Dame Olivia de Havilland - Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://www.achievement.org:80/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/","20180623092236","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1529745756"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <title>Dame Olivia de Havilland - Academy of Achievement</title>  <meta name="description" content="An illustrious star of Hollywood's Golden Age, Olivia de Havilland made her screen debut at 19 and soon became the screen's favorite romantic heroine, starring in a popular series of adventure films with leading man Errol Flynn, including such favorites as Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Charge of the Light Brigade. She made movie history with her unforgettable performance as the selfless Melanie in Gone With the Wind, often voted the greatest movie ever made. Her long struggle with the studio system to gain better roles for herself, and fairer treatment for actors generally, culminated in a landmark court decision, which liberated actors from onerous long-term contracts and opened the door to a new era of artistic freedom in cinema. Her experiences visiting traumatized soldiers during World War II led to a serious interest in mental health issues. Her performance in the film The Snake Pit exposed the shocking conditions prevalent in many mental institutions in the United States and led to widespread reform of mental health practices. She won Best Actress Oscars for her moving portrayals in To Each His Own and The Heiress. In a brilliant cinematic career spanning more than four decades, her beauty and intelligence charmed her first audiences; her courage and eloquence inspire new generations wherever her films are shown."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Dame Olivia de Havilland - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">An illustrious star of Hollywood's Golden Age, Olivia de Havilland made her screen debut at 19 and soon became the screen's favorite romantic heroine, starring in a popular series of adventure films with leading man Errol Flynn, including such favorites as <i>Captain Blood</i>, <i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i> and <i>The Charge of the Light Brigade</i>. She made movie history with her unforgettable performance as the selfless Melanie in <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, often voted the greatest movie ever made.</p> <p class="inputText">Her long struggle with the studio system to gain better roles for herself, and fairer treatment for actors generally, culminated in a landmark court decision, which liberated actors from onerous long-term contracts and opened the door to a new era of artistic freedom in cinema. Her experiences visiting traumatized soldiers during World War II led to a serious interest in mental health issues. Her performance in the film <i>The Snake Pit</i> exposed the shocking conditions prevalent in many mental institutions in the United States and led to widespread reform of mental health practices.</p> <p class="inputText">She won Best Actress Oscars for her moving portrayals in <i>To Each His Own</i> and <i>The Heiress</i>. In a brilliant cinematic career spanning more than four decades, her beauty and intelligence charmed her first audiences; her courage and eloquence inspire new generations wherever her films are shown.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/dehavilland-Feature-Image.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">An illustrious star of Hollywood's Golden Age, Olivia de Havilland made her screen debut at 19 and soon became the screen's favorite romantic heroine, starring in a popular series of adventure films with leading man Errol Flynn, including such favorites as <i>Captain Blood</i>, <i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i> and <i>The Charge of the Light Brigade</i>. She made movie history with her unforgettable performance as the selfless Melanie in <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, often voted the greatest movie ever made.</p> <p class="inputText">Her long struggle with the studio system to gain better roles for herself, and fairer treatment for actors generally, culminated in a landmark court decision, which liberated actors from onerous long-term contracts and opened the door to a new era of artistic freedom in cinema. Her experiences visiting traumatized soldiers during World War II led to a serious interest in mental health issues. Her performance in the film <i>The Snake Pit</i> exposed the shocking conditions prevalent in many mental institutions in the United States and led to widespread reform of mental health practices.</p> <p class="inputText">She won Best Actress Oscars for her moving portrayals in <i>To Each His Own</i> and <i>The Heiress</i>. In a brilliant cinematic career spanning more than four decades, her beauty and intelligence charmed her first audiences; her courage and eloquence inspire new generations wherever her films are shown.</p>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Dame Olivia de Havilland - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/dehavilland-Feature-Image.jpg"/> <script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180623092236\/http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"WebSite","@id":"#website","url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180623092236\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/","name":"Academy of Achievement","alternateName":"A museum of living history","potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180623092236\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/search\/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required 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/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/dehavilland-Feature-Image-1400x560.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Dame Olivia de Havilland</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Two Oscars for Best Actress</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-2251 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-actor"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="banner clearfix"> <div class="banner--single clearfix"> <div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2"> <div class="banner__image__container"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <img class="lazyload banner__image" data-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/dehavilland_WhatItTakes_256x256-190x190.jpg" alt=""/> </figure> </a> </div> <div class="banner__text__container"> <h3 class="serif-3 banner__headline"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> Listen to this achiever on <i>What It Takes</i> </a> </h3> <p class="sans-6 banner__text m-b-0"><i>What It Takes</i> is an audio podcast on iTunes produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: music, science and exploration, sports, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">I would like respect for difficult work well done.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">The Last Belle of Cinema</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> July 1, 1916 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_3081" style="width: 396px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3081 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3081 size-full lazyload" alt="Olivia de Havilland as an infant, with her father, Walter A. de Havilland, her mother, Lilian de Havilland (later Fontaine) and two Japanese nurses. Olivia was born in Japan, where her father had a successful patent law practice. (Getty Images)" width="396" height="611" data-sizes="(max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013.jpg 396w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013-246x380.jpg 246w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Olivia de Havilland as an infant, with her father, Walter A. de Havilland, her mother, Lilian de Havilland (later Fontaine) and two Japanese nurses. Olivia was born in Japan, where her father had a  patent law practice.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputText">Olivia de Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan to English parents. Her father, Walter, headed a firm of patent attorneys; her mother, Lilian, a trained singer and actress, was active in the theatrical life of the city’s small English community. Her parents separated when she was only two years old, and along with her younger sister, Joan, she was taken by her mother to the United States, where they settled in Saratoga, California, then a small village outside of San Jose. After settling in Saratoga, Mrs. de Havilland divorced Olivia’s father and eventually married a San Jose businessman, George Fontaine. Young Olivia quickly took to life in her new world. She excelled in school, editing her high school yearbook and winning awards for public speaking. She was also active in a local theatrical company, playing the title role in their production of <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>, and Puck in <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>.</p> <p class="inputText">Olivia had graduated from high school and was planning to attend Mills College on scholarship when she heard that the renowned director Max Reinhardt was planning a massive outdoor production of <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> to play in San Francisco and Los Angeles. A friend arranged for her to audition for Reinhardt’s general manager, and she was offered the opportunity to understudy the ingénue role of Hermia. This was an extraordinary opportunity for a novice actress. Reinhardt was the leading international theatrical figure of the early 20th century, famous for his elaborate outdoor spectacles. His <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream </i>was to be the largest of all, using the wooded hills above the 25,000-seat Hollywood Bowl to represent Shakespeare’s enchanted forest and a full orchestra playing Mendelssohn’s celebrated score for the play.</p> <figure id="attachment_17808" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-17808 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514685292_master.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-17808 size-full lazyload" alt="October 10, 1934: The cast of <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i> gather together with Warner Brothers executives. Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney, Dick Powell, and James Cagney are the players in the broadcast. (Bettmann/Getty)" width="2280" height="1785" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514685292_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514685292_master-380x298.jpg 380w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514685292_master-760x595.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514685292_master.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">October 10, 1934: The cast of <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> gathers together with Warner Brothers executives. Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney, Dick Powell, and James Cagney are the players in the broadcast. (Bettmann/Getty)</figcaption></figure><table border="0" align="right"><tbody><tr><td><a name="deh0-014a.gif"></a></td> </tr></tbody></table><p>Olivia traveled to Los Angeles to watch Reinhardt’s rehearsals, still planning to attend college in the fall, but when the actress playing Hermia dropped out of the production, 18-year-old Olivia found herself playing the role with a cast of seasoned professionals, in front of all Hollywood. The production was a sensation, and audiences were delighted by the young ingénue with the warm, lilting voice and huge, dark eyes. Warner Brothers studios hired Reinhardt to direct a film version of the play, using Warner Brothers contract players, but Reinhardt insisted on retaining Olivia de Havilland as Hermia. The film was a surprising success, and Warner Brothers signed Olivia de Havilland to a seven-year contract, a standard practice in Hollywood at that time.</p> <figure id="attachment_17802" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-17802 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-50829165_master.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-17802 size-full lazyload" alt="1938: Actors Errol Flynn and 22-year-old Olivia de Havilland embrace in a still from <i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i>, directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. (Warner Bros./Getty Images)" width="2280" height="2758" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-50829165_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-50829165_master-314x380.jpg 314w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-50829165_master-628x760.jpg 628w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-50829165_master.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1938: Actors Errol Flynn and 22-year-old Olivia de Havilland embrace in a still from <i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i>.</figcaption></figure><p>In her first major role after <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>, Olivia de Havilland was paired with an unknown Australian actor, Errol Flynn. The film, <i>Captain Blood</i>, was a swashbuckling costume picture. Audiences were thrilled with the chemistry between the tall blond hero and his petite, brunette leading lady. The film was an enormous success and the studio cast the pair in one picture after another: <i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i>, <i>The Charge of the Light Brigade</i>, <i>Dodge City</i>, <i>Santa Fe Trail</i> and <i>They Died with Their Boots On</i>, as well as the comedy <i>Four’s a Crowd</i>.</p> <figure id="attachment_17806" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-17806 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-17806 size-full lazyload" alt="1939: Actresses Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel play the roles of Scarlett O'Hara, Melanie Hamilton and Mammy respectively in a scene from the movie <i>Gone with the Wind</i> by Victor Fleming. (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1884" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master-380x314.jpg 380w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master-760x628.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1939: Actresses Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel play the roles of Scarlett O’Hara, Melanie Hamilton and Mammy, respectively, in a scene from the movie <i>Gone With the Wind</i> by Victor Fleming. (Getty)</figcaption></figure><p>Inspired by Olivia’s success, her mother and sister joined her in Los Angeles. Adopting her stepfather’s surname, Olivia’s sister also enjoyed a successful acting career as Joan Fontaine; and their mother worked intermittently as an actress, using her married name, Lilian Fontaine. At Warner Brothers, Olivia de Havilland became frustrated with the lack of variety in her film roles. In film after film, it seemed, her character’s only purpose was to serve as the love interest of the daring hero, but despite her growing popularity, Warner Brothers consistently refused to assign her more interesting fare.</p> <figure id="attachment_17807" style="width: 2400px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-17807 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-154046829_master.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-17807 lazyload" alt="1940: British-American actress Olivia de Havilland. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)" width="2400" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-154046829_master.jpg 2400w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-154046829_master-304x380.jpg 304w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-154046829_master-608x760.jpg 608w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-154046829_master.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1940: British-American motion picture actress Olivia de Havilland. (Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>A breakthrough came when independent producer David Selznick offered her the role of Melanie in <i>Gone With the Wind</i>. Although studio chief Jack Warner initially balked at lending her services to Selznick, he relented when offered to exchange the services of the popular star James Stewart for one picture, in return for those of Olivia de Havilland. Her performance in <i>Gone With the Wind</i> is one of the highlights of that enduring classic. De Havilland’s Melanie is both a believable individual and an archetypal embodiment of selfless womanhood. Although she was billed as one of the stars, Selznick did not want her competing with his other star, Vivien Leigh, for a Best Actress Oscar, so he arranged to have de Havilland nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category instead. The award went to Hattie McDaniel for her performance in the same film. De Havilland appreciated the historic importance of this first Oscar win by an African American. De Havilland received a Best Actress nomination of her own the following year for her performance in <i>Hold Back the Dawn</i>.</p> <figure id="attachment_44088" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44088 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-90060492.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44088 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="2918" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-90060492.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-90060492-297x380.jpg 297w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-90060492-594x760.jpg 594w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-90060492.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1945: Olivia de Havilland (left) with her younger sister, actress Joan Fontaine. Fontaine won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1941 for her role in the Alfred Hitchcock film <em>Suspicion</em>. De Havilland and her sister are the only siblings to have won Academy Awards in a lead acting category. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p class="inputText">The Best Actress nomination placed de Havilland in direct competition with her younger sister, Joan Fontaine, who was enjoying success in a series of dramatic roles. When Fontaine won the Best Actress Oscar, a private sibling rivalry erupted into a public professional feud. The sisters remained distant for the rest of their lives. Joan Fontaine died in Carmel, California in 2013.</p> <p class="inputText">Like <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, <i>Hold Back the Dawn</i> had been made away from de Havilland’s home studio. Back at Warner Brothers, she appeared with Flynn and Warners’ reigning queen, Bette Davis, in <i>The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex</i>. De Havilland and Davis also worked together in the powerful drama <i>In This Our Life</i>, and the older star proved a supportive friend through de Havilland’s struggles with studio management. Despite her entreaties, studio chief Jack Warner refused to give her the kind of challenging roles other studios were offering her. When Warner insisted on casting her in substandard projects, she voluntarily went on suspension, collecting no salary until she went back to work. She continued to show her range whenever the opportunity presented itself, giving a sparkling performance in the period comedy <i>The Strawberry Blonde</i>.</p> <figure id="attachment_17805" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-17805 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-120426357_master.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-17805 size-full lazyload" alt="1945: Olivia de Havilland (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="2850" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-120426357_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-120426357_master-304x380.jpg 304w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-120426357_master-608x760.jpg 608w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-120426357_master.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">In 1945, Olivia de Havilland began filming the drama <em>To Each His Own</em>, about an unwed mother who gives up her child for adoption and then spends the rest of her life trying to undo that decision. The role required de Havilland to age nearly thirty years over the course of the film — from an innocent, small-town girl to a shrewd, ruthless businesswoman devoted to her cosmetics company.  Her performance earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 — her first Oscar. The award “represented a vindication of de Havilland’s long struggle with Warner Bros. and confirmation of her abilities as an actress.”  (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>When her seven-year contract was finally due to expire, Warner added the time she had spent on suspension to the term of her contract. Although this appeared to be a violation of California law, it was a routine practice at all the Hollywood studios. No actor, or other studio employees, had ever successfully challenged the custom. Even Warner Brothers’ leading female star, Bette Davis, had been forced to relent and accept the extension of her contract term. After reading the applicable statute herself, Olivia de Havilland decided to ask the State of California for declaratory relief, releasing her from her contract. When the Superior Court ruled in her favor, Warner Brothers secured injunctions, barring her from working at any other studio. The legal struggle kept her off-screen for two years during World War II, but she used the time to tour military hospitals, visiting wounded soldiers, sailors and airmen. Her travels took her as far as Fiji, in the South Pacific, where she received word that the Supreme Court of California had upheld lower court decisions. The contract ingénue had challenged the studio system and won. The <span style="font-size: 1rem;">“d</span>e Havilland<span style="font-size: 1rem;"> decision,” as it is known, set an enduring precedent in labor law and changed the Hollywood studio system forever.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_3072" style="width: 2158px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-3072 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-3072 lazyload" alt="Olivia de Havilland tries to escape from a hellish mental institution in the 1948 film, The Snake Pit. (Getty Images)" width="2158" height="2777" data-sizes="(max-width: 2158px) 100vw, 2158px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003.jpg 2158w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003-295x380.jpg 295w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003-591x760.jpg 591w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Olivia de Havilland tries to escape from a hellish mental institution in the 1948 film <i>The Snake Pit</i>. (Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>On her return to the United States, Olivia de Havilland, and most other established stars in Hollywood, were free to work at any studio, on whatever project suited them, and to negotiate their own fees. Rather than blacklisting her, as she might have feared, the studios rushed to offer her the most challenging assignments. In 1946, she starred in <i>To Each His Own</i>, playing the same character from her teens to maturity. Her meticulously detailed performance won her the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.