Early Life and Acting Debut
Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley in the campus of St. Paul's School, Darjeeling, Bengal, India (British India), to Ernest Hartley, an English officer in the Indian Cavalry, and Gertrude Mary Robinson Yackjee (1888–1972), a devout Roman Catholic, the daughter of Mary I. Robinson and John G. Yackjee, who wed in 1872. Ernest and Gertrude married in Kensington, London in 1912.
In 1917, Ernest Hartley was transferred to Bangalore, while Gertrude and Vivian stayed in Ootacamund. Young Vivian made her first stage appearance at the age of three, reciting "Little Bo Peep" for her mother's amateur theatre group. Gertrude Hartley tried to instill in her daughter an appreciation of literature and introduced her to the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, as well as stories of Greek mythology and Indian folklore. An only child, Vivian Hartley was sent to the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton (now Woldingham School) in 1920, from Loreto Convent, Darjeeling by her devoutly Catholic mother. One of her friends there was future actress Maureen O'Sullivan, two years her senior, to whom Vivian expressed her desire to become "a great actress". She was removed from the school by her father, who took her travelling in Europe; with schooling provided by schools in the areas they travelled, returning to Britain in 1931. She attended one of O'Sullivan's films playing in London's West End and told her parents of her ambitions to become an actress. Her father enrolled her at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London.
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