The star of the Hitchcock classics "Suspicion" and "Rebecca" famously won an Oscar in 1942 over her bitter rival -- her older sister, Olivia de Havilland. 
 
 Joan Fontaine, the polished actress who achieved stardom in the early 1940s with memorable performances in the Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion -- for which she earned the best actress Oscar over her bitter rival, sister Olivia de Havilland -- and Rebecca, has died. She was 96. 
 
 The Hollywood Reporter awards analyst Scott Feinberg spoke with Fontaine's assistant, Susan Pfeiffer, who confirmed the actress' death of natural causes Sunday at her home in Carmel, Calif. 
 
 Fontaine earned a third best actress Oscar nomination for her role in The Constant Nymph (1943). She also was notable as Charlotte Bronte's eponymous heroine in Jane Eyre (1944) opposite Orson Welles; in the romantic thriller September Affair (1950) with Joseph Cotten; in Ivanhoe (1952) with Robert Taylor; and in Island in the Sun (1957), where she plays a high-society woman in love with an up-and-coming politician (Harry Belafonte). 
 
 It was Hitchcock, with his penchant for "cool blondes," who brought Fontaine to the forefront when he cast her as the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca (1940), the director's American debut. Her performance as the new wife of Laurence Olivier in a household haunted by the death of his first wife earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. 
 
 A year later, Hitchcock placed her opposite Cary Grant in Suspicion, and she won the Oscar for her turn as Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth, a shy English woman who begins to suspect her charming new husband of trying to kill her. She thus became the only actor to win an Oscar in a Hitchcock film. 
 
 Among those Fontaine beat out at the 1942 Academy Awards was her older sister, de Havilland, up for Hold Back the Dawn (1941). Biographer Charles Higham wrote that as Fontaine came forward to accept her trophy, she rejected de Havilland's attempt to congratulate her and that de Havilland was offended. (There may have been another similar incident after de Havilland won her first Oscar for To Each His Own in 1947.) The sisters, who never really got along since childhood, finally stopped speaking to each other in the mid-'70s. 
 
 De Havilland, a two-time Oscar winner, is 97 and living in Paris. 
 
 PHOTOS: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2013 
 
 Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland was born in Tokyo on Oct. 22, 1917, to British parents. Her father was a patent attorney who had a thriving practice in Japan. Due to the ill health of both her and Olivia, their mother, Lilian, moved them to California and pushed them into acting. 
 
 While de Havilland pursued acting, Fontaine returned to Tokyo and attended the American School. Ultimately, their parents divorced and Fontaine returned to the U.S. at age 17 to live in San Jose, Calif. As de Havilland was already having some success as an actress, Fontaine joined a local theater group and moved to L.A. 
 
 She received a screen test at MGM and was given a bit part in No More Ladies (1935), credited as Joan Burfield. After changing her last name to Fontaine (from her stepfather, George Fontaine) to avoid confusion with her sister, she signed with RKO and garnered small parts in several movies, including The Women and Gunga Din, both released in 1939. 
 
 Capitalizing on her emotional turns in Rebecca and Suspicion, Fontaine appeared in several romantic films in the '40s, including Constant Nymph (where she falls for composer Charles Boyer), Frenchman's Creek (1944), The Affairs of Susan (1945), From This Day Forward (1945) and Ivy (1947). 
 
 Fontaine moved into more mature roles in the movies and starred on Broadway opposite Anthony Perkins in Tea and Sympathy in 1954. Her last movie appearance was in The Witches (1966). 
 
 Fontaine made regular TV appearances in the late '50s and early '60s and served as a panelist on the game show To Tell the Truth from 1962-65. In 1986, she co-starred in the TV movie Dark Mansions and the miniseries Crossings. Her last credited performance came in the 1994 telefilm Good King Wenceslas. 
 
 Fontaine was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1980 for her guest-starring stint in the soap opera Ryan's Hope and served as jury president at the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival. 
 
 In 1978, she published her autobiography, No Bed of Roses, which detailed her feud with de Havilland. 
 
 Off the screen, Fontaine was a licensed pilot, an accomplished interior decorator and a Cordon Bleu-level chef who was married and divorced four times. In the '40s, she and William Dozier, the second of her four husbands, formed Rampart Productions, which oversaw her 1948 film Letter From an Unknown Woman, Billy Wilder's The Emperor Waltz (1948) starring Bing Crosby and Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948) with Burt Lancaster. 
 
