Olivia de Havilland
Just a few short weeks after I posted about Olivia de Havilland's 104th birthday, we received the news at the weekend that she has sadly passed away.
A British-American actress whose career spanned from 1935 to 1988, she appeared in forty-nine feature films, and was one of the leading movie stars during the golden age of Hollywood.
She was born in Tokyo in 1916, to British parents, Walter de Havilland, a successful attorney who was a direct descendant of King Edward I, and Lillian Ruse, who was a former stage actress. After their marriage broke down, Lillian settled with her two daughters in California in 1919, before marrying again in 1925.
Olivia and her baby sister Joan were both destined to be stars, and Olivia made her screen debut in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1935, and from then continued to play the role of a demure, sweet and innocent young woman opposite popular leading men.
One of these Hollywood heartthrobs was Errol Flynn - who she made eight films with - and they became one of Hollywood's most popular romantic couples on-screen. She later confessed to having had a crush on him, although he was never aware of it.
Olivia went on to date billionaire Howard Hughes and director John Huston, and was proposed to by Jimmy Stewart, before eventually marrying (and divorcing) twice.
Her most notorious broken relationship, however, was with her younger sister, actress Joan Fontaine. They had argued like cat and dog during childhood, and this spun out of control during their Hollywood careers. To this day, they are the only siblings to have both won Academy Awards for Best Actress, but reportedly they hadn't spoken since their mother's funeral in 1975, until Joan passed away in 2013.
During her years on screen, she may have preferred to play the good girl roles, but she was a spirited and intelligent lady, and is highly regarded as one of the most important figures in Hollywood history when, in the 1940s, she sued the studio giant, Warner Bros, and won!
She had previously signed a seven-year contract with them, but after they had added on extensions for the times she had been suspended, it had blocked her from working for other studios. By winning the landmark case in court, the ruling became known as The De Havilland Law, and it limited studio power, which gave other performers more freedom, and saved them from the similar frustrations she had encountered.
In later years, Olivia de Havilland received numerous lifetime citations, including the National Medal of Arts in 2008 - the highest honor awarded to an individual artist on behalf of the people of the United States - and France's Legion of Honor award in 2010, the highest decoration in France, awarded by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
You can listen to many shows starring Olivia on RUSC, including the one highlighted on the old newspaper clip above; Voyage Through Darkness from the series, Suspense.
I can hardly believe that the actress who played sweet, virtuous Melanie in "Gone With the Wind" has gone, but what a long and fulfilled life she lived.
Good night and God bless to the last legend of the golden age of Hollywood.
