Truly, Madly. By Stephen Galloway (Grand Central, 406 pages, $30.)
Stephen Galloway’s “Truly, Madly” revisits the all-consuming (and doomed) love affair between Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, with a sympathetic look at Leigh’s bipolar disorder.
The glamorous British actors were “hopelessly” drawn to each other as they made the 1937 film “Fire Over England.” They fled their spouses (and children) and set up house in Chelsea.
Olivier’s role in “Wuthering Heights” took the couple in 1938 to Hollywood, where Leigh won the coveted role of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind.” The pair wed in 1940 in Santa Barbara, accompanied by Katharine Hepburn and writer/director Garson Kanin. (The couple’s famous friends — and lovers — were legion.) Outcry over the couple’s stay in the U.S. during World War II brought the “global celebrities” back to a besieged London a few months later.
As Olivier’s stature grew, Leigh’s behavior grew increasingly erratic and disturbing, leading to a diagnosis of manic depression. She endured two miscarriages, tuberculosis and electroconvulsive therapy. Critics sniped about her acting, despite her Oscars for “Gone With the Wind” and 1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire.” (Her roles as Scarlett and Blanche DuBois seem to encapsulate her.)
A toxic mix of “resentment, jealousy, workaholism and mental illness” led Olivier to leave, and the couple divorced in 1960. Leigh died in 1967 at age 53. A friend visiting Olivier shortly before his death in 1989 at age 82 found him watching one of Leigh’s movies, lamenting, “This, this was love.”
Galloway captivatingly captures the sort of passion “that engulfs, overwhelms and sometimes destroys.”
