Mahima Chowdhury

Darjeeling, Jan 18: The hill town’s short and sweet, but largely forgotten, love affair with Hollywood heartthrob Vivian Leigh, of Gone with the Wind fame, has been revived by writer Sanjay Biswas in his book Fallen Cicada.

Born as Vivian Mary Hartley at Eden Sanatorium on November 5, 1913, Leigh spent six years in Darjeeling with her mother Gertude Robinson Yackje and father Ernest Hartley before moving to England.

Biswas and Barun Roy, who have traced, researched and recorded Vivian’s stay in Darjeeling, said: “Vivian was quoted in one of her final interviews as saying that she had the best childhood anyone could have dreamt of because she was born in Darjeeling and could frolic around gardens and forests playing with butterflies and talking with birds.”

The book also mentions how close the Queen of the Hills was to Leigh’s heart and how she “wept for a week” on being told that she had to leave the town. The actor, who won the Academy award for best actress for her tempestuous role as Scarlet O’ Hara in Gone with the Wind, had her on-stage debut in Darjeeling with the rhyme “Little Bo Beep” which she “recited” when she was supposed to sing it.

Vivian had become a household name by the time she acted in the Hollywood classic, Gone with the Wind, in 1939. The film went on to bag eight Academy awards that year.

Vivian married Herbert Leigh in 1932 and apart from Gone with the Wind, played the leading lady in movies like Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), Wuthering Heights (1939) and Ship of Fools (1965). She died of tuberculosis on July 7, 1967, at the age of 53.

Leigh, however, is not the only Hollywood idol with a Darjeeling connection. Local boy Nari Erick Avari has found fame after starring in blockbusters like The Mummy, Planet of the Apes, Stargate, Sandler’s Deed and Beast of War.

Avari’s family once owned The Rink, a movie theatre in town, and moved to US in the early 80s.

Darjeeling’s affair with the silver screen divas also extends to Bollywood. Mahima Chowdhury was a history honours student at Loreto College in the mid-nineties.