How Vivien Leigh tried to seduce a startled houseguest - and when he refused, she hopped into bed with his wife: STEPHEN GALLOWAY casts a fascinating light on the actress' insatiable desires and blames her undiagnosed mental illness in a new book

 To be invited as a guest to the Oliviers' grand country home, Notley Abbey, a few miles outside Oxford, felt akin to being summoned by royalty.

Certainly, no other married couples of the 1950s were quite as revered for their talent and exceptional good looks.Madly in love with each other, they'd both triumphed in their profession — Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind, and Laurence Olivier as the foremost Shakespearean actor of the day.

So when the critic Kenneth Tynan and his then wife, the novelist Elaine Dundy, received an invitation to Notley, they keenly anticipated the days ahead.

They were to be severely disillusioned.

As Tynan later recalled, he and Elaine decided one day to take a nap in their twin-bedded guest room. After stripping to his Y-fronts, he'd fallen asleep — only to wake when he felt someone slowly turning back the sheet.

Leaning over him was his hostess Vivien Leigh. She was naked under her peignoir and had a hand on his genitals.

The passion between Vivien and Olivier was indeed a real passion — not the soft, sentimental kind of Hollywood movies and Victorian romance, but the sort that engulfs, overwhelms and sometimes destroys: the sort for which the Oliviers became famous

'I began to respond and then suddenly thought how impossible it would be to cuckold a man I venerated under his own roof,' said Tynan.

'I muttered it to Vivien, who pouted a bit, but eventually rose to her feet — and tiptoed across to Elaine's bed.' 

Hastily, Tynan threw on some clothes. As he bolted from the room, Elaine was sleepily returning Vivien's embrace.

In a bedroom farce, such antics might have raised a laugh or two. But this was for real: one of the most beautiful stars of stage and screen, supposedly passionate about her husband, had just sexually assaulted two of her guests . . .

Back in 1936, both Leigh and Olivier were married to other people when they were cast in the same forgettable British film. They soon crossed the line from admiration to affair.

Each moment they weren't working, they'd sneak off together — making love 'every day, two, three times,' as Olivier confided to a friend.

Later, recalling this period, Vivien said: 'I don't think I have ever lived quite as intensely. I don't remember sleeping, ever; only every precious moment that we spent together.'

At the time, Olivier's wife of six years, Jill Esmond, was in the late stages of pregnancy. Having smelled Vivien's perfume on her husband, she quickly realised what was going on but assumed it would blow over.

After all, Olivier had already had affairs with actresses Greer Garson and Ann Todd as well as Peggy Ashcroft (who wisely chose to withdraw after Jill came hammering at her door).

Nothing, however, could break Olivier's bond with Vivling, as he called her. He even brought her home to see his new-born son.

As for Vivien's husband, a staid lawyer called Leigh Holman, it never crossed his mind that she might be in love with Olivier, let alone ever leave him and their two-year-old daughter.

Half a century since Vivien's death and more than three decades since Olivier's, they continue to haunt us. They were the first married couple since the advent of sound to become global celebrities, but they despised celebrity and even the medium that led to their fame

Incredibly, the lovers kept up 'two years of furtive life, lying life,' as Olivier put it. He felt like 'a really wormlike adulterer, slipping in between another man's sheets,' he confessed later, but he was sick with desperation and desire.

So was Vivien. 'All [she] wanted to do was to talk about Larry,' recalled Rex Harrison, who co-starred with her in a comedy, Storm In A Teacup.

Finally, Jill decided to throw herself on her rival's mercy, a strategy that had worked with Peggy Ashcroft. Have the affair if you must, she pleaded to Vivien, but let me keep my husband.

But Vivien merely diverted the conversation: how did Larry like his eggs, she asked? That was when Jill knew the battle was lost.

Years later, Jill told her son: 'Real passion — I've only seen it that once. If you are ever hit by it, God help you. There's nothing you can do.'

The passion between Vivien and Olivier was indeed a real passion — not the soft, sentimental kind of Hollywood movies and Victorian romance, but the sort that engulfs, overwhelms and sometimes destroys: the sort for which the Oliviers became famous.

Half a century since Vivien's death and more than three decades since Olivier's, they continue to haunt us. They were the first married couple since the advent of sound to become global celebrities, but they despised celebrity and even the medium that led to their fame.

They appeared to have it all; and yet in their own minds they were blighted, doomed by a mental illness neither understood and that transformed their relationship from the stuff of dreams into a living nightmare.

In 1937, the lovers ran off together late one night, while their partners and children were asleep. Jill was devastated — almost overnight, her hair turned white. Holman stubbornly persisted in believing Vivien would return.

After initially staying with friends, the lovers bought a house together in Chelsea. A friend who ran into the 30-year-old Olivier during this period was surprised to find him looking exhausted. It was because of Vivien, he told him, and her constant demands for sex.

