RaveThe Washington PostMaybe, given time, they would have worked out a balance, like the narcissistic leads of Kiss Me, Kate, but ticking beneath them was Leigh’s bipolar disorder, which manifested itself variously as violent mood swings, tumultuous affairs and, on occasion, psychotic breaks ... It is here, I think, that Galloway, the former executive editor of the Hollywood Reporter, lifts himself clear of previous chronicles, including Olivier’s own self-lacerating memoirs, by supplementing firsthand accounts with retrospective diagnoses by experts like Kay Redfield Jamison and by tracing a genetic link to Leigh’s great-uncle, housed in a Kolkata asylum for much the same symptoms. More lucidly than ever, we can see how, in the grip of her own brain chemistry, Leigh quite literally lost her mind.