 In 1939, Fontaine married British actor Brian Aherne, and they divorced in 1945. She was married to Batman TV show producer Dozier from 1946-51, to producer Collier Young from 1952-61 and to journalist Alfred Wright Jr. from 1964-69. 
 
 Duane Byrge contributed to this report. 
 
 Twitter: @mikebarnes4 ||||| Actress Joan Fontaine, wearing a beautiful gown, was accused by a few critics of being over-dressed in this photo. 
 
 1945 Actress Joan Fontaine, wearing a beautiful gown, was accused by a few critics of being over-dressed in this photo. AP 
 
 Joan Fontaine, an Academy Award-winning actress whose delicate beauty made her a movie star in the 1940s and who excelled at portraying romantic vulnerability in such films as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion” and “Rebecca,” died Dec. 15 at her home in Carmel, Calif. She was 96. 
 
 An assistant to Ms. Fontaine confirmed the death to the Hollywood Reporter. 
 
 Ms. Fontaine was the younger sister of Oscar-winning actress Olivia de Havilland, with whom she endured one of the longest-running sibling feuds on record. Their rivalry began in childhood and was encouraged by their ambitious stage mother. 
 
 The rupture deepened over the decades, with spats over movie roles and the attention of powerful men such as oil magnate and film producer Howard Hughes. When de Havilland wed the five-time married novelist Marcus Goodrich in 1946, Ms. Fontaine reputedly quipped, “It’s too bad that Olivia’s husband has had so many wives and only one book.” 
 
 Ms. Fontaine, a teenager when she began her Hollywood career in 1935, was best remembered for playing elegant Englishwomen, fragile society ladies and wide-eyed innocents dominated by men. She could play chic and she could play demure. 
 
 Six years later, she earned her only Oscar, opposite Cary Grant in “Suspicion” as a rich bride uncertain whether her ne’er-do-well bridegroom is a murderer. That same year, she was pitted against her sister for the most prestigious honor in Hollywood. De Havilland was Oscar nominated for her dramatic leading role in “Hold Back the Dawn.” 
 
 In her memoir, “No Bed of Roses,” Ms. Fontaine described the tension of the awards ceremony. 
 
 “I froze,” she wrote. “I stared across the table, where Olivia was sitting. ‘Get up there!’ she whispered commandingly. Now what had I done? All the animus we’d felt towards each other as children, the savage wrestling matches, the time Olivia fractured my collarbone, all came rushing back in kaleidoscopic imagery. My paralysis was total. I felt Olivia would spring across the table and grab me by the hair.” 
 
 The relationship grew more strained when de Havilland won the best actress Oscar for “To Each His Own” (1946). Ms. Fontaine recalled that when she walked over to congratulate her sister at the awards fete, “She took one look at me, ignored my hand, clutched her Oscar and wheeled away.” 
 
 Years passed before they spoke again, but the truce did not hold. Ms. Fontaine said the break became permanent after their mother’s death in 1975. When she was not invited to the memorial service, Ms. Fontaine said she threatened to leak the news to the press unless she were permitted to attend with members of her family. 
 
 The two sisters had to be separated by an entire room during a 1979 Oscar winners’ reunion. A year earlier, she had told the Hollywood Reporter, “I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!” 
 
 Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland was born in Tokyo to English parents on Oct. 22, 1917. Her father, Walter, headed a patent firm, and her mother, Lilian, was an aspiring actress trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art who pushed her daughters toward acting careers. 
 
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 The de Havillands divorced when their daughters were toddlers, and the father stayed in Japan while the mother took their daughters to California. The move was prompted partly for Joan’s health; she was a frail and sickly child. 
 
 Lilian de Havilland remarried, to department-store manager George Fontaine. In her autobiography, Joan Fontaine said her stepfather made sexual overtures to her and that she ran away from home. She was equally discontent living with her father in Japan for two years and moved back to the United States in 1934 to begin her acting career. 
 
 She confronted a dilemma: What would she be called? By the mid-1930s, Olivia had taken the de Havilland name. 
 
 In Ms. Fontaine’s earliest roles, she was billed as Joan St. John or Joan Burfield. She recounted in her memoir that she met a fortune teller who advised her to choose a stage name that would end with an “e.” With no great affection for her stepfather, Fontaine was the only name she could muster. 
 
