De Havilland breaks silence on sibling feud

One of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Olivia de Havilland, celebrated her 100th birthday on Friday. She is best known for her early screen performances in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939), and her later award-winning performances in To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949).

The secret was “Love, laughter and light, ” Olivia de Havilland told the U.S. magazine “Vanity Fair”.

“On my part, it was always loving, but sometimes estranged and, in the later years, severed”, she said, describing Fontaine as “a brilliant, multi-talented person, but with an astigmatism in her perception of people and events which often caused her to react in an unfair and even injurious way”.

Behind the scenes, she took on Warner Bros.

In a 53 year career, de Havilland starred in 49 films and collected two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy and was honored with an Academy tribute in 2006.

Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On. She makes Melanie’s warmth so captivating – while revealing an edge to the softness – that she makes it palatable to savor Leigh’s exaggerations. He was a swashbuckler, and standing opposite him, de Havilland got feisty. – AFPThe film sealed De Havilland’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s top leading ladies, but with her doe-eyed looks she soon felt frustrated at the roles she was offered, fearful of being typecast as a sweet, innocent young thing.

De Havilland said the “legend of a feud” with her sister was first created by an article entitled “Sister Act” in Life Magazine following the 1942 Oscars, where both sisters were nominated for an Academy Award.

As she continues to mature, de Havilland becomes even more lovely on screen, commanding the camera with her presence. After she challenged Warner Bros over the terms of her contract, the 1944 de Havilland Decision, “made it clear that California law limits to seven years the time an employer can enforce a contract with an employee”. Frequently spotted at global film festivals, she subsequently only made occasional film appearances. In the first three, de Havilland is the love interest, but she gives the characters depth by making them forceful, charming and grounded.

Happy 100th birthday, Olivia de Havilland. Her misadventures as an expat living in Paris were documented in her 1962 memoir Every Frenchman Has One, a long out-of-print book that Penguin Random House reprinted and just re-released this past Tuesday. “Hollywood was a dismal, tragic place”, she said. She was then signed to a seven-year contract with Warner Bros., which was common at the time. And, as if art could imitate life, de Havilland creates a woman who refuses to be a glamorous package. Was the material up to the standards of her late 1940s films?

The following year, de Havilland narrated the documentary I Remember Better When I Paint (2009), a film about the importance of art in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.