The stage version of Alexander Dumas’s The Lady of the Camellias was toured by the Old Vic Company in 1961 – 62 and visited the Americas, Australia and New Zealand but was never seen in Britain. Vivien Leigh led the tour, appearing as Viola in Twelfth Night, Paola in Christopher Fry’s adaptation of Giraudoux’s Duel of Angels and Marguerite Gautier, ‘The Lady of the Camellias’. Playing opposite Leigh in all three plays, was John Merivale, her partner from 1960 until her death in 1967. Merivale was born into an acting dynasty; his father was stage and silent film star Philip Merivale and his step-mother was the acclaimed actress Gladys Cooper.

Photographer Anthony Buckley (1912 – 1993) was commissioned to capture a series of images of the play, for marketing and publicity purposes. Buckley opened his first portrait studio in 1937 and he quickly gained a reputation for his portraits of leading actresses of the day. After serving in World War II, he returned to photography and by the early 1950s, his reputation as a leading stage portraitist grew rapidly. In the 1960s he moved to Grosvenor Street, an address that better reflected his enhanced status as a royal photographer.