 Unlike her sister — who early on starred in the hits “Captain Blood” (1935), “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938) and “Gone With the Wind” (1939) — Ms. Fontaine was initially unable to break out of low-budget films despite occasional opportunities. As Fred Astaire’s partner in “A Damsel in Distress” (1937), Ms. Fontaine called herself “terrible” and joked that the title was apt. 
 
 The critics agreed and in 1939, RKO Pictures dropped her. She later wrote in her memoir that she also was let go because she would not participate, as was expected of starlets, in cozy retreats with male guests of the studio. She often fought for better parts and compromised by appearing in some of her best and worst films simultaneously. 
 
 Her first widespread good notices came in 1939 when she was cast in “The Women,” the all- 
 
 female catty comedy by Clare Boothe Luce and made at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. She played the “good” girl in a film that included established players such as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Paulette Goddard and Rosalind Russell. 
 
 Holding her own in “The Women” against a high-electricity cast earned her a seven-year contract with David O. Selznick, who produced “Gone With the Wind.” 
 
 After Ms. Fontaine was turned down for the role of the plain Southerner Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in that 1939 epic, she suggested her older sister for the part. De Havilland got it and was nominated for a supporting Oscar but was said to have resented the help from her younger, lesser-known sibling. 
 
 To win what she hoped would be her breakthrough role, Ms. Fontaine read the Daphne du Maurier story on which “Rebecca” was based — about the insecure wife of a brooding widower — and so identified with the part of “the second Mrs. de Winter” that she lobbied Hitchcock for the job. 
 
 “When I was a little girl unable to hold my own with those who should have been my friends, I knew the same quality of unhappiness the second Mrs. de Winter knew,” Ms. Fontaine said at the time. “I was fearful and timid. And I lived in constant horror of criticism.” 
 
 Cast opposite Laurence Olivier, she earned an Oscar nomination for “Rebecca” (1940) in a role that critics praised for her complex and expressive performance. Ms. Fontaine followed with some of her finest work: “Suspicion”; “The Constant Nymph” (1943), as a young girl in love with a mature composer (Charles Boyer); and “Jane Eyre” (1943), as the young bride opposite Orson Welles’s Rochester in a film based on the Charlotte Bronte novel. 
 
 The rest of her career was a long descent into supporting roles in mediocre fare, although she stepped out of type in several roles. including . Her films included “Frenchman’s Creek” (1944) a 19th-century romance with Arturo de Cordova and based on a du Maurier novel; the comedy “The Affairs of Susan” (1945) with George Brent; and the drama “Letter From an Unknown Woman” (1948) as a woman desperately in love with a concert pianist (Louis Jourdan). 
 
 She was a love interest in the swashbuckler “Ivanhoe” (1952) opposite Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor. 
 
 Ms. Fontaine also stepped out of type in several roles: a poisoner in the Victorian suspense drama “Ivy” (1947) with Richard Ney; a manipulative society woman in “Serenade” (1956), opposite opera singer Mario Lanza; and the chic Baby Warren in “Tender is the Night,” a tepid 1962 version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. 
 
 She said she received hate mail for playing opposite black entertainer Harry Belafonte in “Island in the Sun” (1957), a torrid drama that explored race relations. 
 
 In the mid-1960s, she received the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for her work with children at a New York school for the deaf. She periodically returned to acting, appearing in soap operas such as “Ryan’s Hope” and series including ”The Love Boat” and “Hotel.” 
 
 Her marriages to actor Brian Aherne, producers William Dozier and Collier Young and Sports Illustrated golf editor Alfred Wright Jr. ended in divorce. She had a daughter from her second marriage and one from her third marriage, but a complete list of survivors could not be immediately confirmed. 
 
 Ms. Fontaine was the niece of British airplane manufacturing pioneer Sir Geoffrey de Havilland and was a skillful pilot and prize-winning balloonist in her own right. She also was reportedly a Cordon Bleu chef, a licensed interior decorator and an excellent tuna fisherman. ||||| Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland DBE (; born July 1, 1916) is a retired American actress born in Japan to British parents. Her career spanned from 1935 to 1988.[1] She appeared in 49 feature films and was one of the leading movie stars during the golden age of Classical Hollywood. Her younger sister was the actress Joan Fontaine. 
 
