laurence failed to make much of an impression on screen, disenchanted with the movies he vowed to remain on stage. He graduated to full-fledged stardom in 1935, when he was cast as Romeo in John Gielgud's London production of Romeo and Juliet. Laurence made his first Shakespearean film, playing Orlando in Paul Czinner's production of As You Like It (1936). Now a popular movie leading man, Laurence starred in such entertainment's as Fire Over England (1937), The Divorce of Lady X (1938), Q Planes (1939) and 21 Days (1940). He returned to Hollywood to star as Heathcliff in Sam Goldwyn's production of Wuthering Heights (1939), earning the first of eleven Academy Award nominations. He followed this with leading roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), Pride and Prejudice (1940) and Korda's That Hamilton Woman (1941), co-starring in the latter with his second wife, Vivien Leigh.
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Olivier congratulated Leigh on her performance, and a friendship began. Olivier took her to lunch one day, and the friendship developed.[10] Alexander Korda cast the two as leads in Fire Over England, and when the film was finished, the two began an affair. They appeared in two other films together, 21 Days, and Korda's epic, That Hamilton Woman, with Olivier as Lord Nelson. They wanted to marry, but both Leigh's husband and Olivier's wife at the time, Jill Esmond, at first, refused to divorce them. Finally divorced, they married on 31 August 1940, at the San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara, California, with Katharine Hepburn as maid of honour.
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Olivier travelled to Hollywood to begin filming Wuthering Heights as Heathcliff. Leigh followed soon after, partly to be with him, but ... to pursue her dream of playing Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Olivier found the filming of Wuthering Heights to be difficult but it proved to be a turning point for him, both in his success in the United States, which had eluded him until then, but also in his attitude to film, which he had regarded as an inferior medium to theatre. The film's producer, Samuel Goldwyn was highly dissatisfied with Olivier's overstated performance after several weeks of filming and threatened to dismiss him. Olivier had grown to regard the film's female lead, Merle Oberon, as an amateur; however, when he stated his opinion to Goldwyn, he was reminded that Oberon was the star of the film and already a well-known name in American cinema. Olivier was told that he was dispensable and that he was required to be more tolerant of Oberon.
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Now, as co-manager (with his friend, fellow flyer and fellow actor Ralph Richardson and with John Burrell) of London's Old Vic Theater, Olivier works at least ten hours a day. For recreation he spends quiet evenings after work at the home of friends, listening to phonograph music (Mozart is a favorite). When possible, he runs up to his country home, the I5th-Century Notley Abbey in Buckinghamshire, where his second wife Vivien Leigh is convalescing from tuberculosis.
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Olivier continued to hold his contempt for films, claiming they were "just a quick way to earn money."[6] He got his break in Hollywood when cast as Heathcliff in Samuel Goldwyn's production of Wuthering Heights. Olivier worked with Merle Oberon for the second time (the first had been in The Divorce of Lady X)... despite their relative tolerance for each other on the first film, sparks flew on Wuthering Heights, presumably due to the fact that he had wanted Leigh for the role, and she had been rejected.
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