Olivia de Havilland, in full Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland is an American motion-picture actress remembered for the lovely and gentle ingenues of her early career as well as for the later, more-substantial roles she fought to secure.
Background
De Havilland's father, Walter de Havilland (1872–1968), served as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo before becoming a patent attorney. Her mother, Lilian Fontaine (née Ruse; 1886–1975), was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and became a stage actress. Lilian also sang with the Master of the King's Music, Sir Walter Parratt, and toured England with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Olivia's paternal cousin was Sir Geoffrey de Havilland (1882–1965), an aircraft designer and founder of the de Havilland aircraft company.
Lilian and Walter met in Japan in 1913 and were married the following year; the marriage was not a happy one due in part to Walter's infidelities. De Havilland was born on July 1, 1916. They moved into a large house in Tokyo, where Lilian gave informal singing recitals for the European colony. Olivia's younger sister Joan (born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland)—later known as actress Joan Fontaine—was born fifteen months later, on October 22, 1917.
In February 1919, Lilian persuaded her husband to take the family back to England to a climate better suited for their ailing daughters. They sailed aboard the SS Siberia Maru to San Francisco, where the family stopped to treat Olivia's tonsillitis. After Joan developed pneumonia, Lilian decided to remain with her daughters in California, where they eventually settled in the village of Saratoga, 50 miles (80 km) south of San Francisco. Her father abandoned the family and returned to his Japanese housekeeper, who eventually became his second wife.
In 1923, Lilian had a new Tudor-style house built, where the family resided until the early 1930s. In April 1925, after her divorce was finalized, Lilian married George Milan Fontaine, a department store manager for O. A. Hale & Co. in San Jose. Fontaine was a good provider and respectable businessman, but his strict parenting style generated animosity and later rebellion in both of his new stepdaughters.
Education
Olivia was raised to appreciate the arts, beginning with ballet lessons at the age of four, and piano lessons a year later. She learned to read before she was six, and her mother, who occasionally taught drama, music, and elocution, had her reciting passages from Shakespeare to strengthen her diction. During this period, her younger sister Joan first started calling her "Livvie", a nickname that would last throughout her life.
De Havilland entered Saratoga Grammar School in 1922 and did well in her studies. She enjoyed reading, writing poetry, and drawing, and once represented her grammar school in a county spelling bee, coming in second place.
De Havilland continued her education at Los Gatos High School, near her home in Saratoga. There, she excelled in oratory and field hockey and participated in school plays and the school drama club, eventually becoming the club's secretary. With plans of becoming a schoolteacher of English and speech, she also attended Notre Dame Convent in Belmont.
In 1933, de Havilland made her debut in amateur theatre in Alice in Wonderland, a production of the Saratoga Community Players based on the novel by Lewis Carroll. She also appeared in several school plays, including The Merchant of Venice and Hansel and Gretel. Her passion for drama eventually led to a confrontation with her stepfather, who forbade her from participating in further extracurricular activities. When he learned that she had won the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet in a school fund-raising production of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, he gave her an ultimatum to either stay home or not return home. Not wanting to let her school and classmates down, she left home forever, moving in with a family friend.
In 1998, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hertfordshire in England.
De Havilland caught her big break in 1933 with her stage role as Hermia in a Max Reinhardt production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the famed Hollywood Bowl.
De Havilland earned the chance to reprise her role in the 1935 film adaptation with Dick Powell and James Cagney. Along with her coveted part, she also landed a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers. The studio soon paired her with one of her frequent co-stars, Errol Flynn. The duo first appeared together in the action-adventure tale Captain Blood (1935). De Havilland continued to work with Errol Flynn, and they proved to be a popular on-screen couple. She played Maid Marian to his Robin Hood in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood. While these films were entertaining, they did little to reveal de Havilland's talents as a serious performer.
With 1939's Gone with the Wind, movie audiences had their first real experience with de Havilland as a dramatic actress. This Civil War era drama, based on the Margaret Mitchell novel, proved to be one of the top films of the year and has continued to enjoy enormous popularity since its release. De Havilland played the gentle and kind Melanie Hamilton opposite Vivien Leigh's fiery Scarlett O'Hara. Both characters vied for the love of Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), and Melanie won his heart. Scarlett eventually ended up with the dashing Rhett Butler (Clark Gable).