 De Havilland came to prominence as a screen couple with Errol Flynn in adventure films such as Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). One of her best-known roles is Melanie Hamilton in the film classic Gone with the Wind (1939). De Havilland departed from ingénue roles in the 1940s and later won awards for her performances in To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949), including two Academy Awards. She was also successful in work on stage and television. De Havilland has lived in Paris since the 1950s and received honours like the National Medal of the Arts, the Légion d'honneur and the appointment to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. 
 
 In addition to her film career, de Havilland continued her work in the theatre, appearing three times on Broadway, in Romeo and Juliet (1951), Candida (1952), and A Gift of Time (1962). She also worked in television, appearing in the successful miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations (1979), and television feature films such as Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award. During her film career, de Havilland also won two Golden Globe Awards, two New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the National Board of Review Award for Best Actress, and the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup. For her contributions to the motion picture industry, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 
 
 Early life [ edit ] 
 
 De Havilland's father, Walter de Havilland (1872–1968), served as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo before becoming a patent attorney. Her mother, Lilian Fontaine (née Ruse; 1886–1975),[3] was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and became a stage actress. Lilian also sang with the Master of the King's Music, Sir Walter Parratt, and toured England with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Olivia's paternal cousin was Sir Geoffrey de Havilland (1882–1965),[5] an aircraft designer and founder of the de Havilland aircraft company. 
 
 Lilian and Walter met in Japan in 1913 and were married the following year; the marriage was not a happy one due in part to Walter's infidelities. De Havilland was born on July 1, 1916. They moved into a large house in Tokyo, where Lilian gave informal singing recitals for the European colony. Olivia's younger sister Joan (Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland)‍—‌later known as actress Joan Fontaine‍—‌was born fifteen months later, on October 22, 1917. Both sisters became citizens of the United Kingdom automatically by birthright. 
 
 In February 1919, Lilian persuaded her husband to take the family back to England to a climate better suited for their ailing daughters. They sailed aboard the SS Siberia Maru to San Francisco, where the family stopped to treat Olivia's tonsillitis. After Joan developed pneumonia, Lilian decided to remain with her daughters in California, where they eventually settled in the village of Saratoga, 50 miles (80 km) south of San Francisco.[Note 1] Her father abandoned the family and returned to his Japanese housekeeper, who eventually became his second wife.[15] 
 
 Lundblad's Lodge, in Saratoga, where the family lived for a bit 
 
 Olivia was raised to appreciate the arts, beginning with ballet lessons at the age of four and piano lessons a year later. She learned to read before she was six, and her mother, who occasionally taught drama, music, and elocution, had her reciting passages from Shakespeare to strengthen her diction.[Note 2] During this period, her younger sister Joan first started calling her "Livvie", a nickname that would last throughout her life. De Havilland entered Saratoga Grammar School in 1922 and did well in her studies.[13] She enjoyed reading, writing poetry, and drawing, and once represented her grammar school in a county spelling bee, coming in second place.[13] In 1923, Lilian had a new Tudor-style house built,[13] where the family resided until the early 1930s. In April 1925, after her divorce was finalized, Lilian married George Milan Fontaine, a department store manager for O. A. Hale & Co. in San Jose. Fontaine was a good provider and respectable businessman, but his strict parenting style generated animosity and later rebellion in both of his new stepdaughters.[Note 3] 
 
 Alice in Wonderland, 1933 Olivia de Havilland in the stage play, 1933 
 
 De Havilland continued her education at Los Gatos High School near her home in Saratoga. There she excelled in oratory and field hockey and participated in school plays and the school drama club, eventually becoming the club's secretary. With plans of becoming a schoolteacher of English and speech, she also attended Notre Dame Convent in Belmont. 
 
 In 1933, de Havilland made her debut in amateur theatre in Alice in Wonderland, a production of the Saratoga Community Players based on the novel by Lewis Carroll. She also appeared in several school plays, including The Merchant of Venice and Hansel and Gretel. Her passion for drama eventually led to a confrontation with her stepfather, who forbade her from participating in further extracurricular activities. When he learned that she had won the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet in a school fund-raising production of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, he gave her an ultimatum to either stay home or not return home. Not wanting to let her school and classmates down, she left home forever, moving in with a family friend. 
 
