Olivia de Havilland: Lady Triumphant

INTRODUCTION

Olivia and Me

In 1967 and again in 1969, Gone with the Wind was reissued to American theaters in a 70mm wide-screen print, introducing the classic to a new generation of filmgoers thirty years after its first release. Even then, the film was discussed with a mixture of admiration and concern for its representation of the Confederate, slave-owning South, yet it was still seen as a masterpiece. Along with many other viewers, I was first exposed to the film in 1969, and its grandeur possessed me.

As a young teenager in a tiny Wisconsin farming and manufacturing community, I did two things to facilitate my dreams of a wider world—I read compulsively, and I saw virtually every film that played at the local movie theater, escaping through the written word and the art of cinema. I had read Gone with the Wind in 1968, a rite of passage for many American girls of the time, often encouraged by their older relatives and teachers who had loved the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Atlanta’s Margaret Mitchell. Over a long, frigid Christmas holiday, I was captivated by the panoramic American history and histrionics, by the plot and the characters, by the archetypal American reinvention story of a woman and a nation divided, but particularly by Scarlett O’Hara.

I don’t think it was a coincidence that this Civil War–era heroine in a Depression-era film seemed prescient when I became obsessed a few years later with David Bowie’s anthemic 1974 Rebel, Rebel. Like me (and virtually every other young person in the Western world), Scarlett was on a mission to live life as she chose. Even more relevant to me and to many other young women, she was, in many ways, a protofeminist. Scarlett didn’t like limits or being treated like a child when she knew exactly what she wanted—power, self-determination, and a self-forged identity. She wanted romance with Ashley Wilkes and was ruthless about it. She loved her family and Tara despite herself, and she used every skill, talent, attraction, and strategy she had to fight for their survival. Scarlett didn’t have the awareness to see the personal as political, but she did refute the limitations on her gender and her defeated land. Above all, she wanted to do every and any damned thing she desired.

But what about Melanie Hamilton Wilkes? Too nice to emulate. A true personification of Patmore Coventry’s treacly tribute to Victorian-era domestic enslavement, An Angel in the House. Melanie was a loyal friend to Scarlett, but who could possibly want to be that good? Melanie wasn’t flashy or outwardly fierce; she wasn’t funny, wasn’t particularly captivating. Margaret Mitchell’s description of Melanie offers a character who seems pallid compared with Scarlett:

She was a tiny, frailly built girl, who gave the appearance of a child masquerading in her mother’s enormous hoop skirts—an illusion that was heightened by the shy, almost frightened look in her too large brown eyes. She had a cloud of curly dark hair which was so sternly repressed beneath its net that no vagrant tendrils escaped, and this dark mass, with its long widow’s peak, accentuated the heart shape of her face … a sweet, timid face but a plain face, and she had no feminine tricks of allure to make observers forget its plainness. She looked—and was—as simple as earth, as good as bread, as transparent as spring water.¹

Melanie was a lovely role model for someone bucking for sainthood. She was not, however, an immediately obvious heroine for a troubled teen.

Or so I believed until I saw the film when it finally came to my little Wisconsin town in 1969. I went back several times, alone and with friends. It is the only epic I’ve ever tolerated, and it became my favorite all-time film: the Technicolor, Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh’s magnificence in one of the greatest female screen performances in cinema history, the supporting cast, the Civil War, the sweeping music, the story of survival. Certainly, I was enraptured with Leigh’s Scarlett, as I expected to be. What was unexpected, however, was my newfound appreciation of Melanie. As portrayed by Olivia de Havilland, Melanie was as indomitable as Scarlett.

