Rethinking the Epic Romance Between Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, with Stephen Galloway

Pop Literacy

In Truly, Madly, author Stephen Galloway explores the tumultuous relationship between two giants of Hollywood’s Golden Age, movie stars Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier, which he calls “the romance of the century.” The dual biography explores the lives of both of these huge personalities, which collided in 1934 when a Leigh’s friend brought her to see Theatre Royal, featuring Olivier—that night, Leigh swore she would marry him. But she was married at the time to someone else, and so was he. As their relationship developed anyway, their mystique as a couple was fueled by a growing media obsession with celebrity lives and the rise of television. Under this spotlight, the couple dealt with her undiagnosed mental illness through two world wars and the social unrest of the 1960s. In this episode, we talk to Galloway about the rise of the celebrity news complex, how our modern understanding of mental health issues helps us better understand Leigh and other “difficult” Hollywood women of the past, and how Leigh fueled the work of Olivier.

Read more:

• Truly, Madly by Stephen Galloway
• The Bling Ring by Nancy Jo Sales
• I Was Better Last Night by Harvey Fierstein
• The Hag: The Life, Times, and Music of Merle Haggard Mark Eliot
• Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born by Evan Ross Katz
• Index, a History of the by Dennis Duncan

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