Olivia De Havilland: Hollywood’s Longest Living Legends, Dies At 104

Olivia De Havilland: Hollywood’s Longest Living Legends, Dies At 104

According to Npr website Olivia de Havilland, who starred in dozens of movies through the 1930s and ’40s, has died at age 104. She died at her home in Paris of natural causes, her publicist, Lisa Goldberg, confirmed.

De Havilland was known for playing the good girl — pure hearted, pensive, deeply emotive — during Hollywood’s golden era. But of all her good-girl roles, she’s best remembered for Melanie, Scarlett O’Hara’s sweet foil in Gone With the Wind. Patricia White, a professor of film studies at Swarthmore College, says de Havilland’s Melanie was like a heroine from an 18th-century British novel: full of composure, with an unflashy beauty.

De Havilland Early Life In The spotlight

Reports gathered from Wikipedia, Olivia De Havilland’s 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 father, Walter de Havilland (1872–1968), served as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo before becoming a patent attorney. Her 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 married the following year; the marriage was not a happy one due in part to Walter’s infidelities. Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916. 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 15 months later, on October 22, 1917. Both sisters became citizens of the United Kingdom automatically by birthright.

In February 1919, Lilian persuaded her husband to take the family back to England for a climate better suited to 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.

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. 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 finalised, 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.

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, a teenage 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 told her that she had to choose between staying at home, or appearing in the production and not being allowed home. Not wanting to let her school and classmates down, she left home, moving in with a family friend.

After graduating from high school in 1934, de Havilland was offered a scholarship to Mills College in Oakland to pursue her chosen career as an English teacher. She was also offered the role of Puck in the Saratoga Community Theater production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That summer, Austrian director Max Reinhardt came to California for a major new production of the same play to premiere at the Hollywood Bowl. After one of Reinhardt’s assistants saw her perform in Saratoga, he offered her the second understudy position for the role of Hermia. One week before the premiere, the understudy Jean Rouverol and lead actress Gloria Stuart both left the project, leaving 18-year-old de Havilland to play Hermia. Impressed with her performance, Reinhardt offered her the part in the four-week autumn tour that followed. During that tour, Reinhardt received word that he would direct the Warner Bros. film version of his stage production, and he offered her the film role of Hermia. With her mind still set on becoming a teacher, de Havilland initially wavered, but eventually, Reinhardt and executive producer Henry Blanke persuaded her to sign a five-year contract with Warner Bros. on November 12, 1934, with a starting salary of $200 a week, marking the beginning of a professional acting career which would span more than 50 years.