An archive photo of Olivia de Havilland. (Image courtesy: AFP)
Strong points
- Olivia de Havilland died Sunday in Paris
- She “passed away peacefully from natural causes,” her publicist said
- In all, Olivia de Havilland has been nominated for five Oscars
Los Angeles:
Two-time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland and one of the last ties to Hollywood’s golden age, died Sunday at the age of 104. The actress, who starred in blockbusters like Blown away by the wind and played opposite men as dashing as Errol Flynn, personifying the glamor and elegance of a bygone era of filmmaking. In a statement, journalist Lisa Goldberg said Olivia de Havilland “passed away peacefully of natural causes” at her home in Paris, France, where she had lived for years. “She was a Hollywood queen and will go down in film history as such,” Thierry Fremaux, director of the Cannes Film Festival, told AFP.
“There aren’t many who deserve to be called ‘legend’,” tweeted Hollywood columnist Scott Feinberg, “but Olivia de Havilland … certainly was.”
And a Twitter account managed by the son of screen legend Humphrey Bogart said, “We have lost a true classic Hollywood icon.” Olivia de Havilland, who built a reputation as a bankable star for all genres, starred in 49 films from 1935 to 2009. She was also known for her colorful offscreen life, including a historic legal battle against Warner Bros. and a secret and a bitter quarrel with his sister and fellow actress Joan Fontaine.
– De Havilland’s law –
She won the lasting appreciation of her fellow actors when a lawsuit she filed against Warner Bros. – which had repeatedly extended her contract as she rejected script after script – led to a far-reaching decision in 1945 that gave actors much more power to choose. their own roles.
Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz tweeted that even beyond his two Oscars, “his greatest contribution came in court against Warner Bros., setting a model for labor rights in Hollywood.”
She was proud of the decision, still known as the De Havilland law.
Oscar winner actor Jared Leto tweeted that the law had helped him out of an unfavorable nine-year contract.
He was able to thank the actress in person in Paris, and recalled; “It was amazing to meet her – she’s a legend!”
Although De Havilland was blacklisted for three years while the case was ongoing, his legal victory launched his career.
Neither she nor her sister Joan Fontaine ever spoke publicly about their feud, but in 1941 De Havilland lost an Oscar for his main performance as Emmy Brown in Hold back the dawn at Fontaine, who won for Alfred Hitchcock Suspicion.
They remain the only siblings in Oscar history to both win main actor honors.
– Cast with Errol Flynn –
Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, the daughter of a lawyer mother and British actress Lilian Fontaine. When the couple divorced three years later, Fontaine took their two daughters to live in California. Still a teenager, de Havilland was discovered by the director Max Reinhardt during an amateur theater performance.
In 1935, Warner Bros. signed him to a seven-year contract; the same year, Jack Warner took a chance on the unknown actress, throwing her through the swashbuckling Errol Flynn in Captain Blood and the launch of his famous career.
She and Flynn, whose onscreen chemistry sparked speculation about an offscreen relationship, reunited again three years later in The Adventures of Robin Hood. And in 1939, Olivia De Havilland was cast as the noble and long-suffering Melanie Hamilton in MGM’s Civil War epic. Blown away by the wind. She won an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. De Havilland lost to his co-star Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy and became the first African American to win an Oscar. But the film sealed De Havilland’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s greatest ladies.
– ‘Personal strength’ –
De Havilland married twice – first to author Marcus Goodrich from 1946 to 1953, then to journalist Pierre Galante, editor-in-chief of the French magazine Paris Match.
In all, she was nominated for five Oscars, winning Best Actress for Everyone to his own tastes (1946) and The heiress (1949).
Tributes poured in on Sunday. “At a time when the place of women in film and in society at large is being questioned, we must remember the personal strength she displayed when she attacked the studio system to free actors from the operating contracts, ”said Fremaux. And the Screen Actors Guild tweeted that his “courage to take the studio system in 1945 has helped fellow actors for generations to come.”
The star had lived in Paris since the early 1950s and had received accolades such as the National Medal of the Arts, the Legion of Honor of France and the nomination of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
