VIVIEN Leigh caused a stir in Edinburgh when she arrived in April 1956. She was presented with a bouquet of flowers by a young admirer and, on behalf of the British Legion in Edinburgh, accepted a new car from Lord Tedder, chairman of Standard Motors.

Leigh, the wife of Sir Laurence Olivier, was one of the most charismatic stars of the era: winner of two Oscars, for her roles as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire; and with a stellar career on the stage, including acclaimed roles opposite Olivier in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

“She is so perfectly designed for the part by art and nature”, an American film critic wrote of Leigh in Gone With the Wind, “that any other actress in the role would be inconceivable”. Her performance in Streetcar “is is simply one of the greatest pieces of acting in any American film; no Oscar was ever more deserved”, one author wrote in 2013, on the centenary of Leigh’s birth. When she died, aged just 53, in July 1967, a London newspaper described her as “the greatest beauty of her time”.

In 1956 Leigh was touring in a production of Noel Coward’s play, South Sea Bubble, before it opened in London. The critics seemed to like it, and her. The Herald’s theatre critic, reviewing the play’s gala performance at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow, wrote that while the play was only minor Coward, it was “very pleasant to be going on with.”

Set on an island in the Pacific, South Sea Bubble revolves around a progressive British governor (played by Ian Hunter) intent on fostering enlightened ideas of independence in the native population.

Leigh played his high-spirited wife; “The part makes no great demands,” our critic wrote, “but within these limits Miss Leigh is beautiful and enchanting and full of vitality. As the play depends so largely on her there is not a great deal for anyone else to do, though the rest of the company support her well enough”. All told, it was “a civilised, airy piece of comedy, rare enough nowadays to make one grateful”.

The Evening Times’s critic wrote that the Governor’s wife “is quite a character -- she charms her way into a serious scrape and then charms her way out of it without disturbing a single crease in her beautiful gown...It is easy to believe that charm is equal to all eventualities when Vivien Leigh, glamorously robed for the occasion, is demonstrating how it is done. Her Lady Alexandra is the sort of woman no man could ever blame. She talks, quotes, and quips her way out of everything”.

It had earlier been reported that Leigh and Olivier were planning to star in a film version of Macbeth but the project was said to have been foiled by financial problems. The couple had featured in a much-praised stage production at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1955.

Read more: Herald Diary