“When I returned home on Oscar night, aged 23 and
the loser of the award…. I was convinced there was no God.”—Olivia de
Havilland, on losing for her role in Gone
With the Wind, quoted in Missy Schwartz, “The Last Star,” Entertainment
Weekly, Jan. 3-Feb. 6, 2015
Well, I’d say she more than made up for it: She
eventually took home two of the coveted statuettes, for challenging roles in To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949), not to mention still
more nominations for Hold Back the Dawn
(1941) and The Snake Pit (1948).
All hail Olivia de Havilland, who turns 100 years old today in Toyko to British expatriates (including, notably, an actress). The public celebrates, as cult
figures, stars who burn out way before they should. But a deserved honor
belongs to those who endure.
And who, after all, has endured more than de
Havilland? I don’t mean just surviving to her grand age (making her not only,
after Luise Rainer and George Burns, the only Oscar winners to live to 100, but
the only one of the 50-odd cast members with speaking parts in Gone With the Wind who survives). I also
mean enduring:
*the attempt by her studio, Warner Brothers, to
destroy her career, when they suspended her for turning down roles and
lengthened her contract, only to have her sue and win her freedom;
*the bitterness of younger sister Joan Fontaine, who
wrote about their estrangement in her memoir;
*the blandishments of her charming but rakish
co-star of eight films at Warner Brothers, Errol Flynn;
*the loss of her son at 41, as well as an ex-husband
she nursed in his dying months.
The marvelous film blogger Self-Styled Siren’s post on de Havilland—part of a larger tribute
she wrote for Sight and Sound—discusses
the star’s two-year lawsuit against Warner Brothers, a legal move that none of
her colleagues dared to openly support at the time. When she triumphed, unlike
good friend and fellow star Bette Davis in her own unsuccessful battle with the
studio, the article notes, “Jack Warner … found out that his all-purpose
flower-like ingénue was tougher than Jezebel.”
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