I knew de Havilland’s spirited work from her many films with Errol Flynn shown on television. Her maleficence in Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte and Lady in a Cage, both viewed at the cinema when I was a burgeoning obsessive filmgoer, was delicious to me. But in the actress’s Melanie, I saw a character with strength and gentleness, true manners, and an authentic spirit. Her Melanie captured more of Margaret Mitchell’s evaluation of that Hamilton girl: Ashley had sat on a stool at Melanie’s feet, apart from the other guests, and talked quietly with her, smiling the slow drowsy smile that Scarlett loved. What made matters worse was that under his smile a little sparkle had come into Melanie’s eyes, so that even Scarlett had to admit that she looked almost pretty. As Melanie looked at Ashley, her plain face lit up as with an inner fire, for if ever a loving heart showed itself upon a face, it was showing now on Melanie Hamilton’s.²

Olivia’s Melanie was no second chorus to Scarlett’s beauty or fire; Olivia’s Melanie was suddenly interesting. After all, Melanie married Ashley (played by Leslie Howard) and gave birth during the siege of Atlanta; she cradled the weeping Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable) when he feared Scarlett would die; she was aware of the gossip about Ashley and Scarlett and loved them both regardless; she was the best friend any woman could have. Scarlett was my idealized self; Melanie was the self I might become. I decided to write a fan letter.

Vivien Leigh had died two years earlier, in 1967, of tuberculosis. Leslie Howard had been shot down in 1943 while flying a mission during World War II. Clark Gable had suffered a heart attack in 1960 shortly after completing work on The Misfits. Olivia de Havilland, thankfully, was alive and well and living in Paris with her second husband, Pierre Galante, secrétaire général of Paris Match, and her two children. So I typed a fan letter on my new manual typewriter with a script font—ladylike, I remember thinking, feminine and strong, as I banged on the keys. I told her how much I loved her performances in Gone with the Wind, Captain Blood, and Hush … Hush. I asked her about Gable, Leigh, and Howard; told her I wanted to be an actress; thanked her for her attention; and sent the letter off to Paris (I had found her address in Who’s Who and Current Biography). I was thirteen years old.

Remarkably, several weeks later, a neat airmail envelope arrived with a French postage stamp. It was from Olivia de Havilland. It is a miracle I didn’t tear it to bits in my haste to open the letter. And there, on tissue-fine stationery, was a typewritten response to my letter, answering my questions about Leigh (a consummate actress), Gable (a true gentleman), and Howard (wonderful to work with). She also affirmed, as she has in countless interviews, that Melanie is the role I most loved playing and she is very real, indeed, to me.³ The actress even included an autographed photograph of herself as Melanie—of course, I desperately wanted one, but I hadn’t requested it for fear she would think I was writing solely for that purpose—signed in dark blue ink in her distinctive, curving hand (a good example appears in a note she writes in My Cousin Rachel). The screams of joy are still echoing off the barns in central Wisconsin, and the framed photograph sits before me as I write this.

I showed every human being I had ever met the response from Olivia, as she became known to me and my mother (who also knew and loved her films). I decided to write back so she wouldn’t think I was just another fan braying for a photo. I remember suggesting that we become pen pals, and I shared my interests with her, which included the Green Bay Packers, horror films, cats, and becoming a stage actress. I also learned from further research that she had a son named Benjamin from her first marriage and a daughter named Gisèle who was only a year younger than me, so I thought Olivia might be particularly kind to a young person near her daughter’s age. Thus our correspondence began, and it has continued for forty-nine years (she was always Miss de Havilland in our correspondence until the spring of 2016, when she asked me to call her Miss D; since her 2017 damehood, she is Dame Olivia).

I sent Olivia everything about myself—newspaper clippings reviewing plays I was in or announcing scholarships I’d won; invitations to all my graduations (alas, she never attended any). I even sent her articles about herself that I thought she might have missed. I asked questions about her films: Did she keep her costumes? A few. Was Errol Flynn a good kisser? I knew the answer to that just by watching them onscreen together, and she was far too elegant to answer. Was she really friends with Bette Davis? Very good friends indeed.

In later years, when I studied and worked in Europe, I sent her endless requests to meet me in Paris; it became my favorite city, in part because my favorite correspondent lived there. She always declined. But she continued to answer my letters, typewritten replies on her trademark Della Robbia blue paper. Sometimes years passed between notes (there was a long silence when her son had died, and another long break when she was nursing her ex-husband, who was suffering from lung cancer); sometimes two or three would arrive in a flurry. I kept every one. Now that we email, I receive fewer typed notes, but I hear from her even more regularly and still scream happily, if more restrainedly.

