Where Madness Lies

November 18, 2024
Biographer Spence (Cast a Diva) delivers a moving account of British actor Vivien Leigh’s struggle with mental illness in the 14 years before her death from tuberculosis at age 53 in 1967. Beginning with Leigh’s 1953 mental breakdown while filming Elephant Walk in Ceylon, Spence recounts how the actor was subsequently dismissed from the movie, admitted to a London psychiatric hospital, and diagnosed with what was then called manic depression. Spence chronicles how Leigh sought to salvage her marriage to actor Laurence Olivier—who, engaged in an affair and overwhelmed by the demands of Leigh’s illness, divorced her in 1960—and rebuild her career as her symptoms waxed and waned (during a 1960 performance of the play Duel of Angels, burn marks from electroconvulsive therapy were visible on Leigh’s temples). Flashbacks to Leigh’s younger days recreate her childhood in India, her passionless first marriage to barrister Leigh Holman, and her strained relationship with her daughter, whom she had with Holman when she was 19 and ceded custody of after secretly marrying Olivier in 1940. Spence has a novelist’s flair for pacing and detail, though the afterword discussing what Leigh’s spirit allegedly told her medium about her thwarted plans for the future will raise some eyebrows. Still, Spence succeeds in bringing Leigh to vivid life.