Movie Actresses | Hollywood Yesterday

Olivia de Havilland, A Midsummer Nights Dream

Beautiful Olivia de HavillandI recently had a great conversation with a fellow lover of the Golden Age of Hollywood… okay, we’re obsessed if we’re being honest. We started off trying to name our five favorite actresses and five favorite actors and when that proved to be impossible for both of us, we moved on to talking about a few of our own favorites. While we had quite a few favorites in common (Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Claudette Colbert, Lucille Ball, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Hattie McDaniel, Marilyn Monroe, Hedy Lamarr, Butterfly McQueen, Vivien Leigh, James Dean, Lillian Randolph, Frank Sinatra, Henry Fonda, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Clark Gable…), there were a few that were exclusive to each of us.

For example, a few who are firmly on my lists of favorites that are (somehow!) not on her’s are Olivia de Havilland, Veronica Lake, Gene Tierney, Ida Lupino, Abbott and Costello, Clint Eastwood, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Lauren Bacall.

There were also a couple of her “absolute favorites” who didn’t quite make my list: Grace Kelly, Laurence Olivier, Myrna Loy, and Ingrid Bergman. Not that I don’t like them, mind you.. .they simply aren’t my favorites. I mean, they can’t ALL be, right??!

Because she is one of my absolute TOP favorites, I had to question her about not listing the beautiful and talented Olivia de Havilland. I had a feeling that I KNEW the reason, but I wanted to interrogate her to be sure. As I’d suspected, she’d only seen her in Gone With the Wind.

That’s the only explanation there could be.

Melanie was a lovely character in one of the greatest movies of all time, but the role did very little to showcase Olivia de Havilland’s talent, beauty, and personality. The same can certainly be said for Leslie Howard as Ashley. The characters of Rhett and Scarlett were written larger than life and they were directed in a manner to loom larger than the rest of the cast – although, in my personal opinion, Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen – along with Clark Gable – were the ones who truly stole the show. Melanie and Ashley were vital to the story but were never meant to outshine the stars.

While their performances were, obviously, wonderful, they didn’t show all they have to offer. This is especially true (in my opinion) with Olivia de Havilland. The actress is a real force to be reckoned with – ironically, she has a great deal of “Scarlett O’Hara” fire in her… certainly more Scarlett than Melanie.

Her personality is as large as her face is beautiful – and that’s saying a great deal.

A few of my favorite Olivia de Havilland roles:

Maid Marian in The Adventures of Robin Hood
Charlotte Bronte in Devotion
Rachel in My Cousin Rachel
Josephine in To Each His Own
Emmy in Hold Back the Dawn
Catherine in The Heiress
Virginia in The Snake Pit
Okay, so maybe there are too many to name..

I’ll leave you with the same words I left my fellow “Old Hollywood” lover with… If you’ve never seen Olivia de Havilland in anything besides Gone With the Wind, DO SO! She is about as far from Melanie as you can conceivably get. The vast majority of her roles are filled with passion, fire, personality, and fun. To give you an idea of the type of personality we’re talking about here, when she was nine years old, Olivia made a will in which she stated, “I bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister Joan, since she has none”.

Wonder what Melanie would think about that?!

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Facts About Olivia de Havilland:

Born in Tokyo, Japan on July 1, 1916.
Sister of actress Joan Fontaine.
During a time when women “simply did not” make waves, she did just that. She took Warner Brothers to court in the mid 1940s and won. Her victory stopped Warner Brothers from adding suspension periods to actors’ contracts. The “de Havilland decision” meant more freedom for actors in Hollywood and she is remembered for her boldness to this day.
In 1965 she became the first female president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.
She made a special appearance at the The Academy Awards in 2003 and received a standing ovation.
Won the Oscar for Best Actress for To Each His Own in 1946.
She and Joan Fontaine were the first sisters to win Oscars.
Her mother named her Olivia from a heroine in William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”.
She received the Medal of Arts honor from President George W. Bush in 2008, “for her persuasive and compelling skill as an actress in roles from Shakespeare’s Hermia to Margaret Mitchell’s Melanie. Her independence, integrity, and grace won creative freedom for herself and her fellow film actors.“
Was offered the role of Mary in It’s a Wonderful Life but turned it down.
In 1950, she won the Best Actress Academy Award for “The Heiress.”

