Vivien Merchant
| Vivien Merchant | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Vivien Merchant by Cecil Beaton |
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| Born | Ada Thompson 22 July 1929 Manchester, Lancashire, England |
| Died | 3 October 1982 (aged 53) London, England, UK |
Vivien Merchant (born Ada Thompson; 22 July 1929 – 3 October 1982) was a British actress.
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[edit] Career
Merchant performed in many stage productions and several films, including Alfie (1966) Accident (1967) Frenzy (1972) and The Offence (also 1972). Her performance in Alfie earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress, and the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress.
[edit] Personal life
Merchant was the first wife of the playwright Harold Pinter, whom she met when working as a repertory actress and married in 1956. Their son, Daniel, was born in 1958.[1]
Having performed the role of Rose in a production of his first play, The Room (1957) at the Hampstead Theatre in 1960, she also appeared in many of Pinter's subsequent works, including as Ruth in The Homecoming (1964) on stage (1965) and screen (The Homecoming, 1973). The last of his plays in which she performed was Old Times (1971) as Anna.
Their marriage began disintegrating in the mid-1960s. From 1962 to 1969, Harold Pinter had a clandestine affair with Joan Bakewell, which informs Pinter's play Betrayal and his film adaptation, also called Betrayal.[2]
In 1975 Pinter began a serious affair with the historian Lady Antonia Fraser, the wife of Sir Hugh Fraser, which he confessed to his wife that March.[3] At first, Merchant took it very well, saying positive things about Fraser, according to her friend artist Guy Vaesen (as cited by Michael Billington); but, Vaesen recalled, after "a female friend of Vivien's trotted round to her house and poisoned her mind against Antonia ... [L]ife in Hanover Terrace [where the Pinters then lived] gradually became impossible". Pinter left, and Vivien Merchant filed for divorce and gave interviews to the tabloid press, expressing her distress.[4][5] The Frasers' divorce became final in 1977 and the Pinters' in 1980. In 1980 Pinter and Fraser married.
[edit] Death
Merchant became deeply depressed after the end of her marriage to Pinter, and turned to drinking for relief. She died at the age of 53 on 3 October 1982, from acute alcoholism.[6][7]
[edit] References
- ^ Details about the Pinters' marriage and their family life are provided by Michael Billington, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter (London: Faber and Faber, 1996); rev. ed. Harold Pinter (London: Faber and Faber, 2007). (Pinter's official authorized biography.)
- ^ Billington, Harold Pinter 256–67
- ^ Billington, Harold Pinter 253
- ^ E.g., "Actress Tells All", The Daily Mail, as cited in Billington, Harold Pinter 253–54.
- ^ Cf. "People", Time 11 Aug. 1975. Archived in the Time Archive: 1923 to the Present. (Page 1 of 2 pages.)
- ^ "Death of Vivien Merchant Is Ascribed to Alcoholism", The New York Times 7 October 1982, accessed 13 September 2007.
- ^ According to Billington, Pinter "did everything possible to support" Merchant until her death and regrets that he became estranged from their son, Daniel, after their separation and Pinter's marrying Antonia Fraser. A reclusive writer and musician, Daniel does not use the surname Pinter, having adopted as his surname his maternal grandmother's maiden name Brand after his parents separated (Harold Pinter pgs. 276, 255)
[edit] External links
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