Paris (AFP)
Olivia de Havilland, the unforgettable Melanie in "Gone with the Wind" who died Sunday at the age of 104 in Paris, where she lived, was the dean of Hollywood, of which she embodied the golden age of the 1930s and 1940s.
“Gone with the Wind,” released in 1939, was recently temporarily removed from the HBO Max streaming platform due to its watered-down presentation of slavery. In Paris, the Grand Rex cinema canceled in June a screening of the classic at the request of the American studio Warner, due to the controversy.
Winner of ten Oscars including that of best film and best director (1939), this legendary film, one of the greatest commercial successes in the history of cinema, earned Olivia de Havilland a nomination for best supporting role. Yet she would have liked to be Scarlett.
The last living actress in this adaptation to the big screen of Margaret Mitchell's eponymous novel, Olivia de Havilland had lived in France for over 60 years. She was the oldest American actor.
With her high forehead, her doe eyes and distinguished manners, she was, at her beginnings in the 1930s, confined to the roles of young ingenuous, in adventure films alongside the Australian-American Errol Flynn. , before managing to get character roles that will make her a star.
A British American, Olivia de Havilland was born in Tokyo on July 1, 1916, to British parents, actress Lillian Fontaine, aka Lillian Augusta Ruse, and Walter de Havilland, a patent attorney.
- Havilland case law -
Her younger sister (15 months) and lifelong rival, actress Joan Fontaine (died 2013), Alfred Hitchcock's unforgettable Rebecca, also Oscar winner for best actress, for her role in Hitchcock's "Suspicions" (1942).
Their relationships, marked by an extreme emotional and professional rivalry, have earned them the qualifier of "sisters-enemies" of cinema, irreparably angry until the death of Joan Fontaine, in Carmel (California).
In 2017, Olivia de Havilland even went so far as to sue the FX channel, contesting the unflattering portrait that was made of her in the "Feud" series where we see her insulting her sister. She was dismissed the following year.
After the separation of her parents, when she was three years old, Olivia arrived with her mother in the United States, near San Francisco (California).
Olivia is the first of the two sisters to embark on the cinema while Joan returned to live two years in Japan, with her father.
At 19, she appeared in "Alibi Ike" by Ray Enright and then made her stage debut at the Hollywood Bowl playing Hermia in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare, before landing the role in her. movie adaptation.
She is taken under contract for seven years by the Warner whom she will accuse of confining her to roles of official partner of Errol Flynn, in light films of Michael Curtiz like "The adventures of the blood captain" (1936), "The charge of the light brigade "(1937)," The Adventures of Robin Hood "(1938).
Thanks to Warner who agreed to "lend her", the year 1939 was the starting point for the great successes of the actress who was chosen by Victor Fleming for "Gone with the Wind".
In 1943, the Warner refusing to release her at the end of her contract because of the "loan" periods, Havilland sued the studio. The judge equates the practice with serfdom and it wins a victory that will set a precedent in the defense of the rights of actors.
The many films that she then shoots often give her roles and partners of choice, such as Richard Burton ("My cousin Rachel", 1953), Bette Davis and Joseph Cotten ("Hush, hush, dear Charlotte", 1965), Liv Ullman ("Jeanne, papesse du diable", 1973) Jack Lemmon, Joseph Cotten and Christopher Lee ("The castaways of the 747", 1977).
Married and divorced twice - with American writer Marcus Goodrich (1946-1952) and French journalist Pierre Galante (1955-1979) - Olivia de Havilland had a son, Benjamin (died in 1991), and a daughter, Gisèle .
Since 1953, she had lived in France where, in September 2010, President Nicolas Sarkozy had decorated her with the Legion of Honor.
© 2020 AFP