The grand Dame of Hollywood
How Gone With The Wind actress Olivia de Havilland rose to top
She is one of the last surviving legends of Hollywood’s golden era. And last week, just a fortnight short of her 101st birthday, Gone with the Wind star Olivia de Havilland was made Britain’s oldest Dame, for services to drama.
The actress won two Oscars and starred in 49 films, many of them classics, in a career spanning six decades.
But her own life has been so colourful it could rival any movie script, with romances with her leading men and a feud with her younger sister, actress Joan Fontaine, that lasted a lifetime.
She was born on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916 to British parents living in Tokyo.
The family moved to California in 1919, where the girls’ mother Lilian, herself a former stage actress, taught them drama, music and elocution.
It was her insistence on keeping their cut-glass English accents which was to make both hot property in Hollywood.
At the age of 18, Olivia got her big break – being cast as understudy for the part of Hermia in an LA stage version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
She got the chance to step in on the opening night and earned rave reviews.
Warner Brothers approached her to reprise the role in a film version of the play and offered her a contract.
Just a year later she was to appear opposite Errol Flynn for the very first time in Captain Blood.
The on-screen chemistry between the pair was so strong that their relationship was the talk of Hollywood.
Given Flynn’s notorious womanising and the fact they were on-screen lovers eight times, rumours were rife of a passionate affair between them.
But Olivia has said that while they did fall in love, their relationship was never consummated because Flynn was married to actress Lili Damita.
Speaking in 2009 she said: “Yes, we did fall in love, and I believe this is evident in the screen chemistry between us. But his circumstances at the time prevented the relationship going further.”
In 1939 Olivia was cast as Melanie Hamilton in the iconic film Gone with the Wind. Her performance as Scarlett O’Hara’s good-hearted rival won her a first Oscar nomination, aged just 22.
But despite her success, she wasn’t happy with some of the roles she was offered. And the studio suspended her when she rejected them.
Olivia sued Warner Bros in 1940 after it extended her seven-year contract to cover time spent on suspension. She won and the landmark 1944 ruling ended the tight grip studios had on their stars – and is still known as De Havilland’s Law today.
The row did not harm her career as she went on to win Best Actress Oscars for To Each His Own and The Heiress.
But she wasn’t the only star in the family – her sister Joan Fontaine, who had taken their stepfather’s surname after their mother remarried, was also lighting up the silver screen.
But animosity from childhood snowballed into a lifelong feud. It was Joan who first won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in Suspicion. Both were nominated – Olivia for Hold Back the Dawn.
Relations were tense at the ceremony and when Joan was announced as the winner, memories of their childhood rows came flooding back.
Joan wrote in her autobiography: “I stared across the table, where Olivia was sitting directly opposite me. ‘Get up there, get up there’, Olivia whispered commandingly. Now what had I done?
“All the animosity we’d felt towards each other as children, the hair-pullings, the savage wrestling matches, the time Olivia fractured my collarbone, all came rushing back in kaleidoscopic imagery.
We did fall in love. It’s evident in the screen chemistry between us OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND ON CO-STAR ERROL FLYNN
My paralysis was total.” Olivia, who was 15 months older, hadn’t taken it well when her baby sister arrived and competed for her parents’ attention.
She is said to have rattled the baby’s cot and even cut up her hand-medown clothes so young Joan would have to sew them back together.
And when Olivia was the first to make it big in Hollywood, Joan acted as her chauffeur and was discouraged by their mother from seeking roles at Warner Bros as Olivia thrived there.
There is even a famous photo of the sisters at the 1946 Oscars ceremony where Olivia had just won the Best Actress gong. Joan is seen to be going to congratulate her sister, only to be given the cold shoulder.
Olivia said at the time: “Our relations had been strained for quite some time. I couldn’t change my attitude.”
The siblings’ relationship was broken beyond repair when their mother died in 1975. Joan claimed Olivia did not inform her while she was away touring with a play.
In fact, Olivia sent a telegram which took two weeks to arrive. But the sisters were never to speak again.
Three years later, Joan said: “Olivia has always said I was first at everything. I got married first, got an Academy Award first, had a child first.
“If I die, she’ll be furious because again I’ll have got there first!” Joan passed away, aged 96, in 2013, and Olivia released a statement saying she was shocked and saddened.
While Joan may have been the first of the pair to marry, Olivia was never short of admirers.
Despite, her love for Flynn, she dated tycoon Howard Hughes, actor James Stewart, director John Houston, and rejected the advances of John F Kennedy. She married her first husband Marcus Goodrich in 1946. The couple had a son Benjamin who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 19 and died of a heart attack at 41, brought on by treatments for the disease.
Olivia and Goodrich divorced in 1953 and she went on to marry Pierre Galante, an executive editor for the French magazine Paris Match. At the age of 40, Olivia gave birth to their daughter Gisele. The couple separated in 1962 but continued to share a house for six years to bring up their child, and Olivia cared for him when he was dying of cancer in 1998.
She still lives in Paris and says her honour from the Queen is the best 101st birthday gift she could wish for.
Olivia was put forward for the honour by critic and biographer Roger Lewis.
She told him: “I feel like a survivor from an age that people no longer understand.
“Anyone who has ever heard my name has the distinct impression I was put under the sod years ago.”
I feel like a survivor from an age that people no longer understand OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND REFLECTING ON HER LIFE