</p> <figure id="attachment_17809" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-17809 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514885914_master.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-17809 size-full lazyload" alt="March 25, 1950: Actress Olivia de Havilland proudly displays her second Oscar awarded for her performance as the Best Actress of 1949 for her role in <i>The Heiress</i>. Miss De Havilland also won top honors in 1946. (Bettmann/Getty)" width="2280" height="2816" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514885914_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514885914_master-308x380.jpg 308w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514885914_master-615x760.jpg 615w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514885914_master.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">March 25, 1950: Actress Olivia de Havilland proudly displays her second Oscar, awarded for her performance as the Best Actress of 1949 for her role in <i>The Heiress</i>. Miss de Havilland also won Best Actress honors in 1946. (Bettman)</figcaption></figure><p>During her wartime travels, de Havilland had witnessed the devastating incidence of mental illness among returning servicemen. With war’s end, this problem had become a pressing one for the whole society, but a long-standing taboo inhibited public discussion of the matter. De Havilland leaped at the chance to dramatize the problem in her next project, <i>The Snake Pit</i>. Her fearless performance in this harrowing film exposed shocking conditions in the nation’s mental institutions and ignited public demand for long-overdue reform.</p> <figure id="attachment_17804" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-17804 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180697_master.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-17804 lazyload" alt="English actress Olivia de Havilland with her two Academy Awards (Photo by Terry O'Neill/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="2304" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180697_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180697_master-376x380.jpg 376w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180697_master-752x760.jpg 752w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180697_master.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Legendary actress Olivia de Havilland with her two Academy Awards for Best Actress. (Terry O’Neill/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>Another historic performance came in a project she originated. After seeing a stage adaptation of <i>Washington Square,</i> by the great American novelist Henry James, de Havilland resolved to bring the story to the screen. She enlisted the acclaimed director William Wyler, long recognized for the power of his adaptations of great literature. The production proved a trying one. The distinguished actor Ralph Richardson, the epitome of old-school British acting, posed one set of challenges, while her leading man, Montgomery Clift, an exponent of the new “Method” school, presented another. In one of the most difficult roles of her career, de Havilland found herself isolated on the set. She channeled all of the emotions posed by these difficulties back into the performance. A great story, a stirring musical score by Aaron Copland, masterful direction by Wyler and an unforgettable performance by Olivia de Havilland resulted in an enduring masterpiece, <i>The Heiress</i>. For the second time, Olivia de Havilland was honored with the Best Actress Oscar.</p> <figure id="attachment_44273" style="width: 1104px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44273 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Olivia-de-Havilland-1986-mt-vernon.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44273 lazyload" alt="" width="1104" height="804" data-sizes="(max-width: 1104px) 100vw, 1104px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Olivia-de-Havilland-1986-mt-vernon.jpg 1104w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Olivia-de-Havilland-1986-mt-vernon-380x277.jpg 380w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Olivia-de-Havilland-1986-mt-vernon-760x553.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Olivia-de-Havilland-1986-mt-vernon.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">June 1986: Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon and Academy Class of 1973, addresses summit delegates and members as Summit moderator Olivia de Havilland looks on during the American Academy of Achievement’s 25th anniversary Summit at historic Mount Vernon, VA.</figcaption></figure><p>In the 1950s, de Havilland appeared less frequently on screen, and devoted more of her time to raising her children, a son by her first marriage, to novelist Marcus Goodrich, and a daughter with her second husband, French businessman Pierre Galante. She also enjoyed several successes on stage, including an acclaimed run in <i>Romeo and Juliet </i>on Broadway. She returned to Hollywood periodically in the 1950s, giving memorable performances in <i>My Cousin Rachel</i>, <i>Not As a Stranger</i> and <i>The Proud Rebel</i>. After her marriage to Galante, she settled in Paris; she wrote a humorous account of life in France in her 1962 bestseller, <i>Every Frenchman Has One</i>. In the same year, she gave a highly nuanced performance in the film <i>A Light in the Piazza</i> and starred on Broadway in<i> A Gift of Time</i>. In the 1960s, a new audience of filmgoers discovered the dramatic power of Olivia de Havilland in macabre thrillers such as <i>Lady in a Cage</i> and <i>Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte,</i> with her old friend Bette Davis. Through the following decades, she appeared in a number of Hollywood films, and on television in the miniseries <i>Roots: The Next Generation</i>, <i>North and South II</i> and <i>Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna</i>.</p> <p>With every re-release and anniversary of <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, Olivia de Havilland has been honored as the sole surviving star of that historic motion picture. In 2005, she was awarded the Kennedy Center’s International Medal of the Arts in a ceremony in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2006, shortly before her 90th birthday, she received a tribute from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles.</p> <figure id="attachment_36232" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-36232 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-small-Olivia-de-Havilland-with-daughter.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-36232 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1539" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-small-Olivia-de-Havilland-with-daughter.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-small-Olivia-de-Havilland-with-daughter-380x257.jpg 380w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-small-Olivia-de-Havilland-with-daughter-760x513.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-small-Olivia-de-Havilland-with-daughter.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Awards Council member Olivia de Havilland with daughter, Gisèle Galante, arrives at the Academy of Achievement dinner reception at U.S. Ambassador’s residence during the 2000 International Achievement Summit in London.</figcaption></figure><p>A dual national of the United States and the United Kingdom, she has received high honors from both countries. President George W. Bush presented her with the National Medal of Arts in a ceremony at the White House in November 2008. In 2017, two weeks before her 101st birthday, Olivia de Havilland was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.</p> <p class="inputText">De Havilland’s past courage in bucking the power structure of the motion picture industry and exposing the shortcomings of America’s mental health care system has had repercussions far beyond the world of cinema. As she meticulously researches her memoirs from her home in Paris, Olivia de Havilland enjoys the satisfaction of seeing her past performances inspire new generations of film fans and filmmakers.</p> <figure id="attachment_6289" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-6289 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_719.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-6289 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3420" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_719.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_719-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_719-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_719.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Three members of the Academy’s Golden Plate Awards Council: Hollywood legends Olivia de Havilland and Dame Julie Andrews with L.A. Lakers’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles.</figcaption></figure> <p>At the age of 101, Olivia de Havilland once again undertook a groundbreaking legal case. The dispute arose following the 2016 broadcast on FX Networks of a television miniseries dramatizing the long rivalry between actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.  The drama, <em>Feud: Bette and Joan</em>, portrayed Olivia de Havilland, a real-life friend of Bette Davis’s, using coarse language in reference to her own sister, and gossiping about the private lives of other stars to an interviewer.  Dame Olivia was offended by the portrayal, which she found both demeaning and factually inaccurate — throughout her career, she avoided disparaging other actors or discussing their personal lives in interviews.</p> <p>De Havilland sued FX Networks and Ryan Murphy Productions for portraying her “in a false light” without her permission, thereby violating her “right of publicity.” Observers gave her little chance of success in her suit, as American courts typically give filmmakers considerable freedom in the portrayal of public figures.  De Havilland and her attorneys asserted that the First Amendment protection of political speech afforded artists, journalists and satirists does not apply to the unauthorized misrepresentation of a real person in this context.</p> <figure id="attachment_44090" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44090 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-623626772.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44090 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1517" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-623626772.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-623626772-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-623626772-760x506.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-623626772.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2010: British actresses Jacqueline Bisset and Olivia de Havilland after they were awarded Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, the highest decoration in France, by President Nicolas Sarközy at Élysée Palace in Paris. (Eric Feferberg)</figcaption></figure> <p>FX Networks, joined by Netflix, Inc., moved to have the case dismissed before trial, but in a surprising decision, the California Superior Court ruled that the case should proceed.   As dramas portraying real events and living persons have proliferated in recent years, the decision sent shock waves through the film and television industry.  When the defendants, joined by the Motion Picture Association of America, appealed the decision, the California appeals court dismissed the case, ruling that “a person portrayed in one of these expressive works” has no “legal right to control, dictate, approve, disapprove, or veto the creator’s portrayal of actual people.” De Havilland and her attorney announced that they would appeal this decision and take it to a higher court.</p> <figure id="attachment_44372" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44372 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-931433476.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44372 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3420" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-931433476.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-931433476-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-931433476-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-931433476.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">February 17, 2018: Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland in Paris, France. (Photo: Julien Mignot/Contour by Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>By her own account, de Havilland undertook the case less out of concern for her own reputation than out of concern for the future harm that could be done to others if the practice of portraying living persons inaccurately continues unchecked. Her international reputation and advanced age allow her to pursue such an action, she said, when younger performers might fear professional retribution for suing members of their own industry.</p></body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 1978 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.actor">Actor</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> July 1, 1916 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">An illustrious star of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Olivia de Havilland made her screen debut at 19 and soon became the screen’s favorite romantic heroine, starring in a popular series of adventure films with leading man Errol Flynn, including such favorites as <i>Captain Blood</i>, <i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i> and <i>The Charge of the Light Brigade</i>. She made movie history with her unforgettable performance as the selfless Melanie in <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, often voted the greatest movie ever made.</p> <p class="inputText">Her long struggle with the studio system to gain better roles for herself, and fairer treatment for actors generally, culminated in a landmark court decision, which liberated actors from onerous long-term contracts and opened the door to a new era of artistic freedom in cinema. Her experiences visiting traumatized soldiers during World War II led to a serious interest in mental health issues. Her performance in the film <i>The Snake Pit</i> exposed the shocking conditions prevalent in many mental institutions in the United States and led to widespread reform of mental health practices.</p> <p class="inputText">She won Best Actress Oscars for her moving portrayals in <i>To Each His Own</i> and <i>The Heiress</i>. In a brilliant cinematic career spanning more than four decades, her beauty and intelligence charmed her first audiences; her courage and eloquence inspire new generations wherever her films are shown.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/ix-Pycyhua4?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.00_54_49_04.Still001-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.00_54_49_04.Still001-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">The Last Belle of Cinema</h2> <div class="sans-2">Washington, D.C.</div> <div class="sans-2">October 5, 2006</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Very early in your film career you were cast opposite Errol Flynn in some wonderful adventure films. What was that partnership like? Were you immediately drawn to Mr. Flynn?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Yes, I was.</span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/50-ymK1IBuo?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=56&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.02_36_30_06.Still024-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.02_36_30_06.Still024-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I was called for a test, simply a silent test, just to see how the two of us in costume would look together, and that’s when I first met him. And I walked onto the set, and they said, “Would you please stand next to Mr. Flynn?” and I saw him. Oh my! Oh my! Struck dumb. I knew it was what the French call a <i>coup de foudre</i>. So I took my position next to him, and I was very, very formal with him because that is the way you were in those days. We had never met. We had never met, and we just stood there next to each other. Oh!</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_18195" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-18195 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WP-GettyImages-517245446.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-18195 size-full lazyload" alt="April 26, 1948: Film stars Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, appearing in several movies together, are seen here embracing in one of their films. (Bettmann)" width="2280" height="1738" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WP-GettyImages-517245446.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WP-GettyImages-517245446-380x290.jpg 380w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WP-GettyImages-517245446-760x579.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WP-GettyImages-517245446.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1948: Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, appearing in several movies together, are seen here embracing. (Getty)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1">A few weeks later, quite a considerable debate had gone on. Bette Davis, for example, had been photographed with him too, and she was the great star on the lot. They had to weigh casting me as Arabella Bishop, because Errol Flynn and I were both at that time completely unknown, and they were going to invest what was then a very large sum of money, $800,000, in this production. Therefore, they decided that we should work on some scenes together, not to be filmed, but just so that the producer and director could see how we performed together.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">So one day, we were called together, and we started to rehearse, and then we had a lunch break. We went off to the commissary, and he walked with me to the commissary. I had never been in it before. I got a tray, and he went ahead, and he took his tray to a table, and I filled my tray and I wanted to go and sit over there next to him, and I thought, “No, he will think I am bold, and I can’t do that.” So I found another place and sat there and ate my lunch in a solitary fashion.</span></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/-Uu0pPWOGPE?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=99&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.02_36_05_23.Still023-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.02_36_05_23.Still023-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">When I turned in my tray, he turned his in at the same time. So we walked back to the stage together, and when we got there, no one was there.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>We were the first, and we sat down on the ramp, which leads from the great open door of the stage to the street, and he asked me — he was 25 years of age when this happened, and I was still 18 — he said to me, “What do you want out of life?” and I thought, “What an extraordinary question to be asked!<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>Nobody has asked me that ever.” And in fact, nobody ever did in the years that followed, and I said, “I would like respect for difficult work well done.” And then I said, “Well, what do you want out of life?” and he said, “I want success.”<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>And what he meant by that was fame and riches, both of which he certainly did achieve, but when he said it, I thought, “But that’s not enough,” and indeed, it proved in Errol’s life not to be enough.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Of course, they decided to cast us together, and we made the film聽<i>Captain Blood</i>.</span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1"><b>Your films with Errol Flynn were highly successful and very popular films, but I gather from about the time of <i>Dodge City</i>, you were beginning to be frustrated at being typecast.</b></span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s2">Olivia de Havilland: Oh yes.</span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/pWlu9VJD5iM?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.01_53_45_23.Still017-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.01_53_45_23.Still017-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">The life of the love interest is really pretty boring.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>The objective is the marriage bed.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>That’s what<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽</span>the heroine is there for, and “Will he win or will he not? Will they finally make the marriage bed?”<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>It was obvious it would be the marriage bed, not any other bed, but it was all about would they in the end get together that way, and the route to the marriage bed — and that was promised at the end of the film, of course — was a pretty boring route. The heroine really <em>heroined</em>.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>She really had nothing much to do except encourage the hero, and at the right moment… and you can’t imagine how uninteresting that can be, the route.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>The objective might have been different, but anyhow the route is very boring.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>So I longed to play a character who initiated things, who experienced important things, who interpreted the great agonies and joys of human experience, and I certainly wasn’t doing that on any kind of level of a significance playing the love interest.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Were you especially low on the set of <i>Dodge City</i>?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Oh, I was. I was very depressed by that time. My ambition had been to play difficult roles or to do difficult work and to do it well. I was getting nowhere with that.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_17810" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-17810 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-517479294_master.