The last time I saw her (my wife and I called on her when she lay ill in bed) was only a few days before she died. Looking very pale, and clearly very ill, she sat up carefully and expertly arranging flowers in vase after vase. She carried on a bright and amusing conversation, talking of her plans and her impatience with what she insisted was a temporary setback. Willful as always, she mockingly and flagrantly disobeyed her doctor’s orders about smoking, leaving her bed, talking too much and tiring herself. Yet were she to have surrendered meekly in order to improve her chances, she would not have been her true self. Her beauty never left her – nor did her humour. Only her life.
– Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
R.I.P VIVIEN LEIGH (5 Nov 1913 –
7 July 1967)