Vivien Leigh : Actress and Icon
- Submitting institution
-
The University of Manchester
: A - Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : A - Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 62073397
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Manchester University Press
- ISBN
- 978-1-5261-2508-8
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- January
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
1
- Research group(s)
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A - SALC: Drama
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This edited volume was originally generated in response to the acquisition of Vivien Leigh’s archive by the V & A museum in 2013, with the ambition of creating a collection reflecting the layered complexities of Leigh’s career as a mid-twentieth century actress and icon. Dorney and Gale (50%/50%) commissioned academics, journalists and curators from across film, theatre and museum contexts, to write on different aspects of Leighs work and life, using the archive as an underpinning evidence base. In a context in which Vivien Leigh had hitherto been predominantly framed by her early role in 'Gone With The Wind', her high-profile and tempestuous marriage to Laurence Olivier, and her role as the troubled Blanche Dubois in Elia Kazan’s 1951, 'A Streetcar Named Desire', the editors aimed to shape the volume in terms of Leigh’s actual work as an actress on stage and screen, and her actual private and domestic life across a broad range of contexts. The volume includes chapters on her work in theatre, her work as a Shakespearean actress, her collaborations with photographers and directors, her interests in interior design and collecting and on critiquing the ways in which her work and private life have been historiographically ‘framed’. Shortlisted for the TaPRA prize for editing in 2019, the volume suggests a more nuanced approach to understanding the significance of the legacy of female performers’ labour, too often misrepresented or dismissed. This is a major departure from previous works on Leigh and represents the first curation of academic engagement with her life and work which does not simply place her as ‘other’ to a more famous actor or director. The output for assessment is Dorney’s contribution to the introduction ‘Vivien Leigh, actress and icon’, pp. 3-23 (50%/50%) and Dorney’s chapter, “Public faces/private lives: performing Vivien Leigh’, pp. 23-42. 299
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