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-17810 size-full lazyload" alt="Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn from the 1939 film Dodge City. (Bettmann/Getty)" width="2280" height="2514" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-517479294_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-517479294_master-345x380.jpg 345w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-517479294_master-689x760.jpg 689w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-517479294_master.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn from the 1939 film <i>Dodge City</i>.  It was one of the highest-grossing films of the year. This was the seventh of eleven movies that de Havilland and Flynn appeared in together. (Bettmann/Getty)</figcaption></figure><p class="p2"><span class="s1"><b>Was this a result of the studio system that kept you in a certain track?</b></span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s2">Olivia de Havilland: Yes. It was a stock company, Warner Brothers. They had one great dramatic actress. That was Bette Davis. They had a great dramatic actor, Paul Muni. They had another one, Edward G. Robinson. And they had a clotheshorse, marvelous Kay Francis. They had two comediennes, Glenda Farrell and Joan Blondell. And then they had two ingenues, one was brunette, and one was blond, and the blond one was Anita Louise — who was really, I thought, marvelous in <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> playing Titania — and they had Olivia de Havilland, the brunette ingenue. Well that’s how the casting went, you see. It was either the brunette ingenue or it was the blond ingenue. It was confining in that way. I had no real opportunity to develop and to explore difficult roles, and that was tiresome.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How did you land the part of Melanie in <i>Gone With the Wind</i>? Wasn’t that at another studio?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s2">Olivia de Havilland: Oh yes.</span></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/dcR6gTq6brk?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.01_39_19_09.Still015-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.01_39_19_09.Still015-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>One day, I came back from location. In Modesto it was. <i>Dodge City</i>. It must have been early December — very late November in any case — of 1938, and the phone rang. The voice said, “You don’t know me. We’ve never met, but I am George Cukor. I have been supervising the preparation of <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, and I will be directing the movie. We are in the process of casting, and I would like to know if you would be interested in playing the role of Melanie.” Well, I said, “I certainly would,” and then he said, “Would you consent to doing something highly illegal?” Well, I said, “What would that be?” And he said, “You are under contract to Warner Brothers. We have no right to ask this of you, but would you come secretly 鈥斅爐ell no one 鈥斅爐o the studio? We will give you directions to what entrance to go, just a private entrance. Someone will be waiting there for you, and he will unlock the door and let you in and lead you to my office to read some lines, read the part of Melanie.” I said, “Yes. I’d be delighted to do this highly illegal thing.” So, I did, and I read the lines for George Cukor, and he said, “I think I must call David,” and he called David Selznick and said, “David, I think you must hear Miss de Havilland read the part of Melanie.”</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">So it was all arranged that I would go off to David’s house — which happened to be a Southern mansion, by the way — on Sunday at 3:00, having memorized a scene George then gave me, a scene between Scarlett and Melanie.</span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/itzIBNw1tLI?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.01_26_01_16.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.01_26_01_16.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">I drove myself up in my little green Buick to David’s Southern mansion.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>I was shown into this beautiful drawing room, paneled, wood-paneled, a lovely room, and in came George and David.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>Now, I have to explain to you that George was very, very rotund.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>He also had very dark eyes and very dark hair, very curly and very thick, and he wore very thick glasses, thickly rimmed in dark tortoiseshell, very dark, or maybe not even tortoiseshell.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>They were rimmed in thick black rims.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>He played Scarlett.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>He played Scarlett passionately, clutching the porches.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>There we were in this little bay window with the hangings, and I was pleading with “Scarlett! Scarlett!” over something or another, and he was clutching the porches, and there was David standing three feet from us, watching this scene with rapt attention, enthralled. Well, part of my mind, of course, was saying this has to be the most comic thing to witness that has ever, ever happened, ever been performed in the history of the world.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_3085" style="width: 396px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3085 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-017.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3085 size-full lazyload" alt="1939: Olivia de Havilland as the selfless Melanie in <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, a performance cherished by generations of moviegoers. (Getty Images)" width="396" height="496" data-sizes="(max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-017.jpg 396w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-017-303x380.jpg 303w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-017.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1939: Olivia de Havilland as the selfless Melanie in <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, a performance cherished by generations.</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Extraordinarily, when this was over, David decided that he had found his Melanie. He couldn’t make a screen test with me, of course, Warners would never agree to that, but before making a final decision, he wanted to see the screen tests of the other ladies who had tried out for the part. So I went into the projection room. There was Mrs. Selznick, Irene, a wonderful woman, sitting in a taffeta housecoat in this empty projection room, which abutted on the drawing room. We all sat down, and they began. The projectionists began to run the different tests. Andrea Leeds was marvelous, and Anne Shirley was marvelous. There were at least six. I felt they were all wonderful, and I said so, and then I thought, “Oh Lord, I don’t want to convince him. I don’t want to convince David and George to choose one of them. I must be more restrained in my reaction.” So I sort of calmed down and was much more discreet, and when it was over, unbelievably, David said, “Well, I will start getting in touch with Jack Warner.” So I had survived the acid test of the six screen tests. Now…</span></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/JDZlbyh4Rpw?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.01_39_19_09.Still015-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/de-Havilland-Olivia-2006-HDCAM-MasterEdit.01_39_19_09.Still015-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">Jack Warner utterly refused to lend me for Melanie.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>He wouldn’t hear of it.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>I even went to call on him and begged him.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>He said no, he wouldn’t do it.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>He would not lend me to Selznick to play the part of Melanie.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>I was desperate, and I did something, age 22, that really was not correct, but I did it.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>I called Mrs. Warner, who had been an actress, a lovely, lovely woman — Ann Alvarado was her name before she met Jack — and I told her that I would very much like to see her, and would she be kind enough to have tea with me at the Brown Derby, and she said, “Yes.”<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>Well, we met.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>It was raining.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>I remember that.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>The Brown Derby, I think, no longer exists.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>It’s a terrible thing that they tore that down.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>I explained to her how much the part meant to me, and I said, “Would you help me?”<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>She said, “I understand you, and I will help you,” and it was through her that Jack eventually agreed, and he says so in his biography. It was Ann who did it. Isn’t this wonderful? And finally arrangements were made, an agreement between Selznick and Warner.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>Selznick had a one-picture commitment with Jimmy Stewart.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>So he loaned — he gave up that.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>He gave that over to Jack Warner, who needed him for a film and took me in exchange, so I reported to the set.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What attracted you to the role of Melanie? You said that you believed you could really bring something to this character.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: </span><span class="s1">Jack [Warner], for example, said, “Oh, you don’t want to play Melanie. You want to play Scarlett.” I said, “I don’t want to play Scarlett. I want Melanie.” It’s because I was so young. I had for four years been earning my own living, going through all the problems of a career woman, self-supporting and even contributing to the support of others, which is what Scarlett did. That’s what Scarlett did. So, I knew about being Scarlett in a sense, but Melanie was someone different. She had very, deeply feminine qualities. Scarlett was a self-absorbed person. She had to be. Career women have to be, that’s all there is to it. But, Melanie was “other people-oriented,” and she had these feminine qualities that I felt were very endangered at that time, and they are from generation to generation, and that somehow they should be kept alive, and one way I could contribute to their being kept alive was to play Melanie, and that’s why I wanted to interpret her role.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What were those characteristics you felt were endangered? What was it about Melanie?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: The main thing is that she was always thinking of the other person, and the interesting thing to me is that she was a happy person. Scarlett was not a happy woman, all self-generated and preoccupied, but there’s Melanie, “other people-oriented,” a happy woman, loving, compassionate. She had this marvelous capacity to relate to people with whom she would normally have no relationship. For example, look at her behavior with Belle Watlin, absolutely astounding, marvelous.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>She believed in the best in people, didn’t she?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Yes. Yes. And, of course, all people have something wonderful about them. She was not mistaken.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You have said that a profound influence on you as an actress was a comment that James Cagney made to you about what it means to act.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Thrust into my profession without any training whatsoever, I had to just flounder and just find my way. It was an agonizing experience. It’s like jumping off a diving board in the Olympic contest without knowing how to swim or dive, and I just had to find my way. So one day, I said to Jimmy Cagney, “Jimmy, what is acting?” and he said, “I don’t know.” He said, “All I can tell you is whatever you say, mean it,” and I thought that marvelous counsel. It is key. Wonderful.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You have said that your style of preparing for a scene was quite different than that of your co-star Vivien Leigh. Did you have different attitudes about that?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Vivien was just a marvel. She was a hard worker, highly professional, a marvel, and between scenes, she had this other capacity. It took a long time to light up the sets as you can well imagine Technicolor in those days. Three cameras, all of these strips of film, three-strip cameras, and all of that required quite special lighting and a lot of time to set the scenes in that way. So Vivien, in between, would find a little quiet place on the set, and she and [Clark] Gable would play a game called Battleship, and occasionally, they would invite me to join them, and I would play. The assistant director would come and give us warning. He would say, “Ten minutes,” something like that, and I would excuse myself to go back to my dressing room, not only to check the makeup, but also try to recapture the character of Melanie, which often, just looking in the mirror — because the costumes, and the hair and all of that did express her so well — I would need that time. Not Vivien. She would leave. They would say, “We’re ready to shoot or ready to rehearse,” and she would get up from the game of Battleship, go straight into the scene, and play it brilliantly. She was fabulous, fabulous.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What impact did the firing of George Cukor as director have on the two of you? You had worked with Cukor in developing these roles of Scarlett and Melanie.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Oh, yes. It was a frightful shock. </span><span class="s1">Two or three weeks after we had begun shooting, we learned that George Cukor would be leaving the film. It was devastating for Vivien and for me because we had set our characters under his direction, and for consistency and continuity, we would depend on him and his assistance and direction. The thought of having another director come on the set was devastating. So we went, the two of us, to implore David Selznick to retain George. We had been doing the bazaar scenes. We were both dressed in widow’s weeds and all of that, and we had black-bordered handkerchiefs, and we went to see David. We called and said we would like to see him, and he received us, and we pleaded for three-and-a-half hours. We pleaded that he retain George as director. We even took out our handkerchiefs, black-bordered, and we wept into them. Well, he withstood those tears. He had a kind of window seat behind his desk, and he retreated to that window seat. He couldn’t go out the window. That stopped him, but how he managed to remain firm, I will never know, and he didn’t dismiss us or anything. He was so patient. He listened and listened and listened, and finally, we left and we had not succeeded.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Why did he feel so strongly that Cukor was not the right director for <i>Gone With the Wind</i>?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Nobody really knows the story, but I think that Clark was rather concerned. Because there was a scene, the bazaar, between him and Scarlett and Melanie, and that scene was written quite differently from the scene that we saw. Quite differently, and Melanie had an extraordinary speech, a long speech, quite remarkable, and the whole incident of the exchange between Clark and Scarlett was somehow secondary to what happened between Scarlett and Melanie before he enters this scene. This is just supposition on my part. It is just a theory I have. He may have thought, “Oh heavens. George is known — I have never worked with him before, and he may turn this into a woman’s picture, because that scene really was between those two women and about the war. And it was only incidental, this little incident. It was very early in the shooting. I sort of think that might have been it, because we went back and we reshot the scene, and that long speech of Melanie’s was out, and the whole emphasis of the scene had changed. It was entirely about this little moment with Rhett Butler as the principal character in that scene and the initiator of the scene, and Scarlett and Melanie.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_3073" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3073 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-024.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3073 size-full lazyload" alt="Clark Gable embraces co-star Viven Leigh in a memorable scene from Gone With the Wind. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" width="2280" height="1721" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-024.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-024-380x287.jpg 380w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-024-760x574.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-024.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Clark Gable embraces co-star Viven Leigh in a memorable scene from <em>Gone With the Wind</em>. (© Bettman/CORBIS)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Clark Gable was a big star at the time already, wasn’t he?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Clark Gable was an enormous star. Spencer Tracy, who was a big star himself, named Clark Gable “the King.” Both of them were on the Metro [MGM] lot. Huge. He had everything to lose, Clark, and in those days, if you failed in three pictures in a row, you were out, and you never got a job again. That’s how tough that world was and how unforgiving. He was, I’m sure, very much concerned about playing Rhett Butler, because the book had been such an enormous hit — huge, wide readership. Everyone had a concept of Rhett Butler, and his job was to somehow fulfill that concept. If he failed, that would be a blow almost irreparable to his career. So he felt his responsibility very, very deeply, very strongly. He had to protect himself. He had to do it, and in so doing, protect the film. He had worked with Victor Fleming and made a film with him, it had worked out extremely well, and Fleming was highly regarded. So it was Victor who was chosen to replace George Cukor.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I had met Howard Hughes just before we started the filming, and you wouldn’t think that a man who was so brilliant in another field did make films, but his specialty naturally was planes, flying them. When I met him, he had not terribly long before made this great heroic flight to Moscow, beating all records. I don’t think anyone had tried that, and he was a great hero, and that impressed me. He was a rather shy man. He was six-feet-three, three-and-a-half, thin, and had kind of a shy manner. And yet, in a whole community where the men every day played heroes on the screen and didn’t do anything heroic in life, here was this man who was a real hero. And that impressed me very much, and his rather shy manner, but you still wouldn’t expect that he would have the insight that helped me in a moment of great distress.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">We had a dinner engagement, the night after this decision was made to replace George Cukor, and we were not far from the studio. I still had my makeup on, and I told him this terrible thing. I said, “And Victor Fleming is going to replace George.” And he said this: “Don’t worry. With George and Victor, it is the same talent, only George’s is strained through a finer sieve,” and that was the most marvelous metaphor. It gave me confidence, and indeed, when my first scene took place with Fleming — he was a sensitive man — he called me to one side. It was a scene where Melanie meets Scarlett at the barbecue, early in the film. I had thought their encounter is a kind of social encounter. After the first rehearsal, he drew me aside, and he said the same thing as Jimmy Cagney. He said, “Remember, everything that Melanie says, she means.” So I went back and thought of that and did the scene that way. Well, he got to the truth of the scene, just as accurately as George. He was not as detailed a director, but he had that wonderful sensitivity and sense of the core of the scene, the truth of the scene. We were in wonderful hands with him, and I trusted him from then on.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>In the script, there is also a reference to how sincere Melanie is. Scarlett says, “Oh, you’re just flattering me, Melanie. You don’t mean it,” and Ashley says, “Melanie means everything she says.”</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: That’s true. Yes.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You have said that Hollywood looked very disparagingly on this huge fuss that was being made filming <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, and assumed it was going to be a big failure.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Oh yes. </span><span class="s1">The whole business of casting, putting it together, taking almost three years, the whole town was bored with the film [<i>Gone With the Wind</i>]. They were so bored with the film, they wished it bad luck, and they all thought it was going to be a big, big flop, a complete disaster, and they were rather pleased at the thought. Well, we just went ahead, quietly working ahead on the lot, six months, retakes after that, and just knew — I knew we were making a film that was going to have quite a different history from any other film that had ever been made, and it would endure. And by heaven, it has, has it not?</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So those of you who were on the set believed in what you were doing.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Yes, we did. </span><span class="s1">The unifying factor was, of course, David Selznick. Change of direction with all directors. We also had Sam Wood, because Victor Fleming fell ill. He had kind of a nervous breakdown after about four weeks of shooting, and Sam Wood came on the set to replace him. And eventually, when Victor was ready to come back, because by this time we were so far behind, David did something amazing. He kept both of them, so that you would start in the morning and you would film with Victor, change your costume, go to another stage, and continue in the afternoon a different scene with Sam Wood. Now that is quite a strange practice!