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Truly, Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century
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70/99
Critics
46/99
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Scholars
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Rating
95/99
Volume
22/99
Rating
71/99
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About This Book
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST A New York Times Bestseller "A "well rounded and entertaining" ( New York Times ) Hollywood biography about the passionate, turbulent marriage of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. In 1934, a friend brought fledgling actress Vivien Leigh to see Theatre Royal , where she would first lay eyes on Laurence Olivier in his brilliant performance as Anthony Cavendish. That night, she confided to a friend, he was the man she was going to marry. There was just one problem: she was already married—and so was he. TRULY, MADLY is the biography of a marriage, a love affair that still captivates millions, even decades after both actors' deaths. Vivien and Larry were two of the first truly global celebrities – their fame fueled by the explosive growth of tabloids and television, which helped and hurt them in equal measure. They seemed to have it all and yet, in their own minds, they were doomed, blighted by her long-undiagnosed mental-illness, which transformed their relationship from the stuff of dreams into a living nightmare. Through new research, including exclusive access to previously unpublished correspondence and interviews with their friends and family, author Stephen Galloway takes readers on a bewitching journey. He brilliantly studies their tempestuous liaison, one that took place against the backdrop of two world wars, the Golden Age of Hollywood and the upheavals of the 1960s — as they struggled with love, loss and the ultimate agony of their parting.
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Reviews
"Engagingly presented and thoroughly researched, Truly, Madly is a fascinating exploration of how the art of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier was inextricable from their personal relationship and public personas."
"Galloway's reporting is immersive and intimate, and studded with vivid recollections ..."
"It is here, I think, that Galloway, the former executive editor of the Hollywood Reporter, lifts himself clear of previous chronicles, including Olivier's own self-lacerating memoirs, by supplementing firsthand accounts with retrospective diagnoses by experts like Kay Redfield Jamison and by tracing a genetic link to Leigh's great-uncle, housed in a Kolkata asylum for much the same symptoms."
"Galloway, rightly, reads Leigh's behaviour through modern understandings of bipolar disorder, quoting extensively from the work of contemporary psychiatrists."
"Galloway paints a sympathetic portrait of a couple who loved each other too much and understood each other too little."
"Galloway earnestly pulls these sources together, corroborating from multiple perspectives."
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