Olivia de Havilland is 102!

Olivia de Havilland turned 102 on July 1. Yes, 102! De Havilland is a true living legend and one of the few movie stars still with us who came to be during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

A two-time Best Actress Oscar winner—To Each His Own 1946 and The Heiress 1949—de Havilland is probably best known to movie audiences today as Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind (1939). De Havilland’s performance in that film is a marvel. In the hands of a lesser actress, Melanie could have been too sickeningly sweet, but in de Havilland’s hands, she’s a strong, compassionate, and intelligent woman. As a friend of mine noted, she understood Scarlett, Ashley, and Rhett better than they understood themselves. Her compassionate, non-judgmental approach endeared herself to all three, even the self-centered Scarlett.

De Havilland was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Melanie, but she was bested by Hattie McDaniel who played the irrepressible Mammie. McDaniel also made film history as the first African American to win an Academy Award.

Joan Fontaine (1917 – 2013), de Havilland’s younger sister was the first in the family to win an Oscar. Both sister’s were nominated the same year (1941). Fontaine was nominated for Best Actress for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion. De Havilland was nominated for Best Actress for her performance in Hold Back the Dawn. De Havilland was so convinced that the winner that year would be Barbara Stanwyck—Stanwyck was nominated for her performance in Ball of Fire, but she also had strong roles in Meet John Doe and The Lady Eve that same year—that she voted for Stanwyck instead of herself. As history would record it, Fontaine was the winner and this was the beginning of the sisters’ famous feud. Fontaine and de Havilland remain the only sisters to have both won Best Actress Oscars.

Celeste Holm and Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit

De Havilland has a strong body of work, most of which holds up under 21st Century scrutiny. Her acting is free from affectation and over-the-top-emoting. Her style remains amazingly contemporary.

Next year (2019) will be the 80th anniversary of the release of Gone With the Wind. Let’s hope de Havilland will be with us to celebrate this film milestone.

Some film highlights from Olivia de Havilland’s career:

Captain Blood (1935)—her first pairing with Errol Flynn
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Dodge City (1939)
The Strawberry Blonde (1941)
Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
The Male Animal (1942)
Princess O’Rourke (1943)
To Each His Own (1946)*
The Dark Mirror (1946)
The Snake Pit (1948)
The Heiress (1949)*
My Cousin Rachel (1952)
The Proud Rebel (1958)
Light in the Piazza (1962)
Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

*Best Actress winner

Classic Films in Context: Gone With The Wind

I decided to write this post about Gone With The Wind after I read “When It Comes To ‘Gone With The Wind,’ Do Kids Today Give A Damn?” at the NPR Web site. The article suggests that the 1939 Best Picture Winner hasn’t aged well. The author of the piece, Neda Ulaby interviewed 13 students studying film at Georgetown University. Ulaby assures us these students are “serious about movies” to support her thesis.

Not so critical analysis
Apparently the fact that the story took place during a time when it was legal to own slaves makes the film unworthy of any respect or a full viewing according to Georgetown film student Mike Minahan. This is what Minahan has to say about Gone With The Wind: “Everything I’ve seen about it says it, like, glorifies the slave era ... and I dunno, what’s the point of that? I don’t see that as a good time in history. ... like, oh, sweet, a love story of people who own slaves.” Notice the “Everything I’ve seen about it” portion of the quote. Did Minahan watch the film in its entirety? Is he basing his opinion, one that Ulaby says most of his fellow Georgetown film students agree with, on the opinions of others? Shouldn’t a film student be more critical in his analysis? Films are like history; they need to be put into context.

It’s Scarlett's point of view
We see Gone With The Wind through Scarlett O’Hara’s (Vivien Leigh) point of view. If the film were told through Mammy’s (Hattie McDaniel) point of view, for example, we’d have an entirely different film. But it’s Scarlett’s movie and it’s her story warts and all. Is plantation life romanticized in the film? Yes, but then again, it’s pretty typical for the past to be thought of fondly in the face of some pretty stark reality (like the American Civil War); it’s human nature. What Gone With The Wind makes clear is that war is always tragic and that personal relationships (and land if you’re Gerald O’Hara) are all that really matter in life. Unfortunately for Scarlett, she learns that lesson too late.