“I believe that the actress who wears her profession on her sleeve, as it were, outside of her work, is, as a rule, merely dramatizing herself. When she acts off-stage as well as on, she is wasting her talent. It is like using nectar to quench a casual thirst.” – Ann Harding

Ann Harding, was born Dorothy Gatley on August 7, 1901 in Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

You may remember her as Mae Priest on “Dr. Kildare” or as Edith Sommers on Ben Casey. Ann Harding also had a very impressive film career – even though she never received the acclaim she truly should have.

An exciting new biography has been written about this talented and beautiful actress.

Press Release for Ann Harding: Cinema’s Gallant Lady:

When Ann Harding opted for an acting career, her Brigadier General father, George Grant Gatley, told her that she had taken “the inevitable road to Hell.” He banished her from his home. The year was 1921. The father and his equally strong-willed daughter did not reconcile until he was on his death-bed ten years later.

Ann proved her father wrong.

Her integrity as an actor – her commitment to her profession, allowed her to create a sensation on and off Broadway in such hits as Inheritors, Tarnish, and The Trial of Mary Dugan. When Ann and actor-husband Harry Bannister settled into Hollywood, she took the motion picture industry by storm. Film fans and critics were transported by her honest, natural portrayals. The microphone loved her. One critic referred to Ann as having the “Voice of Temple Gongs.”

Following an Academy Award Nomination for her role in Holiday (1930), Ann went on to further triumphs in Pre-Code hits such as The Animal Kingdom (1932), When Ladies Meet (1932), Gallant Lady (1933), and, one of her best, The Life of Vergie Winters (1934). As Vergie Winters, Ann immersed herself (and her audience) with such a realistic take on the shopworn topic of unwed motherhood, that her lovely, frank, open face easily displayed a raw vulnerability that was rare for the screen.

Noted author and film critic Mick LaSalle (who has written the foreword for the new biography release Ann Harding – Cinema’s Gallant Lady) refers to Ann Harding as an “overlooked master” – “one of the greatest actors in the history of American cinema.”

Theater visionary-director Jasper Deeter, Ann’s life-long mentor, attributed her success to her ability in hiding a childish, and stubborn temperament.

Ann’s personal life countered what many have referred to as her “noble” screen image. Her passionate, free-thinking spirit was something to be reckoned with. She fell out of love with her opportunistic husband Bannister, only to become involved with two of cinema’s “bad boys”: the avant-garde film director Dudley Murphy (Emperor Jones), and the ribald and brilliant author and screenwriter Gene Fowler (Goodnight, Sweet Prince).

Both of them married men.

Ex-husband Bannister turned to blackmail in order to continue to get his share of Ann’s cinema earnings. A child custody battle over their daughter Jane went on for close to a decade. French surrealist, Luis Bunuel considered Peter Ibbetson (1935), which paired Ann with Gary Cooper, to be among the Top Ten All-Time Best Films. Critics felt that Ann’s role as the ethereal Duchess of Towers to be “the most complete revelation of her art.” However, Ann Harding was fed up with Hollywood moguls and scripts she felt unworthy. She told one writer in the 1970’s, “When RKO couldn’t find a script in the trash can for me, Harry Edington [her manager] would arrange a loan out.”

Fed up with battling Bannister and her film career, Ann abandoned Hollywood. She headed for England, and returned to the stage for a triumphant tour in Shaw’s Candida. The convoluted personal and professional life of Ann Harding didn’t stop after her cinematic peak. Ann Harding – Cinema’s Gallant Lady (BearManor, 2010), covers in depth her extensive career on stage, film, radio, TV, and pays homage to a woman who, according to Mick LaSalle, “pointed the way to an entirely new way of being on screen.”

For cinema aficionados the time is ripe for Ann Harding to reclaim her legacy.

On Amazon: Ann Harding – Cinema’s Gallant Lady