Our exchanges weren’t always terribly profound—how could they be? But we found enough common ground to sustain our correspondence. Olivia’s kindness to me as I matured was generous beyond belief. In 1973 she offered a handwritten P.S. to one note: Special good luck to you for this last year of school—may your grades be excellent, and your plans for the future clarify.⁴ I wrote to her in 1981 about my decision to move into academe and teaching rather than pursue an acting career, and she wisely advised me, If you think of your teaching as a form of communication (this is mainly what acting is, too) and of the immense need people have to articulate and organize their own thoughts, and to convey them intelligibly, you may find creative ways to teach those courses of yours which will satisfy you very deeply.⁵

When I completed my PhD, she kindly wrote, Dear Dr. Victoria, isn’t it wonderful to be able to address you this way!⁶ Olivia had intended to major in communications at Mills College before those plans were derailed by Max Reinhardt and a Warner Brothers contract, and I always felt this shared interest forged a special bond between us. In an email interview with People in honor of her 100th birthday, she mentioned regretting that she hadn’t attended college and observed, ‘The scholarship I won in 1934 is still waiting for me!’⁷ I smiled at the thought that she might have been my teacher or my colleague. In some ways, with our correspondence and with the writing of this book, she has been both.

I’ve annoyed her, certainly, at times. She didn’t mince words when I first mentioned reading Sisters, the late Charles Higham’s biography of Olivia and her sister, Joan Fontaine. She dismissed the book, saying, I have nothing whatsoever to do with this book and have not even read it. Friends have told me, however, that it is full of inaccuracies of every sort and that its author, Charles Higham, is most irresponsible.⁸ A few years later, in an academic paper I’d written about John Huston’s In This Our Life (1942), I returned to the infamous Higham bio, which contained several pages on the making of the film and Olivia’s affair with the director. I sent the published article to the actress, who very kindly said, I found it extremely interesting and wonderfully perceptive. Accurate, too.⁹ She then requested photocopies of the pages from Higham’s book that I’d quoted.

Despite her generous appreciation of the essay I’d written, Olivia was outraged by the information in Higham’s book: His description of the atmosphere on the set … is unrecognizable, and his incredible fiction about Bette [Davis, her costar in the film] coming to 2337 Nella Vista to read some selections from Job while the two of us shared a hot tub, is so outrageous and has rendered me so indignant that it will be difficult for me to function normally for the rest of this day! Yet, with her teasing cleverness, she went on to write, On the other hand, John Huston did, indeed, cross the threshold of that small vine-covered house, but he certainly did not read the Bible while there.¹⁰

Olivia’s wit has always been present in her performances, in interviews, and in our correspondence, too. She gave me a nickname—Victoria A. and B., the second letter for my then married name. When I divorced, I became Victoria A. again.

Her generosity to me over the years has been remarkable. When I was in Paris for my fiftieth birthday, my customary requested meeting was denied due to her ill health, but she sent a bountiful basket of fifty roses to my hotel, along with a long, handwritten note (on the Colette-blue paper) asserting that the "50s are marvellous years—enjoy them to the fullest!"¹¹ I still have the letter, the dried petals, and the basket.

Regrettably for me, yet understandably, Olivia continued to ignore or avoid my repeated requests for a meeting in Paris. Why should she consent, after all? I was not a renowned journalist or a working actress, and she had a busy life, as well as numerous other correspondents and a wide fan base. Olivia was also a very discreet, very private person. Even though I had gone to university with the partner of her longtime agent Jim Wilhelm, and even though another friend’s acquaintance worked with the American Cathedral in Paris, which she attended regularly, those connections weren’t door-openers either.

So the years and the decades passed. Olivia was now in her mid-nineties. I was an academic, presenting papers about her career for conferences and writing about her for various publications. We continued to correspond, and the fan in me refused to give up. Every time I visited Paris over the years, I always sent a letter with my travel details and a request for a visit; she always politely and regretfully declined. It must have been terribly annoying, but Olivia was always gracious in her refusals.

Then, in August 2010, I was in Paris for three days with a friend, and I took a bolder step. As usual, I’d written to Olivia to tell her I was coming and hoped for a meeting—after all, I was now middle aged and she was a walking miracle—and heard nothing. I’d decided to have roses delivered to her home when my steadfast travel companion, Jane, made a bold suggestion—why not go to her home with the flowers and my business card and ring the bell? If she wasn’t in, I could leave the flowers for her. If she was in, who knew?

