Classic Movies of Legendary Couple, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland

Today, let’s talk Classic Movies of Olivia de Havilland! This two-time Academy Award-winning actress is always fabulous in whatever she appears in. Her films with Errol Flynn are a pleasure to watch and will be shared with you in our next post, but today we are focusing on her screen performances without Mr. Flynn. Beginning with her first appearance in Alibi Ike (1935), with funny man, Joe E. Brown, Olivia de Havilland has remained an audience favorite throughout her highly successful career and is one of the few surviving actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1930’s. Her most distinctive career accomplishment, however, came in the 1940’s when she brought a lawsuit against Warner Brothers Studios, for whom she had worked for many years. Fighting for more “actor-control” over role choices, Olivia de Havilland scored a major victory for herself and all screen actors when she won the lawsuit. Until that time, actors were at the mercy of the studio system and if they refused to play certain roles, they were often suspended for extended periods of time. That “suspension period” then had to be made up as part of their contract fulfillment. “The de Havilland decision” brought an end to the cattle-like treatment of actors by their studios.

Olivia de Havilland’s classic motion pictures are so many that we will list only a few on this post. That list includes wonderful films such as Anthony Adverse (1936), with Fredric March; It’s Love I’m After (1937), with Bette Davis and Leslie Howard; Gone with the Wind (1939), with Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Leslie Howard (de Havilland was perfectly cast as Melanie Hamilton);

The Strawberry Blonde (1940), a delightful comedy with James Cagney; The Male Animal (1942), with Henry Fonda (another fine comedy); The Dark Mirror (1946), in which she plays dual roles as twins;

The Snake Pit (1948), which takes a harrowing look at mental illness and earned her an Oscar nomination; The Heiress (1949), with Montgomery Clift (the second of her Oscar-winning performances); My Cousin Rachel (1952), with Richard Burton; and Not as a Stranger (1954), with Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra.

Several later films include the classic thriller, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), with Bette Davis; the controversial Lady in a Cage (1964), introducing James Caan; and the exciting Airport ’77 (1977), with Jack Lemmon. All of the above are films we have seen and enjoyed through the years.

The Olivia de Havilland classic we are spotlighting today is the poignantly romantic drama, To Each His Own (1946), with John Lund in his screen debut. This was the film for which Olivia de Havilland won her first Academy Award for best actress and it was definitely well-deserved. As both the young and middle-aged “Jody Norris”, Miss de Havilland shines in a role that has her age approximately 25 years during the course of the film. The story is one of bittersweet remembrance as matronly Miss Norris recalls, in flashback, her youthful, ill-fated romance with a World War I airplane pilot (Lund). That romance resulted in an illegitimate son that was given up for adoption. Only 16 hours of work a day, building a cosmetic empire, would fill the years of loneliness and regret for Miss Norris. Finally, during World War II, the chance comes for her to meet her grown son (also a pilot played by John Lund) and to do “something” for him at last. The entire film is deeply moving and Olivia de Havilland is completely believable and wonderful as Miss Jody Norris. We warmly recommend To Each His Own to anyone who loves fine adult drama. It is one of Olivia de Havilland’s greatest performances.

**Trivia Question for Today: Who is Olivia de Havilland’s Oscar-winning sister?

Trivia Answer for Previous Post: Errol Flynn convincingly portrays self-destructive screen legend and his good friend, John Barrymore, in Too Much, Too Soon, the biopic of Barrymore’s self-destructive daughter, Diana (played by Dorothy Malone).