
Where Madness Lies
The Double Life of Vivien Leigh
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Narrated by:
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Sarah Welborn
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By:
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Lyndsy Spence
About this listen
Vivien Leigh was one of the greatest film and theatrical stars of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Her Oscar-winning performances in Gone With the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire have cemented her status as an icon of Hollywood.
From 1940 to 1960, Leigh was married to Sir Laurence Olivier, and together they were considered the royal couple of British theater. Indeed, their romance and acting partnerships captured the imagination of the public around the world.
Behind the scenes, however, Leigh's personal life was marred by manic depression. Largely misunderstood and subjected to barbaric mistreatment at the hands of her doctors, she would also suffer the heartbreak of Olivier's infidelity. Contributing to her image as a tragic heroine, she would die at the age of fifty-three.
Unlike previous biographies, Where Madness Lies begins in 1953 when Leigh suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized. The tragic story unfolds as she tries to rebuild her life, salvage her career, and save her marriage.
Featuring a wealth of unpublished material—including private correspondence—Lyndsy Spence reveals how Leigh tragically fell victim to the draconian medical practices of the era.
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Story
Before Anna Delvey, before the Tinder Swindler, there was Kari Ferrell. Adopted at a young age by a Mormon family in Utah, Kari struggled with questions of self-worth and identity as one of the few Asian Americans in her insulated community, leading her to run with the “bad crowd” in an effort to fit in. Soon, stealing from superstores turned into picking up men (and picking their pockets), and before she knew it, Kari had graduated from petty theft to Utah’s most wanted list. Though Kari was able to escape the Southwest, she couldn’t outrun her new moniker: the Hipster Grifter.
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Very interested and perfect the way she didn’t do too long in one area
- By Amazon Customer on 03-31-25
By: Kari Ferrell
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The Scapegoat
- The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
- By: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
- Narrated by: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
- Length: 25 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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As King James I’s favorite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was similarly enthralled and made Buckingham his best friend and mentor. A dazzling figure on horseback and a skilful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. He became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.
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Perfect
- By Greg Murphy on 03-13-25
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Cocktails with George and Martha
- Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- By: Philip Gefter
- Narrated by: Alexa Morden
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn’t be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s.
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Another Bad Narration
- By TPH on 02-25-24
By: Philip Gefter
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Kate Remembered
- By: A. Scott Berg
- Narrated by: Tony Goldwyn
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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For seven decades Katharine Hepburn played a leading role in the popular culture of the 20th century, reigning as an admired actress, a beloved movie star, and a treasured icon of the modern American woman. She also remained one of the most private of all the public figures of her time.
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Why Do I Bother
- By Patricia B Tripoli on 01-17-11
By: A. Scott Berg
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Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell
- By: Anne Edwards
- Narrated by: Karen Commins
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Margaret Mitchell was as complex and compelling as her legendary heroine, Scarlett O'Hara, and her story is as dramatic as anything out of her own imagination. Indeed, it is the basis for the legend she created. Gone with the Wind took the American reading public by storm and went on to become one of the most popular books and motion pictures of all time. The book was a phenomenon whose success has never been equaled, but it shattered Margaret Mitchell's private life.
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Interesting - but far too padded with minutiae
- By Summer Layne on 12-13-17
By: Anne Edwards
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Summer of Fire and Blood
- The German Peasants' War
- By: Lyndal Roper
- Narrated by: Rose Akroyd
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as well over a hundred thousand people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they proved no match for the forces of the lords.
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A Lost History Recovered
- By C. C. Kissinger on 03-12-25
By: Lyndal Roper
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Saturday Night
- A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live
- By: Doug Hill, Jeff Weingrad
- Narrated by: Bill Hemberger
- Length: 20 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Saturday Night is the intimate, original history of Saturday Night Live, from its beginnings as an outlaw program produced by an unruly band of renegades from the comedy underground to a TV institution that made stars of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy. This is the book that revealed to the world what really happened behind the scenes during the first ten years of this groundbreaking program, from the battles SNL fought with NBC to the battles fought within the show itself.
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Wonderful story, noticeable mispronunciations.
- By Fard Muhammad on 03-08-25
By: Doug Hill, and others
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The Motherload
- By: Sarah Hoover
- Narrated by: Sarah Hoover
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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“The kid was objectively a tiny worm, even worse, a worm with my nose.” Welcome to Sarah Hoover’s unflinching take on motherhood and its expectations in which the beatific narrative women have been fed—one of immediate connection to your child followed by a joyful path of maternal discovery—turns out to be not quite true. In The Motherload, Hoover provides a candid, funny, and sobering look at the journey women undertake as expectant mothers and wives from the early days of pregnancy through labor and beyond.
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Needs Perspective
- By Jana Jamail on 02-10-25
By: Sarah Hoover
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Deliberate Cruelty
- Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century
- By: Roseanne Montillo
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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When Ann Woodward shot her husband, banking heir Billy Woodward, in the middle of the night in 1955, her life changed forever. Though she claimed she thought he was a prowler, few believed the woman who had risen from charismatic showgirl to popular socialite. Everyone had something to say about the scorching scandal afflicting one of the most rich and famous families of New York City, but no one was more obsessed with the tale than Truman Capote.
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An interesting true crime story buried in here
- By Quinn on 11-11-22
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The Secret History of the Rape Kit
- A True Crime Story
- By: Pagan Kennedy
- Narrated by: Claire Danes
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1972, Martha "Marty" Goddard volunteered at a crisis hotline, counseling girls who had been molested by their fathers, their teachers, their uncles. Soon, Marty was on a mission to answer a question: Why were so many sexual predators getting away with these crimes? By the end of the decade, she had launched a campaign pushing hospitals and police departments to collect evidence of sexual assault and treat survivors with dignity. She designed a new kind of forensics tool—the rape kit—and new practices around evidence collection that spread across the country.
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A forgotten woman who changed the world
- By Gregory J. Baldwin on 01-19-25
By: Pagan Kennedy
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Notorious
- Portraits of Stars from Hollywood, Culture, Fashion, and Tech
- By: Maureen Dowd
- Narrated by: Maureen Dowd
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Shining a white-hot spotlight on America’s famous, from Hollywood legends to Broadway stars to media moguls, Notorious is a captivating assortment of columnist Maureen Dowd’s most compelling style features and profiles. Using her signature wit and incisive commentary as a scalpel, Dowd dissects influential cultural elite.
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The honesty of the subjects
- By rumdok on 03-22-25
By: Maureen Dowd
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Astor
- The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune
- By: Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
- Narrated by: Anderson Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society. The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic.
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A family first made, then destroyed by wealth.
- By Barbara W. on 09-23-23
By: Anderson Cooper, and others
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Life Will Be the Death of Me
- ...And You Too!
- By: Chelsea Handler
- Narrated by: Chelsea Handler
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of President Donald Trump’s election, feeling that her country—her life—has become unrecognizable, Chelsea Handler has an awakening. Fed up with the privileged bubble she’s lived in, she decides it’s time to make some changes.
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Raw Chelsea Hander
- By LSnid on 04-14-19
By: Chelsea Handler
Interesting but hollow.
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Disappointing
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Disjointed story line
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even more depressing than I anticipated, and a lot of thing were left out
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Best VL Bio
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