So, fortified by a couple of glasses of wine and a now-or-never false courage, that’s exactly what I did. Olivia’s house was on a short, elegant street dominated by consulates and stately buildings, the street sign ringed by ivy. The house itself was tall and narrow, with four stories and a basement level; it was painted a soft, burnished yellow-gold, fronted by a black iron fence and a dark iron door. The light from one of the upstairs rooms facing the street cast a warm, peachy glow. La maison was as elegant and discreetly situated as its owner.

After taking a moment to compose myself and possibly change my mind, I boldly rang the doorbell. Surprise! The iron door in the gate immediately swung open, and standing there was a young American woman, very pretty, dressed casually, and curious about this person standing before her bearing blooms. I introduced myself and showed her my card and learned that she was Olivia’s assistant. Then I babbled a bit—Olivia and I had been correspondents for over forty years, I just happened to be in Paris, and I wondered if I might briefly pay my compliments. The very poised assistant kindly invited me to wait in the entryway—mon Dieu!—while she delivered my bouquet to Miss de Havilland. She walked up the several concrete steps to the door of the house, and I followed.

I had crossed the sacred threshold. On that hot August day, I was frozen with anticipation. I sat demurely on a wooden bench in the cool, nineteenth-century, flagstoned entryway, across from a large drawing room with another large room beyond it. To my left was the open front door; to my right was a steep staircase carpeted in red, at the top of which was a landing and, certainly, the actress. The drawing room was very formal, and it looked unused, like something frozen in time. It was very proper, heavily French, and elegant but cold—literally—despite the sweltering August heat. Clearly the life of the house existed beyond this proper, somewhat old-fashioned reception room.

Then I heard muffled voices—the young woman and the actress. I recognized the mellifluous tones, low and honeyed, even if I couldn’t hear the precise words. My heart was pounding. I might finally meet the woman who had become almost like a family member, whose career and personal life I had followed faithfully, whose presence in my life, however limited, had given me tremendous pride and conferred on me a dusting of starlight by only a few degrees of separation.

Suddenly the young woman came downstairs, smiling sadly. Miss de Havilland appreciated the roses but wasn’t prepared to receive visitors. I understood. I also smiled sadly, thanked her assistant, and hurried away, embarrassed and disappointed and, I have to confess, in tears once I had put some distance between me and the house—crying partly to release my previous emotions and partly because the tale of our faraway acquaintance wasn’t getting the ending I needed.

I met Jane at a sidewalk café near Shakespeare and Company, and she congratulated me for my resolve while handing me a stiff drink. I exulted a bit as my first response faded. Upon reflection, and aided by another cocktail, I realized that calling on a legendary movie star unannounced and being turned away with civility seemed apropos of Olivia de Havilland and indicative of the character traits that inform much of this study of her life and work.

Olivia is elegant, she is friendly, she is humorously self-aware in interviews, but she is reserved and protective. This careful approach may be attributable to her sudden fame and youth (she was nineteen) in 1935 Hollywood, or to the difficult relationships she had with her family, or to her frustrations at Warner Brothers, or to her decision to abandon the Hollywood lifestyle for Paris in 1953. Her reticence may be natural; it may be intentionally cultivated. In 1950 the Hollywood Women’s Press Club chose her as the winner of Least Cooperative Actress, and she did not acknowledge the honor.¹²

In any case, Olivia’s discretion has served her well. Since her final screen performance in 1988 in the television movie The Woman He Loved, she has maintained a dignified but only occasionally visible and well-managed profile. She has increasingly kept the wider world at a distance, maintaining the image of a velvet glove hiding an iron hand, offering up a lady of elegance with a life far more interesting than the public could imagine. That persona informed her career choices, which sometimes, ironically, limited her potential as effectively as Jack Warner’s studio leash, yet it also preserved her reputation as the last grande dame of America’s golden age of cinema.

