We are saddened to hear of the passing of the iconic actress Dame Olivia de Havilland. The double Oscar-winner, and the last surviving major cast member of the cast of civil war epic Gone With The Wind (for which she received her first Oscar nomination), passed away in Paris on July 25th at the age of 104.
Born in Tokyo in 1916 to British expatriate parents, de Havilland was the older sister to another actress- Joan Fontaine. In 1919, after her parents divorced, she moved with her mother and sister from Japan to California. Making her film debut in 1935 in Alibi Ike (opposite Joe E. Brown), one of her earliest film roles was in Max Reinhardt's star-studded adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) as Hermia, opposite James Cagney, Dick Powell, and Mickey Rooney.
Also in 1935, she made the first of eight films with Errol Flynn, playing Arabella Bishop in Captain Blood (1935). They would also star together in The Charge Of The Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938) (where she played Maid Marian to Flynn's Robin), and The Private Lives Of Elizabeth And Essex (1939). The chemistry between Flynn and de Havilland was evident and palpable, and the two admitted to having "crushes" on each other. It is speculated that they were actually deeply in love and de Havilland even said that Flynn had proposed to her, but she turned him down as he was married to someone else at the time.
At the age of 22, de Havilland was cast as Melanie Hamilton, the virtuous and placid counterpoint to the wayward Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh), in Gone With The Wind. de Havilland gained the first of her five Oscar nominations- and her only Best Supporting Actress nod- for her performance, although famously lost to her co-star Hattie McDaniel who became the first African-American actress to be nominated for, or win, an Oscar. de Havilland was loaned out from Warner Brothers to play the role, despite Jack Warner's initial resistance to the idea.
de Havilland's second Oscar nomination came in 1942 when she was nominated for Best Actress for playing Emmy Brown in Hold Back The Dawn (1941). Joan Fontaine was also nominated for Best Actress for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941), making it the first time a pair of siblings were nominated for Oscars in the same category. Fontaine famously won, and it is rumoured that an already fractious relationship turned to estrangement.
After playing such a strong role in Hold Back The Dawn, de Havilland demanded better roles from Warner Brothers rather than the "sweet young thing" roles she was getting. On refusing to take the roles, she was suspended for six months then- to add insult to injury- was told she would have to make up that lost time at the end of her contract. Incensed, she sued Warner Brothers- and won the case. In what became known as the "de Havilland decision", the court ruled that not only did de Havilland have to make up the time, but that performers would be limited to seven years. Essentially, the ruling meant studios could no longer treat their performers as property, and helped to bring the studio system to an end.
In 1946, de Havilland gained a second Best Actress Oscar nomination- and her first win- for playing Josephine Norris- an unwed mother who was forced to give up her child to avoid scandal and follows her son's life from afar- in To Each His Own. In her acceptance speech, she set (and still holds) the record for the most people thanked in an Oscar acceptance speech, by thanking 27 different people! She was also offered the role of Mary Hatch Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life (1946) but turned it down; it was eventually taken by Donna Reed. She also played twins in the noirish drama The Dark Mirror (1946), where it's often unsure whether you're watching the "good" twin or "bad" twin.
Her next Oscar nomination came for playing a woman who finds herself in an insane asylum, but cannot remember how she got there, in The Snake Pit (1948), an acclaimed portrait of mental illness and (for the time) a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal, although it hasn't aged well. At the end of the 1940s, she appeared as Catherine Sloper in The Heiress (1949), an adaptation of Henry James' novella Washington Square, and won her second Best Actress Oscar for playing the naive young woman targeted by a fortune-hunter but who finds her dignity when she rejects her emotionally abusive father and would-be suitor.
She was offered the role of Blanche DuBois in the film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) but turned the role down; she reportedly refused saying "a lady just doesn't say or do those things", but she had recently given birth to her son and couldn't relate to the material. The role was taken by her Gone With The Wind co-star Vivien Leigh. Instead, de Havilland took roles on Broadway (in Romeo And Juliet and Candida) and took the role of the enigmatic Rachel Ashley in My Cousin Rachel (1952), opposite Richard Burton.
She moved to Paris in the mid-1950s and her film and TV appearances became more sporadic. In 1962, she published Every Frenchman Has One, a wry autobiographical account of her attempts to adapt to French life. In 1964, she appeared in a double-bill of dark thrillers; first was Lady In A Cage as a wealthy woman terrorised by a group of hoodlums when she gets trapped in the elevator in her building. Secondly, she took the role of Miriam Deering in the southern gothic mystery Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) opposite Bette Davis; the role was meant to be taken by Joan Crawford to reunite the What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? stars but, after a few weeks of shooting, Crawford withdrew. de Havilland is a brilliantly cool, scheming foil against the showier performance of Davis, and it ranks as one of her finest performances. In 1965, she became the first female president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.
In the 1970s, de Havilland took roles as the Mother Superior in Pope Joan (1972), Emily Livingston in disaster movie Airport '77 (1977) [having passed on playing Lisolette Mueller in The Towering Inferno (1974)], and Maureen Schuester in Irwin Allen's horror-thriller The Swarm (1978). Her last film role came in 1979 as the Queen Mother in The Fifth Musketeer, but she continued to appear in TV movies, including Murder Is Easy (1982), The Royal Romance Of Charles And Diana (1982), and Anastasia: The Mystery Of Anna (1986) for which she won a Golden Globe. Her final role came in the TV movie The Woman He Loved, about the relationship between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.
Despite no longer appearing on screens, de Havilland was still very highly thought of, not only in Hollywood but throughout the world. She was made an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Hertfordshire in 1998 and, when she made an appearance at the 75th Academy Awards in 2003, to introduce the Oscar Family Album segment, she received a four-minute standing ovation. She was presented with the National Medal of Arts in 2008 by President George W. Bush. In July 2016, to honour her 100th birthday, she was named Turner Classic Movies Star of the Month and, two weeks before her 101st birthday, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2017 Birthday Honours. She is the oldest woman to receive this honour.
However, de Havilland would come back to public life in 2017 when she sued Ryan Murphy Productions and the FX network for defamation, due to what she considered an inaccurate portrayal of her in the mini-series Feud: Bette And Joan. She was played by Catherine Zeta-Jones as a gossip, and particularly took offence to a scene which has her calling her sister a "bitch". In her lawsuit, de Havilland claimed this portrayal damaged her “professional reputation for integrity, honesty, generosity, self-sacrifice and dignity". However, the lawsuit was dismissed in 2018. She petitioned the Supreme Court for a hearing, but was denied the opportunity to present her case.
In an interview with The Indepedent, de Havilland discussed her career saying “I feel not happy, not contented, but something else. Just grateful for having lived and having done so many things that I wanted to do and have also had so much meaning for other people.”
She has made an indelible mark on the cinematic landscape, and will be sadly missed. Our thoughts are with her family and friends at this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment