Truly Madly Deeply by Stephen Galloway, a review

 

I was absolutely fascinated by Vivien Leigh after watching Gone With the Wind (cringey I know).  But there was actually so much I didn't know about her - that she had bi-polar disorder and that she died of tuberculosis among them.  I knew that she was married to Sir Laurence Olivier though and so I randomly saw this book at the library and picked it up.

THe book starts with the personal histories of the two main players - Vivien being born in India as Viven Hartley and then sent to a Catholic boarding school at a very young age. Her stage name combines her first name and the first name of her first husband, Leigh Holman, with whom she had a daughter with (who she remained particularly close to in spite of their eventual divorce). Olivier was the youngest of three children born into a not very wealthy family and lost his mother at 12. He greatly admired his father, even though he wasn't particularly close to him. 

The couple met at a garden party and began what can only be described as a sordid love affair while they were both still married to other people - which meant that it was the best kept secret in all of Hollywood and the theater world for a while. Galloway then continues the story through its end.

What I greatly admired about this book was the depth of the research that Galloway engaged in.  He obviously spent a lot of time picking through interviews to glean information that he could then put together in a way that was palatable for us as readers. I learned things that I had not learned before - which is very, very valuable and the book, while long, is written simply. I found that the sections about the times on scene - the technical parts of the movie business and the gossipy, middle school type drama that occurred aside from the relationship - were not very interesting so I skimmed it. I wanted to read this book to learn about the people themselves and their relationships, not read a primer on the movie business and I did learn about it.  If you can live with those sections, then I would definitely give this book a go. The couples' relationship was dizzying and had a lot going on in it and the book itself was a generally enjoyable way of learning about it.