But sex had to be squeezed in between a host of obligations, as he was about to open in three major Shakespeares — Macbeth, Othello and Coriolanus — while she was making her debut at the Old Vic in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Even so, they managed to find time for friends. The actress Hayley Mills recalls they invited her parents, John and Mary, for dinner with the actor Stewart Granger (known to friends as Jimmy) and his wife Elspeth March. 

'It was a very dressed-up evening — people used to get dressed up to go out to dinner in those days,' says Hayley. 

'And when my parents arrived, they were shown into the living-room — where Vivien and Larry and Jimmy and Elspeth were arranged around the sofa, all of them stark naked, except for wearing a tie.'

In November 1938, while Vivien was tied to a play in London, Olivier travelled to Los Angeles to take on the role of Heathcliff in the film of Wuthering Heights.

He phoned her each day, sometimes spending a hair-raising £50 (the equivalent of £3,580 today) on one call — ten times his weekly salary at the Old Vic. When he wasn't calling, he was writing love letters — around 200 of them — of up to 30 pages each.

It took another year and a half before their respective divorces were finalised and they were free to marry.

Both working in LA at the time, they chose a wedding venue overlooking the Pacific coast, inviting Katharine Hepburn and screenwriter Garson Kanin to be maid of honour and best man.

Four years later, while filming Caesar And Cleopatra, Vivien suffered a miscarriage, which plunged her into uncharacteristic gloom.

Back on set, in the middle of shooting a big banquet scene, she suddenly stopped and had a hysterical fit over a minor detail in her costume. Calling a halt to that day's work, the producer sent her home. Vivien seemed unaware that her behaviour had been startlingly inappropriate. Yet she clearly wasn't well: for five weeks, she remained at home, her mood cycling rapidly between exaltation and dejection.

For the first time, too, she was flying into rages and abusing her beloved husband.

No one used the words 'mental illness' at the time, and Olivier had no idea what was wrong. In fact, Vivien was showing signs of bi-polar disorder — then known as manic depression. Today, it's treated with the drug lithium, but it came too late for her.

When she finally returned to the Cleopatra film set, Olivier believed the worst was over. He didn't realise their problems had just begun.

Anxious to keep working, Vivien took the lead role in a play but had to drop out weeks later. At Notley Abbey, which they bought in 1944, she succumbed to an all-engulfing depression.

Incredibly, the lovers kept up 'two years of furtive life, lying life,' as Olivier put it. He felt like 'a really wormlike adulterer, slipping in between another man's sheets,' he confessed later, but he was sick with desperation and desire'

This low was inevitably followed by another high, each liable to be triggered by an outside event such as stress or physical illness. Sometimes these cycles would last for months, and sometimes they'd alternate in the blink of an eye.

When she was down, Olivier could do nothing to raise her spirits. But he began to recognise when a high was imminent: her eyes would dart about, never settling, and she'd become agitated. Then out would come torrents of abuse and violence, sometimes lasting for hours.

Vivien's illness, recalls Hayley Mills, 'made her behave in all sorts of very extreme and uncharacteristic ways.'

She'd have sudden bouts of extraordinary generosity, when she would give people jewellery and other valuable gifts; one day, she gave a gossip columnist her mink coat.

At Notley, she began to stay up all night, surrounding herself with acquaintances. Actor Godfrey Winn remembered making the 50-mile drive from London with Orson Welles and Rex Harrison.

They arrived at 1am, wondering whether they'd be lucky enough to get a small snack. Instead, Vivien treated them to a full candlelit dinner and expected them to stay up all night.

As daylight broke, Winn went to bed — only to be woken by a maid, who told him Vivien 'would like you to join her for a game of bowls'. Olivier increasingly dreaded the next influx of guests. Time and again, he begged Vivien to slow down, to no avail: she had energy to burn — sometimes almost literally.

Actress Juliet Mills remembers that once, while staying at Notley, she heard the couple having a terrible row. Olivier slammed out of the room. 'About half an hour later there was smoke — Vivien had set the bed on fire.'

Few people understood that she was seriously ill. The Oliviers' great friend Noel Coward, for instance, wrote: 'What has driven her round the bend again is the demon alcohol. I suspect there is far less genuine mental instability about it than most people seem to think.

'She has always been spoilt and when she fails to get her own way she takes to the bottle and goes berserk. Personally, I think that if Larry had turned sharply on Vivien years ago and given her a clip in the chops, he would have been spared a mint of trouble.'

In fact, in a vain attempt to get better, she'd already given up both alcohol and cigarettes.

Olivier coped by throwing himself into his work, clocking up one theatrical triumph after another (Henry IV parts I and 2, Uncle Vanya, Oedipus Rex and King Lear — all within a year).

The more caring and compassionate he was with Vivien at home, the more demonic he became onstage.

In 1948, they decided to tour Australia with a series of plays in which they each had leading roles. The critics raved — but behind the scenes, Vivien was once again succumbing to wild changes of mood.

On the ship back home, she did everything she could to needle her husband: dressing provocatively, openly disparaging him and dancing with any eligible young man. The most glamorous couple in the world were barely talking by the time they reached Britain.