</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>For Melanie, you were nominated for an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. Was that really a supporting role?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: No, Melanie was a starring role, and that is a very interesting tale. </span><span class="s1">When we opened in Atlanta, there were only three stars in the program. It’s there to see today, if you can get hold of one, and it’s “Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland in <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, introducing Miss Vivien Leigh.” Then of course, when she was this great, big, wonderful hit, perfectly accepted by the South, Atlanta — that was the question. Would the South, would Margaret Mitchell, would Atlantans, Georgians, accept this English actress as Scarlett O’Hara? Well they certainly did, and then she was starred. It was Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, and myself. Now, when it came to the question of being nominated for the Academy Award, David could not have Melanie and Scarlett competing for Best Actress. Neither one would win.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">The risk was very great. There was that wonderful film with Robert Donat and Greer Garson, <i>Goodbye Mr. Chips</i>, and other great performances that year by women, really tremendous performances in marvelous films. One of them would have got it, you see, because we would have competed against each other and drawn votes away from each other.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">A lot of people liked Melanie. A lot of people preferred Melanie to Scarlett. So he [Selznick] had to find a means of protecting Scarlett. The success of that film depended on it. So he decided — he must have got Jack Warner’s permission to do this — to list me not as a star, which I was, but as a supporting actress. I never said a word when that happened, but of course it was a crushing blow. I never said a word. Now, I was only competition to Hattie McDaniel, who <i>was</i> a supporting actress. But you know, the most marvelous thing happened. People were very attached to Melanie, but they knew I wasn’t a supporting actress. They knew that Hattie was, and they were not tricked, and they were not deceived, and they voted for Hattie. I thought that was marvelous. I didn’t right away. The night of the awards, oh, there was no God! He didn’t exist! I ceased to believe in Him! And then two weeks later, I woke up one morning and I thought, “What a wonderful world!” I saw an entirely different perspective, a true perspective, and I thought, “This is thrilling, that they were not deceived for a minute and they voted for Hattie, and she got it!”</span></p> <figure id="attachment_17806" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-17806 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-17806 lazyload" alt="1939: Actresses Vivien Leigh, Olivia De Havilland and Hattie McDaniel play the roles of Scarlett O'Hara, Melanie Hamilton and Mammy respectively in a scene from the movie Gone with the Wind by Victor Fleming.(Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1884" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master-380x314.jpg 380w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master-760x628.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1939: Actresses Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel play the roles of Scarlett O’Hara, Melanie Hamilton and Mammy, respectively, in a scene from the movie <i>Gone With the Wind<i></i> by Victor Fleming.(Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)</i></figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>It turned out to be an historic win by a black actress.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Yes it was, from every point of view.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>After <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, you made history by bucking the studio system and winning a famous court case. How did it come about, that you were able to break away from Warner Brothers?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: I finally began to do interesting work like Melanie, but always on loan out to another studio. I was nominated for <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, and then two years later, I was loaned to Paramount for <i>Hold Back the Dawn</i> and was nominated again. So I realized that at Warners I was never going to have the work that I so much wanted to have. After Melanie and <i>Hold Back the Dawn</i>…</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I knew that I had an audience, that people really were interested in my work, and they would go to see a film because I was in it, and I had a responsibility toward them, among other things. I couldn’t bear to disappoint them by doing indifferent work at an indifferent film. And Warner… Jack would cast me in an indifferent film and an indifferent role, and I thought, “I’ll have to refuse, I must do it,” and I did, and of course, I was put on suspension. Now, the contracts allowed that in those days. If you said, “No, I don’t want to do this part,” they would then suspend the contract for the length of time it took another actress to play the role, and they would take that period of time, tack it on to the end of the contract. So in May of 1943, I found myself with six months of suspension time.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Warner loaned me immediately for a film at RKO that I didn’t want to do, <i>Government Girl</i>, but I went ahead and did it. Not very good, but it was a big success, at least that was in its favor. Then he loaned me to Columbia. It was for a film that had 20 pages of script, and a starting date the following Monday. Now, there was no hope for that film, none whatsoever. No script. You didn’t know how the character was going to develop. You didn’t know how it should be costumed. Elizabeth Blackwell, one of the first woman doctors, was the subject. I went to Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia, and I said, “Mr. Cohn, you have got 20 pages of script and a starting date next Monday. I haven’t any idea about my character, and I cannot do this film, and you will just have to tell Jack Warner.” He was really rather nice to me, Harry Cohn. Maybe he was rather relieved. I don’t know. Quite nice. He was supposed to be a real dragon, but I kind of liked Harry Cohn because of that particular meeting. Of course, I was put on a suspension.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">My agents, Phil Berg and Bert Allenberg, called me into their offices, South Beverly Drive, 121 — I forgot the address, it could have been that — in August of ’43, and with them was Martin Gang, a marvelous man and lawyer. They said, “We want Martin to talk to you about your situation. He thinks there is a way out.” So Martin explained that there was a California law which limited the right of an employer to enforce a contract against an employee for more than seven years, and that no actor had dared to take advantage of the law by asking for declaratory relief, which is to say an interpretation of a law as it applied to an actor’s contract.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I think a baseball player had done it, but no actor had ever dared to do it. So he said, “This is what it entails. You go into the Superior Court, and there we will probably lose. There will be a single judge, and he will be influenced by Warners’ lawyer and will see you as just a temperamental film actress. He will see it in emotional terms, not legal terms. Then we will appeal — having lost the case in Superior Court — to the appellate court, three judges, and they will judge the matters purely from the point of view of law. If we lose there, there is always the Supreme Court of the State of California to which we can appeal. So I said, “I’d like to read the law,” and he provided it. I read it. It was quite brief, only about three paragraphs long. Very clearly stated, and I thought its meaning quite obvious, that the seven years meant calendar years, not seven years of work. So I said, “Let’s go ahead with it, and we’re not going to get discouraged along the way. We will go straight to the Supreme Court.” Well…</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">We went into court first, the Superior Court, Judge Charles S. Pernell presiding, in November of that year, 1943. And it is true that Warner Brothers’ lawyer did put me on the witness stand, and they said, “Be very careful, because he will try to make you angry and try and make you appear like a spoiled movie actress,” Oh, he was so wicked! Gimlet-eyed, and he would say, accusing me in thunderous tones, “Is it not true, Miss De Havilland, that on such-and-such a date, you failed to report to the set to play such-and-such a role in such-and-such a film?” And I, remembering Martin Gang’s instructions, said, “I didn’t refuse. I declined.” So, all this time, I noticed that the judge, he had his hand in front of his face, and I couldn’t figure out whether it was his spectacles that were twinkling or, in fact, his eyes, but we certainly had his attention, and I thought, “Maybe I have a little hope here.” I think maybe I had a chance after all, and indeed, about three months later or more than that – it was March of 1944, around the 15th of March. I was up on the Island of Adak in the Aleutians, visiting patients in the military hospitals. Someone came to me, a U.S. soldier, and said, “We have a telegram for you.” Well, this was really quite extraordinary up there in wartime, and it was from Martin Gang, and it said, “You’ve won in the Superior Court.” Yes, the Superior Court of the State of California. The Warners naturally appealed immediately, and they enjoined every studio in town from employing me. <i>Every</i> studio in town. I think they sent out 125 injunctions, and half of the studios no longer existed, but they did a thorough job at that.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Now, we went into the Appellate Court with the three judges in September. I think it was September 10th, 1944. Martin explained to me, “You will not be put on the witness stand, but it would be a very good idea for you to appear at the back of the courtroom as the two lawyers present their cases and their arguments, because that way, the judges will know how much the outcome of the case means to you.” So I appeared at the back of the court, and two of the judges understood Martin’s arguments immediately. They posed very few questions because they already understood the law, and I suppose they knew where they would stand. The third judge was quite different. He questioned Martin very closely, in an aggressive, almost agitated way, and he questioned the Warners’ lawyer as well. And I was awfully worried about him, and so was Martin. He told me so afterwards.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I went off to the South Pacific to visit our soldiers there, ended up in a barrack hospital with pneumonia as a patient myself. Finally got home to the States, and I think it was in early December of ’44, and I think it was about the 16th of December. Martin phoned me, and he said, “You’ve won a unanimous decision in the Appellate Court of the State of California.” Warners appealed right away to the Supreme Court of the State of California. Now, the way it works, apparently, is that the Supreme Court takes a case for review, and if they feel there is no justification — no need to review it because the previous decisions are sound — they will simply not accept it for review. But there is a certain period of time, and if you pass that period — I think it is two-and-a-half months or something like that, two months or whatever it is. Maybe it’s not quite that long. If that date has passed, and they have not taken it for review, then the previous decisions hold, and that is exactly what happened. And in early February, I knew that I was now free to do the work I wanted to do.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Weren’t you taking a great risk, by taking Warner Brothers to court? You were risking that all the studios would blacklist you. How did you come to that decision?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: There really wasn’t any doubt about the right decision for me to take, and one of the nice things I thought was, “If I do win, other actors feeling frustration such as I feel will not have to endure that. They will take the suspension, going without pay of course, but knowing they will not have to serve that time again.” And indeed, I didn’t realize how much that could mean to other artists in the profession until actually, about two or three years ago. I was at a luncheon in Hollywood, and I sat next to a very charming and very able man, very highly regarded man, Roger Mayer, a lawyer. Now, he was not related to Louis B. Mayer, but he was apparently with Metro [MGM studios] for a certain length of time, and he said, “What that meant to writers, you can’t imagine.” Writers like Scott Fitzgerald, Faulkner was one. He didn’t mention those particular names, but indeed, the names he meant were of equal stature. He said, “Those men would be put under contract, and then assigned something, a scene to write in a film for which they had no natural inclination and no knowledge.” I mean, say a western, a writer whose great specialty was the Deep South. He said, “Those men couldn’t bear to do a poor piece of work, and they knew that they would, and that they would risk their great international reputations in going ahead and trying to meet the requirement of the studio. Now, when you won your case, they were thrilled, because of course, they were perfectly willing to go without pay until they were assigned some kind of work for which they had a feel and knew that they could do a distinguished piece of work by it.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>The “<em>d</em><i>e Havilland</i> decision” really had a profound and long-lasting impact, not just on your career, but on the industry as a whole, didn’t it?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Oh yes. Another wonderful thing is this: </span><span class="s1">You know, our fellows, our actors, they were extraordinary in World War II. They all went. Jimmy Stewart, he was a bomber pilot, 21 raids over Germany; Clark Gable, tail gunner. The others in the Navy, Marine Corps, they were extraordinary. Now when they came back, you see, all the time they were at war, they were on suspension. When they came back, they would have to serve that time all over again and at the salary which was by this time outmoded, because when they were lending people right and left, the producers were paying the actor the normal salary, which was the contracted salary, but they would collect from the producer they were lending the services of the actor to. They would collect a lot of money and keep it. It wouldn’t go to the actor. So certain actors really had quite high prices. They didn’t get the money, but the price for their services had risen during the war through this system. Now that meant that these actors would come back and have to serve. Their services would be infinitely more valuable, but they would still get the same salary that they had been receiving five years before. Jimmy Stewart came back and all those others — Tyrone Power, the lot — and he wanted, of course, to take advantage of my case, and it was suggested that he better not risk anything. He’d better ask for declaratory relief, and it didn’t apply to an actor who had gone off to war. Of course, it did, and that was settled straight away, because it was a question not of work, but of calendar years. Therefore, all of those chaps, those brave, splendid young men, were able to negotiate new contracts.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Thanks to your decision.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Isn’t that nice?</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Tell us about your own work during World War II. You visited some very tough situations, psychiatric wards and so forth.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Every cloud does have a silver lining, because when I was put on suspension by Jack Warner in ’43, August — or rather when I went to court and therefore was enjoined from working, I wanted to do something to contribute to the war effort. I wanted to find something, and under contract, I couldn’t, but now that I was enjoined from working, I was free, and the USO — I had done caravans and that sort of thing, but the USO asked me. They said, “You can’t sing, and you can’t dance. Could you, would you consider visiting our military patients in military hospitals in the Christmas season of 1943?” and I said, “Oh yes, I certainly would.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I had a beau. He was in Italy, risking his life making documentary films for the Signal Corps, and I thought, well, I want my December to be constructive in some way, so I said certainly, yes. They started me off at a very large military hospital in Chicago with a program that would take me through the Christmas season, mainly in Oklahoma, with a couple of stops in Texas afterwards. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I started in Chicago, and in between wards a</span><span class="s1"> man presented himself in uniform, a major, and he introduced himself. He said, “I’m Major Richardson, and I am in charge of the psychiatric ward here. I was in charge at Bellevue, previous to my Army service, in New York City. I have a theory. It’s an experiment I would like you to agree to, that if you visited my patients, your visit would do some good. Would you agree?” And I said, “Well, of course, I would.” He said, “I have to have the post surgeon, the head of the hospital’s, approval first, and I will come back and meet you between wards to let you know if I have received it.” Well, he met me between wards, and he said, “I’ve got the permission. So, at the end of your day — I’ve read your orders, I know exactly what time and at what ward you will finish. I will come and get you,” or “I’ll send for you. You have nothing to worry about. I will have two very sturdy orderlies to protect you.” Well, I hadn’t worried before then, but I certainly began at that moment to worry. To protect? </span><span class="s1">Anyway, he met me, with the two sturdy orderlies, we got into a lift, and we rose to his floor. There was a padlock on the door, and one of the orderlies unlocked it, and we entered his ward.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I was very, very anxious to be a success for Major Richardson, and there was a boy sitting right there, a big, kind of husky boy, not tall, but muscular, and blue eyes and brown hair and maroon corduroy dressing gown and his gray pajamas, and so I went up to him and I said, “Well, hello there.” No reaction. He didn’t even look at me. I said, “Well, it’s nice to see you today.” No reaction. “What’s your name?” No reaction. “Well, what state do you come from?” No reaction. I asked five questions. Failed, failed miserably with each question, and I thought, “I am a total catastrophe. I have failed Major Richardson and this experiment.” Well, they were all watching me, these doctors, and so I passed to the next patient, and I had much better luck with him, and things began to look brighter, and from then on, they were really very bright. Major Richardson explained to me. He said, “You know, that first boy that you encountered was in a catatonic state, and of course, he wouldn’t respond. He was in a totally unresponsive state, but when he comes out of it, he will remember every single detail of what happened in much greater precision and detail than any of us.” So, when we finished, he said, “I think it’s been a success. Now I want you to do something for me. You have many hospitals on your schedule, at each hospital, I ask you to go first to the post surgeon, and tell him that you would like to visit a psychiatric ward — and there will be one in every hospital you visit — and then ask him to ask the doctor — the psychiatrist in charge of the psychiatric ward — if he would like you to make that visit. I beg you to do that.” So, I said I would do it, and I kept my promise.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_3072" style="width: 2158px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3072 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3072 size-full lazyload" alt="Olivia de Havilland tries to escape from a hellish mental institution in the 1948 film, The Snake Pit. (Getty Images)" width="2158" height="2777" data-sizes="(max-width: 2158px) 100vw, 2158px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003.jpg 2158w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003-295x380.jpg 295w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003-591x760.jpg 591w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Olivia de Havilland tries to escape from a hellish mental institution in the 1948 film <em>The Snake Pit</em>. (Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1">I asked him about that boy who was in the catatonic state. I said, “Is he a battle case?” and he said, “Oh no. He’s a healthy farm boy. Just being ripped out of his lovely life and thrust into the rigorous impersonality of camp discipline and training, it was simply too much for him.” He said, “None of our cases here are battle cases. This is environmental shock these boys are going through.” I thought that very extraordinary. Up in Alaska, it was the same thing. In the Aleutians I did meet some soldiers who had been in the invasion of Attu, and they were battle cases. When I got to Fiji, I visited, of course, their hospital at Nandi. It was a barrack hospital with just one story, two wings, and in the middle, there were three little cubicles with one window, and the fourth wall was just a sheet. Luckily, when I got pneumonia, I was put into one of those little cubicles, but before that happened to me, I had visited the hospital. This one boy suffered from pleurisy, and they said, “Would you like to watch us drain his lungs?” So I watched, little knowing that I was going to come down with pneumonia in two days time. There was one patient in the physical ward, and I think there were 25 in the psychiatric ward.