Someone in Hollywood once said: "Vivien Leigh was so beautiful, there was no reason for her to be so talented. And she was so talented, there was no reason for her to be so beautiful."
I never understood that. For me personally she never was as beautiful as Ava Gardner or Grace Kelly or a big amount of other women. But a true talent indeed.
Same 😢 I watched in my 20s and found her irritating but now it’s just heartbreaking. I paid closer attention this time around. It was really hard to digest this one. Too much like home life. Blanche def deserved better… even if she was lying to her sister. She just wanted to be loved and make her world pretty again.
Totally agree! She just had an incredible magic about her looks that a lot of other female actresses didn’t have. Although some of them stunningly beautiful, Vivien had this almost childlike beauty about her that couldn’t be replicated. Liz Taylor and Hedy Lamar were I think the closest to Vivien in terms of beauty! Viv was and always will be my absolute favourite! Love her so much!
Vivien gives us the two most important female roles in history. Her perfomance as Blanche is a Master Class in acting. In the final close up she is amazingly beautiful.
That's true but also two of the most important film performances in history male or female. It's crazy how despite her limited filmography, she pulled all-time great turns with Gone With The Wind (1939) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).
It breaks my heart that they'll never be another like Vivien Leigh. She died long before I was born and yet no other actress has me completely spellbound by their beauty and talent.
EXACTLY how I feel about getting to NEVER meeting Marlon 😥 I would've LUVED to meet him! 😳 when he was at this age he was SOO talented and SOO HEARTSTOPPINGLY BEAUTIFUL! 😏🔥🥵
@@davidstevenson9496 Part of the allure of Vivien Leigh is her duality. She was very fragile, physically and mentally, but she also had remarkable resilience. She's has mesmerized me and inspired me since I first saw her in GWTW when I was a child. My evaluation of that film, and book, has matured and evolved, but I still love Vivien's portrayal of Scarlett. Between Scarlett and Blanche, her place in Hollywood's pantheon is forever assured.
She has such a different charisma here than in real life... a different way to look, to move, to speak, a completely different voice... It's like something possessed her body. One word: ACTRESS!
The hardest thing of all is to deliver Tennessee's sheer poetry and have it completely come from character. When Vivien speaks about 'old love letters yellow with age' or of Tarantula Arms where I brought my victims..." It is BLANCHE completely not 'acting'. Vivien is the only one who managed this.
the most perfect performance I have even seen. So incredibly nuanced, brave and perceptive. The way she varies the tone of her voice and the use of body language is sublime. Bravo Vivien 👑
I so agree - I think Vivien Leigh's two Oscar winning performances - as Scarlett in GWTW and Blanche in ASND - are the two best performances ever captured on film. And she was wonderful in all her other movies. I only wish her Lady Macbeth had been realized as a movie - have a feeling it would have been Oscar # 3!
She is the greatest actress who ever lived. She won 2 Oscars for the greatest performances ever given. She was a highly accomplished stage actress, and won a Tony almost as an afterthought. Her beauty and talent were off the charts
Vivien Leigh acting is so sublime in "Gone with the Wind" and a "Streetcar named Desire" many say her characterization of Blanche DuBois seized her into madness after filming; reminiscent of her character's mental break down.
Yes, Marlon Brando saw that coming and worried about her. He wrote that in his autobiography Songs My Mother Taught Me. He also said he felt Vivien's was the best, most authentic Blanche (even though he highly respected his Broadway co-star Jessica Tandy's talent).
I have seen many actresses play Blanche, Jessica Lange, Blythe Danner, etc., but no one has come cose to the realism and pathos Vivien Leigh brought to the role.
Her performance was indeed truly astounding, but I it seems to me that casting an obviously gorgeous woman in this role is wrong. It is impossible to believe that 1) such a beautiful and refined woman has had to resort to a life of degradation just to get by, and 2) that someone so incandescently beautiful is nevertheless, somehow, so unattractive that a man is shocked and repelled by seeing her in full light! On the stage, given the distance between performer and audience, it would not have seemed so blatantly ridiculous. To explain Blanche's poverty and fragility, the viewer can construct a backstory that she is the mentally shattered survivor of years of abuse -- but the incompatibility of Leigh's vibrant beauty with idea of Blanche being shockingly over the hill remains. We do have one of the great screen performances of all time, though.