The failure of my first attempt at direct contact with Olivia did not dissuade me. In August 2012 I was back in Paris for my friend Steven’s sixtieth birthday. I had emailed Olivia that we would be in the city for a week and would love to call on her. This time, when she wrote back, the heavens opened and the angels sang: we were invited to tea! At last, my private audience with Olivia de Havilland was going to happen.

Thrilled, Steven and I bought an enormous bouquet of roses the size of a small child and took the Metro and a taxi to the sixteenth arrondissement. We walked down her street, which was familiar to both of us after years of pilgrimages to the tall, narrow town house where the star lived. We rang the bell to the heavy iron gate. We rang again. Then we rang a third time.

A young woman appeared, not the same one from two years earlier, but just as sweet and welcoming. I recognized the thoughtful, compassionate look. Didn’t you receive our message? she asked. Miss de Havilland is ill. Our hearts sank. But do you want to come in while I take this bouquet to her? Hope! We stood in the same entryway where I had waited two years before. There was the same coolness to the air, the same beautiful floor tiles, the same formal living room, and the same red-carpeted stairway to heaven. After a few minutes’ wait that felt eternal, the assistant descended. Olivia was too ill to receive us, but she loved the bouquet. I’m so glad, I replied, as both Steven and I smiled. I thought it might be too large.

Miss de Havilland appreciates extravagance, her assistant replied charmingly. We left, but we were far less disappointed than might be expected. After all, Olivia had our flowers, we had brightened her day, we had both passed through the iron gates, and we had the great satisfaction of being close to our favorite star.

Immediately, I sent her an email, wishing her good health and noting that if she was feeling better in the next few weeks and felt like a visit, I would fly in at her convenience. I didn’t expect anything, but I couldn’t help thinking, I’ve gotten into the house twice now. Perhaps the third time will be the charm. It was. Two weeks later, she invited me for coffee and macarons. With no hesitation whatsoever, I flew to Paris from Edinburgh, where I lived, to see her.

This time when I arrived, again bearing sumptuous blooms, the iron gate was ajar. Her assistant, Meghan, greeted me, smiling. The reception room was warm this time, not chilly; it was scented by ivory candles, and rose-shaded lamps cast a comforting light. A tray of macaroons rested on an elegant serving table to the left of a burgundy velvet settee. The silk Chinese screens radiated a golden glow. I chatted nervously with Meghan, almost trembling with anticipation. And then in she walked, vigorously, wearing a white silk blouse, a black skirt, and a pearl necklace. Her white hair was styled in a chic chignon. Her hand reached out to me. Olivia de Havilland—at last! After forty-three years of correspondence, we were finally sitting down together, and the long-awaited meeting began.

Our three hours together flew by. We drank coffee, nibbled macaroons, discussed the present and the past; much of our conversation informs this book. We also discussed our personal lives; much of that will remain private. Her assistant took our photograph together. When I offered bises on both cheeks in farewell, I was above the clouds. Life couldn’t have been better.

Then, in August 2013, I was going to be in Paris again, staying for a month this time. Again, Olivia de Havilland invited me to visit, this time for champagne and canapés. Her assistant greeted me (as usual, I was bearing an extravagant bouquet) and led me to a sequestered walled garden. It was sundown, and I sat beneath a huge chestnut tree, illuminated by candlelight, a bottle of Mumm’s chilling on a white hostess cart. Flowers were in bloom; a spherical, Japanese-influenced fountain bubbled quietly. The white wrought-iron settee was covered invitingly in plush white draping.

I breathed in the moment, memorizing every detail. Then the actress made her entrance, this time wearing a beautiful velvet maroon caftan and the same white pearls, her hair in a silver chignon. She offered the same welcoming hand and smile. This time we spoke for four hours, through the gathering dusk and into the evening. We drank champagne and talked about John Huston (I had met his daughter Allegra and interviewed Anjelica), her favorite roles, her daughter’s recent marriage, and her garden. She asked me about my life. We laughed and spoke thoughtfully, always with joie de vivre. Her assistant took a photograph of us toasting, me looking wide-eyed and contented, Olivia looking regal. When I left, I kissed her hand good-bye, and the trip back to my Paris flat was fueled with a fizzy happiness and a tremendous sense of good fortune at being able to spend time with a real legend.

The goddess had smiled upon me twice. What more could I want? Another visit, of course. In April 2014 I was back in Paris for a conference, but Olivia was suffering from respiratory and back issues and wasn’t receiving guests (I wondered if her poor health had somehow been precipitated by the death of her sister, Joan Fontaine, in December 2013); even her old friend Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne had been unable to see her, according to her new assistant, Mimi. Nevertheless, at Olivia’s urging, Mimi agreed to meet with me at a café near Olivia’s home. Over wine and cigarettes, Mimi and I spoke about her work with the actress—like most of Olivia’s assistants, Mimi was a lively and charming postgraduate student. It was the next best thing to being in Olivia’s drawing room and garden.

This seemed likely to be the end of our encounters, and I was grateful to have met Olivia at all. Time had passed, I had secured the contract for this book and had started my research, and Olivia had recovered from her illnesses of 2014. By the time February 2015 rolled around, I had taken a semester’s leave from my university and planned to spend several months working on the first draft of this manuscript. Carpe diem, I thought, so I wrote to Olivia and asked if she would be open to another visit, expecting a charming declination. And quelle surprise—she said yes!

A week later I was in Paris, again accompanied by my friend Jane. This time, as befits a grand lady, Olivia was ensconced at the Saint James Hotel while her home was being renovated. She still lives there today, in an airy blue suite designed with a distinctive Chinese aesthetic.

Hidden behind a tall wall in the sixteenth arrondissement, the Saint James is one of the most elegant hotels (and private clubs) I’ve ever seen. The grand Napoleon III building, with whimsically elegant updates by interior designer Bambi Sloan,¹³ is entered through a circular courtyard and up a flight of impressive stone steps. Jane and I sipped cocktails in the leopard-carpeted library bar as we waited for Olivia’s newest assistant, the adorable Stefanie (another postgrad student), to escort me to Olivia’s suite. This time, in addition to a fragrant and flamboyant bouquet of roses, I arrived bearing a bottle of pink Taittinger champagne (Olivia had emailed me that Stefanie was searching for the rose bubbly because it’s so much more festive¹⁴), macarons in honor of our first tête-à-tête, and a silk scarf.

When Stefanie arrived, I left a contented Jane in the bar, and we went to the second floor to the star’s suite, which was decorated de la façon chinoise in beautiful royal blue and turquoise, similar to her signature writing paper. We walked through the entryway, and there, resplendent in a black velvet and gold embroidered caftan, stood my hostess, the divine Olivia de Havilland. Her white bouffant hair was swept up elegantly, as always, and her favorite pearls circled her neck. Her skin was glowing, her smile welcoming, her voice strong, and her memory sharp. We shook hands, shared bises, sat together, and, for the next four-plus hours, did justice to more than one bottle of pink champagne. We were like old friends catching up, discussing what we’d been doing and how we’d been. She had just been the subject of a lovely profile in Entertainment Weekly entitled The Last Star, in which she had exclaimed, "‘I’m certainly relishing the idea of living a century. Can you imagine that? What an achievement.’"¹⁵ We discussed that goal, and with her characteristic energy and enthusiasm, she told me about her home improvements, her pleasures of daily life, and her improved health. Even more flattering to me, she asked about my life, remembering details from our first meeting three years before. I had sworn that this time, I was going to leave early. After all, Olivia was ninety-eight years old. Instead, I stayed even later, and rather than take the Metro to my hotel, I asked Stefanie to call a taxi due to the bubbly we had imbibed, whereas Olivia was all poise and warmth. When I saw my friend Jane at our hotel, we toasted to Olivia.

We met for the fourth time only eight months later, in November, again at the Saint James Hotel. This time I flew to Paris not so much to obtain material for this book—she had been most generous in emailing answers to my questions (it had become her favorite way of dealing with interviewers)—but just to see this amazing woman with whom I had finally established a friendship. In addition to roses and champagne, I brought a bottle of her favorite scent, which, I discovered after an inquiry to her assistant, was Chanel No. 5 (I had expected it to be a Dior fragrance, given her love of that fashion house’s designs). We spent several hours discussing her relationship with her mother, for whom she had enormous respect and gratitude, as well as contemporary politics, film, and education. I left my first edition of her 1962 memoir of Parisian life, Every Frenchman Has One, and she kindly autographed it and sent it to me shortly thereafter.