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I came back from this experience, and I thought — because there was a great stigma to mental illness at that time, it was not understood, and families that had a case would never speak of it to anybody else, it was a true skeleton in the closet — I thought, “These boys, their families, how are they going to react? They need education. They need hope, and the boys must be treated with some kind of understanding.” And then, of course, <i>The Snake Pit</i> came along. That was wonderful. That was just after the end of the war, and here was my opportunity to do something about that. And it was a marvelous story, an autobiography written by this young woman who had become really seriously mentally ill, was institutionalized and remarkably was cured in a day when they had no drugs at all for treatment, but the therapy that they used then actually worked in her case, and so I thought this will educate families. People will understand. Patients will understand, and it’s a hopeful story because it ends in a cure. That film, in New York, when it was released, ran one year in one theater. People flooded to it.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b><i>The Snake Pit </i>was a difficult subject for a film in 1948, wasn’t it? Mental illness was very rarely touched on in movies at that time.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: I think it was the first serious study of mental illness of a character — serious study. And I, of course, saw all the experiences that Virginia Cunningham endured. I saw [electric] shock. It was very moving, because when the body under shock, it rises like this, and there is terrible danger, that it will slide off the table when it comes back, and bones can be broken. The particular hospital, it was a California hospital that I visited. Something so touching happened. They had a team of patients who were undergoing shock treatment help the patient who had been assigned that therapy for a certain day, and one would hold this shoulder, another would hold the other. All of them having been through shock, and still, still programmed for that, the hips, the knees, and the ankles, and I saw the body rise. They held on, and of course, nothing happened. No injury ensued to the patient. I saw her afterwards and then several days later, and the whole experience was altogether extraordinary.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You were nominated for an Oscar for that role.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Yes. Another nomination. I was so pleased about that.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>After the <em>d</em><i>e Havilland</i> <em>decision</em>, your roles did change rather quickly, didn’t they? You got more in-depth roles.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Oh, right away. It was the most thrilling thing. Paramount came forth with <i>To Each His Own</i> right away, Universal with <i>The Dark Mirror</i>. <i>To Each His Own</i> was just what I wanted to do, interpreting the life of a girl of 16 straight through to the age of 45 when she is in London and is a successful business woman during the war. A marvelous story, very well told, beautifully done. <i>The Dark Mirror</i> was extraordinary too as an assignment. Twins, one psychotic, the other normal. I did a lot of research for that too, of course.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>In <i>To Each His Own</i>, how did you differentiate between the young Josephine Norris and the 45-year-old woman? Did you behave differently? Were you lighted differently? How did that work?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: We tried to shoot in sequence, and I was quite thin then. I had gone on a diet and lost a lot of weight, and that was quite suitable for the 16-year-old Jody Norris, and the costumes helped. I loved studying the hairstyles, working out the hairstyles according to period with the hairdresser. There was a very good hairdresser, a good makeup man too, at Paramount, and of course, Edith Head did a superb job with the costumes. I tried to think of everything that could help me. I thought of cologne also. What scents will be helpful in building the character? There was one called Apple Blossom, and I thought for the very first scenes of Jody, that would just be perfect. When she’s slightly older, but still in the village, Lilac. So I found colognes to express the character’s age and environment and experience. Then I wanted to know what I should use for Jody as she becomes rather successful and she’s wearing a gown, smoking cigarettes. I asked a Frenchwoman what was the fashion in that particular year, and she said, “<i>Chipre, Chipre.</i>” I don’t know what that means in French, but I then asked for “<i>Chipre, Chipre</i>,” and I got an approximation to it. For another scene I chose Chanel No. 5. I thought that was appropriate for Miss Norris, and that’s what I chose for her.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>In that movie, you play a young woman who becomes an unwed mother and then is separated from her child for a great period of time, which is so agonizing. You yourself had not yet become a mother and had not yet gone through these emotions. How were you able to portray those characteristics without having experienced those things in life?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: I think you have to have a very responsive nature. Think about anyone who reads a book. You visualize the characters. You become one with each of the characters. For a moment, through reading a book, you have the life experience of the character you are reading about. I fancy that reading gives you all of these extraordinary experiences that are helpful in understanding people. And that’s true for a person without an acting talent. For an acting talent, it is a very developing thing.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Does it take empathy?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: It takes empathy. If you are going to do a good job, you have to empathize with a character, either instinctively and through feeling, or intellectually. Preferably in both ways, but empathy is very much involved, of course.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You won your second Oscar for your performance as Catherine Sloper in <i>The Heiress</i>. How did you come at that role of this terribly shy young woman who changes so?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: I saw her in the play, wonderfully played by Wendy Hiller, a brilliant performance, but very stylized. It was an adaptation of Henry James’s <i>Washington Square</i>, as you know. And I thought, “I see another way to play Catherine,” because stylization will not work on film. It would be artificial. I just knew, at the end of the second act, I had to play Catherine. I had to do it, and I was, of course, by now, completely independent and could make my own decisions to take my own initiatives. So, I thought of the directors who would have a particular feel for this material and whom I admired. Two of them I had worked with, and the third I had not worked with. The first two were caught up in other commitments and were not free. The third one had just founded, together with two other directors — Capra and George Stevens — his own independent film company, Liberty Films at Paramount, and that man was Willie Wyler. So my agent persuaded him to say nothing to anyone, to get on the train, go to New York, see <i>The Heiress</i>, and he, of course, was looking for material. It was quite wonderful. Never will forget the night I knew he had arrived, the day he arrived in New York, and I knew he would go straight to the theater to see the play, and he had promised to call me afterwards. Well, I waited for that phone call, and I waited, and it came, and he said, “I’ve seen it. I like it. Let’s do it.” And, we did.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>The chill between your character, Catherine Sloper, and her father is very powerful. It’s a very strong feeling when one is watching the film. I gather that on the set, there was a bit of a chill as well with the actor who played your father.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Ralph Richardson was an extremely distinguished and gifted English artist. He was quite cool to me, and frightfully English, really. Really a wonderful artist, revered to this day in the profession, but he would do rather naughty things. He was a glove flapper. That is a British theater trick. There was one scene with the two of us, it was an intimate scene and it was very important that Catherine and all her feelings captured the audience’s attention fully. Ralph Richardson? The father? Glove flapping. This distracted me in rehearsals terribly, just as an actress, but what I was worried about was Catherine. The attention of the audience had to be on her without a distraction like that. Willie was very impressed by Ralph. I went to him and I asked him, “What about that glove flapping?” He said, “Don’t worry. I’ve framed it so the gloves are out.” I still had to put up with the terrible distraction, but it didn’t matter. I knew that Catherine was protected.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Why didn’t Wyler make him stop? Do you think he wanted you to feel insecure?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: I often wonder, because Willie was really quite rude to me on the set, in that he would sit with Ralph. They would sit together, engage him in conversation, ignore me completely as we were waiting for a scene to be lit, and I would be sitting there like Cinderella in my little chair, nobody speaking to me. None of the two gentlemen speaking, no one paying any attention to me at all, and it is entirely possible that Willie did that deliberately to make me feel sort of inadequate and sort of uninteresting and well, certainly not the focus of attention, I’ll tell you that.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Very much the way the character of Catherine feels in her own home.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: He may have done that quite deliberately. I hadn’t thought about it until this question came up.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What was Montgomery Clift like to work with?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Naughty. It was his second picture. <i>Red River</i> had not yet been released, but people had seen it and knew he was marvelous in it. So he came to play Morris Townsend in <i>The Heiress</i>. He had a Polish lady friend who was apparently a highly respected coach, a theater coach, a very talented woman, and she would be in back of the stage. He would work out every one of his scenes with the Polish lady. I knew that when he was working with me, he wasn’t working with me at all. He was working with the Polish woman in our scenes together. It was most peculiar, but I decided I’ve got to make use of this in some fashion, and I managed psychologically to do that, because in fact, the character of Morris Townsend really is giving a performance. So I was able to get around that psychologically, but when we would finish a scene, he would look up to see whether she nodded. If she didn’t, he would say, “Can we do the scene again?” This wasn’t fun for me.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">It wasn’t fun for anyone, and it certainly wasn’t for William Wyler, a very distinguished man, as the director of the film. One day, we came on the set. It was a long and difficult scene, and he said, “I don’t know what this scene is all about. I want you to show me. Just get up there. Start there with your scripts, and just show me what this scene is all about.” Well, it was frightful. There we were stumbling along, and we exchange, say, ten lines, and he would say, “Stop. I want you to go back to the beginning. Keep this little exchanges you made, say, with the third exchange of lines. Leave everything else out. Do something different. I don’t care what you do, as long as it’s different, but keep just that.” So we would do that, and then he would say, “Stop. Keep the first exchange. Then I want you to keep the sixth exchange. Drop everything else. Start again.” We did that for four hours, and I think Montie Clift realized that perhaps he should kind of work things out with William Wyler and Miss De Havilland.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>And not the Polish woman?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: But she was still about, I believe, nonetheless. That was a unique experience.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Before we go on, let’s talk about your family and childhood. We were surprised to learn that you were born in Tokyo, Japan. How did it happen that you were born in Tokyo?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: The natural reply is, “My parents were there at the time,” but of course, there’s more to the story than that. My father went out to Japan as a very young Cambridge graduate in 1893 to teach in Anglican missionary schools. He was 21. My mother went out much later, in 1907, when <i>she</i> was 21. She went out to teach choral singing to an Anglican community. In the last days of her life, I said, “Mother, do you mean to tell me that you went out to Japan in 1907 at the age of 21 without a chaperon?” and she said, “I was in charge of the captain. He went mad in the Malay straits.” I said, “Mother, were you the cause?” and she replied, “There were some who said so.” That was my mother. My mother was quite a remarkable person, and she had great charm.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>She studied acting as well, didn’t she?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: That all came about in a most extraordinary way. She soloed at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Tokyo, and one day a woman came up to her and said, “You have a very beautiful voice” — it was a warm soprano — “and I would like to write a musical play for you.” This alarmed my mother because she knew all about singing and music, but she knew nothing about acting. So she thought, “Well, maybe I should learn about acting, and she went back to England.” It must have been 1911. I know for a fact because I have done a lot of research, having a passion for accuracy. She enrolled in January of 1912 at Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s Academy, which in a few years was licensed as the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, known familiarly today as RADA. When she finished her courses there, the representatives, agents, would come and audition the students right there. They were interested in her largely because of her beautiful singing voice, and so she did get some concert engagements after that, between the summer of 1912 and the summer of 1914.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_3081" style="width: 396px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3081 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3081 size-full lazyload" alt="Olivia de Havilland as an infant, with her father, Walter A. de Havilland, her mother, Lilian de Havilland (later Fontaine) and two Japanese nurses. Olivia was born in Japan, where her father had a successful patent law practice. (Getty Images)" width="396" height="611" data-sizes="(max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013.jpg 396w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013-246x380.jpg 246w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Olivia de Havilland as an infant, with her father, Walter A. de Havilland, her mother, Lilian de Havilland (later Fontaine) and two Japanese nurses. Olivia was born in Japan, where her father had a successful patent law practice. (Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1">My father had courted her unsuccessfully in Japan. He had been interested in her for seven years; he told me this story himself. When World War I came along in August of 1914, of course, as an Englishman, he sailed all the way back to England to offer his services. He was a very good shot, but he was over 40 by then. They said, “We’re not really looking for chaps like you, not at your age. Go back to Japan, and proceed as you are in your business.” He had bought a firm of international patent attorneys, quite different from the way he started out as a teacher, but anyway, it was a very successful international firm. So he decided to look up my mother, and again, he proposed to her. She was not at all in favor, but he persuaded her to flip a coin. She lost, which meant she had to marry, and off they went.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So you were born after they returned to Tokyo?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Eventually. I was born July the 1st, 1916. My sister was born October 22nd of 1917. I learned Japanese first, and people ask me, “Can you still speak Japanese?,” and I say, “<i>Ich ni sanshi go roku shichi hachi kyu ju.</i>” Counting up to 10 in Japanese.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Did your parents both speak Japanese?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Oh yes, indeed. My mother loved her life in Japan.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How did you come to move all the way from Tokyo to Saratoga, California?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Well this is really quite astounding. Soon after they arrived as a married couple in Tokyo, my mother became interested in amateur theatricals in Tokyo. The British apparently had a renowned amateur theatrical company in Tokyo. She performed in a musical play, perhaps written by the very lady who came up to her that day several years before and admired her voice. It was <i>Kismet</i>. Everybody thinks that the first musical version of <i>Kismet</i> was the one that had such great success in New York City in the 1950s. Well it wasn’t. It was this performance, presented in the summer of 1918 in Tokyo, Japan. The King’s brother, Arthur, the Duke of Cornwall, was making a state visit representing the British government, the crown, in Japan, and between the Japanese and the British, a program for his visit had been laid out, and one of the chief events in this program was for his Royal Highness to witness the musical play <i>Kismet</i> starring my mother. I have a letter written by an officer at the British embassy telling her of the Duke of Cornwall’s great pleasure in the performance That was a tremendous event in my mother’s life , you can well imagine. I think my father was quite pleased about that sort of thing too. He was quite proud of her.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_3077" style="width: 396px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3077 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-007.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3077 size-full lazyload" alt="Olivia de Havilland, age one, in Tokyo, Japan. (漏 John Springer Collection/CORBIS)" width="396" height="316" data-sizes="(max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px" data-srcset="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-007.jpg 396w, /web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-007-380x303.jpg 380w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-007.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Olivia de Havilland, age one, in Tokyo, Japan. (© John Springer Collection/CORBIS)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1">They had two properties up in Karuizawa in the mountains for the summer. People fled Tokyo in the summer because the heat is quite extreme. Unfortunately, in this great triumphant moment in my mother’s life, a missionary’s wife came to call on her one day at Karuizawa and said, “Do you know it is the talk of Tokyo that your husband is having an affair with one of the maids in the household?” You cannot imagine the humiliation that would be for a woman in this small foreign community of diplomats and businessmen. The story that I heard from my mother was that she went down to Tokyo and went into the house, and sure enough, in one of the maid’s rooms, she found my father’s coat and watch. From then on, of course, the marriage was doomed. She would not go back to that house again, and I don’t think she wanted ever to go back to Tokyo again. That was the degree of her humiliation.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">They then decided that my mother had to find some place, preferably outside of Japan. There were several possibilities, and the final decision was that my father would buy some land near Victoria on Vancouver Island. Fourteen acres, that was his ideal. He would find us a very pleasant house, and then he would make regular visits to us from Tokyo by the northern route, which was only a week at sea. If you cross from Tokyo to San Francisco, it is two weeks, but not the northern route to Canada. That seemed a very reasonable plan. They intended to go first to San Francisco, so that we could consult Dr. Langley Porter, who was one of the first pediatricians and a renowned one. His fame had reached Tokyo, Japan. We never got to Vancouver Island. We never proceeded up the coast to Canada, because Langley Porter took one look at my tonsils and said, “These have got to come out immediately.” I remember my father leaving us. Out came my tonsils. I can remember that very well. My mother leased a flat in a small house that belonged to a San Francisco family I think my father must have known in business, and we stayed there for six months. Then we went down to the Vendome Hotel for a week or two in San José. It was a beautiful Victorian hotel, and people from the East Coast used to come out and spend the winters there, beautiful grounds, and she liked it very much.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I can remember New Year’s Eve at the Vendome, 1920. I remember my mother was all excited and dressed up for this gala New Year’s celebration. We stayed on there for a little over six months. I remember my father joining us. I think it must have been for my fourth birthday. We didn’t see him for many years after that. I failed to mention along the way that on New Year’s Eve at the gala at the Vendome Hotel, my mother had met a widower of French Canadian descent, a very prosperous, highly respected businessman in San José. He was a part-owner and general manager of the best department store in San José, Hale Brothers. His name was George Milan Fontaine, and, of course, he was as struck by my mother as my father had been.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">The San Francisco fog followed my mother down to San José, which wasn’t a bit favorable to her two children, and she rather liked the idea of escaping it entirely. She heard of a village across the valley in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, on the other side of which, of course, is the Pacific Ocean. So she crossed the valley, 12 miles, to the foothills one day and took us to lunch at this chalet on Oak Street, and it was called Lundblad’s Lodge. The proprietors were Swedish, and Mrs. Lundblad was the most wonderful cook in the entire world. The Canterbury bells and hollyhocks grew in abundance in the garden, and it was a marvelous place for children. My mother decided, of course, that she would like to settle in this lovely little village surrounded by prune orchards and apricot orchards and pear orchards and with hills all about covered in the springtime with all sorts of beautiful wildflowers of every color and California poppies. In the grounds of the little garden, the front garden of Lundblad’s Lodge, there were hummingbirds and bluebirds and woodpeckers and all kinds of birds and beautiful butterflies, swallowtail butterflies, yellow and black, and little blue butterflies and monarch butterflies. We lived this marvelous life in nature, surrounded by nature. My mother then bought some property in a sort of development, three lots, what was called La Paloma Terrace. The number was 231 La Paloma, and now it is 20250. What has happened to this world? Anyway, she bought the land and found an architect she liked and built a house.