HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VIVIEN LEIGH (aka Scarlett O’Hara)! In honor of Ms. Leigh’s birthday, I’m going to share a RARE gem with you for today’s SUNDAY SHOWSTOPPER SNIPPET!
Most of us know Vivien Leigh from her Academy Award winning on-screen performances in Gone With the Wind and Streetcar, or her Shakespearean stage work with Laurence Olivier. But, how many of you knew that Ms. Leigh not only performed in a Broadway musical comedy, but that she won the Tony Award for Best Performance by An Actress in a Musical for her performance?
TOVARICH opened on Broadway in 1963, and ran for about 7 months, hopping from the Broadway Theatre to the Majestic to the Winter Garden. It starred Vivien Leigh and Jean-Pierre Aumont as Tatiana and Mikail (the roles played by Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer in the 1937 non-musical movie). Tatiana and Mikail are refugees from the Russian aristocracy who become a maid and butler for an American family living in 1920s Paris as they dodge a Soviet Commissar who is trying to recover the four billion francs entrusted to them by the late Tsar.
I will let Ed Sullivan set up the scene for you in this snippet!