A well-worn epic
From a technical aspect, I was amazed at how well Gone With The Wind has aged. The fact that a film released in 1939 can hold its own against contemporary epics is in itself remarkable. Ernest “Ernie” Haller’s Oscar-winning cinematography is quite compelling. Who can forget the shot of Scarlett at the Atlanta train station as she walks among the wounded and the dead. At first the camera is close on Scarlett and you only see a few men on the ground. But then the camera pulls back and the number of the wounded and dead on screen is staggering. It’s one of the greatest visuals in all of cinema. And what about the scene of people fleeing Atlanta? How they were able to choreograph the action with star Leigh, not a double, moving against the crowds and running in front of horses and carriages we’ll never know. But on the screen it’s terrific.

Life is troubling
One of the other aspects that the film students find troubling is the scene of marital rape. It is a troubling scene, but put in context it’s true to the marital conventions of the time. The relationship between Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) and Scarlett is indeed a complicated one. I wonder if the same students would refuse to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie or Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter?

Award-winning performances
The performances in Gone With The Wind are solid. Leigh’s portrayal of Scarlett is fresh, lively, and contemporary. The same can be said for Gable’s portrayal of Rhett. In the hands of Olivia de Havilland (still with us at 97!), Melanie Hamilton is not quite the “mealy mouth ninny” that Scarlett accuses her of being. And who can forget Hattie McDaniel as Mammy? She goes toe-to-toe with Scarlett, always speaks her mind, and is nobody’s fool. When did a black actress get as much screen time as McDaniel did prior to 1939?

Don’t know much about history
My background in educational publishing makes me suspect that today’s film students may be the product of political correctness gone amok. When I worked in school library publishing, we routinely airbrushed cigarettes, cigars, and pipes out of the hands and mouths of historical figures like FDR and pop culture icons like James Dean. We were told that school librarians wouldn’t buy our books if we left these photos intact. This is also the case in contemporary textbook publishing. Instead of explaining that in the not so distant past people didn’t think smoking was a serious health issue and open up a dialogue on the subject, it’s ignored entirely. For many, the history they’ve been taught has been sanitized to the point where it’s not history at all, but instead someone’s fantasy of what history should be. It’s also disturbing the way we in the 21st century look down on people in the past with a superior attitude. As if we would have been any different in our thinking than Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley, and Melanie had we been born during the 19th century.

They’ve got a lot of living to do
What the NPR piece revealed is a group of film students who are unwilling to look at what might be disturbing or upsetting to their worldview. This seems contrary to the whole point of studying film, which is in many ways, studying our history. Perhaps those 13 Georgetown film students need to experience a little more of life to have an appreciation for a classic like Gone With The Wind. And frankly, I do give a damn.

Classic Movie Man’s Guilty Pleasure: “Devotion”

In 1943, Warner Brothers set out to film an account of the Brontë siblings, focusing mainly on the lives of authors Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights). In the 1930s and 1940s, the studio produced many successful historical biographies. Film versions of both Wuthering Heights (1939) and Jane Erye (1943), produced by rival studios, hit box office gold, so wouldn’t a movie on the lives of the authors and real-life sisters be a hit too?  That was part of the thinking behind Devotion, a production that seemed to be doomed from the beginning, but succeeds in spite of itself.

Lupino and DeHavilland Set To Star
Before production started, Warner Brothers had hoped that movie star sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia DeHavilland would play Emily and Charlotte respectively. Fontaine wasn’t available, so Warner Brothers replaced her with Ida Lupino, who was already under contract to the studio, as was DeHavilland. Nancy Coleman played youngest sister Anne, and Arthur Kennedy played Branwell, the only boy in the Brontë brood. The cast was rounded out with Paul Henried as the Reverend Arthur Nicholls, Sydney Greenstreet as William Makepeace Thackery, and Montagu Love, in his last film role, as Rev. Brontë, patriarch and widowed father of four gifted and complex children.