De Havilland earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Melanie, but she lost out to her fellow castmate Hattie McDaniel. Two years later, de Havilland scored another Academy Award nomination for her role in the drama Hold Back the Dawn (1941), with Charles Boyer—this time as Best Actress. This time around, de Havilland lost out to her own sister, who used the stage name of Joan Fontaine.
Over the years, de Havilland became increasingly frustrated with her situation at Warner Brothers. Good parts seemed to be few and far between, and she was relieved when her contract with the studio neared its end in 1943. Warner Brothers, however, subtracted time that she had been suspended while under contract and claimed that she owed them that time. Rather than comply, de Havilland battled Warner Brothers in court.
The case went all the way to the California Supreme Court in 1945, which reaffirmed a lower court ruling in favor of de Havilland. The case created the de Havilland rule, which limited the length of a contract to a maximum of seven calendar years. During her years away from the silver screen, de Havilland found work in radio and toured military hospitals to show her support to soldiers fighting in World War II.
After her hiatus, de Havilland quickly returned to top form with To Each His Own. Her turn as an unwed mother brought her the Academy Award for Best Actress, making she and Joan the only siblings to have both won Academy Awards in a leading category.
Delivering another impressive performance, de Havilland starred in 1948's The Snake Pit. This film was one of the first to explore mental health issues, and de Havilland played a troubled woman who is sent to an insane asylum.
In The Heiress (1949), de Havilland lit up the screen as a wealthy young woman torn between her love (Montgomery Clift) and her father (Ralph Richardson). This adaptation of a Henry James story led to de Havilland's second Best Actress Academy Award win, as well as a Golden Globe. But by the 1950s, de Havilland's film career had slowed down.
Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965) proved to be one of de Havilland's more notable later roles. She shared the screen with fellow film legend Bette Davis in this acclaimed psychological thriller. In the 1970s, de Havilland appeared in the popular disaster film Airport '77 and the killer bee horror movie The Swarm (1978), among other roles.
On the small screen, Olivia de Havilland made guest appearances on such programs as The Danny Thomas Hour and The Love Boat. She landed roles in such popular miniseries as Roots: The Next Generations (1979) and North and South, Book II (1986). Also in 1986, de Havilland had a supporting role in the television movie Anastasia: the Mystery of Anna, which earned her a Golden Globe Award.
In retirement, de Havilland has remained active in the film community. In 1998, she traveled to New York to help promote a special showing of Gone with the Wind. In 2003, she appeared as a presenter at the 75th Academy Awards, earning a standing ovation upon her entrance. In 2004, Turner Classic Movies produced a retrospective piece called Melanie Remembers in which she was interviewed for the 65th anniversary of the original release of Gone with the Wind. In June 2006, she made appearances at tributes commemorating her 90th birthday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland appeared in 49 feature films, and was one of the leading movie stars during the golden age of Classical Hollywood. She is best known for her early screen performances in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939), and her later award-winning performances in To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949).
During her film career, de Havilland won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, 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. For her lifetime contribution to the arts, she received the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush, and was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
De Havilland was raised in the Episcopal Church and has remained an Episcopalian throughout her life. After moving to France, she became one of the first women lectors at the American Cathedral in Paris, where she was on the regular rota for Scripture readings. As recently as 2012, she was doing readings on major feast days, including Christmas and Easter. "It's a task I love", she once said. In describing her preparation for her readings, she once observed, "You have to convey the deep meaning, you see, and it has to start with your own faith. But first I always pray. I pray before I start to prepare, as well. In fact, I would always say a prayer before shooting a scene, so this is not so different, in a way." De Havilland prefers to use the Revised English Bible for its poetic style. She raised her son Benjamin in the Episcopal Church and her daughter Gisèle in the Roman Catholic Church, the faith of each child's father.
