Olivia de Havilland is “The Heiress”

The Heiress (1949) is an American drama produced and directed by William Wyler and starring Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, and Ralph Richardson. The supporting cast included Miriam Hopkins, Mona Freeman, Selena Royle, and Vanessa Brown.

The film takes place in New York City in 1849 and concerns one Catherine Sloper (de Havilland), a shy young woman, who lives with her wealthy father Dr. Austin Sloper (Richardson). Dr, Sloper and Catherine live in the prestigious Washington Square neighborhood.

When Catherine is introduced to Morris Townsend (Clift) at a ball, she is charmed by the handsome young man. Catherine falls madly in love with Morris. He seems gracious and caring…and loving. However, Catherine’s stern father disapproves of the relationship, concerned that Morris is only interested in Catherine because of her wealth.

Will Catherine and Morris’s relationship thrive or die over her father’s objections?

 

Montgomery Clift, Olivia de Havilland, and Ralph Richardson

William Wyler (1902 - 1981) was an American (born in Mulhouse, Alsace, then part of Germany) film director and producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Direction three times: Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Ben-Hur (1959). Wyler was nominated 12 times for Best Director, an Academy Award history. Wyler started working in the movie business during the silent era, eventually making a name for himself as a director in the early 1930s. He would go on to direct Wuthering Heights (1939), The Westerner (1940), and The Little Foxes (1941). Actress Bette Davis received three Oscar nominations under Wyler’s direction, winning her second Oscar for her performance in Jezebel (1938). Other popular films directed by Wyler include The Heiress (1949), Roman Holiday (1954), Friendly Persuasion (1956), The Big Country (1958), and Funny Girl 1968).

Olivia de Havilland (1916 – 2020) was a British-American actress and two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner. De Havilland’s career spanned more than five decades. She was one of the leading actresses of the 1940s and was the last major surviving star from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Some of de Havilland’s classic films include The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), Hold Back the Dawn (1941), To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949).

Montgomery Clift (1920 – 1966) was an American actor. He was a four-time Academy Award nominee for Best Actor. Like Marlon Brando and James Dean, Clift was considered one of the original method actors. Clift got his start on the stage as a young man and starred opposite the likes of Tallulah Bankhead, Frederic March, and Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Clift’s first movie role was in Howard Hawks’s Red River (1949), starring opposite John Wayne. He went on to co-star with Olivia de Havilland in William Wyler’s The Heiress (1949). He reached superstar status in the role of George Eastman in the George Stevens production of A Place in the Sun (1951), starring opposite Elizabeth Taylor. Clift would later star in Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953) and Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity (1953). Other films followed, including Raintree County (1956), The Young Lions (1958), Lonelyhearts (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and Wild River (1960).

Ralph Richardson (1902 – 1983) was an English stage and screen actor. Along with John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, he dominated the British theatre for most of the 20^th century. Richardson worked in movies in Britain and the United States throughout his long career. Some of his famous films include The Fallen Idol (1948), The Heiress (1949), Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962), Women of Straw (1965), and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

 

Olivia de Haviland and Ralph Richardson

The Heiress trivia

• After seeing The Heiress on the Broadway stage, de Havilland approached William Wyler about directing her in a screen adaptation.
• Wyler became a fan of de Havilland’s acting talent and was annoyed by Clift’s disdain for her performance and for Ralph Richardson’s attempt to scene-steal through improvisation.
• Clift was so disappointed by his performance that he walked out of the premiere.
• Basil Rathbone played Dr. Sloper on the stage and hoped to recreate the role for the film version.
• De Havilland won her second Best Actress Academy Award for her performance.
• Wyler originally wanted Errol Flynn to play Morris.

 

Click HERE to watch the film at the Internet Archive

Click HERE to learn more about the film and preview the discussion questions. Once you RSVP, you will receive an email with a link to the discussion on Zoom.

 

Discussion questions

1. Many consider Olivia de Havilland’s performance as one of the greatest of the 20^th century. Do you agree?
2. When do you think Catherine’s personality began to become imbittered?
3. Montgomery Clift was unhappy with his performance. What did you think? Was he wrong to be unhappy about it?
4. What did you think of Ralph Richardson’s characterization as Dr. Sloper? Do you think he loved Catherine?
5. Do you think Morris was interested in Catherine only for her money?
6. Would Catherine have been happy with Morris if they had married?