 After graduating from high school in 1934, de Havilland was offered a scholarship to Mills College in Oakland to pursue her chosen career as an English teacher. She was also offered the role of Puck in the Saratoga Community Theater production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. That summer, Austrian director Max Reinhardt came to California for a major new production of the same play to premiere at the Hollywood Bowl. After one of Reinhardt's assistants saw her perform in Saratoga, he offered her the second understudy position for the role of Hermia. One week before the premiere, the understudy Jean Rouverol and lead actress Gloria Stuart both left the project, leaving 18-year-old de Havilland to play Hermia. Impressed with her performance, Reinhardt offered her the part in the four-week autumn tour that followed. During that tour, Reinhardt received word that he would direct the Warner Bros. film version of his stage production, and he offered her the film role of Hermia. With her mind still set on becoming a teacher, de Havilland initially wavered, but eventually, Reinhardt and executive producer Henry Blanke persuaded her to sign a five-year contract with Warner Bros. on November 12, 1934, with a starting salary of $200 a week. 
 
 Career [ edit ] 
 
 Early films, 1935–1937 [ edit ] 
 
 De Havilland made her screen debut in Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was filmed at Warner Bros. studios from December 19, 1934 to March 9, 1935.[31] During the production, de Havilland picked up film acting techniques from the film's co-director William Dieterle and camera techniques from cinematographer Hal Mohr, who was impressed with her questions about his work. By the end of filming, she had learned the effect of lighting and camera angles on how she appeared on screen and how to find her best lighting.[32] Following premieres in New York and Beverly Hills, the film was released on October 30, 1935.[31] Despite the publicity campaign, the film generated little enthusiasm with audiences. While the critical response was mixed, de Havilland's performance was praised by The San Francisco Examiner critic. In his review in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Winston Burdett noted that she "acts graciously and does greater justice to Shakespeare's language than anyone else in the cast".[34] Two minor comedies followed, Alibi Ike with Joe E. Brown and The Irish in Us with James Cagney. In both films, she played the sweet and charming love interest‍—‌a role into which she would later become typecast. After the experience of being a Reinhardt player, de Havilland felt disappointed being assigned these routine heroine roles. In March, de Havilland and her mother moved into an apartment at the Chateau des Fleurs at 6626 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. 
 
 Publicity photo, 1935 
 
 Although Warner Brothers studio had assumed that the many costumed films that studios like MGM had earlier produced would never succeed during the years of the Great Depression, they nonetheless took a chance by producing Captain Blood in 1935.[39]:63 The film is a swashbuckler action drama based on the popular novel by Rafael Sabatini and directed by Michael Curtiz.[39]:63 It would star a then unknown extra, Errol Flynn, alongside the little-known de Havilland.[40] According to film historian Tony Thomas, both actors had "classic good looks, cultured speaking voices, and a sense of distant aristocracy about them". Filmed between August 5 and October 29, 1935,[43] Captain Blood gave de Havilland the opportunity to appear in her first costumed historical romance and adventure epic, a genre to which she was well suited, given her beauty and elegance. In the film, she played Arabella Bishop, the niece of a Jamaica plantation owner, who purchases at auction an Irish physician wrongly condemned to servitude. The on-screen chemistry between de Havilland and Flynn was evident from their first scenes together, where clashes between her character's spirited hauteur and his character's playful braggadocio did not mask their mutual attraction to each other.[Note 4] Arabella is a feisty young woman who knows what she wants and is willing to fight for it. The bantering tone of their exchanges in the film‍—‌the healthy give-and-take and mutual respect‍—‌became the basis for their on-screen relationship in subsequent films. Captain Blood was released on December 28, 1935,[43] and received good reviews and wide public appeal. De Havilland's performance was singled out in The New York Times and Variety.[48][49] The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.[50] The popular success of the film, as well as the critical response to the on-screen couple, led to seven additional collaborations. 
 
 In 1936, de Havilland appeared in Mervyn LeRoy's historical period drama Anthony Adverse with Fredric March. Based on the popular novel by Hervey Allen, the film follows the adventures of an orphan raised by a Scottish merchant, whose pursuit of fortune separates him from the innocent peasant girl he loves, marries, and eventually loses. De Havilland played a peasant girl, Angela, who after being separated from her slave-trader husband, becomes opera star Mademoiselle Georges, the mistress of Napoleon. The film earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.[54] It garnered de Havilland good exposure and the opportunity to portray a character as she develops over time. Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune found her later scenes as Mademoiselle Georges "not very credible", but Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times called her "a winsome Angela".[57] That same year, she was re-united with Flynn in Michael Curtiz's period action film The Charge of the Light Brigade, set during the Crimean War which became a box office success. 
 
