Which film role should Vivien Leigh have starred in alongside Laurence Olivier?

Waterloo Bridge. Olivier would've been better than Robert Taylor.

Anyone is better than Robert Taylor.

R1 I considered including that as well in the poll, but I'd rather see more of Vivien in movies than Larry.

Joan's test for Rebecca was better than Vivien's.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

[Quote] Anyone is better than Robert Taylor.

Taylor is surprisingly effective as the villain terrorizing Katharine Hepburn in Undercurrent (1946).

Undercurrent

The Long, Long Trailer.

Nobody would believe her as the mousy bride in Rebecca. But she could’ve posed for the portrait of Rebecca.

She would’ve been fantastic as Cathy.

Agree R9. Merle Oberon was way too prissy to play Cathy and she really hurts the film.

Agree that Vivien would have been the perfect Cathy. It’s too bad she spent her best years chasing Olivier around the stage. At least Taylor mostly realized her skills were best suited to film.

Could Vivien have even played Cathy in Wuthering Heights with her commitment to Gone with the Wind? Wasn't she filming for Gone with the Wind for the first 9 months or so of 1939?

That’s true.

Leigh was gorgeous. Playing the deceptively plain Second Mrs De Winter in Tebecca would have been ludicrous miscasting. Fontaine was perfect. Actually terribly pretty in that quiet English Rose sort of way, but you did not notice. And the seasoned actors on the film were ride to the intense newcomer until they started watching the rushes.

The whole point was that Rebecca had been a great beauty and Maxim wasooking for Sonethung Else.

Leigh would never have been able to put that Something Else over.

^*ingenue (not intense) newcomer

Fucking autocorrect.

Minority opinion on Wuthering Heights: Leigh had the type of beauty that didn't dress down well for something like Heatchliff's Cathy.

Leigh was born glamorous. It can because problem. Frankly, I wasn't that enthused about Overon, either. Both seemed a bit too slick for the rough half of her soul that went for Heathcliff. I've often wondered if Fitzgerald wasn't, in reality, the better fit for Cathy. She was a better actress than both of them, and her foolishness and anguish were far more persuasive than Oberon's.

Leigh never had any intention of playing the second Mrs de Winter. She had her eyes on the real prize, and she won it.

Bunny Lake is Missing, in the Carol Lynley role, of course.

She’d have made a perfect Rebecca, if we ever saw the character, but she’s far too beautiful to have played the second Mrs. de Winter.

Leigh would have been in the perfect Cathy in Wuthering Heights. She possessed the sort of ethereal beauty that haunts heterosexual men. I think the film, which was released in April 1939, had completed filming by the time Leigh began shooting GWTW. Still, having been a huge success as Cathy would have slightly lessened her impact as Scarlett. The public's curiosity about whether a relatively unknown young English actress could pull off playing the quintessential Southern vixen has never been equaled. She needed to be completely fresh to most moviegoers.

Leigh could never have succeeded as the second Mrs. DeWinter in Rebecca. Her screen tests are proof of this. she could never hide her beauty and sophistication.

She'd have been wonderful as Elizabeth in Pride & Prejudice, but wasn't cast for a couple of reasons. The character was Scarlett-esque and would have drawn comparison to her work in GWTW. More importantly, she and Olivier were still unmarried and their relationship was of concern to L.B. Mayer and it was frowned upon by many gossip columnists.

Leigh was too mature to play Ophelia in Olivier's Hamlet.

If you read vintage gossip columns, there were many other projects that were offered to them following their marriage, including a film about Horatio Hornblower. They were also cast in Separate Tables, but Olivier had an argument with Burt Lancaster just prior to filming so he and Leigh split for London.

IMDb says filming of Wuthering Heights went from December 1938 to March 1939; they also list the premier as March 24, 1939, with it going into general release in April.

R21, I don't think IMDb's dates are accurate. I think Wuthering Heights began filming earlier than December 1938, because Olivier had begun writing Leigh to tell him how miserable he was. She arrived in Hollywood in early December and this was after sailing across the Atlantic. Leigh and Olivier were both at the filming of the burning of Atlanta scene, which took place on December 10.