Living History : Olivia de Havilland turns 100
The centennial of a Hollywood Legend.
When I first saw her I was in high school, having checked a VHS copy of a film from the Homewood public library in Homewood, Alabama and screened it on the nineteen-inch family television. She was in her early twenties wearing what appeared to be a gold-colored kneepad meant to be a crown and a body-swallowing dress whose lime, cherry, and navy colored pattern reminded me of the carpet of a two star motel. In her first scene as Lady Marian she patiently listens to Prince John drone on while wearing an outfit cloaks any possibility of bodily display, only her face was visible in the great spectacle of 1938 otherwise known The Adventures of Robin Hood. The first words I heard Olivia de Havilland say were “Must I take him your highness?” We do not get to see her hair, the color of finished wood, split in two simple braids down to her navel, until seventy minutes into the film. Changing outfits in nearly every scene, her wardrobe seemed adopted from a variety of department store drapes. By the end she is wearing a white head covering shaped like a saltshaker. Even with The Adventures of Robin Hood being one of the early color tentpole blockbusters, Ms. de Havilland’s face, like her voice, are too balanced and symmetrically proportional to be sexualized — the 1930s nearly burst under pressure from just Garbo and Mae West — yet there was something of the great romance in her. At the end of the adventures, her excited eyes tell us she desires to put her lips together and kiss the cheerful, and nearly invincible, rascal otherwise known as Errol Flynn.
With her there were different kinds in films, as Arabella Bishop in Captain Blood, she is young, haughty, and sly, wearing a hat in the shape of a woman’s high-heeled shoe, topped with what appears to be an enormous caterpillar. The scene is so clearly plagiarized by Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl I felt embarrassed that I had not recognized it on first viewing. Keira Knightley was eighteen, Olivia de Havilland was nineteen. She changes radically in the four years from Captain Blood to Gone With The Wind, she becomes the noble martyr, portraying Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, suffering innumerable glares and barbs from her cousin Scarlett O’Hara, gracefully displaying a kind of moral beauty as a counterpoint to Scarlet’s cunning and restless sexuality. In Gone with the Wind, her eyes have aged, weary from the misfortunes she has encountered.
Eleven years ago, Anthony Lane wrote in The New Yorker about Barbara Stanwyck for a centennial celebration of her films. As an undergrad I majored in history not only because it would allow me to graduate sooner, but also because I loved historical narratives, especially those about old Hollywood (the Lew Wasserman biography The Last Mogul, for example). Going down the hyperlink rabbit holes of Wikipedia has helped keep Olivia de Havilland in the back of my mind as I read about her portfolio of work with mogul Jack Warner and director Michael Curtiz, among others. I waited years for this date to write about her because it seemed the most appropriate time (if you are so inclined, Kirk Douglas turns one hundred this year as well). Now we have so many meta-Hollywood shows that that the subject of Hollywood culture has become boring naval gazing. But for today, let us not lament, but rejoice and be glad that there is living history for Olivia de Havilland turns one hundred years old. Rather than hold up a boom box stereo outside a window as John Cusack did in Say Anything…, I would hold up a reel. Maybe someday I will visit her in Paris and be able to do so.