From left to right: Olivia DeHavilland, Ida Lupino, Nancy Coleman

Top Production
The studio employed some of its top talent for the film’s production. Curtis Bernhardt (Possessed, 1947) was tapped as the director. Oscar-winner, Ernest “Ernie” Haller (Gone With The Wind, 1939) was assigned the cinematography duties, and Perc Westmore was on hand for makeup. The lush score was composed by Erich Wolfgand Korngold who won an Academy Award for scoring The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

Don't Know Much About History
One of the major criticisms of the film is that it plays fast and loose with the facts, although Hollywood biographies of the period were hardly known for their absolute accuracy. As is often noted, the Brontë sisters were not famous for their attractiveness, but Lupino, DeHavilland, and Coleman are all quite beautiful in the movie. But come on, it’s Hollywood where there are no plain Janes.

For “poor” girls, they sure have some great clothes!

Poor, But Nicely Dressed
The Brontë’s weren’t wealthy by any stretch; in fact, they were quite poor. Jane Erye’s Lowood school was partly based on the four older sisters’ experiences at the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge, where the eldest Brontë daughters, Maria and Elizabeth became ill and died. Charlotte and Emily returned to Howarth, England, and were homeschooled by their father. The movie version hints at their lower economic circumstances, but the sisters Brontë are always beautifully, if simply, dressed and coiffed.

In the film, older sister Charlotte, as portrayed by DeHavilland, is somewhat self-centered and a bit snobby compared with Lupino’s more cerebral and serious portrayal of Emily. As the youngest sister Anne, Coleman doesn’t have much to go on. Her character has minimal screen time and no real story line to follow. Kennedy’s Branwell is a tortured self-destructive soul. The real Branwell struggled with drugs and alcohol, so Kennedy’s portrayal does seem close to the truth.

Lupino and Paul Henried starred together
in In Our Time (1944)

A Faithful Setter Dog?
As melodrama, Devotion is quite satisfying. Lupino and DeHavilland obviously took their roles seriously and give excellent performances, as does Kennedy. Henried is fine as Nichols, although some critics at the time didn’t find him at his best. Bosley Crowther in his New York Times review said, “Paul Henreid plays Arthur Nicholls with the air of a faithful setter dog.” In the broader context of his review, that was actually a compliment, since Crowther didn’t like the film overall. But Crowther and many other critics couldn’t get past the liberties the screenwriters took with the facts.

A Love That Never Was
In the film, Emily and Charlotte are both in love with Nicholls; however, there is no evidence that Emily was involved with her father’s curate or even had any feelings for him. Charlotte eventually married Nicholls, but she refused his first proposal and some Brontë historians believe Charlotte, although fond of Nichols, was never really in love with him. In the film Charlotte is infatuated with Professor Heger while studying in Brussels. Again there is no evidence that any romance took place. Events are out of order, which bothered purists like Crowther, but for lovers of classic film, Devotion is fun to watch.

DeHavilland starred with John Lund in Too Each His Own,
at Paramount after she successfully sued Warner Brothers.

Loving Lupino and DeHavilland
I love Lupino’s brooding, wistful Emily. When she shows Nicholls the moors and the house in the distance that she calls Wuthering Heights, with Korngold’s score at full tilt, it’s wonderful. Emily’s dream sequences are artfully done, too. The dark mysterious man on horseback haunting Emily looks quite spectacular on the screen. DeHavilland’s snobby and bossy Charlotte can be obnoxious, but she’s far from unlikable. When she professes her love for Profesor Heger, she’s convincing and sincere. Who cares if it didn’t really happen? It’s effective filmmaking.