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Many years later, in the early ’50s, I asked my father to come down to Los Angeles and visit me in Beverly Hills. I was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel at that time with my little son, Benjamin Briggs Goodrich, descended from one of the founders of the Republic of Texas, his namesake too.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I asked my father to come down, and he said to me one day, “You know, I never could understand your mother, what caused the breach?” and I said, “Well, Father, it’s because a missionary’s wife told her in Karuizawa that summer, that fatal summer of 1918 after her great triumph, that you were having an affair with one of the maids in the household,” and he said, “Oh?” And I said that, “My mother found your gold watch in one of the maid’s rooms.” He said, “My gold watch?” He was really quite puzzled by that. He said, “You know, I had a great friend who was in British intelligence, and he was the protector, as it were, of a young Japanese, and she came — the situation became dangerous for her, and my friend asked me if I would shelter her in the house, and I said of course, and so I let her stay in the house.” Isn’t that extraordinary? That whole terrible break occurred through a total misunderstanding. Somebody said to me, when I told them this story, “Which story do you believe, your mother’s or your father’s?” and I thought, “Well, my mother’s story, was it <i>for her</i> a true story?” My father’s story, I think, <i>was</i> the true story. I really do think that. Yes, because he was a rather prudish man, and he was 36 years old, he confided to me — he was the son of a vicar — before he had any sort of well, “experience,” as it were. And I think that was arranged by the Japanese, probably with one of those lovely ladies who are trained in conversation, in music, and in other arts as well.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What books did you like to read when you were growing up in Saratoga?</b></span></p> <figure id="attachment_4320" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><noscript><img class="wp-image-4320 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/edmund-dulac-e1459958953722.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-4320 size-full lazyload" alt="Edmund Dulac's Picture Book by Edmund Dulac" width="760" height="1092" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180623092236/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/edmund-dulac-e1459958953722.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text"><em>Edmund Dulac’s Picture Book</em> by Edmund Dulac</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: The first book that made an impression on me when I was very young was sent by my Aunt Ethel, my mother’s sister from England. It was published in 1919 for the benefit of the Red Cross at the First World War, and it was called <i>Edmund Dulac’s Picture Book</i>. It was a wonder, full of the most beautiful illustrations by Edmund Dulac and also Arthur Rackham who was one of the other celebrated illustrators of the day. It was a book of fairy stories. “The Princess and the Pea” was in it. I can remember that, and “Arabian Nights,” that was in it, an exquisite book, and I have it to this day. Then, of course, with nature all around us, I was very much interested in Thornton Burgess’s books. I loved those books. <i>A Child’s Garden of Verses</i>, and then later on, Captain Marryat’s <i>Children of the New Forest</i>, that made an impression on me, and <i>The Three Musketeers</i>. I loved <i>The Three Musketeers</i>.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Peggy Baker, my friend from Lundblad’s Lodge, her mother had decided to buy a house in Saratoga, right near ours, right near, and so she and I continued to be great friends, and we would act out plays and that kind of thing. We would act, as plays, books we had read, and she said, “Well, all right. Let’s play <i>Three Musketeers</i>,” and I said, “Yes. Let’s play <i>Three Musketeers</i>,” and we decided who we were going to be. I think I was Athos, and she was, as she called it, she said, “I’ll be Darting-on,” and I went home to my mother. I said, “Well, we are going to play Three Musketeers, and I am Athos, and Peggy is Darting-on,” and my mother said, “You don’t pronounce it that way. It is <i>D’Artagnan</i>.” So I said to Peggy, “Well, you don’t pronounce it Darting-on.” She said, “You don’t pronounce it Darting-on? “No. You pronounce it <i>D’Artagnan</i>,” and so she went home to her mother. Her mother was very offended with my mother. They were great friends, played bridge together all the time, but there was a rather cold moment there for a week or so over the pronunciation of D’Artagnan. Of course, we settled for “Darting-on.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Were you a serious student? Did you take school seriously?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Take school seriously? Adored school! My mother was remarkable. While we were staying at Lundblad’s Lodge, she learned that a neighbor, Mrs. Hanchett was her name, had decided to run a kind of preschool, where she would teach us how to spell, how to count, and, of course, my mother was enthralled by this, and off my sister and I went. We learned how to count with an abacus. I can remember that very well, though I did learn how to count in Japanese, as you know. Then when I went to school, I was very heroic. The children did make a great deal of noise. The school yard was right next to Lundblad’s, and my mother had always spoken of “those wild Indians.” and I thought, “Oh, this first morning!” when I had to go across the street to school with the wild Indians. My mother took my photograph — I’ve still got it — as I heroically crossed the street to mingle with the wild Indians. I came home for lunch triumphantly. I had survived the wild Indians.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">In any case, with all this training that I got at Mrs. Hanchett’s nursery school, I did very well in my studies, and it was kind of boring. I took a book and read. Now this broke all the rules. There were two classes. Miss Richards was her name, a very nice woman. Two classes in one school room, first and second grades, and of course, while she was teaching the second grade, I had nothing to do. It was awfully hard. The talk was that I should maybe skip a grade and go into the second grade, but I can remember seeing — I think it was Walton Wickett from Lundblad’s Lodge — ended up by being a professor of engineering. I think the story is he designed the bomb bay door for the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. Well, anyway, Walton was a crackerjack at math, and he would get up with a chalk and the blackboard and figure things out, and I thought, “Oh, I will never be able to do that,” and that’s why I never skipped into the second grade. I just stayed there in first grade, comfortably, but bored. And from then on, I loved all my studies.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">We had wonderful teachers. All the classrooms, as I recall it, had two classes. The third and fourth, I know were together. I am not sure about fifth and sixth, but I think it is possible. The seventh, no, that was a single class, Miss Ashbury. And Bertha Seely, the principal, taught the eighth grade. I remember that very well indeed. They were all wonderful teachers, I loved every one of them, but the most marvelous experience, I think, was Mrs. Reed, fifth grade and sixth.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Mrs. Reed emphasized the arts in her teaching of these youngsters, and she encouraged us to write poetry and to draw. So in our time off, two or three of us would go together and go off to some pretty place and draw, and we would write poems and read them to each other. She was really remarkable. I loved spelling. I got very, very good in spelling, and I was so proud to have been chosen by the school to represent it at the county spelling bee where I was competing with all of these crackerjack students from schools all over the valley, including Bellarmine, I believe, the Roman Catholic private school in San José. Well, that boy, that wicked boy, he beat me out. I knew his name yesterday, but I am blocking it today.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I came in second and went back to Saratoga, and they had a special assembly, so that I could tell the entire student body about my thrilling experience at the county spelling bee where I represented Saratoga Grammar School and came in second. I wish I had come in first!</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>We understand you started acting when you were still in Saratoga. Can you tell us how you first became involved in the theater?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: One of the great features of Saratoga, when we moved there, there were only 800 people. Our telephone number was number seven. Nonetheless, it attracted interesting people from all over the world. There was Nunke McGlew who was with Standard Oil. He was British, from out in Hong Kong, and decided to settle there in Saratoga. The Goodrich family was a very old olive-growing family, and they had a beautiful estate called Hayfield House, 14 acres oddly enough, right near where my mother built her house. They were a fascinating family, and Mr. Goodrich, Chauncey Goodrich, was a lawyer in San Francisco. This was true of quite a few families. The fathers would commute to San Francisco, stock brokers, and other professions, as well as people who had come from other parts of the country to settle there in retirement. So you had a rather sophisticated, experienced, traveled, cultivated community, interested naturally in the arts.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">One of the townspeople who was quite renowned was Dorothea Johnston — not Vivian Abbot, and she was remarkable, but I won’t deal with her at the moment. Dorothea Johnston, she had studied drama in England and had done a remarkable thing there. She had studied — in one of the great British libraries, museums — American Indians, and Dorothea learned some Indian songs and how to beat a tom-tom, and she acquired an Indian drum. She had a costume made, an Indian costume and a headdress with feathers, and she gave concerts. You could say, “Yes, she has Indian blood; yes, yes, she does. She looks like an Indian chief, rather, like the one that’s on the nickel somewhat,” but she was the rage of London. All the hostesses wanted her to come and entertain after dinner, and there’s, “Oh, the fingers of the sun around the mountain, woo, woo, woo.” It was a grand performance. We loved it. We children adored having Dorothea give a concert in the village, and then, of course, we would sneak around and say “Oh, the fingers of the” — well, not very nice of us, but we did.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Dorothea was even presented to the Queen in London. That’s how celebrated she was. When she came back from her English adventures in London and England, she made friends with the drama department, the professors of the drama department at Stanford University. One of them, Frederick Stover, had graduated from Yale Drama School, and the two of them decided that they would like to put on some amateur performances in the village of Saratoga. Of course, the village of Saratoga was very excited about that, and all these charming people were eager to come and see Dorothea and Frederick Stover’s first play. The play they chose was <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>. Freddy designed the sets, and he played the Griffin. He called on some of his students at Stanford to play some of the parts, and we were a mélange of Stanford students and local children. I was cast as Alice, and Willys Peck, very tiny, he was the son of the owner of the <i>Saratoga News</i>. Willand B. Peck was his name. Willys played the Duck, and Willys is my friend to this day, the Duck. Anyway, we presented it at the Saratoga Foothill Club.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Foothill Club was designed by Julia Morgan, the great woman architect of the day who designed Hearst Castle. That’s the way Saratoga did things. Only the best for Saratoga! Well, the production was a local success, and its renown spread.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">We were invited to give the same performance at the Palo Alto Community Theater, which was very celebrated. We did, and to that performance came George C. Warren, the critic of the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>. And the best review I have ever received — at the age of 16 — was from George C. Warren of the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>, reviewing <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>. We went on and performed at the Women’s City Club in San Francisco, San José State University. I had to be called out of the classroom. By now, of course, I was in high school, Los Gatos Union High School. Saratoga was too small to have a high school, and so the Saratoga students would take the Red Peninsula Car over to Los Gatos, to another beautiful, beautiful school with wonderful teachers. And that’s the story of <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Not long after that you were discovered by the great German director Max Reinhardt, who cast you in <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>. How did that come about?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Oh, yes. Well, the second production that Freddy Stover and Dorothea decided to present in the village of Saratoga was to be an outdoor production. Dorothea’s mother, Mrs. Johnston, owned the Saratoga Inn. It had lovely gardens in front, and something magical behind. You took a pathway down to the village creek, and there was this wonderful grove of sycamore trees surrounding the village creek, the perfect site for an outdoor production of <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>. This was scheduled for June, after I graduated from high school. I was to play Puck. I helped to make my own costume. Mrs. Johnston made the other costumes, and Freddy again designed the sets, and this time, he played Bottom.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">It was the Depression. I knew I had to go to college. There was no question about it. In Saratoga, the girls all went to college. It was unthinkable if you didn’t. Whereas, in England, of course, it was unthinkable that a girl would go to university, and so I tried out for a scholarship and took an exam at Stanford, sat at Stanford for Mills [College], passed in group one, and won the scholarship. This I knew as early as, I think, April of 1934, before I graduated. Mills was known for its drama and speech arts course, and I thought, “Well, I’ll major in that, I think, because, well, I don’t know what else to major in. So, I’ll major in that, and the main thing is I hope that — I don’t know what I really want to do in life. I should have a career. I would like to have a profession.” We were all encouraged, the girls were, more or less, to think about that in those days, because of the Depression. And so I thought, well, at least I will have these four years, sort of sequestered from life and studying, and I’ll take this major in drama and speech arts and hope to win a scholarship for the following year, because the only way I can get through college is by doing that, but I hope I’ll find what I really should do in life. And all of us, I think, were brought up with a sense that we had a place in life, that there was a right course for each of us to take, which would be the right course, a special pathway individual to ourselves.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I read in the newspapers that Max Reinhardt, who was the greatest living theatrical personage of the day, would be presenting <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> in the Hollywood Bowl, the San Francisco Opera House, and the Faculty Glade and the Greek Theater at the University of California in Berkeley. Well, I thought, “Golly, if I could watch his rehearsals, I will be so good at everything I try to do. I will have learned so much, and I will have such prestige, in my drama and speech arts course at Mills, that I am sure to win my sophomore scholarship.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">So it turned out that Dorothea Johnston knew Professor Sibley of the University of California and his daughter, Katherine Sibley, whose idea all this was. Katherine Sibley had gone off to Europe at a time when there were no arts or theater festivals in the United States, but Europe was alive with them. It was very fashionable to go for the season and do all the festivals. It was she who said to her father, “Why can’t California have a festival?” Obviously a very, very good idea, so the California Festival Association was formed. Dorothea, knowing Katherine Sibley, asked her if I might watch the rehearsal. Katherine Sibley came down and saw one of our performances of <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>. I must tell you about those performances. The audience sat on a platform constructed over the village stream, rather festive in its feeling right then and there, and we had a full moon for all three performances. It was pretty magical.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Katherine Sibley came to one of the performances, and she said, “Yes, I will try to arrange this for you.” And when Felix Weissberger came ahead to the University of California to examine the Faculty Glade and the Greek Theater — he was Reinhardt’s casting director or sort of general manager of the production — she made an appointment for me to meet him up there for dinner at a little restaurant near the campus, and he said, “I’d like to hear your reading of Puck,” and it just so happened that I had brought with me my gym bloomers and my tennis shoes. So we retired to the faculty room, and I put on my gym bloomers and I put on my tennis shoes, and I leapt all over the tables and chairs of the faculty room, giving my exuberant performance of Puck in <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>. To my astonishment, Felix Weissberger, watching this extraordinary performance, said, “I would like you to meet me tomorrow morning in San Francisco, which is where I am staying, at my hotel at 9:30, and I want you to study the part of Hermia.” Well, this was quite a request, but I was keen for it.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Dorothea drove me all the way down to Saratoga that night, 35 miles an hour. </span><span class="s1">It took us almost two hours to get there, 35 miles <i>up</i> the valley to San Francisco to meet on time — and we were on time — Felix Weissberger, at his hotel, and there I read the lines of Hermia. But at the end of this reading — I was 17 — he said, “If you come down to Hollywood in four weeks time, you may understudy the role of Hermia.” Well, can you imagine what that meant? Incredible news! I was now going to be an official member of the Reinhardt company. Well, I was going to get a scholarship straight through my senior year, no question about that, with this kind of prestige and learning experience.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Well, in four weeks time I was down there. Two artists drove me down. They saw to it that I was established in a very nice, very respectable little hotel run by Ruth B. Kinney. She was a lady lawyer, and I shared her bathroom with her, so she could keep her eye on me at all times and protect me from whatever dangers lurked in this strange city of which I had no knowledge. I found Felix Weissberger, and was disappointed to learn I was not the first understudy. I was the <i>second</i> understudy. The first understudy was a darling girl from Palo Alto, Jean Rouverol, who was under contract to Paramount. You will never guess who was cast as Hermia. None other than a graduate of UC, also under contract to Paramount, named Gloria Stuart who years later won an Academy Award for her performance in <i>Titanic</i>! I owe a lot to her. I owe my whole career to that lady. She could not come to the rehearsals because, on loaner from Paramount, she was making a film at Warner Brothers. They thought the film would finish in good time, so that she would be able to actually perform in the play, but she was able to come to only three rehearsals. Then Jean Rouverol dropped out; she had to make a film with W.C. Fields at Paramount.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I was the first understudy. I took all the rehearsals, all but three, and I started receiving Max Reinhardt’s direction. Well, well, well! And it turned out that, as the days went by and weeks passed and as the opening night drew closer, it was evident that the company could not get along without this — by this time, I was 18 — 18-year-old school girl who was understudying Hermia. They couldn’t have the rehearsals without her. They had to have her. I understood this, that I had this huge responsibility toward this company, and <i>Herr Professor Doktor</i> Reinhardt, the California Festival Association and the Hollywood Bowl, the San Francisco Opera House even, but certainly the Hollywood Bowl, and I thought, well, the day for enrollment at Mills was getting closer, and I wasn’t going to be able to report. I had to stick with the company.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">So I wrote to the Dean of Women and explained why I couldn’t report, and she wrote back. I think her name was Miss Daikin. She wrote back and said, “That’s quite all right. Don’t worry about it. Your scholarship will be perfectly good in February for the spring term.