Three weeks, two lovers, one shelved film: Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier’s forgotten blackmail drama 21 Days

With his protégé Merle Oberon making a name in Hollywood, Hungarian producer Alexander Korda was eager to launch a new star into British cinema, and set his sights on Vivien Leigh. In 1937, she appeared opposite Laurence Olivier in the historical drama Fire over England and ably took on Conrad Veidt’s Nazi agent in the effective spy thriller Dark Journey. That March, she also signed a contract to act in another feature with Olivier, by which time the pair had embarked on an affair, both leaving their spouses and children.

The film was to be an adaptation of John Galsworthy’s 1919 play The First and the Last, which, somewhat aptly, relates the tale of a young man, Larry Darrant, who falls in love with a married woman. When her ruthless, blackmailing husband tracks her down, Darrant accidentally kills him. The couple then spends an agonising three weeks waiting to see whether the defrocked minister who has been falsely accused of the crime will be found guilty. If he is, Larry is determined to turn himself in.

The film’s director, Basil Dean, had produced the play on stage in 1921, and it had been filmed as The Stranger by Famous Players-Lasky in 1924 with Betty Compson and Richard Dix. This screen version was adapted by Dean, working with novelist and critic Graham Greene, initially under the original title which was changed before release, 21 Days more effectively emphasising the couple’s limited time together. Shooting took place between early May and July 1937 and both Dean and his stars approached the production with some trepidation.

Dean was uncertain about the casting of Leigh due to her lack of experience and had wanted a different actress. Both actors had worked with Dean before and found him difficult, a reputation he had certainly acquired over the years. In turn, Dean found his stars a handful – if they weren’t all over each other, they were giggling and ruining shots. Co-star Leslie Banks wasn’t much better and on one occasion shooting had to be halted because Olivier and Banks couldn’t stop laughing, causing Dean to stalk angrily off the set. Eventually, Korda himself had to step in to direct some scenes to alleviate the tension on set.

Dean remained bitter about the experience of making the film, realising in hindsight that “both Galsworthy’s story and myself had been pawns in this larger game”, which was Korda’s determination to make a star out of Leigh. He was forced to put up with breaks in the filming when Olivier and Leigh went to Denmark to perform Hamlet at Elsinore. They were much more caught up in doing the play than the film, with Olivier coaching Leigh to play Ophelia in the back of the car to the studio and the pair heading to a Lambeth drill-hall for rehearsals with Tyrone Guthrie each evening.

On a “grey, cold July morning smelling faintly of fish”, critic C.A. Lejeune travelled to Tower Pier to write a set report on the film for Picturegoer, joining cast and crew on a boat called the Royal Eagle as it sailed down to Southend. On the journey back to London, while Dean did sound takes on deck, Lejeune sat below deck watching the stars play gin rummy with press and publicity staff. In her autobiography, Lejeune recorded a conversation that had taken place on that trip. The conversation turned to the best-selling novel Gone with the Wind, with someone suggesting that Olivier would make a good Rhett Butler. In response, Leigh snapped, “Larry won’t play Rhett Butler. But I shall play Scarlett O’Hara. You wait and see.”

Leigh’s prediction of course came true, but what she didn’t foresee was that 21 Days wouldn’t reach the screen until her casting in the Hollywood blockbuster was announced two years later. Editing had been completed by the autumn, but the film wasn’t released, instead going into Korda’s cold store labelled ‘asset’. It was eventually trade shown in April 1939, by which time its two stars had gone to Hollywood and Korda sold the film to Columbia on the back of their rise to fame. Apparently, Leigh and Olivier didn’t actually see the film until it was released in America in May 1940; legend has it that they sneaked anonymously into a screening in New York but walked out before it was halfway through. 

Despite having contributed to the screenplay, Graham Greene reviewed the film negatively in The Spectator, presumably airing his frustrations with the writing process. “Galsworthy’s story was peculiarly unsuited for film adaptation, as its whole point lay in a double suicide (forbidden by the censor), a burned confession and an innocent man’s conviction for murder (forbidden by the great public). For the rather dubious merits of the original, the adaptors have substituted incredible coincidences and banal situations.” Greene blamed Korda for the film’s failure, writing, somewhat mysteriously, “I wish I could tell the extraordinary story that lies behind this shelved and resurrected picture. A story involving a theme-song, a bottle of whisky, and camels in Wales… Meanwhile, let one guilty man, at any rate, stand in the dock, swearing never, never to do it again.”

Quite why Korda didn’t feel the the film was good enough to release is difficult to fathom, as 21 Days stands up well, although its principle selling point, its stars, are perhaps not its greatest strength. “Laurence Olivier is lacking in restraint… and Vivien Leigh is not much better. These two unfortunately do not help to render the drama thematically plausible,” wrote the critic of Kinematograph Weekly. Their acting is rather mannered, but they are extremely decorative and their mutual attraction certainly comes across on screen.

Banks gives an accomplished turn as Darrant’s barrister brother, but the film’s stand-out performance is that of Hay Petrie as the ex-clergyman falsely accused of murder who poignantly accepts his fate. A familiar face in character roles throughout the 1930s and up until his death in 1948, Petrie brings an honesty and depth to the role, despite being hampered by some rather clumsy make-up to make him look older than his 42 years.

Though it’s largely studio-bound, 21 Days has some nice London location work and the sequence on the Thames steamer has an almost documentary feel. The recreation of Soho at Denham studios is remarkably effective; a market scene is brought to life by the set design of Alexander Korda’s brother Vincent, who also recreates the interior of Coventry Street’s Vita-Sun Café. 

The press made much of the fact that the 14 waitresses seen on screen were genuine ‘nippies’ (the nickname given to Lyons Corner House staff) who’d been picked from the 400-strong team employed by the chain.

21 Days had a fairly sparse distribution in Britain, mostly seen in a double bill with Three Cornered Moon, a Claudette Colbert drama from 1933. The film remains a fascinating picture of the two actors on the cusp of stardom, and embarking on a relationship that was to become one of the most legendary, and turbulent, in show business.

The original nitrate negatives of the film came to the BFI National Archive from Rank in 1973 and an intermediate safety element and a viewable print were made in 1984.