Reframing Vivien Leigh takes a new look at the laboring life one of the twentieth century's most iconic stars. It offers a new perspective on Vivien Leigh as a distinctly archival subject, examining collections and curatorial practices that have built up around her in archives and museums around the world.

List of illustrations Note on sources Acknowledgements Introduction: Into the archives Part I: Stardom, Gender and the Archive Chapter 1: 'A consummate actress, hampered by beauty': archiving stage and screencraft Chapter 2: Collaboration, adaptation and unmade projects Chapter 3: Documenting other roles: alternative star labor Part II: Archival Legacies Chapter 4: 'Her sort of trouble': archiving breakdown Chapter 5: The Posthumous archive: collecting, collectors and memorabilia Chapter 6: 'The Vivien Leigh Room': memorializing a local star Afterword Bibliography Index

Most importantly, Vivien Leigh is presented here as a much more complex, intelligent woman than the generally accepted image of Screen Goddess, Tormented Beauty, and Great Lady of the Stage. Ms. Stead has created an unforgettable portrait of a professionally triumphant, privately tragic life.

"Most importantly, Vivien Leigh is presented here as a much more complex, intelligent woman than the generally accepted image of Screen Goddess, Tormented Beauty, and Great Lady of the Stage. Ms. Stead has created an unforgettable portrait of a professionally triumphant, privately tragic life." -- Vaughan Edwards, Stage and Cinema "Through a fascinating 'reframing' of Vivien Leigh, one of the most well-known performers of the mid-twentieth century, Lisa Stead provides a model for how feminist historiography might transform star studies.  Looking beyond Leigh's glamorous image, Stead reveals her work behind the scenes as a creative collaborator and activist.  All the while, Stead remains attentive to the challenges of documenting the work of female stars, examining a range of archives, popular and scholarly, where traces of Leigh's life and work might be glimpsed" -- Shelley Stamp, author of Lois Weber in Early Hollywood "Lisa Stead re-frames Vivien Leigh as an archive in motion, defying reduction and fossilisation, and demonstrates the constellation of stories, memories, items and relationships that constitute the star's presence in archives. Stead's inventive and inquisitive approach has produced a fresh framework at the vanguard of star studies: inclusive, interdisciplinary, and pioneering." -- Lucy Bolton, Reader in Film Studies, Queen Mary, University of London

Selling point: First major single-authored scholarly monograph focused solely on Vivien Leigh Selling point: Showcases new ways of producing histories of women's creative labor and stardom through the archive Selling point: Uses original oral history to provide rich new understandings of Vivien Leigh's legacy and meanings for fans, collectors and archival institutions Selling point: Illuminates a rich network of archival materials and makes new connections between a variety of different collections

Lisa Stead is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. She has published in the areas of adaptation, interwar women's cinema and literature, fan magazines, location filming histories, and cinemagoing histories. She is the author of Off to the Pictures: Women's Writing, Cinemagoing and Movie Culture in interwar Britain (2016), and co-editor (with Carrie Smith) of The Boundaries of the Literary Archive (2013). She is Principle Investigator of AHRC Early Career Fellowship project Reframing Vivien Leigh: Stardom, Archive and Access (2019-2020).

Selling point: First major single-authored scholarly monograph focused solely on Vivien Leigh Selling point: Showcases new ways of producing histories of women's creative labor and stardom through the archive Selling point: Uses original oral history to provide rich new understandings of Vivien Leigh's legacy and meanings for fans, collectors and archival institutions Selling point: Illuminates a rich network of archival materials and makes new connections between a variety of different collections