10 Things You May Not Know About Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland (1916 – 2020) was a two-time Academy Award Winner for Best Actress. She was the last remaining major movie star from Hollywood’s Golden Age when she passed away at her home in Paris, France, at 104.

1. De Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan. Her father was an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo City at the time of her birth. Her parents were both citizens of the United Kingdom so she became an automatic citizen.

De Havilland as Alice in the Saratoga Community Players production
of Alice in Wonderland in 1933

2. She took ballet lessons at four and piano lessons at five and could read before she was six.

3. De Havilland originally planned on becoming a schoolteacher, focusing on English and speech; she received a scholarship to Mills College in Oakland, CA for this pursuit.

4. She was reluctant to become a film actress but was convinced by director Max Reinhardt (who in some respect discovered her) and producer Henry Blake to sign a contract in 1934 with Warner Bros. Her starting salary was $200 a week, an amazing sum for an 18-year-old actress.

Two perfect profiles: Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn in Captain Blood

5. At age nineteen, de Havilland starred opposite another newcomer, Errol Flynn in Captain Blood, released in 1935. The pairing of the two stars was so popular with the public that they made a total of eight films together.

6. De Havilland was cast as Maid Marian opposite Errol Flynn in the Technicolor classic The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). It was one of the most popular adventure films of the late 1930s.

Hattie McDaniel, (Mammy), de Havilland (Melanie), and Vivien Leigh (Scarlett) in

Gone with the Wind

7. She managed to convince Warner Bros Studio head Jack Warner (with the help of his wife) to be loaned to David O. Selznick to play Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind (1939). She would receive the first of five Academy Award nominations for her role. The New York Times wrote as Melanie de Havilland’s performance “is a gracious, dignified, tender gem of characterization.”

8. In 1943 she sued Warner Bros. after her contract was up but the studio contended that she owed them an additional six months for the times she had been suspended for turning down certain roles. She won her case (known today as the De Havilland Law) but Warner Bros. blacklisted de Havilland which resulted in her not working for almost two years.

De Havilland (center) played a patient in a state mental hospital in The Snake Pit (1948)

9. In 1945, de Havilland began filming To Each His Own. She played an unwed mother who gives her child up for adoption. In the film, she ages almost 30 years. She won her first Best Actress Oscar for her performance, marking a remarkable comeback.

De Havilland and Yvette Mieux in Light in the Piazza (1962)

10. She was appointed a Chevaliler of the Legion d’honneur, the highest decoration in France in 2010 by President Nicolas Sarkozy, and was appointed Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 2017 by Queen Elizabeth II.

Olivia de Havilland dead at 104

As Maid Marion in The Adventures of Robin Hood

Olivia de Havilland, winner of two Best Actress Academy Awards and the last remaining star of Gone with the Wind (1939) has died. She passed away in her sleep on July 25, 2020.

De Havilland was one of the last links to Hollywood’s Golden Age, having starred in so many classic films. Ironically, it was her lawsuit against Warner Brothers that helped bring down the studio system. She sued the studio for adding six months to her seven-year contract and won. Her court victory was known as the “de Havilland decision.” She was blackballed for a time by all the major studios, but she fought back and eventually reached heights few actresses ever attain.

In 1945, de Havilland signed a two-picture deal with Paramount. Her first film for that studio was The Well Groomed Bride co-starring Ray Milland, but it would her second Paramount release that would launch her career to the next level. As an unwed mother who gives up her child for adoption in Michell Leisen’s To Each His Own (1946), she won her first Best Actress Academy Award. Better roles continued with Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror (1946) where she played identical twins—one good, the other a psychotic killer. One of her best roles was as Virginia Cunningham in Anatole Litvak’s The Snake Pit (1948). The film dealt with the treatment of patients suffering from mental illness under severe conditions at a state-run mental institution. The film’s success helped bring about many changes in mental hospitals.

William Wyler tapped de Havilland for the lead in The Heiress (1949). The movie was based on the Henry James novel Washington Square. For her performance, she won the New York Film Critics Award, the Golden Globe, and the Academy Award for Best Actress. Now a two-time Oscar winner, de Havilland’s services were in demand by top directors and studios. Elia Kazan wanted her for the role of Blache DuBois in his film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1950), but she turned it down. Her Gone with the Wind co-star Vivien Leigh ended up playing Blanche, winning her second Best Actress Oscar in the process. Besides her work on the screen, de Havilland appeared on Broadway in Romeo and Juliet and Candida, taking the latter on the road.

Celeste Holm (left) and Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit

During the 1950s, de Havilland starred in Not as a Stranger (1955), receiving top-billing over Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra, The Ambassador’s Daughter (1956), and The Proud Rebel (1958). The Proud Rebel, directed by Michael Curtiz co-starred Alan Ladd who would become a lifelong friend. The Ladd family and the de Havilland family remain close to this day. In 1962 she starred in Guy Green’s Light in the Piazza. The film co-starred Rossano Brazzi with Yvette Mimiuex playing de Havilland’s mentally disabled daughter. That same year she starred on Broadway with Henry Fonda in A Gift of Time. The play brought some of the best reviews of her career. The New York World Telegram and Sun said of her performance, “It is Miss de Havilland who gives the play its unbroken continuity. This distinguished actress reveals Lael as a special and admirable woman.” Also that year-a busy one—she published her first book, Every Frenchman Has One about her attempts to adapt to living in France; it became a bestseller.