Politics
As a United States citizen, de Havilland became involved in politics as a way of exercising her civic responsibilities. She campaigned for Franklin D. Roosevelt's re-election in 1944. After the war, she joined the Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, a national public policy advocacy group that included Bette Davis, Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart in its Hollywood chapter. In June 1946, she was asked to deliver speeches for the committee that reflected the Communist Party line—the group was later identified as a Communist front organization. Disturbed at seeing a small group of Communist members manipulating the committee, she removed the pro-Communist material from her speeches and rewrote them to reflect Harry S. Truman's anti-Communist platform. She later recalled, "I realized a nucleus of people was controlling the organization without a majority of the members of the board being aware of it. And I knew they had to be Communists."
She organized a fight to regain control of the committee from its pro-Soviet leadership, but her reform efforts failed. Her resignation from the committee triggered a wave of resignations from 11 other Hollywood figures, including future President Ronald Reagan. In 1958, she was secretly called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and recounted her experiences with the Independent Citizens' Committee.
Views
Quotations:
“Playing good girls in the 30s was difficult, when the fad was to play bad girls. Actually I think playing bad girls is a bore; I have always had more luck with good girl roles because they require more from an actress.”
“Famous people feel that they must perpetually be on the crest of the wave, not realising that it is against all the rules of life. You can't be on top all the time, it isn't natural."
“Of course we fight. What sisters don't battle?"
“I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time leave this life, I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic crossword."
“There certainly is such a thing as screen chemistry, although I don't believe you find it frequently."
Personality
Olivia's natural beauty and refined acting style made her particularly effective in historical period dramas. She is classy, strong, elegant, and beautiful.
Physical Characteristics:
With her delicate features and innocent eyes, she was often cast as demure ingénues opposite popular leading men.
Quotes from others about the person
Flynn wrote, "By the time we made The Charge of the Light Brigade, I was sure that I was in love with her."
Connections
On August 26, 1946, Olivia married Marcus Goodrich, a Navy veteran, journalist, and author of the 1941 novel Delilah. The marriage ended in divorce in 1953. They had one child, Benjamin Goodrich, who was born on September 27, 1949. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of 19, but was able to graduate from the University of Texas. He worked as a statistical analyst for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California, and as an international banking representative for the Texas Commerce Bank in Houston. He died on October 1, 1991, in Paris at the age of 41 of heart disease brought on by treatments for Hodgkin's disease, three weeks before the death of his father.
On April 2, 1955, de Havilland married Pierre Galante, an executive editor for the French journal Paris Match. Her marriage to Galante prompted her relocation to Paris. The couple separated in 1962, but continued to live in the same house for another six years to raise their daughter together. Galante moved across the street and the two remained close, even after the finalization of the divorce in 1979. She looked after him during his final bout with lung cancer prior to his death in 1998. They had one child, Gisèle Galante, who was born on July 18, 1956. After studying law at the Université de Droit de Nanterre School of Law, she worked as a journalist in France and the United States.
Father:
Walter Augustus de Havilland
(31 August 1872 – 20 May 1968)
He was a British patent attorney who became professor of Law at Waseda University and was one of the first Westerners to play the game of Go at a high level. He was the father of British-American film stars Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine.
Mother:
Lillian Fontaine
(11 June 1886 – 20 February 1975)
She was a British actress and mother of Academy Award-winning British-American actresses Dame Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine.
Sister:
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland
(October 22, 1917 – December 15, 2013)
She was a British-American actress best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films. Fontaine appeared in more than 45 feature films in a career that spanned five decades. She was the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland.
Spouse (1):
Marcus Aurelius Goodrich
(November 28, 1897 – October 20, 1991)
He was an American screenwriter and novelist. He was the first husband of actress Olivia de Havilland.
Spouse (2):
Pierre Galante
(November 22, 1909, Nice, France - September 20, 1998, Paris, France)
Daughter:
Gisèle Galante
(b. July 18, 1956, American Hospital of Paris, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France|)
Son:
Benjamin Goodrich
(December 1, 1949 - October 1, 1991, Paris, France)
He was an Australian-born American actor who achieved fame in Hollywood after 1935.
Partner:
Howard Hughes
(December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976)
He was an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, film director, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most financially successful individuals in the world.
