OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND

(1 July 1916 - 26 July 2020)

The actress Olivia de Havilland, who has died at the age of 104, was the last reminder of Hollywood in its heyday. She was born in Tokyo to British parents, as was her sister Joan Fontaine, but they soon moved to California and then their parents divorced. In a college play she was spotted by Max Reinhardt who put her in Warner’s film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Hermia, in 1935. She gained a seven-year contract and worked with James Cagney in The Irish In Us, with Fredric March in Anthony Adverse, and made eight films with Errol Flynn including Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Adventures of Robin Hood. As Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind for MGM she was nominated for an Oscar. Back at Warner’s she did Hold Back the Dawn, was nominated but lost again. Finding her roles to be less than ideal, she refused the parts on offer and was placed on suspension. She sued Warner Bros, won the case and, with actress Bette Davis, changed the law against illegal studio suspensions. She won her first Oscar for To Each His Own and later films included The Snake Pit (another Oscar nomination) and The Heiress for which she finally won the best actress statuette. In the 1950s she made My Cousin Rachel with Richard Burton, Not As a Stranger with Frank Sinatra, The Proud Rebel with Alan Ladd and Libel with Dirk Bogarde, etc. Then came TV and some popular shockers such as Lady in a Cage, Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte and The Swarm. She retired from films in 1988. Olivia and her sister Joan (who died in 2013) had allegedly never got on: they both denied it. Olivia de Havilland married the actor-writer Marcus Goodrich and then the writer Pierre Galante. The marriages both ended in divorce but produced a son, Benjamin, and a daughter, Gisèle. Olivia de Havilland received the US National Medal of the Arts, the French Chevalier of the Lḗgion d’honneur and Oldie of the Year. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2017.

MICHAEL DARVELL