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Always in a relaxed spirit in a closed world, Olivia de Havilland fought workers’ rights studios, fought in a First Amendment match for the use of her image, turned her back on the film industry and moved to Paris for a lifetime. freedom unhindered.
But everything, remained the essence of Hollywood royalty, a name he graciously accepted.
The last remaining star of the 1939 epic film “Gone with the Wind” and a two-time Oscar winner, De Havilland died on Sunday for herbal reasons at his home in Paris, where he had lived for decades. She’s 104.
De Havilland was widely regarded as the last of Hollywood’s wonderful actors of the golden age, a time when studios were buzzing with activity and the stars seemed larger than life.
Although she lived semi-retired and may even be seen behind in her life circling the city that follows, the actress remained firmly in the public eye. In his later years, he led a First Amendment bout for privacy over the use of his symbol in the 2017 docudrama “Feud: Bette and Joan”.
On the eve of his 101st birthday, he sued FX for claiming the unauthorized use of his identity in the miniseries, which chronicled the rivalry between actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Catherine Zeta-Jones described De Havilland in the series.
“I’m furious. In fact, I was hoping to be consulted on the text. I never imagined anyone would misrepresent me,” he told The Times in 2018, adding that the series called it “vulgar gossip” and “hypocritical.”
The case accelerated due to the complex age of De Havilland. Despite the first victories, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case in early 2019.
Early in her career, film audiences knew De Havilland as the pretty, understated heroine who confronts the fast-paced Errol Flynn in “Captain Blood” and other popular Warner Bros. costume dramas. 1930, adding “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “The Burden of the Light Brigade”.
But he won his Oscars in more extensive and less flattering roles after leaving Warner Bros.au in the mid-1940s.
Her first Oscar came here for the 1946 film “For Everyone His Own,” a World War I drama in which she plays a single mother who regrets abandoning her child.
He earned his moment with “The Heiress,” a 1949 drama set in 19th-century New York in which he plays a shy and undeniable young woman who falls in love with a handsome young man (played by Clift) whose rich and authoritarian suspect the father is a fortune hunter.
De Havilland also earned an Oscar nomination for his memorable role in “The Snake Pit,” a 1948 drama about the depression and recovery of a married young man who is interned in a psychiatric facility.
But her enduring top role on screen, that of sweet Melanie in “Gone with the Wind,” the civil war drama that won hearts and the Oscars, but has eventually become a symbol of the country’s systemic racism for its fictional interpretation of the pre-War South and its hygienized treatment. the overwhelming horrors of slavery.
WarnerMedia got rid of the film from its streaming service The national protests triggered by the possible death of George Floyd after a white Minneapolis police officer immobilized her on the floor leaning on her neck for several minutes while other police officers gave the impression of being looking without passion.
De Havilland is the last survivor among the film’s lead actors, as well as Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard and Hattie McDaniel.
Off-screen, De Havilland was known in Hollywood for his decisive legal victory over Warner Bros.au in the mid-1940s, a court ruling that revolutionized contract relations between the actor and the studio and then provided ammunition for his war with FX.
And connoisseurs and industry enthusiasts were well aware of his high-profile enmity with his star movie sister, Joan Fontaine, a large fraternal rivalry that began as a child.
“My sister is a year, 3 months, 3 weeks and a day younger than me,” De Havilland told The Washington Post in 1979 when she was 62. “When you do it first, it will have to be very difficult by the time one. I think it’s a wonderful pity.
In his autobiography, “No Bed of Roses,” Fontaine speculated that De Havilland would have liked to be an only child and resent a younger sister.
The fact that Fontaine followed his sister to Hollywood and won the first Oscar for the family’s lead actress, in 1942 for “Suspect,” beating De Havilland in “Hold Back the Dawn,” never mattered.
In a 1978 interview, Fontaine said, “I got married first, I won the Oscar before Olivia, and if I die first, she’ll be furious because I hit her.”
Fontaine died of herbal reasons in 2013 at the age of 96. De Havilland said the two had been repaired before his sister’s death.
The daughter of British parents, De Havilland was born on July 1, 1916, in Tokyo, where her father ran a patent law firm. His mother, who had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, named her eldest daughter Olivia after the character of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”.
In 1919, when De Havilland was not yet 3 years old, his parents’ marital disorders led his mother to take away their two daughters and move to Northern California, where they settled in Saratoga, near San Jose. De Havilland’s parents divorced and his mother married George M. Fontaine, manager of a local branch.
At Los Gatos Union High School, De Havilland joined the theater club and, despite a tendency to suffer from nervousness, gave the impression in the plays and won trophies in the debate team and in a public conversation contest.
After graduating from the best school in 1934, he awarded a scholarship to Generators College in Oakland, but his life took a turn that summer.
An assistant to acclaimed director Max Reinhardt saw the players from Saratoga’s community in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in which De Havilland played Puck.
Reinhardt was mounting a domestic itinerant production of this play for his Hollywood Bowl debut, and De Havilland was invited to join an organization of other academics to watch essays in Hollywood.
She ended as an understudy and when actress Gloria Stuart had to give up production of the Hollywood Bowl, which included Mickey Rooney as Puck, De Havilland repeated the Hermia film.