Three Years on the Shelf

When the film wrapped, Warner Brothers held back its release. There are a few stories explaining their decision. Some say the studio delayed the release because they felt a costume drama wouldn’t play well during the height of World War II. The studios were sensitive about showing too much opulence on the screen during the war years, but rival Twentieth Century Fox released Jane Eyre in 1943 to great reviews and good business. The other, and more intriguing explanation, involves DeHavilland and her lawsuit against the studio. During the studio era, stars signed long-term contracts, typically for a period of seven years. Under that system, actors were paid a weekly salary and expected to perform in movies assigned them. If a star refused a role, they were put on suspension without pay until production of the film they refused to star in was completed. In addition to not paying the star’s salary, studios added time spent on suspension to their contracts, potentially extending them almost indefinitely. DeHavilland was fighting this practice in court.

Banned From the Premier
The story goes that so angry was the studio with DeHavilland that they refused to promote her career during the litigation. Whether or not their anger would go so far as to shelve a big-budget movie like Devotion to make a point, seems over the top. However, movie moguls from the period could be vindictive and spiteful. When the film was finally released, DeHavilland was under contract to Paramount. Warner Brothers wouldn’t let her attend the premier. Even worse, they gave her third billing behind Henried, which would never have happened had she been in the good graces of the brothers Warner. Considering how hot DeHavilland’s career was after she left Warner Brothers, it would have made sense, from a business perspective, to have let her participate in the film’s publicity. Hard to tell if we’ll ever really know the story behind Devotion’s delayed release, but it’s fun speculating.

The Classic Movie Man’s Verdict
Devotion may not be an accurate portrayal of the lives of the most famous of the Brontë sisters, but as film entertainment, it’s a lot of fun. Lupino, DeHavilland, Henried, and the rest of the cast are such pros, they make you care about their characters. Would it have been a better film if they spent more time on historical accuracy? Perhaps, but did audiences complain that both the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights and the 1943 version of Jane Eyre left out major plot points and characters? Hardly. That’s one of the reasons Devotion remains one of my favorite guilty movie pleasures.

What do you think? Is there a classic movie that you love, but the critics hate? Please feel free to share your favorite guilty movie pleasures here.

Olivia De Havilland Awarded Legion of Honor

One More Honor for De Havilland
Two-time Oscar-winning actress, Olivia De Havilland was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday. At 94, De Havilland is the last surving major star of Gone With the Wind (1939). Also awarded the award with her was film star Jacqueline Bisset, perhaps best know in France for her role in Francois Truffaut's Day for Night (1973).

Olivia De Havilland with Legion of Honor medal

The Associated Press said De Havilland "looked radiant" during the ceremony.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy embraces De Havilland during ceremony

Mitchell Leisen: The Best Director Nobody Knows

Mitchel Leisen's trademark signature

Sometimes history isn’t always fair. For example, there are movie directors and actors, who in their day, were enormously famous and successful, but for whatever reasons are almost forgotten today.

Paramount Director
Such is the case with Mitchell Leisen (1898-1972), a top director during Hollywood’s golden age. As a contract director at Paramount, he worked with all the top stars during that period: Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Jack Benny, Fredric March, Ray Milland, Marlene Dietrich, and Barbara Stanwyck.

Fred MacMurray

Early Commercial Success
Best known for his elegant romantic comedies, Leisen also excelled at action and melodramatic films. Leisen got his start as an art director and costume designer. Working under famed director Cecil B. DeMille, Leisen received his one and only Academy Award nomination for his art direction of Dynamite in 1930.  He eventually worked his way up the ladder, directing his first film, Cradle Song, in 1933. The next year, Leisen directed two popular films Death Takes a Holiday and Murder at the Vanities. In 1935, he knocked one out of the park with Hands Across the Table. This landmark romantic comedy made Carole Lombard a superstar and established Fred MacMurray as a top leading man. During the rest of the 1930s, Leisen made some of the most commercial films at Paramount, including Swing High, Swing Low which was the studio’s biggest moneymaker in 1937. That same year, he directed the classic Easy Living starring Jean Arthur. Leisen topped off the decade with the delightful Midnight starring Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche. This romantic comedy, one of the many great films released in 1939, unfortunately does not have the status of some of its less-worthy, but better-known contemporaries.

