Stratford remembers Vivien Leigh
SATURDAY was the 50th anniversary of the death of Vivien Leigh - but did you know there is a memorial stone commemorating the life of the acclaimed actress in Stratford-upon-Avon?
It is in the Royal Shakespeare Company's swan gardens, opposite the Dirty Duck, and reads: 'In memory of Vivien Leigh, Actress, 1913 - 1967, A lass unparalleled' (from Antony and Cleopatra).
The Herald has been unable to establish exactly how it came to be there.
False poinsettia flowers were thought to have been planted there two years ago.
Vivien Leigh became an international star in 1939 when she starred as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind for which she was awarded the Oscar for Best Actress.
She married Laurence Olivier married the year after and they became the most famous acting couple of the era.
The two appeared alongside each other for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1955.
She played Viola in John Gielgud’s production of Twelfth Night, Lady Macbeth in a production directed by Glen Byam Shaw, and Lavinia in Peter Brook’s Titus Andronicus.
It was to be her only season in Stratford-upon-Avon, and there was said to have been 500,000 applications for the 80,000 tickets that were available for that season.
You can see the costume Vivien Leigh wore as Lavinia in the RSC's permanent exhibition, The Play’s The Thing.
Among other memorial stones in the RSC Gardens carry the names of actor and RSC regular Norman Rodway and Buzz Goodbody, who established the RSC's first studio theatre in Stratford, The Other Place, and was the RSC's first female director.
