Struggle with illness[edit]
In 1951 Leigh and Laurence Olivier performed two plays about Cleopatra, William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, alternating the play each night and winning good reviews.[88] They took the productions to New York, where they performed a season at the Ziegfeld Theatre into 1952.[89] The reviews there were also mostly positive, but the critic Kenneth Tynan angered them when he suggested that Leigh's was a mediocre talent that forced Olivier to compromise his own.[90] Tynan's diatribe almost precipitated another collapse; Leigh, terrified of failure and intent on achieving greatness, dwelt on his comments and ignored the positive reviews of other critics.[91]
In January 1953, Leigh travelled to Ceylon to film Elephant Walk with Peter Finch. Shortly after filming commenced, she had a breakdown and Paramount Pictures replaced her with Elizabeth Taylor.[92] Olivier returned her to their home in Britain, where, between periods of incoherence, Leigh told him she was in love with Finch and had been having an affair with him.[93] She gradually recovered over a period of several months. As a result of this episode, many of the Oliviers' friends learned of her problems. David Niven said she had been "quite, quite mad". Noël Coward expressed surprise in his diary that "things had been bad and getting worse since 1948 or thereabouts".[94] Leigh's romantic relationship with Finch began in 1948, and waxed and waned for several years, ultimately flickering out as her mental condition deteriorated.[95]
In 1953 Leigh recovered sufficiently to play The Sleeping Prince with Olivier; and, in 1955, they performed a season at Stratford-upon-Avon in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and Titus Andronicus.[96] They played to capacity houses and attracted generally good reviews, Leigh's health seemingly stable. John Gielgud directed Twelfth Night and wrote, "... perhaps I will still make a good thing of that divine play, especially if he will let me pull her little ladyship (who is brainier than he but not a born actress) out of her timidity and safeness. He dares too confidently ... but she hardly dares at all and is terrified of overreaching her technique and doing anything that she has not killed the spontaneity of by overpractice."[97] In 1955 Leigh starred in Anatole Litvak's film The Deep Blue Sea; co-star Kenneth More felt he had poor chemistry with Leigh during the filming.[98]
Photograph by Roloff Beny, 1958
In 1956 Leigh took the lead role in the Noël Coward play South Sea Bubble, but became pregnant and withdrew from the production. Several weeks later, she miscarried and entered a period of depression that lasted for months.[99] She joined Olivier for a European tour of Titus Andronicus, but the tour was marred by Leigh's frequent outbursts against Olivier and other members of the company. After their return to London, her former husband, Leigh Holman, who could still exert a strong influence on her, stayed with the Oliviers and helped calm her.[100]
In 1958 considering her marriage to be over, Leigh began a relationship with the actor Jack Merivale, who knew of Leigh's medical condition and assured Olivier he would care for her. In 1959, when she achieved a success with the Noël Coward comedy Look After Lulu!, The Times critic described her as "beautiful, delectably cool and matter of fact, she is mistress of every situation".[101]
In 1960 she and Olivier divorced and Olivier soon married actress Joan Plowright.[102] In his autobiography, Olivier discussed the years of strain they had experienced because of Leigh's illness: "Throughout her possession by that uncannily evil monster, manic depression, with its deadly ever-tightening spirals, she retained her own individual canniness – an ability to disguise her true mental condition from almost all except me, for whom she could hardly be expected to take the trouble."[2]