The Fabulous Forties

Claudette Colbert

During the next decade, Leisen produced more winners for Paramount. In 1940, he directed the classic Remember the Night starring Stanwyck and MacMurray. The sensitive Hold Back the Dawn (1941) provided Olivia de Haviland with one of her best film roles up to that time. Leisen’s masterful direction helped de Haviland receive her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Later in the decade, he would direct de Haviland in her Oscar-winning performance for To Each His Own (1946). In 1944, Leisen was trusted with directing two big-budget Technicolor productions: Lady in the Dark starring Ginger Rodgers and Frenchman’s Creek starring Joan Fontaine. Both films were huge commercial successes and both focused on the talent and beauty of the female leads. As Dona St. Columb, Joan Fontaine never looked more beautiful. In 1945 Leisen directed Paulette Goddard to one of her biggest commercial and critical successes in Kitty. After seeing Goddard in that film, French film director, Jean Renoir decided to cast her as the lead in Diary of a Chambermaid the following year.

Paramount's George Cukor
Leisen, like George Cukor, at MGM, had a reputation for his direction of women. A generation of leading ladies at Paramount owe Leisen a great debt. Many did their best work under his direction. For others, he crafted popular vehicles ideally tailored to their personalities.

TV Director
His success as a director continued into the early 1950s. Leisen’s last popular success was The Mating Season (1952) starring Gene Tierney, John Lund, and the Oscar-nominated Thelma Ritter. After The Girl Most Likely in 1958, with movie projects nonexistent, Leisen turned his attention to television, directing episodes of popular shows like the Twilight Zone, Wagon Train, and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

Of all the directors to come out of the studio system, Mitchell Leisen was one of the best. And one day, I hope, he’ll receive the recognition and honor he deserves.

Jeanne Crain's great year

During the mid-1940s, you couldn't be more famous or beloved than Jeanne Crain. Under exclusive contract to Twentieth Century Fox since 1943, Crain was a top box office star until the early 1950s. During the war years, Crain received more fan mail than anyone on the Fox lot except Betty Grable.

Forties trifecta

In the mid-40s, Crain had hits with State Fair (1945), Centennial Summer, and Margie (both 1946). But in 1949 she really hit her stride with three critical and financial successes: A Letter to Three Wives, The Fan, and Pinky. Not only that, but she worked with three uniquely talented directors in each of those films. For A Letter to Three Wives, Crain worked with Joseph Mankiewicz; for The Fan, Crain worked with Otto Preminger; and for Pinky, Crain worked with the legendary Elia Kazan.

Julia who?

During Crain's peak in popularity, her face was on the covers of dozens of magazines. In Crain's obituary, film historian and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) host, Robert Osborne, called her the "Julia Roberts of the day."

Pregnant pauses

Crain was so popular and such a favorite of Fox studio chief, Darryl Zanuck that he slated many of the plum female roles for her. One problem for Crain was that she was seemingly always pregnant, which frustrated Zanuck to no end and resulted in Crain losing out on some great parts.

One role that Crain may have missed, because she was pregnant, was Eve Harrington in Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950). Mankiewicz didn't think Crain could be tough enough in the role, but it would have been a brilliant move to cast Crain against type. (I mean no disrespect to Anne Baxter, who was superb.) But imagine audiences discovering that sweet Jeanne Crain was a cold, calculating villain. From Zanuck's perspective, casting Crain in that role made sense because she would have been a huge box-office draw. Pinky was the biggest-grossing film of 1949, and Bette Davis's star power was greatly diminished. With all Eve's acclaim, it wasn't as big a box office success as another Crain film released that year, Cheaper By The Dozen. With Crain in the picture, it might have been a bigger box office hit.

With Pinky, the first film from a major studio to deal with racism, Crain was nominated for her only Best Actress Academy Award. She lost out to the eventual winner, Olivia deHaviland (The Heiress), but it was an acknowledgment that Crain was more than just a pretty face.

And a pretty face she was, indeed.