Vivien Leigh's former home, London (5^th November 1913 to 8^th July 1967)

In 2012 I visited the apartment block where Vivien Leigh lived and died (in the year I was born.) The address is Flat D, 54 Eaton Square, Belgravia, London. In the late 1950's Vivien was still married to Lawrence Olivier and they moved here. The flat was quite small but decorated to make it appear bigger. Lawrence’s ornate tastes were reflected in burnt-red painted pillars, maroon silk and velvet curtains, blackberry-purple walls (in his study), acid green carpet, and thick champagne-colored curtains.

Vivien remained here after divorcing Lawrence. She lived here with her companion actor Jack Merivale until her death in 1967. After her death, a blue plaque was placed on the building which simply reads: Vivien Leigh 1913-1967 Actress.

Vivien died here on a Friday evening of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis (her lungs filled with fluid and suffocated her.) The actress Luise Rainer lives in the flat at the time of writing (2013) however she’s died on 30^th December 2014 aged 104.

The fateful night in more detail

On 31^st May 1967 Vivien returned to the flat from her house in the country. She felt faint and breathless and went to bed where she began coughing up blood. The doctor was called and he found a big black hole on her lung. Her comment on her medicine was 'Tastes perfectly awful!'. She was to have few visitors, no alcohol, no cigarettes.

She recovered and continued to live life with a friend callers. She began smoking again, more concerned that Olivier was in St Thomas's Hospital suffering from prostate cancer. On 2^nd July she was visited by Noel Coward and her ex-husband Lawrence Olivier who wrote in his diary, "Vivien was sitting in bed looking pale but lovely, and smoking, which she shouldn't have been doing. She was gay and enchanting as she always is."

However she was a seriously ill woman and would only spend an hour a day out of bed mostly tending to her plants and flowers.

On the Friday she died she watched the Wimbledon Men's tennis finals on television with her partner and actor Jack Merivale. He left to perform in his evening show. Later than night he phoned her and she sounded tired.

He returned at 11pm and looked in on her, and she was asleep with her cat (Poo Jones) beside her. He went to the kitchen to heat up some soup. At 11:30 he looked in again and found her lying on the floor, half way to the bathroom, a tumbler beside her. It’s thought that as her lungs filled with fluid she would have felt choked and would have needed water.

Jack tried to help as she was still warm and gave her mouth-to-mouth breaths. Nothing. He lifted her onto her bed and called her doctor. "It's Lady Olivier - something's happened!" The doctor thought it was a joke and said, “Something has happened – you voice has gone deed overnight.”

Vivien had died. The following day Jack rang Lawrence Olivier who discharged himself from hospital and was driven to Eaton Square. The news was already out so he entered the apartment block through a side door. He was left alone with her and wrote later that he "stood and prayed for forgiveness for all the evils that sprung up between us."