Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland DBE (/də ˈhævɪlənd/;
July 1, 1916 – July 26, 2020) was a British-American actress. The major
works of her cinematic career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in
49 feature films, and was one of the leading actresses of her time. She was the last
major surviving star from the Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema and oldest
living Academy Award winner, until her death in July, 2020. Her
younger sister was actress Joan Fontaine.
De Havilland first came to prominence by
forming a screen couple with Errol Flynn in adventure films such
as Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin
Hood (1938). One of her best-known roles is that of Melanie
Hamilton in the classic film Gone with the Wind (1939),
for which she received her first of five Oscar nominations, the only
one for Best Supporting Actress.
De Havilland as Melanie Hamilton
De Havilland departed from ingénue roles
in the 1940s and later received acclaim for her performances in Hold
Back the Dawn (1941), To Each His Own (1946), The
Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949), receiving
nominations for Best Actress for each, winning for To Each
His Own and The Heiress. She was also successful in work
on stage and television. De Havilland lived in Paris from the 1950s, and
received honors such as the National Medal of the Arts, the Légion
d'honneur, and the appointment to Dame Commander of the Order of the
British Empire.
In addition to her film career, de Havilland
continued her work in the theatre, appearing three times on Broadway,
in Romeo and Juliet (1951), Candida (1952),
and A Gift of Time (1962). She also worked in television,
appearing in the successful miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979)
and Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986), for which she
received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and won the Golden
Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Movie or Series.
During her film career, de Havilland also collected two New York Film
Critics Circle Awards, the National Board of Review Award for Best
Actress, and the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup. For her
contributions to the motion picture industry, she received a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame. She and her sister remain the only siblings to have won
major acting Academy Awards and the only sisters to have won any Academy Awards.
Career Assessment and Legacy
De Havilland's career spanned 53
years, from 1935 to 1988. During that time, she appeared in 49 feature
films, and was one of the leading movie stars during the golden age of
Classical Hollywood.
She began her career playing demure ingénues opposite male
stars such as Errol Flynn, with whom she made her breakout film Captain
Blood in 1935. They would go on to make eight more feature films
together, and became one of Hollywood's most successful on-screen romantic
pairings. Her range of performances included roles in most major movie
genres. Following her film debut in the Shakespeare adaptation A
Midsummer Night's Dream, de Havilland achieved her initial popularity
in romantic comedies, such as The Great Garrick and Hard
to Get, and Western adventure films, such as Dodge City and Santa
Fe Trail. In her later career, she was most successful in drama films,
such as In This Our Life and Light in the Piazza,
and psychological dramas playing non-glamorous characters in films such
as The Dark Mirror, The Snake Pit, and Hush...Hush,
Sweet Charlotte.
During her career, de Havilland won
two Academy Awards (To Each His Own and The Heiress),
two Golden Globe Awards (The Heiress and Anastasia: The
Mystery of Anna), two New York Film Critics Circle Awards (The Snake Pit and The
Heiress), the National Board of Review Award, and the Venice Film Festival
Volpi Cup (The Snake Pit), and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination (Anastasia:
The Mystery of Anna).
For her contributions to the motion
picture industry, de Havilland received a star on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame at 6762 Hollywood Boulevard on February 8, 1960. Since her
retirement in 1988, her lifetime contribution to the arts has been honoured on
two continents. In 1998, she received an honorary doctorate from
the University of Hertfordshire in England.
In 2006, she was inducted into the
Online Film & Television Association Award Film Hall of Fame.
The moving-image collection of Olivia de
Havilland is held at the Academy Film Archive, which preserved a nitrate reel
of a screen test for Danton, Max Reinhardt's never-produced
follow-up to A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935).
De Havilland, as a confidante and friend
of Bette Davis, is featured in the series Feud: Bette and Joan,
portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones. In the series, de Havilland
reflects on the origins and depth of the Davis-Crawford feud and how
it affected contemporary female Hollywood stars. On June 30, 2017, a day before
her 101st birthday, she filed a lawsuit against FX Networks and
producer Ryan Murphy for inaccurately portraying her and using her
likeness without permission. Although FX attempted to strike the suit as
a strategic lawsuit against public participation, Los Angeles County
Superior Court Judge Holly Kendig denied the motion in September 2017, and
also granted de Havilland's request to advance the trial date (a motion for
preference) and set trial for November 2017. An interlocutory appeal of
Judge Kendig's ruling was argued in March 2018. A three-justice
panel of the California Court of Appeal of the Second District ruled against
the defamation suit brought by De Havilland (that is, by ruling the
trial court erred in denying the defendants' motion to strike), in a published
opinion by Justice Anne Egerton that affirmed the right of filmmakers to
embellish the historical record and that such portrayals are protected by
the First Amendment. De Havilland appealed the decision to the Supreme
Court in September 2018, which declined to review the case.
Her Death
De Havilland died of natural causes in
her sleep at her home in Paris, France, on July 26, 2020, at the age of
104.
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