Olivia de Havilland
1916-2020
As you will read in every obituary of Olivia de Havilland that will be published over these next few days, she is perhaps the very last survivor of "Hollywood's Golden Age" or of "Hollywood's Studio System." de Havilland was 104 years old when she died today, and surely there can't be anybody else still around who predates her in either of those categories.
A two time Oscar winner, de Havilland is most remembered for her "Gone With The Wind" role of the Goody-Two-Shoes Melanie Hamilton, the cousin of Scarlett O'Hara, whom Scarlett hated because she ended up marrying prissy Ashley Wilkes, played by Leslie Howard. (AN ASIDE: Scarlett had Rhett Butler/Clark Gable, and she pinned for Wilkes/Howard? I never could get that.) In a touch of irony, de Havilland, who was the only lead character in GWTW to die, was the last surviving cast member of that epic production.
With Howard as Ashley
As the perfect Melanie
Perhaps her next most famous role was that of Maid Marion alongside Errol Flynn in "The Adventures of Robin Hood." She was undeniably beautiful in both roles, and the on screen chemistry with Flynn led to them appearing in many movies together. Although Flynn was one of Hollywood' most notorious womanizers, de Havilland maintained that the on screen chemistry never extended to anything other than platonic off-screen.
As Maid Marion with Flynn
"The Adventures of Robin Hood"
For all of her distinguished career, I have to say that in 1978, at the age of 62, she appeared in a cast-of-thousands disaster movie that were so popular during that era called "The Swarm" that may well have been one of the worst movies ever made. Hey, so she was working for a paycheck. Nothing wrong with that.
There are two aspects of Miss de Havilland's career that are noteworthy.
The first is that she is the older sister of Oscar winning actress Joan Fontaine. I believe that they are the only siblings ever to receive Leading Role Oscars, but more to the point, the two of them had legendary Hollywood feud that dated back to the 1930's. They rarely spoke or even acknowledged each other's existence from then until Miss Fontaine's death in 2013 at the age of 94. I am sure that Olivia took great delight in outliving her sister by seven years.
The other interesting thing was de Havilland's challenge to the Hollywood "studio system", when the studios kept actors under contract and left them with little choice in what they could or could not do. To make a long story short, in 1943, de Havilland took Warner Bros. to court for the right to get out of her contract. In a decision that to this day is known as "de Havilland's Law", the California Courts ruled that no studio could extend a performer's contract without the consent of the performer. So, in a sense, she was the Curt Flood of Hollywood, or maybe Flood was the Olivia de Havilland of baseball.
RIP Olivia de Havilland.
