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| Olivia de Havilland |
Today, The Grandma has received sad news. Olivia de Havilland, the last star of Hollywood's Golden Age died yesterday at 104.
The Grandma loves classic cinema and Olivia de Havilland was one of the most acclaimed artists thanks to her great interpretations. Perhaps, the most part of fans are going to remember Olivia de Havilland because of her role in Gone with the Wind but for The Grandma, Olivia de Havilland will be always one of the best Lady Marian, the famous character of Robin Hood.
The Grandma thinks that the best way to pay homage to Olivia de Havilland is talking about her life and her career.
Olivia Mary de Havilland (July 1, 1916-July 25, 2020) was a French-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 also one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema, until her death in 2020. Her younger sister was actress Joan Fontaine.
De Havilland first came to prominence as 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 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 since 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.
More information: BBC
In addition to her film career, de Havilland continued her work in the theater, 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.
Olivia Mary de Havilland
was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo. They moved into a large house in Tokyo, where
Lilian gave informal singing recitals. Olivia's younger sister Joan
(Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland) -later known as actress Joan Fontaine-
was born fifteen months later, on October 22, 1917. Both sisters became
citizens of the United Kingdom automatically by birthright.
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| Robin Hood (E. Flynn) & Gone with the Wind (V. Leigh) |
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.
In 1933, a teenage de Havilland made her debut in amateur theater 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.
De Havilland made her screen debut in Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was filmed at Warner Bros.
Although Warner Brothers studio had assumed that the many costumed films that studios like MGM had earlier produced would never succeed during the years of the Great Depression, they nonetheless took a chance by producing Captain Blood, also 1935.
De Havilland had her first top billing in Archie Mayo's comedy Call It a Day (1937), about a middle-class English family struggling with the romantic effects of spring fever during the course of a single day.
In September 1937, de Havilland was selected by Warner Bros. studio head Jack L. Warner to play Maid Marian opposite Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
More information: BBC
In a letter to a colleague dated November 18, 1938, film producer David O. Selznick wrote, I would give anything if we had Olivia de Havilland under contract to us so that we could cast her as Melanie. The film he was preparing to shoot was Gone with the Wind, and Jack L. Warner was unwilling to lend her out for the project.
De Havilland had read the novel, and unlike most other actresses, who wanted the Scarlett O'Hara role, she wanted to play Melanie Hamilton—a character whose quiet dignity and inner strength she understood and felt she could bring to life on the screen.
De Havilland appeared in Elliott Nugent's romantic comedy The Male Animal (1942) with Henry Fonda, about an idealistic professor fighting for academic freedom while trying to hold onto his job and his wife Ellen.
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| Olivia de Havilland and her sister, Joan Fontaine |
Around the same time, she appeared in John Huston's drama In This Our Life, also 1942, with Bette Davis.
De Havilland became a naturalized citizen of the United States on November 28, 1941, ten days before the United States entered World War II militarily, alongside the Allied Forces.
De Havilland was praised for her performance as Virginia Cunningham in Anatole Litvak's drama The Snake Pit (1948), one of the first films to attempt a realistic portrayal of mental illness and an important exposé of the harsh conditions in state mental hospitals, according to film critic Philip French.
De Havilland appeared in William Wyler's period drama The Heiress (1949), the fourth in a string of critically acclaimed performances.
De Havilland returned to the screen in Michael Curtiz's Western drama The Proud Rebel (1958), a film about a former Confederate soldier (Alan Ladd) whose wife was killed in the war and whose son lost the ability to speak after witnessing the tragedy.
More information: Everything Zoomer
As film roles became more difficult to find, a common problem shared by many Hollywood veterans from her era, de Havilland began working in television dramas, despite her dislike of the networks' practice of breaking up story lines with commercials.
In the 1980s, her television work included an Agatha Christie television film Murder Is Easy (1982), the television drama The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982) in which she played the Queen Mother, and the 1986 ABC miniseries North and South, Book II.
Her performance in the television film Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986), as Dowager Empress Maria, earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film.
In 1988, de Havilland appeared in the HTV romantic television drama The Woman He Loved; it was her final screen performance.
De Havilland died of natural causes in her sleep at her home in Paris, France, on July 25, 2020, at the age of 104.
More information: The Atlantic
There certainly is such a thing as screen chemistry,
although I don't believe you find it frequently.
Olivia De Havilland
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