On July 1, 2016, Olivia turned 100 years old. Tributes from around the world appeared in the media, and the star celebrated at the Saint James with close friends and, of course, with champagne. Vanity Fair ran a tribute article in May that asked, Is 100 the new 70?¹⁶ And despite the remarkable number of gifts she received to commemorate this wonderful milestone birthday, she emailed me a week later to thank me for my flowers. In December 2017 we enjoyed our fifth meeting, and again I needed a taxi to take me to my hotel after too much intoxicating wine and conversation.

This book examines Olivia de Havilland’s long and rich life, hoping to inspire in readers a renewed appreciation for her career. She is still known to the public primarily because of her appearance in Gone with the Wind; its seventy-fifth anniversary was celebrated in 2014 with another theatrical release. However, her reputation as an actress and her stature as a Hollywood star, as well as her recognition as the woman who changed the studio contract system, have also ensured the public’s enduring interest. In February 2011 at the Cesar Awards, when Jodie Foster introduced de Havilland, who was sitting in the audience, Olivia received a spontaneous standing ovation; the clearly moved actress was acknowledged by industry members seventy-five years younger than she. And at the age of ninety-four, she was awarded both the Legion of Honour in France and a Presidential Arts Medal in the United States—stunning achievements. These aren’t just awards for longevity; they signal that the media and popular culture fans are broadening their vision and appreciation of female artistry. (However, the American Film Institute [AFI] can’t be accused of such progressiveness. Although the AFI has been giving its Lifetime Achievement Award since 1973, only ten women have received it—none of them Olivia. She hasn’t received a Kennedy Center honor either.)

De Havilland was born during World War I on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Her first film role was only eight years after the first talkies. Yet her regular appearances in the press and in person have asserted her lasting fame, even if that fame is connected in most contemporary minds with Gone with the Wind and, to a lesser extent, The Adventures of Robin Hood (and now with her depiction in the FX series about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Feud).

What else does her lengthy legacy entail? De Havilland is one of a select group that has won the best actor or actress Academy Award at least twice, and she has five nominations, along with numerous other film awards. She costarred in one of the most famous films in history. She broke Hollywood’s contract system by winning her landmark lawsuit against tenacious Jack Warner when Bette Davis couldn’t. Her second husband, Pierre Galante, engineered the photo opportunity that brought Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco together. Her move to Paris in the mid-1950s marked a return to her European heritage as well as a prescience concerning the career of une femme d’un certain âge in Hollywood. It also inspired the risqué-titled Every Frenchman Has One (referring to his liver), reissued by Crown Archetype in June 2016 in time for her centenary. Inevitably, every article that addresses sibling rivalry gives the actress and her late sister, Joan Fontaine, a name check; even the Vanity Fair profile of Olivia in May 2016 was part of its special Sisters issue.

Thus, Olivia de Havilland has achieved lasting respect and visibility among her peers and the media. Yet we don’t really know much about her. Her love affairs with powerful men like Howard Hughes, James Stewart, and John Huston have not been scrutinized as closely as those of other actresses. She’s been a staunch Democrat for years yet never publicly espouses her political beliefs, unlike so many of her colleagues. Her film and television work has always been well received, and as late as 1986 she earned a Golden Globe (and an Emmy nomination) for her role as Dowager Empress Maria in the television remake of Anastasia with Amy Irving. Yet she doesn’t have the same cachet as a Katharine Hepburn or a Bette Davis, despite outliving them both and winning two Oscars. On AFI’s top-fifty Hollywood legends list, her name is shockingly missing.