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Now the day approached, opening night, and five days before that fatal night, September 17th, 1934, Jesse Wadsworth, Gloria Stuart’s agent, came to morning rehearsal it was, and said to Reinhardt, “We’re very sorry, but Miss Stuart will not be able to go on opening night.” So Reinhardt turned to me — <i>Herr Professor Doktor</i> — and he said, “You will play the part.” And I did, but I must tell you, that opening night is a night I hope never to live through again, at least the first part of it. It was just the first part. I had a terrible attack of stage fright. I never did with <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>. For my supper, I had brought tomato juice and there we were in the wings — oh, and I must describe to you the set. Oh how wonderful it was in the wings, and I had to go behind the bushes, and I lost my tomato juice and the first assistant had to take me by the shoulder and say, he said to me, “You’re on!” and he pushed me on the stage.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Now terrified, I went with the three other lovers. We’re on the stage for our first scene, which was with Theseus and Hippolyta. Theseus was played by John Lodge, who later became the Governor of Connecticut. He belonged to that famous Lodge family of New England.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I knew that the cue for my first lines came from Theseus. So I watched him very carefully, and he was talking, and then he closed his mouth and he looked at me expectantly, and I thought, “Oh. Well, this is when I’m supposed to speak.” And I opened my mouth, and these perfectly strange words came out, and he didn’t look at all surprised, and then his mouth opened, and other words came out of his mouth, and then he closed his mouth, and then I spoke. I opened my mouth and other words came out, and nobody looked surprised and nobody looked embarrassed or thunderstruck or horrified, and then it was time for the four lovers to make their exit, and we trooped down and made our exit around the rim of the stage, and there was this great round of applause. It was so surprising and so absolutely wonderful that I couldn’t wait to get back on stage, and I didn’t have stage fright from that moment on, not in that performance.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Now, I’ve got to tell you what Reinhardt did with the Bowl. There is that great shell that is normally present, sort of encompassing the stage of the Hollywood Bowl where the symphony orchestra so often plays. That great shell was slid behind an arm on a railroad, on tracks, so that you couldn’t see it, and on the stage, he built a great hill, and into that hill were planted five huge oak trees, and the whole hill was covered with grassy turf. To the left, as you are facing the stage, there was a platform, a very high platform, screened with bushes and branches. The Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra was situated there, so that when they played Mendelssohn’s music, you didn’t know where it was coming from. It just filled the night, but you didn’t know its source. There were bushes on the stage too — the famous episode of the tomato juice. At the crest of the hill, he built a bridge right over what I think is now the parking lot and maybe even Highland Avenue. He built it from the crest of the hill right over to a mountain, and he carved a winding path that led from the other side of the hill right to the bridge. He also had this dark hill wired, so that tiny little lights like fireflies came on at the beginning of the performance, when the mysterious music of Mendelssohn’s <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> suite began to float on the night air.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">This was during the Depression, and he engaged 100 boys from the CCC — Civilian Conservation Corps — young people who the government was seeing to it that they had work to do and could feed themselves. You can’t imagine the state the country was in then. I think they got a dollar a night. They were dressed in Greek togas. The whole performance was costumed in some Baroque and some sort of Greek costumes. Greek Baroque! They were torch-bearers. As the music began to play and the lights flickered all over the dark mountain, over this crest of the mountain came these torchbearers, and you saw a hundred torches winding down this pathway, then over the bridge, and they split and lined the sides of this great hill where the court ladies then assembled, and court gentlemen, and finally Theseus and Hippolyta make their entrance and eventually the four lovers. That was something remarkable. That was in the tradition of European festivals, and that was the genius of Max Reinhardt. Do you know, no one knows his name today? That is so dreadful.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What was Max Reinhardt like as a director? How did he work with you?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Reinhardt was a very ebullient man, marvelous, and his style of direction was a very special one. He loved to act out the parts, all the parts. He loved that, and he expected you — he had obviously worked each one out — he expected you to catch his intonations and inflections and duplicate them. So, I would mark the cadence of the way he read the lines — or spoke the lines, I should say, he never read anything — and tried to remember them and then reproduce them and have them there for the next rehearsal. I did have a bit of a trouble. I would rehearse quite carefully at the Highland Hotel. That was the name of this little hotel, but then he would get me, you know, “No, no, no, no.” He would do it again at the next rehearsal, and I would study, and then I would do it. After, he would say, “Good. Now keep it,” and it was the keeping of it that was the problem.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Wasn’t it frustrating not to be able to create your own interpretation of the character?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: It was curious. I liked it. It was an interesting problem. It was interesting to try and do it well, but it was imposed direction. In <i>Alice in Wonderland</i> it came from inside out. I just <i>was</i> Alice, so it was quite different. His direction was fascinating. I knew I was learning a lot, but I hoped eventually to have a role which came from inside, and was done creatively.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>As it turned out, this performance led to the beginning of your film career. Was it Reinhardt’s decision to cast you in the film of <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Yes. After the conclusion of the tour, which took us of course to the San Francisco Opera House and the University of California at Berkeley, it was decided that Reinhardt would make a film of <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>, and he wanted to take with him two performers from the stage production: myself, playing Hermia; and of course Mickey Rooney, who was a sensation as Puck in the play, and again in the movie.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What advice would you give to young people today who are interested in going into this field? Should they take the route you did and just jump right in, or would you say go to college if you have a chance?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Go. Go. There are wonderful courses. There’s one in North Carolina that teaches a four-year course. I think it’s the North Carolina School of the Arts. I am told that you learn every aspect of the film business: producing, directing, sound, makeup, camera, acting, set designing, costume designing. I don’t know if you have to learn advertising or not, but this is wonderful. I would highly recommend anyone who wants anything to do with the film business, especially acting and directing and screen writing, to take a course like that. UCLA has a famous course too, and it is worth looking up what the courses are. I would highly recommend that.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Do you yourself regret not having gone to college and not having been able to take that Mills College scholarship?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: I do regret it. I regret it very, very much. I think those four years are extremely important in university, not only for what you learn, but it gives students a chance to find out what they are best suited to. To be happy in a profession, you have to be temperamentally suited to it as well as have talent and training for it. It is very important to be happy in the profession that you take up in life. I don’t know whether this was really the profession I might have taken. I had other interests too, but anyway, life propelled me into the profession. Life and necessity, because of the Depression.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">The motion picture business is not easy. It was not easy then. It was hard, really hard, exhausting too, in every way physically. It was a six-day week, and Saturday night, it was the custom to ask at the end of the week — the actors having gotten up at 5:30, 6:00 in the morning to report to makeup. Women had to report at 6:30 on the set, ready, dressed, up on your lines, and ready to shoot. You would work until 6:00, 6:30 at night, but six days a week. The custom was on Saturday night to excuse the company at 6:00 for dinner and come back and shoot until midnight. I can’t tell you how hard that was on us, and how the actors disliked doing it and the camera crew, grips, everyone disliked that very much. You know what I did to get around that? Well, I suggested to the cameraman that we put dark circles under my eyes, that he photograph me very badly, and I would show up in the rushes, and then he would say, “What’s the matter with her appearance?” “Well, she was very tired, Jack, after the week.” Finally, they abandoned that practice, at least they did with me.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You’ve said that in addition to going to college, you believe that American young people should travel abroad.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: For the young who are in college, I think it is terribly important for this country that the young have at least one year of university in some foreign country. It’s extremely important to understand another culture, another people. Here we are isolated, this huge continent, isolated from the rest of the world by two great oceans. We don’t understand other peoples. It’s so ironic, because we are made up of people of every race whose origin — origins were other countries. We are almost completely ignorant, and we are rather arrogant in our ignorance, and we are going to make terrible blunders that are injurious to other peoples abroad, and in the end, to ourselves. It’s imperative.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Otherwise, we will be a retrogressive nation, and we are on our way. I know three university students: one is going to do postgraduate work, a brilliant girl; another, who I think will also do postgraduate work; another who is 19, a sophomore. The 19-year-old has a capacity for analysis, which would be counted as absolutely brilliant in a 45-year-old woman. She can’t spell. She knows her way around a laptop with these mechanisms that spell for you, but she can’t spell, didn’t think it was necessary. Neither can these other two girls. Top students they were. Can’t spell. Now that’s retrogressive. I’ll bet you anything they can’t add either, because they’ve got the calculator. Also, one of the reasons they can’t spell is they will watch television, you see, instead of reading books. They won’t look up anything in their dictionary even. It is all done by pressing buttons.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Reading! Think of what the brain goes through! It is a very, very special function. When you read, you visualize. You imagine the characters. When you go and watch television, it is not only physically passive — reading is physically passive certainly — but it is all done for you. It does arouse your interest, your full attention, and your emotions, but by a different process. The other process, the capacity to envision yourself, is very important to develop. If you do that, you are apt to learn to spell anyway, because you will see the difference between words that sound the same, like “manor,” m-a-n-or, and “manner,” m-a-n-n-e-r, and how they are used, how they are spelled differently. Oh, it is imperative, and I think something has to be done to encourage them to learn to spell, to read, to add and subtract.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You have said that reading biographies was of great interest to you when you were a young woman.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Biographies I found fascinating. I would visualize Michelangelo. There was someone called Steinmetz who was a scientist. Can you imagine me, no talent for science at all, riveted by the story of Steinmetz? What other biographies riveted me? Fannie Campbell, from a great British acting family in the 19th century, she came to America, and she went on a lecture tour all over this country when it was just developing. I thought that was so enthralling, courageous. Look at the adventures, at how she learned, what she learned. There came a time in my life when it was suggested that I do a lecture tour, and do you know I did what Fannie Campbell did. I had wanted to do it when I read the book about her, and by heaven, years later, that’s what I did. It was very reassuring. I went all over this country. It was going through a very tough period, and I met nice people everywhere, very reassuring.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You had initially shown an interest in teaching. You’ve said how important teachers were in your life, and that in a way, you see teaching as a sacred profession.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Yes, it is. Think of them. Any profession that really serves humanity and affects humanity for the good is, in a way, a sacred profession: the medical profession, the nursing profession. But the teaching profession? A whole civilization! Civilizations are formed by teachers. Our country depends on them. Our young depend on them. Our lives depend on them.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Do you think you would have enjoyed being a teacher?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: I did think about it. It’s such a thrilling thing to do. When I was very young at school, I was good at my studies. I remember that George Edward Morris’s mother asked my mother if I would coach him every week, Saturday, and my mother said, “Yes, Olivia could do that,” and George Edward Morris’s mother said, “I will pay 25 cents an hour for this.” Well, that was a huge sum. So I very happily coached George Edward Morris in spelling, reading, and arithmetic. He was ten, I think. I hope his spelling improved. I hope he did improve in his studies.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">When I got to high school I was full of despair and thought I would never be able to do Latin, but through my mother’s helping me with my homework for two weeks, I became quite good at it. In fact, they had to invent a new grade. It was A-plus because I was that far ahead of the other students, and to give me an A was unfair. So it became known that I was pretty good at Latin. Sybil Lord’s mother called up my mother and said, “Would you let Olivia coach Sybil in Latin?” I think she was willing to pay something like 50 or 75 cents an hour for this. Well, I was very happy to coach Sybil Lord in Latin!</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You’ve lived in France for many years now. You speak French, and you have written very charmingly about life in France. Do you think that living there has changed your perspective?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: It’s been an extraordinary experience, absolutely extraordinary to learn about another culture and other people. It is an immense privilege and an exciting adventure. Not only that, but just living in Europe has been an extraordinary experience, because I have been living in a culture of peace. Those 19-year-old American boys — Omaha Beach, and up and down that coast, they didn’t die for nothing. Think of it. Europe, with all these different countries, each country separate from the other in terms of history, culture, language, all of them for 2,000 years and more at war with each other, generation after generation, and all of a sudden, after World War II, they didn’t want to kill each other anymore, and we now have the European Union. It is a miracle. And the culture there is, indeed, a culture of peace, and the thought of solving a problem, a disagreement through war, unthinkable. Unthinkable.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Imagine if the United States had been created 2,000 years ago and from then until now, Nevada had declared war on California regularly all through those centuries. If Florida had been at war with Alabama, North Dakota with South Dakota, Oregon with Washington and Idaho and Montana and the rest of them, Nebraska, Mississippi, all at war with each other for 2,000 years, and suddenly, one day they decide they don’t want to kill each other anymore. That’s what’s happened in Europe. War is a very stupid way to settle a disagreement. Unthinkable. Won’t do. And in Europe, you have the feeling that the whole human race has been raised to another level by what has happened there.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What is your sense of the American Dream? Does it still hold true for you?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: I think we have abandoned our dream, and we must get back to it. We must. We absolutely must.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Looking back on your career, what are the roles that are closest to your heart? Melanie?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: Melanie, of course. Look at what she experiences in terms of life experience in that film, a great progression and development of character! And then <i>To Each His Own</i>, the development of the character there was just marvelous. As an acting problem, of course, <i>Dark Mirror</i>. That film is not close to my heart. I am glad I did it, but you cannot say it’s close to my heart, but there was Jody Norris, very close to my heart, in her development, and certainly Virginia Cunningham, as you well know by now, in <i>The Snake Pit</i>, and Catherine Sloper in <i>The Heiress</i>. Look at what she underwent, discovering that her father did not love her and didn’t even <i>like</i> her, and that the man she loved didn’t love her either. In a woman’s life those are enormous experiences. I wanted to play her.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>“Difficult work, done well,” you said earlier. How do you think the world of film is different today than in the 1930s and ’40s, when you were so busy at the studios?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: I’m not very familiar with it today. I suppose you would like to know how actresses of my day differ from actresses of today. Well, the actresses of today are richer.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>They make more money per picture, that’s for sure. Thank you for giving us so much of your time and sharing so many memories with us.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Olivia de Havilland: It was a great pleasure. A great pleasure.</span></p></body></html> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Dame Olivia de Havilland Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>29 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.72727272727273" title="Olivia de Havilland as Catherine Sloper and Montgomery Clift as Morris Townsend in The Heiress (1949). De Havilland won her second Oscar for her powerful performance in this classic film. (Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Olivia de Havilland as Catherine Sloper and Montgomery Clift as Morris Townsend in The Heiress (1949). De Havilland won her second Oscar for her powerful performance in this classic film. (Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-018.jpg" data-image-caption="Olivia de Havilland as Catherine Sloper, and Montgomery Clift as Morris Townsend in "The Heiress" (1949). De Havilland won her second Oscar for her powerful performance in this classic film. (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Olivia And Monty" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-018-380x276.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-018.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.25" title="A portrait of Olivia de Havilland in 1945. (Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - A portrait of Olivia de Havilland in 1945. (Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-021.jpg" data-image-caption="A portrait of Olivia de Havilland in 1945. (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Olivia de Havilland" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-021-304x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-021.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2525252525253" title="Olivia de Havilland as the selfless Melanie in Gone With the Wind, a performance cherished by genrations of moviegoers. (Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Olivia de Havilland as the selfless Melanie in Gone With the Wind, a performance cherished by genrations of moviegoers. (Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-017.jpg" data-image-caption="Olivia de Havilland as the selfless Melanie in "Gone With the Wind," a performance cherished by generations of moviegoers. (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Olivia de Havilland" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-017-303x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-017.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2020202020202" title="Actor Bill Goodwin and Olivia de Havilland in To Each His Own (1946). De Havilland won her first Oscar for her complex performance as Josephine Norris in this film. (Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Actor Bill Goodwin and Olivia de Havilland in To Each His Own (1946). De Havilland won her first Oscar for her complex performance as Josephine Norris in this film. (Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-015.jpg" data-image-caption="Actor Bill Goodwin and Olivia de Havilland in "To Each His Own" (1946). De Havilland won her first Oscar for her complex performance as Josephine Norris in this film. (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="'To Each His Own'" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-015-316x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-015.