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In a more general piece, like this, I would have mentioned how adept she was at comedy, even as a real ingenue; you can see two films released in 1935 for the evidence. Alibi Ike, based on the Ring Lardner story, is still a good baseball movie, with the comedian Joe E Brown (who had played professional baseball). It was her first film released, but her first film role as Hermia in the much-underrated at the time Warner Bros A Midsummer's Night's Dream, directed by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, proved she was an actress of real talent. It was released after Alibi Ike.
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OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND: THE ACTRESS' BATTLE FOR HERSELF
On July 1st,
Olivia de Havilland celebrated her 100th birthday.
DeHavilland is best remembered today for her early work at Warner
Bros, particularly the best of her eight roles opposite Errol Flynn,
as a radiant Maid Marian in The Adventures of Robin Hood, and
for
Gone With The Wind where her performance as Melanie is
arguably the finest in the film. But there is more to the career of
one of Hollywood's best actresses, because in 1943 DeHavilland won a
landmark decision in court against Warners, a decision which launched
her career on a second act of remarkable quality.
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It is not an
exaggeration to see DeHavilland vs Warner Bros Pictures as the first
of three major blows that brought about the end of the studio system
as it had functioned for some four decades. It was followed by the
1948 anti-trust ruling which stopped studios from owning and block
booking the theatres which showed their movies, thus separating
production and distribution. Then, with the rapid growth of
television a few years later, actors and their agents increasingly
assumed the producing role studios had kept as a virtual monopoly for themselves.
DeHavilland's case
was simple: when her seven year contract with Warners expired, the
studio attempted to keep her for another six months, citing
accumulated days of suspension which they said she owed them. But
California law prohibited personal services contracts of longer than
seven calendar years, and the appeal court's confirmation of the
verdict in her favour, which became known as the DeHavilland Law,
meant DeHavilland herself became a free agent, and the de facto blacklisting by Warners which had stalled her career was finally lifted.
She had received
some of those suspensions for her reluctance to accept the parts she
was assigned, and her constant battle for better roles. The proffer of such roles was sometimes used as a tactic to draw a refusal and thus suspension, thereby extending the contract. But Jack Warner also
saw her as an ingenue, and she was usually cast in roles for ingenues grown up: as the stalwart
girlfriend, the loyal wife, or the virtuous foil for the more
interesting bad girls of film scripts: not just Vivien Leigh as
Scarlett O'Hara, but the likes of Rita Hayworth in The Strawberry
Blonde or Paulette Goddard in Hold Back The Dawn, just to
name two from 1941. After Warners, DeHavilland had to fight to bring people on board to produce and direct her in roles she chose for herself. She worked far less often, but what is fascinating is the way the first four roles she
picked all drew explicitly on the frustrations of the
characters she had earlier played. She was consciously crossing the artificial boundaries Warners had set for her.
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From that point,
DeHavilland put Hollywood in its place, working on stage (though
turning down the role of Blanche DuBois in the Broadway debut of A Street Car Named Desire,
for which she would have been perfect) and caring for her family. Her
second marriage took her to France and her film career became more
intermittent, but it is worth seeking out
Hush Hush Sweet
Charlotte (1964) directed by Robert Aldrich in his signature mix
of Siodmak noir and Sam Fuller tabloid excitement. With Bette Davis
and Agnes Moorehead dominating its gothic grand guignol, the formula that had worked so well in Baby Jane, DeHavilland
channels every bit of her inner Melanie one more time to steal the
film from them.
‘I wanted to play real human beings,’ DeHavilland once told an audience at the NFT in London. She had to win herself the freedom to do that, but what she really wanted was to play larger than life, bigger than real, parts. And she was every bit the actress to conquer such roles.
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‘I wanted to play real human beings,’ DeHavilland once told an audience at the NFT in London. She had to win herself the freedom to do that, but what she really wanted was to play larger than life, bigger than real, parts. And she was every bit the actress to conquer such roles.
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