The Economist - UK (2022-03-26)

84 Culture The Economist March 26th 2022

land,buthisactionssuggesttheopposite.

Thebookthatmostclearlysawwhere

Putinismwasheadingwasnota historyor

biographybuta novel.“DayoftheOprich­

nik”byVladimirSorokin,a Russianauthor

livinginexile,issetin2028.TheRussiait

depictsseemstoexistintwotime­frames

atonce,futuristictechnologyjostlingwith

medievalbarbarityandobscurantism.The

countryiswalledofffromEuropeandthe

tsarhasbeenrestored.Hiswordislaw,but

even he must “bow and cringe before

China”, which (along with gas exports)

propsuptheeconomy.Theoprichnikof

thetitleisoneofhiselitehenchmen—the

namecomesfromanorderofpitilessen­

forcers under Ivan the Terrible. Their

methods are murder and torture, their

sidelinesextortionandtheft.

Publishedin2006,MrSorokin’ssatiri­

caldystopiahascometoseemmorepre­

scientthanoutlandish.Thedetailsaregro­

tesque,butalso,sometimes,horriblyfa­

miliar.Inthestory,whenthewallwasbuilt

“opponents began to crawl out of the

crackslikenoxiouscentipedes”—imagery

thatanticipates MrPutin’sdehumanisa­

tionofhiscriticsasgnats.Chillingly,when

theoprichniksgatherfora debauch,oneof

theirtoastsis“HailthePurge!”n

Celebritymarriages

Such sweet sorrow

I

nfebruary 1940 LaurenceOlivierand

Vivien  Leigh  attended  the  12th  Academy

Awards  ceremony.  Olivier  was  nominated

as best actor for his performance as Heath­

cliff  in  “Wuthering  Heights”;  Leigh  won

the best actress Oscar for her turn as Scar­

lett O’Hara in “Gone With The Wind”. Two

months  later,  the  lovers  embarked  on  an

American theatre tour as Romeo and Juliet.

Four months after that, having finalised di­

vorces  from  their  previous  spouses,  they

were able to get married. That all happens

within  four  pages  of  Stephen  Galloway’s

new joint biography. It must have seemed

that the couple were leading the  most

charmed of lives. 

The theme of the book, though, is that if

(as its subtitle has it) this was “the romance

of the century”, the runners­up must have

been  horrible.  Leigh  overdosed  on  seda­

tives while making “Gone With The Wind”,

a notoriously long, gruelling and calamity­

strewn  production.  When  she  won  her

Oscar,  Olivier  was  “insane  with  jealousy”,

he admitted. Reviews of their “Romeo and

Juliet” were, he lamented, crushing in their

“sheer, savage, merciless cruelty”. 

And the wedding was “a shambles”. The

bride  and  groom  argued  throughout  their

90­mile journey to the ceremony. The jus­

tice  of  the  peace  was  so  drunk  that  he  got

their  names  wrong  and  wound  up  with  a

shout of “Bingo!” The tone was set for their

20­year  marriage.  Noel  Coward,  a  long­

term  friend,  summed  up  its  later  days  in

his diary: “Their life together is really hid­

eous,”  he  wrote.  They  were  “scrabbling

about  in  the  cold  ashes  of  a  physical  pas­

sion  that  burnt  itself  out  years  ago...They

are  eminent,  successful,  envied  and

adored, and most wretchedly unhappy.”

When  their  careers  separated  them,

they  wrote  agonised  letters  wishing  they

were  together  again.  When  reunited,  they

were racked by envy, resentment, exhaus­

tion,  infidelities,  money  worries,  miscar­

riages, alcoholism and, in her case, tuber­

culosis.  Leigh  craved  company,  and  threw

endless parties in their Oxfordshire coun­

try  home;  Olivier  wanted  to  be  alone.  He,

meanwhile,  was  fixated  on  scaling  ever

higher peaks as an actor and director. After

they  divorced  in  1960  Olivier  had  three

children  with  his  next  wife,  Joan  Plow­

right. Leigh had still not got over him when

she died in 1967.

“Truly Madly” is not revelatory. Relying

on extensive quotes from previous biogra­

phies,  and  reports  in  film  magazines  and

newspapers, the book is a well­researched

survey  of  previous  writing  about  the  cou­

ple. Mr Galloway’s personal preoccupation

is Leigh’s bipolar disorder, which prompt­

ed frequent manic episodes. He interviews

various  psychiatric  specialists,  and  em­

phasises  that  her  violent  outbursts  arose

from  a  severe  illness  and  not,  as  Coward

put it, because “she has always been spoilt

and when she fails to get her own way she

takes to the bottle and goes berserk.”

Perhaps  she  and  Olivier  each  needed  a

more  stable  helpmate.  For  all  the  trauma,

though,  they  were  well­matched  in  some

ways.  Olivier  directed  Leigh  in  several  hit

plays,  and  Leigh,  a  voracious  reader,  con­

tributed  numerous  (uncredited)  ideas  to

his  productions.  Their  tumultuous  rela­

tionship  appears  to  have  enriched  their

performances, too. 

It is hard to say if life was imitating art

or vice versa when Leigh played Lady Mac­

beth, Anna Karenina, and Blanche DuBois

in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, but she and

Olivier  saw  the  parallels  between  their

marital strife and their characters’ predica­

ments.  “It  was  Vivien’s  illness  that  made

Olivier  the  great  actor  he  became,”  Simon

Callow, another actor, tells the author. “He

was  forced  to  engage  with  overpowering

emotions  and  to  acknowledge  that  will­

power was not the solution to everything.”

Something worked, anyway. Leigh won

a second Oscar for “A Streetcar Named De­

sire”.  Olivier  won  two  for  producing  and

starring  in  “Hamlet”,  plus  countless  other

awards.  His  achievements,  especially,

were  prodigious,  and  he  and  Leigh  were

hailed as the king and queen of British the­

atre.  Unfortunately,  as  in  the  Shakespeare

plays they made their own, royaltywasthe

stuff of tragedy as well as romance.n

Life and art imitated one another in the explosive union of two stars

Truly Madly. By Stephen Galloway.

Grand Central Publishing; 416 pages; $30.

Sphere; £25

Love and other demons