 During the film's production, de Havilland renegotiated her contract with Warner Bros. and signed a seven-year contract on April 14, 1936, with a starting weekly salary of five hundred dollars (equivalent to $9,000 in 2018).[Note 5] Toward the end of the year, 20-year-old de Havilland and her mother moved to 2337 Nella Vista Avenue in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. 
 
 Call It a Day, 1937 In, 1937 
 
 In 1937, de Havilland had her first top billing in Archie Mayo's comedy Call It a Day, about a middle-class English family struggling with the romantic effects of spring fever during the course of a single day. De Havilland played daughter Catherine Hilton, who falls in love with the handsome artist hired to paint her portrait. The film did not do well at the box office and did little to advance her career. She fared better in Mayo's screwball comedy It's Love I'm After with Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. De Havilland played Marcia West, a young debutante and theater fan enamored with a Barrymore-like matinee idol who decides to help the girl's fiancé by pretending to be an abominable cad. The film received good reviews, with Variety calling it "fresh, clever, excellently directed and produced, and acted by an ensemble that clicks from start to finish", and praising de Havilland.[69] 
 
 That same year, de Havilland made two more period films, beginning with The Great Garrick, a fictional romantic comedy about the 18th-century English actor's encounter with jealous players from the Comédie-Française who plot to embarrass him on his way to Paris. Wise to their prank, Garrick plays along with the ruse, determined to get the last laugh, even on a lovely young aristocrat, de Havilland's Germaine Dupont, whom he mistakenly believes to be one of the players. With her refined demeanor and diction, de Havilland delivers a performance that is "lighthearted and thoroughly believable", according to Judith Kass. Variety praised the film, calling it "a production of superlative workmanship".[73][74] Despite the positive reviews, the film did not do as well at the box office.[74][Note 6] Her final film that year was Michael Curtiz's romantic drama Gold Is Where You Find It, a film about the late 19th-century conflict in the Sacramento Valley between gold miners and their hydraulic equipment and farmers whose land is being flooded. De Havilland played the daughter of a farmer, Serena Ferris, who falls in love with the mining engineer responsible for the flooding. The film was released in February 1938,[80] and was her first appearance in three-strip Technicolor. 
 
 Movie stardom, 1938–1940 [ edit ] 
 
 In September 1937, de Havilland was selected by Warner Bros. studio head Jack L. Warner to play Maid Marian opposite Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The Technicolor production was filmed on location between September 26, 1937, and January 14, 1938, at Bidwell Park, Busch Gardens, and Lake Sherwood in California.[82] Directed by William Keighley and Michael Curtiz, the film is about the legendary Robin Hood, a Saxon knight who opposes the corrupt and brutal Prince John and his Norman lords while good King Richard is away fighting in the Third Crusade. The king's ward, Maid Marian, initially opposes Robin, but later supports him after learning his true intentions of helping his oppressed people. No mere bystander to events, Marian risks her life to save Robin by providing his men a plan for his escape. As defined by de Havilland, Marian is both a beautiful fairy-tale heroine and a spirited, intelligent woman "whose actions are governed by her mind as well as her heart", according to author Judith Kass. The Adventures of Robin Hood was released on May 14, 1938,[82] and was an immediate critical and commercial success, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. It went on to become one of the most popular adventure films of the Classical Hollywood era.[88] 
 
 The popularity of The Adventures of Robin Hood brought de Havilland a new level of fame as a movie star, but this new status was not reflected in her subsequent film assignments at Warner Bros. Her next several roles were more routine and less challenging. In the romantic comedy Four's a Crowd (1938), she played Lorri Dillingwell, a dizzy rich girl being romanced by a conniving public relations man looking to land an account with her eccentric grandfather. In Ray Enright's romantic comedy Hard to Get (1938), she played another dizzy rich girl, Margaret Richards, whose desire to exact revenge on a gas station attendant leads to her own comeuppance. While de Havilland was certainly capable of playing these kinds of characters, her personality was better suited to stronger and more dramatic roles, according to Judith Kass. By this time, de Havilland had serious doubts about her career at Warner Bros.[93] 
 