At the opening night hearing, Warner Bros. production manager. Hal Wallis, who was so inspired by De Havilland’s functionality that he implored studio manager Jack Warner to watch the show.
Warner agreed with Wallis’ assessment that the 18-year-old would be the best for the next film edition of Shakespeare’s fantasy film and that she had the ingredients of a star.
After the four-week national tour, De Havilland signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros.
By the end of 1935, his first year in the studio had not only played Hermia, but had also starred alongside Joe E. Brown in “Alibi Ike”, gave the impression with James Cagney in “The Irish in Us” and performed with Flynn, another new player hired by Warner, in “Captain Blood”.
Flynn and De Havilland made the impression in combination in seven other films over the next six years, adding “Dodge City,” “Elizabeth and Essex’s Privacy” and “They Died in Their Boots.”
But the ambitious De Havilland aspired to play more complicated roles than those presented to her at Warner Bros.
“I think we follow Bette Davis’ example,” De Havilland told The Times in 1988. “He didn’t care if he looked smart or bad. I was just looking to play complex, engaging and desirable roles, a variety of human experiences.” .
She played a role in “Gone with the Wind,” the radical adaptation of the independent manufacturer David O. Selznick to Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Civil War and Reconstruction.
The question of who would play Scarlett O’Hara had a national fixation, and one of the actresses who was interested was De Havilland’s sister Joan.
In “Sisters,” Charles Higham’s dual biography of De Havilland and Fontaine, “Gone With the Wind” director George Cukor is quoted as saying that Fontaine asked to read for the part of the fiery Scarlett. Cukor told the blond actress that that was out of the question, but he would like her to read for the role of the more sedate Melanie.
“If it’s a Melanie you want,” Fontaine reportedly snapped, “call Olivia!”
Cukor did. And after De Havilland played a scene at Selznick’s, with Cukor in front of her as Scarlett, Selznick looked at De Havilland and said, “You’re Melanie!
“Gone with the Wind” nominated for thirteen Oscars, adding Leigh’s lead actress Scarlett and the supporting actress for performances by De Havilland and McDaniel.
Although she was one of the film’s 4 main actors, De Havilland once said, “At the time, regardless of billing or contract, the manufacturer was entitled to the category; and Selznick, not by percentage of the vote between Vivien and me, made my look as a supportive actress.
On Oscar night, Leigh as lead actress and McDaniel left with the honor of the supporting actress, the first African-American to win an Oscar.
Still dissatisfied with the kind of roles Warner Bros. introduced him, De Havilland accepted common suspensions and rejected them.
In 1943, his seven-year contract with Warner Bros. had followed his course. But because she had been suspended at events for rejecting papers, the studio argued that she owed her six more months.
De Havilland hired prominent Hollywood lawyer Martin Gang, who informed him that state labor law stipulated that a seven-year contract would last seven years. She sued Warner Bros. in court.
De Havilland won his case in the High Court, but Jack Warner appealed the ruling and ordered the film companies to rent it. When the Court of Appeals voted unanimously in Favor of De Havilland, Warner appealed to the state Supreme Court. In February 1945, this court upheld the decision.
Since then, the sentence has been known as the De Havilland decision. Decades later, De Havilland’s legal precedent helped Oscar-winning musician Jared Leto convince the courts of the rule to record contracts as well.
Released from Warner Bros., De Havilland began working as a freelancer in studios and had his selection of scripts.
The actress, whose call had been romantically related to Howard Hughes, James Stewart and John Huston, among others, married publisher Marcus Aurelius Goodrich of the best-selling e-book “Delilah” in 1946. They had a son, Benjamin, and divorced in 1946.1952.
A year later, De Havilland met Pierre Galante, editor of Paris Match magazine. She and Galante married in Paris in 1955 and had a daughter, Gisele. They divorced in 1979.
She appeared on Broadway several times during the ‘50s and ‘60s, including a 1951 revival of “Romeo and Juliet,” a 1952 revival of “Candida” and “A Gift of Time” in 1962 with Henry Fonda.
But he gave the impression in only nine films in the 1950s and 1960s, adding “Lady in a Cage” in 1964 and “HushArray.. Hush, Sweet Charlotte” unlike her former Warner Bros. colleague. Bette Davis the same year.
In his later years, he made the impression in films such as “Airport 77” and “The Swarm” in 1978. She also made occasional television paintings, adding “Roots: The Next Generations” in 1979 and, max, in 1986 as the empress of Douairiére in a four-hour performance of “Anastasia”, for which she won an Emmy nomination as a supporting actress. He officially retired in 1988.
In 2003, De Havilland returned to Los Angeles and was a host at the 75th Academy Awards. Five years later, President George W. Bush awarded her the National Medal of Arts and, two years later, she was named a knight through French President Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2018, he named the Lady of the British Empire, which fits the older living user to get the honor.
De Havilland is survived by his daughter, Gisele. His son, Benjamin Goodrich, died of headaches from Hodgkin’s disease in 1991.
Times editors Nardine Saad and Steve Marble contributed to the report. McLellan is a former Times writer.