Why isn’t de Havilland recognized as one of those legends? There may be several reasons. She lacks a late career-defining role like Davis’s and Crawford’s in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? or Hepburn’s in On Golden Pond. Arguably, her last great starring film role was as Catherine Sloper in 1949’s The Heiress, although she worked when she wanted to for the next forty years. She was never driven by financial or artistic need to stay in the public eye. She wasn’t camp; no drag queens dress up as Olivia or one of her characters. Her daughter, Gisèle Galante, has lived a circumspect life as a journalist as well as the administrator of her late husband Edward Broida’s estate and art collection. Her quiet remarriage to Andy Chulack in September 2011 did not receive much press. The closest Gisèle has come to gossip was in the 1980s, when she briefly dated French pop heartthrob Johnny Hallyday. Joan Fontaine’s 1978 autobiography No Bed of Roses pulled no punches about her version of her relationship with her sister, but Olivia has not yet published her long-awaited memoir. She is discreet, protected by French privacy laws and her own generational inclination toward unobtrusive public behavior.

It is that poise, however, that limited Olivia’s later career in some ways. So often, she made choices that positioned her as a respectable matron rather than as visceral actress. Perhaps her prettiness and her later motherhood led her to select roles of propriety after the hard-won battle for career freedom. Although she plays a mature seductress opposite the young Richard Burton in 1952’s My Cousin Rachel, and she enjoys clinches with Robert Mitchum and Rossano Brazzi in later films, she developed a mature, humorous, self-aware protagonist persona who was unwilling to risk emotional or psychological experiments in her roles or performances.

There are two major exceptions to this persona: her hag horror–Grand Guignol roles in 1964 in Lady in a Cage and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Perhaps being back in Los Angeles for these films led her to scream along with Bette and Joan and other aging actresses, but it also inspired her to let loose and display a rawer, less controlled complexity in the characters she played. Although these two films have been dismissed as part of the 1960s move to black-and-white B-list horror-thriller films with former A-list stars, they show Olivia’s potential to be more than a gentlewoman in a Christian Dior suit.

In exploring Olivia’s private and public lives, it has been challenging to find sources that illuminate beyond the fan magazine articles and the polite interviews. A few years ago, I sent a letter to the actress and told her I was thinking of writing a book about her. Often, years would pass before she replied, but this time, a letter appeared in two weeks. In it, Olivia was gracious enough to say, It is very gratifying to learn that you are considering … writing a critical biography of some of my work; I wish you great good fortune therewith. With that letter came a copy of Paris magazine that contained a recent interview almost free of error.¹⁷ A letter that arrived several weeks later offered the caution that almost nothing accurate is known about my life.¹⁸ True enough. Olivia has shared facts, details, and reminiscences, but she has very wisely shared the private woman with only her inner circle.

Her resolve to maintain the persona she had crafted for more than eighty years was certainly realized in the month before her 101st birthday on July 1, 2017. Queen Elizabeth II had bestowed a damehood on Olivia in early June, making her the oldest person to ever receive the honor. This was a delayed but moving recognition for the actress, who, although a naturalized American citizen, was born to English parents. Olivia issued a statement to People, saying she was ‘extremely proud that the Queen has appointed me a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.… To receive this honor as my 101st birthday approaches is the most gratifying of birthday presents.’¹⁹

She was also getting a great deal of press as a result of Ryan Murphy’s FX miniseries Feud, the delicious tale of the legendary Bette Davis–Joan Crawford relationship. Catherine Zeta-Jones portrays Olivia—who is both narrator (in an imagined 1978 documentary) and participant—as elegant and as loyal to Davis, and her career savvy and her measured, articulate public incarnation are represented.

I emailed her in February 2017 and asked whether she’d watched Feud and, if so, what she thought of Catherine Zeta-Jones’s portrayal of her. She offered an interesting reply: Many thanks for the forewarning! My assistant, Stefanie, assures me she will be able to arrange a viewing here of each of the episodes.²⁰ Apparently, that didn’t happen, as Olivia issued a gorgeously dismissive response to the Hollywood Reporter’s inquiry about her opinion of Feud’s depiction of the relationship between Davis and Crawford and of the 1963 Oscar ceremony that features prominently in the series:

I have received your e-mail with its two questions.… I would like to reply first to the second of these, which inquires of me the accuracy of a current television series entitled Feud, which concerns Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and their supposed animosity toward each other. Having not seen the show, I cannot make a valid comment about it. However, in principle, I am opposed to any representation of personages who are no longer alive to judge the accuracy of any incident depicted as involving themselves.… As to the 1963 Oscar ceremony, which took place over half a century