Vivien Leigh friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. Olivier and Leigh began an affair while acting as lovers in "Fire Over England" (1937), but Olivier was still married to actress Jill Esmond. During this period, Leigh read the Margaret Mitchell novel "Gone with the Wind" and instructed her American agent to recommend her to David O. Selznick, who was planning a film version. She remarked to a journalist, "I've cast myself as Scarlett O'Hara", and "The Observer" film critic C. A. Lejeune recalled a conversation of the same period in which Leigh "stunned us all" with the assertion that
Gone with the Wind in the Vatican by an illegitimate daughter. The book also raises questions about the death of Pope John Paul I. Another anecdote details an affair between a young priest at the nunciature in Bern, Switzerland and a nun, who are both reassigned – the nun significantly less gainfully – with the help of the priest's influential Vatican patron. Some critics regard the work as little more than "another recent catalogue of papal sin" and consider the majority of its details dubious. Others have a more favorable view of the work, considering it a "kiss-and-tell classic". Gone with the Wind in the Vatican Gone