If wisdom came _that much earlier,_ would you be able to _enjoy_ your youth, or would such early wisdom turn you into a young curmudgeon? A bitter youth? I have to imagine these things like maturation progress as they do for a reason. Even if that reason is only biological or evolutionary in nature. 😁
Vivien Leigh as Scarlet Ohara in GWTW and her performance in Streetcar .... the years have passed but she still remains the greatest actress of them all. GWTW as in 1939 and Streetcar in 1951 and it's now 2016 thats quite feat.
I played Stanley in college back in the 60s. Watching this brings back the memories. It was a huge moment in my young life. Brando and Leigh were just electric in this movie.
Tennessee Williams was a master story teller about how terrible and miserable it is to be a woman. The misery of Blanche in Streetcar; how terrible it was to be a cripple in The Glass Menagerie; how terrible it was to be ruined and lied to in the Rose Tattoo. Always about the unfortunate state of life a woman usually finds herself. He was a gay man and understood what it means to be female in a male world.
I agree with you dear; but we just have to see Tennessee's great play live every once in a while; the character of Blanche is compelling and magic (to use your word) enough to support fine actresses who may lack Vivien's transcendent talent.
I have seen great performances of great actors and actresses but i truely agree with your statement..i just thought so when i first saw the movie..the emotional depth put in this charactor make other performances around this charactor look like a insult..evn though they are good in normal ways
I always wondered if Jessica Tandy on stage was as good. All I had to do was listen to Tandy in a rare recording of the scene about Stanley handling her 'love letters yellow with age'. Just one line and there was doubt. Viv totally nailed it and made the difficult poetic words come alive as the words of a living person, Tandy was 'doing an interpretation'.
the definite best part that no one can get correct is that she doesn't have the strongest southern accent. Back in the day it was the English tongue mixed with the new reminiscents of american talk. this was the accent that we had!
I had always wondered how Vivien compared to the original Blanche on the stage, Jessica Tandy. I found a recording of Tandy doing the 'trunk' scene with Stanley and when she said "old love letters yellowed with age..." I KNEW at once that Vivien was SO much better. Tandy read it well but only Vivien could make the full ache of age and loss come alive in those few words. Tennessee Williams' poetry, difficult to perform properly, she makes her own words.
Not a proper comparison because Tandy had to yell the words to the back of the playhouse. There's just no way to compare the intimacy of a microphone and film production acoustics to live theater acoustics.
@@janetoss this was a radio microphone production for Tandy so though you make a good point it doesn't apply here. Microphones were not standard in theatre til the 1960's.
yes he WAS 😳 ditto 100 percent 😂 lol I have ALWAYS wondered how Vivien did it on the set of the movie because Brando was REALLY hot 😍 and I like fell for him HARD while watching the film 🥵
No one could have done a better job than Vivien did, was thinking that there must have been some raw emotion behind her act, turns out she suffered from bipolar disorder...
That's because Blanche was from Mississippi, and Scarlett was from Georgia, and the accents are different. Also, Blanche was "giving a performance" to escape her past, Scarlett was just living her life.
I think now this is just me Blanche and Stanley we're kind of highly attracted to each other 😂😱😳 and he was upset with her throughout because he wanted to do more with her but obviously since they we're related he couldn't but damn if Stanley we're attracted to me I just could NOT refuse Marlon was TOO GORGEOUS back then LIKE FOR REAL he was a STUD! 😳🔥😏🥵
Even though I'vee seen this movie many times in film classes, I never understood what was the deal with Blanche: was she crazy or schizophrenic? Why was she so off her rocker?
arguably she wasn’t really mad, she just lived in a fantasy world of her own because she was insecure about her past and her age. The rape at the end probably sent her into madness.
I have dealt with emotional alcoholics, that lack of reality is so common. Everything gets exaggerated and they do weave their own reality to avoid some truths they cannot cope with at the time. The deteriorating mental health. I think vivian leigh really captures the intensity as well as the occasional flashes back into a reality that she is avoiding. Beautifully tragic.
noemistephanie93 she drove her husband to shoot himself in the head after she finds out he was gay....and she can’t live with the guilt which eats at her for the past 17 years.....and Stanley raping her , while her sister is giving birth, finally pushes her over the edge.
I don't know if anybody gonna read this comment but yes lol Theres a video on RU-vid of an interview with Leigh And the interviewer asked her why does she keep been casted with southern belle roles And she responds I have no idea I must have lived there in some past life So yeah....lol
