Olivia de Havilland arrives for the 'Academy Tribute to Olivia de Havilland'
at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Beverly Hills June 15, 2006.
Posted on 07/01/2006 1:13:04 AM PDT by lunarbicep
Born to British parents in Japan, raised in California and discovered by Max Reinhardt, Olivia de Havilland signed with Warner Bros. before her 20th birthday and quickly built a solid reputation as an endearing leading lady in a series of Michael Curtiz swashbucklers starring Errol Flynn. Her demure sweetness played well against Flynn's cocky machismo, and Warners paired them eight times (seven directed by Curtiz) in romantic adventure films and Westerns like "Captain Blood" (1935), "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) and Raoul Walsh's "They Died with Their Boots On" (1941). With the release of "Gone With the Wind" (1939), de Havilland became a major star, earning her first Academy Award nomination; her role as the long-suffering and almost insufferably sweet Melanie, however, did not lead to more prestigious projects, as Warners continued to put her in run-of-the-mill pics. Relations between de Havilland and Warner Bros. became so strained that she successfully sued the studio for refusing to release her at the end of a seven-year contract in a celebrated court case of the 1940s. (Warners had suspended her for six months for demanding better roles and claimed that she had to make up the extra time at the end of the seven-year period.) De Havilland's victory broke the stranglehold that film companies had on actors in Hollywood, but it was a risky move at the time. "They did say I'd never work again, but that turned out not to be true at all, and wasn't that wonderful? I got to choose the pictures I wanted to do, and that was thrilling." She picked up two Oscar nominations while under contract to Warner Bros., but both were on loan to other studios (for MGM's "GWTW" and Paramount's "Hold Back the Dawn" 1941), and her best work was definitely yet to come.
Once free from Warners and the courts, de Havilland made "The Well-Groomed Bride" before winning the first of her two Academy Awards for "To Each His Own" (1946). She appeared more beautiful than ever as an unwed mother who gives up her baby and lavishes attention on him as his "aunt" and, with the spotlight firmly on her as the star, revealed a warmth and gentleness heretofore untapped. Playing twins (one good, one evil) in the psychological drama "The Dark Mirror" (also 1946) gave de Havilland an opportunity to present a more twisted nature side-by-side her standard saccharine temperament. She explored insanity further and picked up another Oscar nomination for "The Snake Pit" (1948), a wrenching look inside a mental institution which helped spur changes in the treatment of patients. "The Heiress", the 1949 adaptation of Henry James' "Washington Square" brought her a second Best Actress Oscar as a plain spinster wooed by fortune-hunter Montgomery Clift, despite warnings from her cruel father.
After that, de Havilland's appetite for films seemed to wane, and she worked intermittently (sometimes in Europe), occasionally leaving her Paris home for Hollywood as she did to work with old friend Curtiz on "Proud Rebel" (1958). Robert Aldrich convinced her to play the scheming cousin opposite Bette Davis in "Hush. . . Hush Sweet Charlotte" (1964), but her role in "The 5th Musketeer" (1979) was her last (to date) in features, although she continued to bring her engagingly warm, gentle but firm ladylike grace to television projects that often featured her as royalty. De Havilland played the Queen Mother in "The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana" (CBS, 1982), the Dowager Empress Maria in the NBC miniseries "Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna" (1986) and Wallis Simpson's aunt in "The Woman He Loved" (CBS, 1988), her last screen appearance to date. The sister of fellow movie star Joan Fontaine, with whom she has had a long-standing feud, she is the last surviving principal of "GWTH" and received great attention at the time of its re-release in 1998, making it quite clear that she would act again if she found a part to her liking.
Olivia de Havilland arrives for the 'Academy Tribute to Olivia de Havilland'
at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Beverly Hills June 15, 2006.
I wonder if she's related to the de Havilland family of aircraft fame?
Yep; Sir Geoffrey, who founded the company, was her uncle.
Family
FATHER: Walter Augustus de Havilland. Patent attorney. Divorced c. 1919.
MOTHER: Lillian Augusta Ruse. Actor. Divorced Walter de Havilland c. 1919; married George M Fontaine.
STEP-FATHER: George M Fontaine.
SISTER: Joan Fontaine. Actor.
COUSIN: Geoffrey de Havilland. Businessman. Founded de Havilland aviation company, a precursor of British Aerospace.
SON: Benjamin Briggs Goodrich. Statistical analyst, international banking representative. Born in 1949; died of heart disease brought on by treatment for Hodgkin's disease (with which he was diagnosed at age 19) in October 1991 at age 42 in Paris, France; father, Marcus Goodrich; worked for Lockheed Missile and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California and for the Texas Commerce Bank of Houston.
DAUGHTER: Gisele Galante. Journalist, lawyer. Born in 1956; father, Pierre Galante.
I had no idea she was still alive. What a star!
I believe her sister, Joan Fontaine, is still alive too.
She looks good for 90.
Good genes.
bttt for Melanie
Thank you both.
When I asked that question, I was on my way to bed after being awake for about 20 hours, so I was way too 'punchy' to look it up myself :)
I looked at different sources and got different answers. Britannica says he's her uncle, but other sources say her father and the father of Geoffrey de Havilland were half-brothers, which would make them cousins of a sort.
But yes, the easy answer is, same family.
Joan Fontaine (born October 22, 1917) IS still alive
HAPPY 90th BIRTHDAY to Olivia de Havilland...
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