STAR OF HOLLYWOOD’S GOLDEN AGE OF FILM
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND • 1916-2020
Forever a free spirit in a buttoned-down world, Olivia de Havilland battled studios for workers’ rights, waged a First Amendment fight over the use of her image, and ultimately turned her back on the film industry and moved to Paris to live a life of unfettered freedom.
Through it all, she remained the essence of Hollywood royalty, a title she gracefully accepted.
The last remaining star from the 1939 epic “Gone With the Wind” and a twotime Academy Award winner, de Havilland died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Paris, where she had lived for decades. She was 104.
De Havilland was generally considered the last of the big-name actors from the golden age of Hollywood, an era when the studios hummed with activity and the stars seemed larger than life.
Early in her career, audiences knew de Havilland best as the demure, pretty heroine opposite the dashing Errol Flynn in “Captain Blood” and other popular Warner Bros. costume dramas of the 1930s, including “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
But she won her lead-actress Oscars in more substantial, less f lattering roles after leaving Warner Bros.
in the mid-1940s.
Her first Oscar came for the 1946 film “To Each His Own,” a World War I-era drama in which she plays an unwed mother who lives to regret giving up her young son.
She won her second for “The Heiress,” a 1949 drama set in 19th century New York in which she portrays a shy and plain-looking young woman who falls in love with a handsome young man (played by Montgomery Clift) who her wealthy and overbearing father suspects is a fortune hunter.
De Havilland also received a lead-actress Oscar nomination for her memorable role in “The Snake Pit,” a 1948 drama that chronicles the mental breakdown and recovery of a young married woman who is placed in a mental institution.
But her most enduring screen role was that of sweet Melanie in “Gone With the Wind,” the Civil War drama that won hearts and Oscars but ultimately became a symbol of the country’s systemic racism for its romanticized portrayal of the antebellum South.
De Havilland was the last survivor among the film’s principal actors, who included Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard and Hattie Mcdaniel.
Off-screen, de Havilland was known in Hollywood for her milestone legal victory over Warner Bros. in the mid-1940s, a court decision that revolutionized actorstudio contractual relationships and later provided ammunition for her battle with the cable television network FX.
And industry insiders and fans were well aware of her much-publicized feud with her movie-star sister, Joan Fontaine, an outsizedsibling rivalry that began in their childhood.
That Fontaine followed her sister to Hollywood and won the first lead-actress Oscar in the family — in 1942 for “Suspicion,” beating out de Havilland in “Hold Back the Dawn” — didn’t help matters.
In a 1978 interview, Fontaine said, “I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it.”
Fontaine died of natural causes in 2013 at the age of 96. De Havilland said the two had mended their differences before her sister’s death.
The daughter of British parents, de Havilland was born July 1, 1916, in Tokyo, where her father headed a patent law firm.
Her mother, who had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, named her firstborn daughter Olivia after the character in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”
In 1919, when de Havilland was not yet 3, her parents’ marital problems prompted her mother to take her two daughters and move to Northern California, where they settled in Saratoga, near San Jose. De Havilland’s parents later divorced, and her mother married George M. Fontaine, manager of a local department store.
De Havilland’s ascent to stardom came at whiplashinducing speed. She was 18 when she was plucked from obscurity to play Hermia in theater impresario Max Reinhardt’s celebrated 1934 Hollywood Bowl production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Reinhardt also cast her in the 1935 film version of the Shakespeare fantasy, which starred James Cagney and Mickey Rooney.
She signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros., and by the end of 1935, she had not only played Hermia, but also played opposite Joe E. Brown in “Alibi Ike,” appeared with James Cagney in “The Irish in Us” and costarred with Flynn, another new Warner contract player, in “Captain Blood.”
Flynn and de Havilland appeared together in seven more films over the next six years, including “Dodge City,” “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” and “They Died With Their Boots On.”
But the fiercely ambitious de Havilland yearned to play more challenging roles than those being offered to her at Warner Bros.
She found such a role as Melanie in “Gone With the Wind,” independent producer David O. Selznick’s sweeping adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
“Gone With the Wind” was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including lead actress for Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’hara and supporting actress for performances by de Havilland and Hattie Mcdaniel.
On Oscar night, Leigh won as lead actress and Mcdaniel walked away with the supporting actress honor, the first Black American to receive an Academy Award.
Still unhappy with the kinds of roles Warner Bros. was offering her, de Havilland took frequent suspensions for refusing them.
In 1943, her seven-year contract with Warner Bros. had run its course. But because she had been placed on suspension numerous times for refusing roles, the studio maintained that she owed it an additional six months.
De Havilland sued the studio and won her case in Superior Court, but Jack Warner appealed the decision and enjoined other film companies from hiring her. When the Appellate Court voted unanimously in de Havilland’s favor, Warner appealed to the state Supreme Court. In February 1945, that court upheld the decision.
Freed from Warner Bros., de Havilland began freelancing at different studios and had her choice of scripts.
The actress, whose name had been romantically linked with Howard Hughes, Jimmy Stewart and John Huston, among others, married writer Marcus Aurelius Goodrich, author of the bestseller “Delilah,” in 1946. They had a son, Benjamin, and were divorced in 1952.
A year later, de Havilland met Pierre Galante, a writer and executive of Paris Match magazine.
She and Galante married in Paris in 1955 and had a daughter, Gisele. They were divorced in 1979.
She appeared on Broadway several times during the 1950s and 1960s, including a 1951 revival of “Romeo and Juliet,” a 1952 revival of “Candida,” and “A Gift of Time” in 1962 with Henry Fonda.
But she appeared in only nine films in the 1950s and 1960s, including “Lady in a Cage” in 1964 and “Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte” opposite Bette Davis the same year.
In her later years, she appeared in movies such as “Airport 77” and “The Swarm” in 1978. She officially retired in 1988.
In 2018, she was made a dame of the British Empire, becoming the eldest living person to receive the honor.
On the eve of her 101st birthday, she sued FX over what she alleged was the unauthorized use of her identity in the miniseries “Feud: Bette and Joan,” which chronicled the rivalry between Davis and Joan Crawford.
The case was expedited due to de Havilland’s advanced age. Despite early victories, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in early 2019.
De Havilland is survived by her daughter, Gisele. Her son, Benjamin Goodrich, died in 1991.