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.

Olivia de Havilland is 103 Today!

Let that sink in for a while.

There are few living legends among us these days, but de Havilland certainly qualifies. One of the truly great movie stars from Hollywood’s classical period, she was a contemporary of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn, and of course her late younger sister, Joan Fontaine.

Olivia de Havilland (center) in The Snake Pit (1948)

A two-time Oscar winner for To Each His Own and The Heiress respectively. She also gave magical performances in The Snake Pit and The Dark Mirror. And who could forget her as Melanie Hamilton in the all-time classic Gone With The Wind. In the hands of a lesser actress Melanie would have been nothing more than a “mealy mouth ninny,” as Scarlet described her. In the hands of de Havilland, she’s a three-dimensional woman of great warmth and sincerity.

Bravo, Olivia!

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

Happy 101st birthday to Olivia de Havilland!

Today is Olivia de Havilland’s 101st birthday. The screen legend is the only surviving major cast member of the Civil War classic Gone With the Wind (1939). She’s also the most famous surviving actress from Hollywood’s Golden Age, outliving her younger sister, Joan Fontaine who passed away in 2013 at 96.

Olivia de Havilland in perhaps her most famous role as Melanie Hamilton
in Gone With the Wind

De Havilland is a two-time Oscar winner for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949). Her first Oscar nomination was for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind. She received two other Best Actress nominations for Hold Back the Dawn (1941), famously losing to her sister, and The Snake Pit (1948). For The Snake Pit she won the National Board of Review Award and New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. The Snake Pit exposed the poor conditions in state mental institutions. It had such an impact on audiences in 1948 that many states adopted new rules and regulations regarding the treatment of mental patients in state-run institutions.

De Havilland and her attorneys recently announced that they are suing FX and producer Ryan Murphy “over unauthorized use of her [de Havilland’s] identity in Feud: Bette and Joan.” De Havilland sued Warner Bros. in 1943 over the studio practice of adding the time an actor spent on suspension to his/her long-term contract. Her suit helped end the power and control of the major Hollywood studios which led to their decline.

De Havilland’s first film role was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935). Her last big screen appearance was in The Fifth Musketeer (1979). In between there were some great movies and performances. Below is a list of some of the best.

Captain Blood (1935) – her first pairing with Errol Flynn
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) – another pairing with Flynn (their third) in glorious Technicolor

Dodge City (1939) – her fifth picture with Flynn, also starring Ann Sheridan; one of the earliest Technicolor westerns
Gone With the Wind (1939) – her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress; she lost to costar Hattie McDaniel
Santa Fe Trail (1940)) – one of the top films of the year and another pairing with Flynn
They Died with Their Boots On (1941) – the final pairing of de Havilland with Flynn
The Strawberry Blonde (1941) – a great screen pairing with James Cagney and an up-and-coming Rita Hayworth
Hold Back the Dawn (1941) – on loan to Paramount, she was nominated for Best Actress under the direction of Mitchell Leisen; she lost to her sister Joan Fontaine for her work in Suspicion (1941)

Charles Boyer and de Havilland in Hold Back the Dawn

The Male Animal (1942) – good comedy role based on the James Thurber Broadway hit co-starring Henry Fonda
Princess O’Rourke (1943) – delightful comedy that was a forerunner to Roman Holiday (1953)
To Each His Own (1946) – her first Best Actress Oscar win, once again she was under the direction of Mitchell Leisen
The Dark Mirror (1946) – interesting dual role for de Havilland, playing identical twin sisters, one good one bad
The Snake Pit (1948) – an amazing performance of a woman suffering from mental illness

The Heiress (1949) – de Havilland goes from meak and mild to cold and ruthless in this classic based on Henry James’s Washington Square
My Cousin Rachel (1952) – notable as Richard Burton’s film debut, but it features a finely shaded performance from de Havilland as the mysterious Rachel
The Proud Rebel (1958) – one of my favorite de Havilland performances; she plays a tough woman rancher who befriends a man and his handicapped son

de Havilland with David Ladd, Alan Ladd

Light in the Piazza (1962) – beautifully photographed melodrama set in Rome
Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) – interesting film for the pairing of de Havilland with old friend Bette Davis

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.