 Some film scholars consider 1939 to be the high point of the golden age of Classical Hollywood,[95] producing classics in many genres, including the Western.[96][Note 7] Warner Bros. produced Michael Curtiz's sprawling Technicolor adventure Dodge City, Flynn and de Havilland's first Western film.[96] Set during the American Civil War, the film is about a Texas trailblazer who witnesses the brutal lawlessness of Dodge City, Kansas, and becomes sheriff to clean up the town. De Havilland played Abbie Irving, whose initial hostility towards Flynn's character Wade Hatton is transformed by events, and the two fall in love‍—‌by now a proven formula for their on-screen relationships. Curtiz's action sequences, Sol Polito's cinematography, Max Steiner's expansive film score, and perhaps the "definitive saloon brawl in movie history"[96] all contributed to the film's success. Variety described the film as "a lusty western, packed with action".[99] For de Havilland, playing yet one more supporting love interest in a limited role, Dodge City represented the emotional low point of her career to that point. She later said, "I was in such a depressed state that I could hardly remember my lines." 
 
 Gone with the Wind, 1939 Studio publicity portrait for, 1939 
 
 In a letter to a colleague dated November 18, 1938, film producer David O. Selznick wrote, "I would give anything if we had Olivia de Havilland under contract to us so that we could cast her as Melanie." The film he was preparing to shoot was Gone with the Wind, and Jack L. Warner was unwilling to lend her out for the project. De Havilland had read the novel, and unlike most other actresses, who wanted the Scarlett O'Hara role, she wanted to play Melanie Hamilton‍—‌a character whose quiet dignity and inner strength she understood and felt she could bring to life on the screen.[citation needed] 
 
 De Havilland turned to Warner's wife Anne for help. Warner later recalled, "Olivia, who had a brain like a computer concealed behind those fawn-like eyes, simply went to my wife and they joined forces to change my mind." Warner relented, and de Havilland was signed to the project a few weeks before the start of principal photography on January 26, 1939.[105] Set in the American South during the 19th century, the film is about the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner in love with the husband of her sister-in-law, Melanie, whose kindness stands in sharp contrast to those around her. According to film historian Tony Thomas, de Havilland's skillful and subtle performance effectively presents this character of selfless love and quiet strength in a way that keeps her vital and interesting throughout the film. Gone with the Wind had its world premiere in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 15, 1939, and was well received.[105] Frank S. Nugent of The Times wrote that de Havilland's Melanie "is a gracious, dignified, tender gem of characterization",[107] and John C. Flinn, Sr., in Variety called her "a standout".[108] The film won 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and de Havilland received her first nomination for Best Supporting Actress.[110] 
 
 Melanie was someone different. She had very, deeply feminine qualities ... that I felt were very endangered at that time, and they are from generation to generation, and that somehow they should be kept alive, and ... that's why I wanted to interpret her role. ... The main thing is that she was always thinking of the other person, and the interesting thing to me is that she was a happy person ... loving, compassionate.[13] — Olivia de Havilland 
 
 Santa Fe Trail, 1940 Studio publicity portrait for, 1940 
 
 Within days of completing her work in Gone with the Wind in June 1939, de Havilland returned to Warner Bros. and began filming Michael Curtiz's historical drama The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex with Bette Davis and Errol Flynn. She had hoped her work on Selznick's prestige picture would lead to first-rate roles at Warner Bros., but instead, she received third billing below the title as the queen's lady-in-waiting. In early September, she was lent out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions for Sam Wood's romantic caper film Raffles with David Niven,[113] about a high-society cricketer and jewel thief. She later complained, "I had nothing to do with that style of film." 
 
 In early 1940, de Havilland refused to appear in several films assigned to her, initiating the first of her suspensions at the studio. She did agree to play in Curtis Bernhardt's musical comedy drama My Love Came Back with Jeffrey Lynn and Eddie Albert, who played a classical music student turned swing jazz bandleader. De Havilland played violinist Amelia Cornell, whose life becomes complicated by the support of a wealthy sponsor.[Note 8] In his review in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther described the film as "a featherlight frolic, a rollicking roundelay of deliciously pointed nonsense", finding that de Havilland "plays the part with pace and wit".[117] That same year, de Havilland was re-united with Flynn in their sixth film together, Michael Curtiz's Western adventure Santa Fe Trail, set against the backdrop of abolitionist John Brown's fanatical antislavery attacks in the days leading up to the American Civil War. The mostly fictional story follows West Point cadets J. E. B. Stuart, played by Flynn, and George Armstrong Custer, played by Ronald Reagan, as they make their way west, both vying for the affection of de Havilland's Kit Carson Halliday. Playing Kit in a provocative, tongue-in-cheek manner, de Havilland creates a character of real substance and dimension, according to Tony Thomas. Following a world premiere on December 13, 1940, at the Lensic Theatre in Santa Fe, New Mexico‍—‌attended by cast members, reporters, the governor, and over 60,000 fans ‍—‌ Santa Fe Trail went on to become one of the top-grossing films of 1940.[121] De Havilland, who accompanied Flynn on the well-publicized train ride to Santa Fe, did not attend the premiere, having been diagnosed with appendicitis that morning and rushed into surgery. 
 
