Late actress’ legacy extends beyond one film
Olivia de Havilland, known for her role in “Gone with the Wind,” took on Warner Bros. over treatment of actors.
All too often lately we’ve felt obligated to use this space to pay tribute to great figures in American arts and culture who have left us. Some of them were of local renown, such as TV personality Gene London and radio legend Gene Shay, and others internationally famous, such as Carl Reiner and Kirk Douglas.
Another such moment has arrived with the July 26 death of actress Olivia de Havilland at the age of 104.
There is much to consider when recalling de Havilland’s life. She is best known for her role as the kindhearted Melanie in the 1939 blockbuster epic “Gone With the Wind.” De Havilland also enjoyed considerable success co-starring with Errol Flynn in a series of films, including the classic swashbucklers “Adventures of Robin Hood” and “Captain Blood.”
But she played an even more important role in real life than in any of her movies. A lawsuit she filed against Warner Bros. in 1943 helped take down the studio system that treated actors as indentured servants. Warner Bros. tried to keep her under contract after it had expired, claiming she owed six more months because she had been suspended for refusing roles. Though others, including her friend Bette Davis, had tried and failed to fight the studios on this issue, de Havilland prevailed in court. The decision in her favor is still unofficially called the “De Havilland law.”
Her explanation for taking on the studio says a lot about de Havilland and her attitude toward her work and her fans. She did not want to be forced into performing in movies that weren’t up to her standards.
“I knew that I had an audience, that people really were interested in my work, and that they would go to see a film because I was in it, and that I had a responsibility toward them,” de Havilland once told the Academy of Achievement. “I couldn’t bear to disappoint them by doing indifferent work in an indifferent film.”
That uncompromising attitude led to some of de Havilland’s greatest successes. Free to choose her own projects, she won an Academy Award in 1946 for her performance in “To Each His Own,” a melodrama about out-of-wedlock birth. A second Oscar came three years later for “The Heiress,” co-starring with Montgomery Clift and Sir Ralph Richardson in an adaptation of Henry James’ “Washington Square.”
In recent years de Havilland astounded the world with her remarkable longevity.
Consider that when she was taking part in the making of “Gone With the Wind,” which depicts the Civil War era, a fair number of people who actually lived through that period were alive. Or that in her memoir “Every Frenchman Has One,” published in 1962, she quipped that readers might be surprised to learn that she was still around. Indeed, she stuck around for nearly six more decades.
One could argue that the deaths of Douglas and de Havilland have taken away the last living ties to Hollywood’s golden age.
A few people who were making movies in the 1940s and ’50s are still with us, including Eva Marie Saint, 96; Angela Lansbury, 94; and Sidney Poitier, 93. But Saint and Poitier generally are associated with a different generation of movie stars, and today Lansbury is perhaps better known for her work on television and Broadway than for her film career, impressive as it was.
We’re fortunate that even as the stars of the past fade from real life, their work lives on, and not just in memory. One of the glories of film is that we can still enjoy great works of the past long after those who made them have left us.
We salute Olivia de Havilland for a life well lived and a legacy likely to endure for the next 104 years and beyond.