Weeks later, Vivien told him: 'I don't love you anymore. There's no one else or anything like that; I mean, I still love you but in a different way, sort of, well, like a brother.'

Olivier later wrote: it 'felt as if I had been told that I had been condemned to death. The central force of my life, my heart in fact, as if by the world's most skilful surgeon, had been removed.'

Did Vivien mean what she said? Of course not: she continued to have enthusiastic sex with her husband. Or as Olivier put it wryly: 'Occasional acts of incest were not discouraged.'

According to psychiatrists, some people with untreated bi-polar condition can become abusive, foul-mouthed, violent, hyper-sexual and driven to twist the knife where it hurts. Poor Vivien ticked every box.

Yet all her life, she remained capable of moving audiences to rapture. And she continued to have interludes when she was not only as charming as ever but also mortified by her appalling behaviour.

'When she had the breakdowns and behaved very, very violently,' said the actor John Gielgud, 'she would always, afterwards, write letters and go and see people and apologise for having upset them.'

In 1949, Vivien set her heart on the role of Blanche DuBois, the unstable and promiscuous heroine of A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams. Olivier, however, warned her that to play a woman on the edge of insanity could trigger a return of her own.

In the end, he agreed to direct the play, aware it provided a rare chance for Vivien to prove herself as an actress. And it did: people queued for three days to get tickets and her portrayal of Blanche was greeted with ecstatic reviews. But the stress of playing Blanche night after night triggered another manic episode.

It was around then that she made her bizarre sexual assault on Kenneth Tynan — hardly a man she'd be attracted to normally. Ironically, he'd been the only critic to give her a negative review. She also began to roam through the West End's red-light district after the show, stopping to chat to prostitutes. Playing the mad Blanche, Vivien later acknowledged, 'tipped me into madness'.

And yet when Hollywood came calling, she couldn't resist. On July 31, 1950, she flew to America, leaving Larry in London, to reprise the role of Blanche opposite Marlon Brando.

Her first encounter with him, in the Warner Brothers commissary, was less than promising. 'Why do you always wear scent?' he asked.

'Because I like to smell nice — don't you?' Vivien replied.

'Me?' he said. 'I just wash. In fact, I don't even get in the bath. I just throw a gob of spit in the air and run under it.'

As the weeks went by, she drew closer to Brando. When he poked fun at Olivier, mimicking him with needlepoint accuracy, Vivien howled with laughter. She also started socialising with Brando away from the set, sometimes going swimming with him.

Ten days into the shoot, Olivier had joined her in LA. Their time together, however, was punctuated by frequent shouting matches — though his love for her was as intense as ever.

Was he aware, as Marlon Brando later claimed, that Vivien had started being unfaithful?

'Her mind began to wobble and her sense of self became vague,' Brando said. 'Like Blanche, she slept with almost everybody and was beginning to dissolve mentally and to fray at the ends physically.' Brando also admitted: 'I might have given her a tumble, if it hadn't been for Larry Olivier. I'm sure he knew she was playing around, but like a lot of husbands I've known, he pretended not to see it.'

Among Vivien's lovers, allegedly, was Scotty Bowers, an occasional petrol station employee and a gigolo renowned for servicing both men and women. After meeting him at the home of director George Cukor, Bowers claimed, Vivien had told him to come to Cukor's guesthouse, where she occasionally spent the night.

'We had to be careful,' he said. 'George was a light sleeper — the slightest noise would wake him. Vivien and I looked at one another, giggled quietly, and tried to make as few sounds as possible as we began to passionately make out.'

The following morning, Vivien sat staring at her dressing-table mirror, brushing her hair and refusing to make eye contact with him.

Then, said Bowers, she barricaded herself in the bathroom and insisted he leave — only to fly out moments later, sobbing: 'Oh, darling, darling boy. I'm sorry. Can you come around again tonight?'

Bowers' account warrants scepticism, but some members of Vivien's circle believed it. The Hollywood agent Irving 'Swifty' Lazar once lashed out at her for being two hours late to a dinner party, and 'accused her of picking up strangers at petrol stations,' remembers the publisher and author Michael Korda. 'Her behaviour certainly raised eyebrows.'

Whatever the truth, Vivien managed to turn up to the Streetcar set each day, and once again put her heart and soul into playing a woman going mad.

Unaware of her issues with mental health, the Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons asked her one day how she was doing.

Vivien, she reported, 'opened her big, blue eyes. 'Why, there's nothing wrong with me,' she said, 'I am all right. I don't know how those rumours ever started . . . I had one little breakdown, but I have fully recovered.' She hadn't.

What happened next would horrify some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, break up the marriage of a leading British actor and drive Olivier to utter despair . . .

Adapted from Truly Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier And The Romance Of The Century by Stephen Galloway, published by Sphere on March 10 at £25. © Stephen Galloway 2022. 

To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 12/03/22; UK P&P free on orders over £20), visit www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.