Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

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WIN I AVISITTO J NAME HOLLYWOOD I with ART | ADDRESS _ LINKLETTER • CouiKH! brings I CITY & STATE details. | □ Send special plan for organizations. ! ing before the cameras in Caesar and Cleopatra, her doctor broke the happy news. The picture had a long and strenuous schedule. When she told the director she was pregnant, he speeded up her scenes. She worked day and night, in flimsy gowns on a damp and chilly set. Coal was a precious commodity. She was exhausted most of the time and plagued with a racking cough. But she wouldn't slow down. She had a deadline to meet. The cough grew worse. Her strength diminished. And one day she collapsed. Larry was at her side when she awoke in a stark hospital room. He tried to help. "We're still young. There will be other babies. The doctor assured me we will." But he didn't have the heart to tell her then — what else the doctor said. That the wracking cough wasn't due to a bad cold — as she had insisted, or too much smoking or nerves. But that she was suffering from a severe case of TB. She was hospitalized for five long months. When she was finally released, she was frail and spent. The little girl look he had loved so much was forever gone. A few weeks after she was out of the hospital — in spite of Larry's pleas to rest, she was in rehearsals for a new play. Triumphs and tragedy The next few years sped by in a whirl of professional triumphs. In 1947 he was knighted by the late King George. But the joy of being Lady Olivier was overshadowed by the tragedy of another miscarriage. In 1948, he won the Academy Award for Hamlet and she laughed: "Oh I'm so relieved. He used to hate the sight of my Oscar around. I had to make up one for him as a gag." In 1950 they returned to Hollywood — for the first time in a decade. She to make Streetcar Named Desire, he to make Carrie. It was only the opportunity to be there at the same time that made them accept the roles. Previous offers would have meant separation. "It's the most beautiful thing," sighed a friend. "They hate to be out of each other's sight for an hour. Their eyes still continue to light at the sight of the other. Their hands still continue to cling. Wherever he went he carried with him a miniature of his wife. If she — asn't working with him, she was watching him work." Business kept him in England and Vivien arrived in Hollywood a week ahead of him. Only a week but Vivien couldn't sleep. • "I miss Larry so. England seems so far away when someone you love is there — in! stead of beside you." When their assignments were completed, they took the long way home via a slow freighter. "It's our first vacation in too many years," she sighed blissfully. "Nothing to do except be with one an; other. . ." The following year she won her second Oscar for Streetcar, and the Oliviers invaded Broadway as a team again alternating the two Cleopatras — their first appearance in New York together since their ill-fated Romeo. This time there was nothing but praise. And a reporter who paid several visits to their dressing room wrote, "They seemed sincerely in love and happy in their careers. I have seldom seen a happier, better adjusted couple. They addressed each other lovingly and they spoke of their home in England with nostalgic affection." But a year later Vivien strayed alone into the darkness. They v/ere offered co-starring roles in Elephant Walk, but busy with pre-Coronation duties, Olivier declined. Vivien accepted, causing many to marvel that she would leave her love. The producer sought reassurance on the state of her health. "She's completely recovered from her lung ailment," said Larry. "I believe a new environment and an interesting role would do her a world of good." But in Ceylon, tormented by sleeplessness, she'd wander at night among the ruins or sit till daybreak watching the natives dance. When she was urged to rest so she would be "your most beautiful self," her reproach was "I'm no longer young. I shouldn't look like an ingenue." Larry flew out and found no cause for concern. Besides, his very appearance seemed to calm her. They flew to Paris and he put her on the plane to New York. He promised to come to Hollywood as soon as he was free of his commitments. But he came a great deal sooner. He came in response to a frantic call from his friend David Niven. Vivien had been acting strangely in Hollywood. Eyes overbright, she chattered ceaselessly. Obviously weary, she dreaded solitude, refused to be left to herself for five quiet minutes. She shocked people by sitting for hours by a radio with her head pasted against the loud speaker, the volume turned up to a pitch that deafened all others in the room. Exhausted after work she'd spin into a useless whirl of activity — sweeping, dusting, washing dishes. And on the set, completely unaware of the slip, she kept calling Peter Finch, her leading man, "Larry." On March 9th she collapsed on the set in hysteria. Put to bed she moaned over and over the lines of the unhappy Blanche Dubois of Streetcar. She kept crying: "I want my daughter to get married. I want to become a grandmother." This time her husband's arrival failed to calm her. There were moments when she didn't even recognize him. Larry took her home. Under sedation she was borne on a stretcher to the airport. Again hysterical as the sedatives wore off, she was half carried onto a London bound plane by her husband and Danny Kaye. In Hollywood, the breakdown was explained by her intense panic-reaction to air travel, a panic attributed to three near-fatal accidents she had been in in the past. The trip from India amounted to being "scared to death for 72 hours." But the psychiatrists in the Netherne Hospital in Surrey felt ''iTerently. "Your wife's fear of flying is a substitute for a much deeper fear buried in her subconscious. Perhaps it is a manifestation of the rejection she felt when her parents sent her to Enn1and to be educated when she was a child. "She's all wound up. We will put her to sleep for three weeks and let her unwind slowly. It will be better if you are not with her at this time." Heartbroken, he returned to Italy — while the press had a field day with its own diagnosis. In firm black print they recorded their findings; that except for Vivien's illness the Olivier marriage would have been called off. The end of a dream To live and work with Larry had been her dream — and her life. Approaching the age of forty she saw the dream fading. For years she had taxed her frail body to keep pace with him. At thirty-nine she felt her forces fail. All lesser fears stemmed from the great, the paralyzing fear. Losing vital 67