Olivia de Havilland (left) with Yvette Mimiuex in Light in the Piazza

Her movie career slowed down in the 1960s although she would appear—somewhat reluctantly—in the box office hit Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte with fellow Warner Brothers alum Bette Davis. De Havilland replaced Joan Crawford, at Davis’s request when Crawford dropped out of the film. During the 1970s, she still appeared in films, but she also appeared on television in a variety of productions including Roots: The Next Generations (1979) playing the wife of a former Confederate officer played by Henry Fonda. She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film in 1986 for Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna.

This brief obituary of de Havilland is only a small slice of her talent and impact on Hollywood during its most creative period. Thankfully we have her tremendous body of work which will live on for generations to come.

“The Reckless Moment”—an overlooked film noir gem

Max Ophuls, a renowned German director who only made four films in the United States, directed The Reckless Moment (1949). It starred Joan Bennett and James Mason. It was only Mason’s third American film.

The plot involves Lucia Harper (Bennett), who is trying to keep Ted Darby (Shepperd Strudwick), a low-life criminal, from seeing her teenage daughter, Bea (Geraldine Brooks). He tells Lucia that he’s willing to stop seeing Bea for a price. Lucia is confident that when she tells her daughter Darby’s true feelings, the relationship will come to an end. This is film noir, so no situation gets resolved that easily. Without giving anything away, let’s just say things go horribly wrong, exposing Lucia’s daughter and family to some pretty despicable characters.

Joan Bennett in a pivotal scene from The Reckless Moment

The Backstory
Director Ophuls (1931-1957) was born in Germany, where his film career began. After it was clear the Nazis would take power in Germany, Ophuls, a jew, moved to France in 1933, where he became a French citizen in 1938. After the fall of France, he traveled through Switzerland and Italy, eventually ending up in the United States. In Hollywood, Ophuls directed Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in The Exile (1947), Joan Fontaine and Louis Jordan in Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), and Caught starring James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Robert Ryan. The Reckless Moment would be his last Hollywood film before he returned to France, where he directed major successes La Ronde (1950) and The Earrings of Madame de…(1953), starring Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux.

Joan Bennett (1910–1990) began her film career during the early sound era. A natural blonde, Bennett dyed her hair as a plot device in the film Trade Winds (1938). As a brunette, Bennett projected a sultry persona that had her compared to brunette beauty Hedy Lamarr. During this period, she starred in two costume epics. She played Princess Maria Theresa in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) and Grand Duchess Zona of Lichtenburg in The Son of Monte Cristo (1940).

Joan Bennett in a still from one of her screen tests for Gone with the Wind. This is the famous paddock scene.

Almost Scarlett O’Hara
Bennett was one of two finalists for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), along with Paulette Goddard, who appeared to be the front-runner. There was concern that Goddard’s marriage to Charley Chaplin wasn’t legal, which made Bennett’s prospects to play Scarlett almost certain until Vivian Leigh showed up to watch the filming of the burning of Atlanta scenes on the Selznick backlot. Despite that disappointment, Bennett had a distinguished film career. She worked with many of the top directors of the period, including George Cukor, Mitchell Leisen, Tay Garnett, Henry Hathaway, and Vincente Minnelli. She had a very successful collaboration with the director Fritz Lang. With Lang, she starred in the classics Man Hunt (1940), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945). She worked with the French director Jean Renoir in The Woman on the Beach and with director Zoltan Korda in The Macomber Affair (both 1947), co-starring Gregory Peck. In 1950, she became the perfect wife and mother in Father of the Bride (1950) and its sequel, Father’s Little Dividend (1951), both directed by Minnelli. A scandal after the release of Dividend pretty much ended Bennett’s film career. She continued to act on stage and on television, where she became a pop culture icon playing Elizabeth Collins Stoddard on the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (1966-1971).

James Mason (1909-1984) was an English actor who was a popular film star in Great Britain before he came to Hollywood. Mason was a top box office star in the UK with hits like The Seventh Veil, The Wicked Lady (both 1945), and Odd Man Out (1947).

Barbara Stanwyck and James Mason in East Side, West Side (1949)

Hollywood Calling
Mason went to Hollywood to make Caught (1949), directed by Ophuls. He made three other films in 1949: Madame Bovary, East Side, West Side, and The Reckless Moment. In 1951, he entered into an agreement with 20th Century Fox, where they signed a seven-year contract. At Fox, he starred as General Rommel in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951) directed by Henry Hathaway. It was a commercial and financial success. He reprised the role in The Desert Rats (1953), co-starring a young Richard Burton, with direction by Robert Wise. In 1954, he played the evil Sir Brack in Prince Valiant and Captain Nemo in Disney’s 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea. That same year, he starred in the role he is probably most identified with, Norman Maine in A Star Is Born, co-starring Judy Garland. For his performance in that film, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He continued to act through the fifties and sixties in a variety of films, including North by Northwest, Journey to the Center of the Earth (both 1959), The Marriage-Go-Round (1961), Lolita (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Georgy Girl (1966), and Mayerling (1968). During the 1970s and 1980s, Mason continued to act in film and on television. In 1982, Mason was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Verdict, starring Paul Newman.

Joan Bennett and Elizabeth Taylor Trivia
Bennett and Elizabeth Taylor share the same birthday: February 27.
Bennett played Amy March in Little Women 1933.
Taylor played Amy in Little Women 1949.
Both Bennett and Taylor were grandmothers at 39.
Both Bennett and Taylor gave birth to one of their children on their birthdays.
Bennett and Taylor played mother and daughter, respectively, in Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend.

You can read more about Joan Bennett by clicking here.