Vivien Leigh Bio

but worse than that for anyone really interested in her life, it's a book missing very important facts. That's not Edwards' fault-- of all the people she acknowledges at the end of the book, Laurence Olivier, Viv's second husband and the man who was there as her manic-depressiveness began to take over, is not listed. Olivier did not speak much about Vivien until after he'd written his won two volumes of autobiography, in the 80s. (On Acting and its companion).

So, the notorious affair with Peter Finch, for example, is not described, or worse-- described as just a mild flirtation. Far too much is missing from the biography.

Alexander Walker's book VIVIEN, published after both Olivier and Leigh were dead, is a much better choice, and its style is also far more comprehensive. Walker spends less time speculating and more time grounding his ideas with citations and sources. There's also a book coming out in the spring of 2003 which promises to be complete.

In short, this must have been a very welcome book in 1977, 10 years after Viv's death, but it's obsolete now. I gave it two stars because in its time it did represent a great deal of labor and research, and the writing style works hard (unsuccessfully, for me) to keep the reader engaged. But for anyone who really needs to research her life and the lives of the many famous people in her life, it's missing too much.