Frances Anne Kemble

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopędia Britannica..
. Her various volumes of reminiscences contain much valuable material for the social and dramatic history of the period. Leigh has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6773 Hollywood Blvd. These were followed by Records of a Girlhood (1878), Records of Later Life (1882), Notes on some of Shakespeare's Plays (1882), Far Away and Long Ago (1889), and Further Records (1891). She was cremated and her ashes were scattered on the lake at Tickerage Mill, near Blackboys, Sussex, London, England. Besides her plays, Francis the First, unsuccessfully produced in 1832, The Star of Seville (1837), a volume of Poems (1844), and a book of Italian travel, A Year of Consolation (1847), she published a volume of her Journal in 1835, and in 1863 another (dealing with life on the Georgia plantation), and also a volume of Plays, including translations from Dumas and Schiller. The actress died of chronic tuberculosis in her London home.

During this period Fanny Kemble was a prominent and popular figure in the social life of London. Joan Plowright, third wife and widow of Olivier, later claimed that during much of Olivier's marriage to Leigh he was having a longterm homosexual relationship with the American actor Danny Kaye. In 1877 she returned to England, where she lived in London using her maiden name till her death. Leigh continued to keep a framed photograph of him on her bedside table, even while living with her companion, actor John Merivale. In 1847 she returned to the stage, from which she had retired on her marriage, and later, following her father's example, appeared with much success as a Shakespearian reader. In 1960, she and Olivier divorced on supposedly friendly terms. They were divorced in 1849. She had also been plagued by manic-depression for some time, which was believed to be a factor in the failure to cure her ailment.

In 1832 she went with her father to America, and in 1834 she married there a Southern planter, Pierce Butler. By the early 1960s Leigh had suffered two miscarriages, and the severity of the tuberculosis was incapacitating. She played all the principal women's parts, notably Portia, Beatrice and Lady Teazle, but Julia in Sheridan Knowles's The Hunchback, especially written for her, was perhaps her greatest success. In 1951, however, Leigh won a second Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Her attractive personality at once made her a great favorite, her popularity enabling her father to recoup his losses as a manager. Though she continued her career with such plays as Thornton Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth, and the 1946 film Caesar and Cleopatra, her illness was getting worse. She first appeared on the stage on October 26, 1829 as Juliet at Covent Garden. In 1944, the actress was diagnosed as having a tuberculosis patch on her left lung.

Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny Kemble) (November 27, 1800 - January 15, 1893), the actress and author, was Charles Kemble's elder daughter; she was born in London, and educated chiefly in France. At the time, both were married (Olivier to actress Jill Esmond who was pregnant when the affair began). The pair had met in 1935 and had begun a rather public love affair. In 1940, Leigh arranged for a divorce from Holman and married British theatre star Laurence Olivier. Leigh is best known, however, for her role of Scarlett O'Hara in the American film Gone With the Wind (1939), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 1935, she began her film career with such movies as The Village Squire, Things are Looking Up, and Look Up and Laugh. Her first play was The Green Sash, though it was Mask of Virtue that really brought her to stardom. Leigh's career began on the stage. She was married in 1932 to Herbert Leigh Holman, and they had a daughter, Suzanne, in 1933.

She attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, England, along with fellow actress-to-be Maureen O'Sullivan. She and her parents later moved to England, where young Leigh grew up. Vivien Leigh (November 5, 1913–July 7, 1967) was an English actress who was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, India. Ship of Fools (1965).

Stone (1961). The Roman Spring of Mrs. The Deep Blue Sea (1955). A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

Gone With the Wind (1939). Martins Lane (1938). St. A Yank At Oxford (1938).