On July 1, Olivia de Havilland celebrated her 100th birthday. She's the only important player from the greatest decades of the classic Hollywood studio system still living. Ironically, she was also instrumental in undoing the studio system.
Born in Tokyo to English parents who divorced when she and younger sister, the future Joan Fontaine (1917-2013), were little girls, she was reared in Saratoga, California. While attending Mills College, she auditioned for the legendary Max Reinhardt's lavish stage production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. She essayed Hermia when the play was staged at the Hollywood Bowl. She made her screen debut in the all-star film version of Dream (1935), which featured James Cagney as Bottom and Mickey Rooney as Puck. It's available in DVD.
Warner Bros signed her to a seven-year contract and frequently teamed her with Errol Flynn, but she got her most important early part away from the studio: Melanie in David Selznick's Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. In lesser hands, Melanie would have been too good to be believable. But de Havilland conveyed her decency and strength. She was utterly convincing in her loyalty to Scarlett. Author Margaret Mitchell insisted that Melanie was the novel's heroine, and de Havilland's performance gives credence to that assertion. The film, like those discussed in the following paragraphs, is available in DVD.
In 1938, she and Flynn were paired in their best movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood, a thrilling version of Sir Walter Scott's novel, shot in vibrant colors. In many of their films, she was a passive beauty, waiting to be rescued. But as Maid Marion, she's not only ravishing, she's intelligent, spirited, courageous, and instrumental in saving Robin and his men. She was touching in The Strawberry Blonde (1941), playing Cagney's devoted wife. Again, her ability to make a good woman interesting and appealing allowed the audience to feel Cagney's dilemma in choosing between her and Rita Hayworth's more traditional temptress.
In 1943, de Havilland's contract ended �" or so she thought. The studio, however, disagreed, insisting it had six months more to run. Following common practice, Warners had added onto the original termination date the weeks it had suspended her for refusing poor roles in bad movies. She challenged that practice, sued, and won. That historic case is known as the "de Havilland Decision."
The legal proceedings prevented her from working for two years, but she triumphantly returned in 1946, winning the Best Actress Oscar for her moving performance as the unwed mother in To Each His Own . That Oscar made her and Fontaine the only sisters to have won that prize. That same year, she dazzled in Robert Siodmark's The Dark Mirror, a superb noir in which she plays twins �" one murderous, the other innocent. She convincingly conveyed their individual personalities and strong sibling bonds.
The Snake Pit (1948) was a landmark look at mental illness and the "asylums" in which patients were warehoused. Foregoing obvious histrionics, de Havilland touchingly showed how seemingly "normal" individuals could suffer from severe psychological problems. Audiences identified with her. She lost the Best Actress Oscar to Jane Wyman's Johnny Belinda, but won the New York Film Critics prize.
The following year, she was The Heiress, helmed by William Wyler. For this dramatization of Henry James' novella Washington Square, she camouflaged her beauty and radiance to unforgettably portray the plain, insecure, unloved Catherine Sloper, daughter of a wealthy doctor (Ralph Richardson) who blames her for her mother's death in childbirth. He has unfavorably compared her to her mother for her entire life. When his suspicions about the motives of a handsome, penniless suitor (Montgomery Clift) prove correct, her heart breaks, then hardens. She avenges herself on both men, famously telling her Aunt (Miriam Hopkins), "Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters." Her extraordinary performance garnered a second Best Actress Oscar and another New York Film Critics Award.
She was director Elia Kazan's and Marlon Brando's first choice for Blanche in the film version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), but declined because she felt the role wasn't right for her. After starring in Broadway revivals of Romeo & Juliet and Candida, she returned to the screen in an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel (1952), playing the ambiguous title character with precision. The young Richard Burton co-starred.
She had married writer Marcus Goodrich in 1946, but they divorced in 1953. In 1955, she married Pierre Galante, editor of Paris Match, and moved to the French capital, where she still resides. That marriage ended in 1979, but they remained on amicable terms.
As The Ambassador's Daughter (1956), set in Paris, she gave a delightfully comic performance. But A Light in the Piazza (1962) was serious �" she played a woman determined that her beautiful but developmentally disabled daughter marry and have a comfortable life. Once again, she combined gentility and strength to create a memorably sympathetic character.
She was harrowing in the terrifying Lady in a Cage (1964), trapped in her private elevator while her home is ransacked by young hoods who don't realize they have met their match. That same year she replaced Joan Crawford opposite Bette Davis in Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, playing the soignee, malicious cousin Miriam with charm, and stealing the picture from her old friend.
For the next 24 years, she worked in films and on television, retiring in 1988 with characteristic grace. Her stature, however, increases with each passing year. A 2003 appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony earned her a lengthy, show-stopping standing ovation. President George W. Bush presented her with the National Medal of Honor in 2008. In 2010, French President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed her a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur, France's highest civilian award.
The significance of her artistic legacy is indisputable. It's all the more memorable because it's linked to rare intelligence, character, and elegance.