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.78030303030303" title="Mickey Rooney as Puck and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia in Max Reinhardt's 1935 film of Midsummer Night's Dream. Rooney and De Havilland were the only two actors from Reinhardt's stage production to be retained for the film. (Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Mickey Rooney as Puck and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia in Max Reinhardt's 1935 film of Midsummer Night's Dream. Rooney and De Havilland were the only two actors from Reinhardt's stage production to be retained for the film. (Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-014.jpg" data-image-caption="Mickey Rooney as Puck, and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia, in Max Reinhardt's 1935 film of "Midsummer Night's Dream." Rooney and de Havilland were the only two actors from Reinhardt's stage production to be retained for the film. (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Shakespeare's Play" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-014-380x297.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-014.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5429292929293" title="Olivia de Havilland as an infant, with her father, Walter A. de Havilland, her mother, Lilian de Havilland (later Fontaine) and two Japanese nurses. Olivia was born in Japan, where her father had a successful patent law practice. (Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Olivia de Havilland as an infant, with her father, Walter A. de Havilland, her mother, Lilian de Havilland (later Fontaine) and two Japanese nurses. Olivia was born in Japan, where her father had a successful patent law practice. (Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013.jpg" data-image-caption="Olivia de Havilland as an infant, with her father, Walter A. de Havilland, her mother, Lilian de Havilland (later Fontaine) and two Japanese nurses. Olivia was born in Japan, where her father had a successful patent law practice. (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Baby de Havilland" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013-246x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-013.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.82070707070707" title="The great German director Max Reinhardt rehearses his cast for a massive outdoor production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Los Angeles, 1934. Olivia de Havilland, age 18, is second from left. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - The great German director Max Reinhardt rehearses his cast for a massive outdoor production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Los Angeles, 1934. Olivia de Havilland, age 18, is second from left. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-010.jpg" data-image-caption="The great German director Max Reinhardt rehearses his cast for a massive outdoor production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Los Angeles, 1934. Olivia de Havilland, age 18, is second from left. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Troupe Rehearsing Shakespeare Play" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-010-380x312.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-010.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.209595959596" title="Olivia de Havilland, as Catherine Sloper in The Heiress, pleads with her father, played by Ralph Richardson, to let her marry the penniless Morris Townsend, played by Mongtgomery Clift. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Olivia de Havilland, as Catherine Sloper in The Heiress, pleads with her father, played by Ralph Richardson, to let her marry the penniless Morris Townsend, played by Mongtgomery Clift. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-009.jpg" data-image-caption="Olivia de Havilland, as Catherine Sloper in "The Heiress," pleads with her father, played by Ralph Richardson, to let her marry the penniless Morris Townsend, played by Mongtgomery Clift. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Scene from" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-009-314x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-009.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71212121212121" title="Teenage Olivia de Havilland and her sister, Joan Fontaine, dressed for a costume party in Saratoga, California, 1934. By the end of the year, Olivia will be in Hollywood. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Teenage Olivia de Havilland and her sister, Joan Fontaine, dressed for a costume party in Saratoga, California, 1934. By the end of the year, Olivia will be in Hollywood. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-008.jpg" data-image-caption="Teenage Olivia de Havilland and her sister, Joan Fontaine, dressed for a costume party in Saratoga, California, 1934. By the end of the year, Olivia will be in Hollywood. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Olivia De Havilland &amp; Joan Fontaine" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-008-380x271.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-008.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.7979797979798" title="Olivia de Havilland, age one, in Tokyo, Japan. (漏 John Springer Collection/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Olivia de Havilland, age one, in Tokyo, Japan. (漏 John Springer Collection/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-007.jpg" data-image-caption="Olivia de Havilland, age one, in Tokyo, Japan. (漏 John Springer Collection/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Actress Olivia de Havilland as a Baby" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-007-380x303.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-007.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.77777777777778" title="Olivia de Havilland won two Best Actress Oscars, one for To Each His Own and one for The Heiress. She displays the trophies to photographers in this 1957 picture. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Olivia de Havilland won two Best Actress Oscars, one for To Each His Own and one for The Heiress. She displays the trophies to photographers in this 1957 picture. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-006.jpg" data-image-caption="Olivia de Havilland won two Best Actress Oscars, one for "To Each His Own," and one for "The Heiress." She displays the trophies to photographers in this 1957 picture. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Portrait of Actress Olivia De Haviland her Two Oscars" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-006-380x296.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-006.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2868632707775" title="From L to R: Producer David Selznick, stars Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland and director George Cukor meet to sign contracts for Gone With the Wind. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - From L to R: Producer David Selznick, stars Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland and director George Cukor meet to sign contracts for Gone With the Wind. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-004.jpg" data-image-caption="Left to right: Producer David Selznick, stars Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland and director George Cukor meet to sign contracts for "Gone With the Wind." (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Vivien Leigh and Olivia De Havilland With Producers" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-004-295x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-004.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.75526315789474" title="Clark Gable embraces co-star Viven Leigh in a memorable scene from Gone With the Wind. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Clark Gable embraces co-star Viven Leigh in a memorable scene from Gone With the Wind. (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-024.jpg" data-image-caption="Clark Gable embraces co-star Viven Leigh in a memorable scene from "Gone With the Wind." (漏 Bettman/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Scene from" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-024-380x287.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-024-760x574.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2859560067682" title="Olivia de Havilland tries to escape from a hellish mental institution in the 1948 film, The Snake Pit. (Getty Images)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Olivia de Havilland tries to escape from a hellish mental institution in the 1948 film, The Snake Pit. (Getty Images)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003.jpg" data-image-caption="Olivia de Havilland tries to escape from a hellish mental institution in the 1948 film "The Snake Pit." (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="The Snake Pit" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003-295x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/deh0-003-591x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2101910828025" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-50829165_master.jpg" data-image-caption="1938: Actors Errol Flynn and 22-year-old Olivia de Havilland embrace in a still from "The Adventures of Robin Hood," directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. (Warner Bros./Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Flynn & De Havilland Embrace In 'Robin Hood'" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-50829165_master-314x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-50829165_master-628x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0079575596817" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180690_master.jpg" data-image-caption="English actress Olivia de Havilland. (Photo by Terry O'Neill/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Olivia de Havilland" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180690_master-377x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180690_master-754x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0106382978723" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180697_master.jpg" data-image-caption="English actress Olivia de Havilland with her two Academy Awards. (Photo by Terry O'Neill/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Olivia And Oscars" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180697_master-376x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-52180697_master-752x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.25" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-120426357_master.jpg" data-image-caption="1945: Olivia de Havilland (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Olivia De Havilland" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-120426357_master-304x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-120426357_master-608x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.82631578947368" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master.jpg" data-image-caption="1939: Actresses Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel play the roles of Scarlett O'Hara, Melanie Hamilton and Mammy, respectively, in a scene from the movie "Gone with the Wind" by Victor Fleming. (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Vivien Leigh, Olivia De Havilland and Hattie McDaniel in a scene from the movie Gone with the Wind" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master-380x314.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-152216276_master-760x628.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.72763157894737" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Olivia-de-Havilland-1986-mt-vernon.jpg" data-image-caption="1986: Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon and Academy Class of 1973, addresses summit delegates and members as Summit moderator Olivia de Havilland looks on during the American Academy of Achievement's 25th Anniversary Summit in Mount Vernon, Virginia." data-image-copyright="Neil Armstrong Olivia de Havilland 1986 mt vernon" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Olivia-de-Havilland-1986-mt-vernon-380x277.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Olivia-de-Havilland-1986-mt-vernon-760x553.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68421052631579" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Dr.-Norman-Borlaug-Olivia-de-Havilland-1987-Summit-Scottsdale-AZ.jpg" data-image-caption="1986: Awards Council member and Summit moderator Olivia de Havilland presenting the Achievement Award to Dr. Norman E. Borlaug during the American Academy of Achievement's 25th Anniversary Summit in Mount Vernon, Virginia." data-image-copyright="Neil Armstrong Dr. Norman Borlaug Olivia de Havilland 1987 Summit Scottsdale AZ" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Dr.-Norman-Borlaug-Olivia-de-Havilland-1987-Summit-Scottsdale-AZ-380x260.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Dr.-Norman-Borlaug-Olivia-de-Havilland-1987-Summit-Scottsdale-AZ-760x520.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.25" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-154046829_master.jpg" data-image-caption="1940: British-American actress Olivia de Havilland. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Olivia De Havilland" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-154046829_master-304x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-154046829_master-608x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.78289473684211" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514685292_master.jpg" data-image-caption="The cast of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" gather together with Warner Brothers executives. Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney, Dick Powell, and James Cagney are the players in the broadcast. (Bettmann/Getty)" data-image-copyright="Group Portrait of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Broadcasters" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514685292_master-380x298.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514685292_master-760x595.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2357723577236" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514885914_master.jpg" data-image-caption="March 25, 1950: Actress Olivia de Havilland proudly displays her second Oscar, awarded for her performance as the Best Actress of 1949 for her role in "The Heiress." Miss de Havilland also won top honors in 1946. (Bettmann/Getty)" data-image-copyright="Olivia De Havilland Holding Her Oscar" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514885914_master-308x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-514885914_master-615x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.1030478955007" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-517479294_master.jpg" data-image-caption="Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn from the 1939 film "Dodge City." (Bettmann/Getty)" data-image-copyright="Errol Flynn with Olivia de Havilland" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-517479294_master-345x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-517479294_master-689x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.76184210526316" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WP-GettyImages-517245446.jpg" data-image-caption="April 26, 1948: Film stars Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, appearing in several movies together, are seen here embracing in one of their films. (Bettmann)" data-image-copyright="Errol Flynn Kissing Olivia de Havilland" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WP-GettyImages-517245446-380x290.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WP-GettyImages-517245446-760x579.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.675" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-small-Olivia-de-Havilland-with-daughter.jpg" data-image-caption="Council member Olivia de Havilland with daughter, Gis猫le Galante, at the 2000 International Achievement Summit in London." data-image-copyright="wp-small-Olivia de Havilland with daughter" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-small-Olivia-de-Havilland-with-daughter-380x257.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-small-Olivia-de-Havilland-with-daughter-760x513.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_719.jpg" data-image-caption="Hollywood legends Olivia de Havilland and Dame Julie Andrews with L.A. Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (漏 Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="wordpress_06Academy_719" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_719-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_719-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-931433476.jpg" data-image-caption=" Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland is photographed for The New York Times on February 2018 in Paris, France. (Photo by Julien Mignot/Contour by Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="wp-GettyImages-931433476" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-931433476-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wp-GettyImages-931433476-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" 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class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Sally Field</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Two Oscars for Best Actress</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2005</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts difficulty-with-school illness-or-disability poverty racism-discrimination small-town-rural-upbringing shy-introverted be-a-performer " data-year-inducted="1996" data-achiever-name="Jones, James Earl"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" 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class="isotope-achiever the-arts poverty ambitious athletic curious be-a-performer make-films " data-year-inducted="2007" data-achiever-name="Swank"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/swank-760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/swank-760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Hilary Swank</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Two Oscars for Best Actress</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2007</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </div> </div> </article> <div class="modal image-modal fade" id="imageModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="imageModal" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="close-container"> <div class="close icon-icon_x" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close"></div> </div> <div class="modal-dialog" role="document"> <div class="modal-content"> <div class="modal-body"> <figure class="image-modal__container"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <img class="image-modal__image" src="/web/20180623092236im_/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/" alt=""/>  <figcaption class="p-t-2 container"> <div class="image-modal__caption sans-2 text-white"></div>  </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </div> </main> </div> </div> <footer class="content-info main-footer bg-black"> <div class="container"> <div class="find-achiever" id="find-achiever-list"> <div class="form-group"> <input id="find-achiever-input" class="search js-focus" placeholder="Search for an achiever"/> <i class="icon-icon_chevron-down"></i> </div> <ul class="find-achiever-list list m-b-0 list-unstyled"> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/hank-aaron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hank Aaron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kareem-abdul-jabbar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/edward-albee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Albee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tenley-albright-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tenley Albright, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a 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Ballard, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-roger-bannister-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Roger Bannister</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-banville/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Banville</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ehud-barak/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ehud Barak</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lee-r-berger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lee R. Berger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-timothy-berners-lee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Tim Berners-Lee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/yogi-berra/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Yogi Berra</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeffrey-p-bezos/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeffrey P. Bezos</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benazir-bhutto/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benazir Bhutto</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/simone-biles/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Simone Biles</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/keith-l-black/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Keith L. Black, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elizabeth-blackburn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-boies-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Boies</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-c-bradlee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin C. Bradlee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sergey-brin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sergey Brin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carter-j-brown/"><span class="achiever-list-name">J. Carter Brown</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linda-buck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linda Buck, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-burnett/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Burnett</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-h-w-bush/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George H. W. Bush</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/susan-butcher/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Susan Butcher</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-cameron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Cameron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-s-carson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin S. Carson, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Carter</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-cash/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Cash</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William J. Clinton</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-s-collins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/denton-a-cooley/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Denton A. Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Gl眉ck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180623092236/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. 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