 War years, 1941–1944 [ edit ] 
 
 Following her emergency surgery, de Havilland began a long period of convalescence in a Los Angeles hospital during which time she rejected several scripts offered to her by Warner Bros., leading to another suspension. In 1941, she appeared in three commercially successful films, beginning with Raoul Walsh's romantic comedy The Strawberry Blonde with James Cagney. Set during the Gay Nineties, the story involves a man who marries an outspoken advocate for women's rights after a rival steals his glamorous "strawberry blonde" girlfriend, and later discovers he ended up with a loving and understanding wife. The film was a critical and commercial success. In Mitch Leisen's romantic drama Hold Back the Dawn with Charles Boyer for Paramount Pictures, she transitioned to a different type of role for her‍—‌an ordinary, decent small-town teacher whose life and sexuality are awakened by a sophisticated European gigolo, whose own life is positively affected by her love. Leisen's careful direction and guidance appealed to de Havilland‍—‌much more than the workman-like approach of her Warner Bros. directors. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that the actress "plays the school teacher as a woman with romantic fancies whose honesty and pride are her own‍—‌and the film's‍—‌chief support. Incidentally, she is excellent."[128] For this performance she garnered her second Academy Award nomination‍—‌this time for Best Actress. 
 
 In July 1941, de Havilland was re-united with Flynn for their eighth movie together, Raoul Walsh's epic They Died with Their Boots On. The film is loosely based on the courtship and marriage of George Armstrong Custer and Elizabeth "Libbie" Bacon. Flynn and de Havilland had a falling out the previous year‍—‌mainly over the roles she was being given‍—‌and she did not intend to work with him again. Even Flynn acknowledged, "She was sick to death of playing 'the girl', and badly wanted a few good roles to show herself and the world that she was a fine actress." After she learned from Warner that Flynn had come to his office saying he needed her in the film, de Havilland accepted. Screenwriter Lenore Coffee was brought in to add several romantic scenes, and improve the overall dialogue. The result is a film that includes some of their finest work together. Their last appearance on screen is Custer's farewell to his wife. "Errol was quite sensitive", de Havilland would later remember, "I think he knew it would be the last time we worked together." Flynn's final line in that scene would hold special meaning for her: "Walking through life with you, ma'am, has been a very gracious thing." They Died with Their Boots On was released on November 21, 1941, and while some reviewers criticized the film's historical inaccuracies, most applauded the action sequences, cinematography, and acting. Thomas M. Pryor of The New York Times found de Havilland "altogether captivating".[137] The film went on to earn $2,550,000 (equivalent to $43,400,000 in 2018), Warner Bros' second-biggest money-maker of that year.[138] 
 
 In 1942, de Havilland appeared in Elliott Nugent's romantic comedy The Male Animal with Henry Fonda, about an idealistic professor fighting for academic freedom while trying to hold onto his job and his wife Ellen. While her role was not particularly challenging, de Havilland's delineation of an intelligent, good-natured woman trying to resolve the unsettling circumstances of her life played a major part in the film's success, according to Tony Thomas. The film was a critical and commercial success, with Bosley Crowther of The Times noting that de Havilland "concocts a delightfully pliant and saucy character as the wife".[140] That year, she also appeared in John Huston's drama In This Our Life with Bette Davis. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Ellen Glasgow, the story is about two sisters whose lives are destroyed by the anger and jealousy of one of the sisters. Crowther gave the film a negative review, but noted de Havilland's "warm and easy performance".[142] During production, de Havilland and Huston began a romantic relationship that lasted three years. 
 
 According to de Havilland, one of the few truly satisfying roles she played for Warner Bros. was the title character in Norman Krasna's romantic comedy Princess O'Rourke (1943), with Robert Cummings. Filmed in July and August 1942,[145] the story is about a European princess in Washington, DC, visiting her diplomat uncle, who is trying to find her an American husband. Intent on marrying a man of her own choosing, she boards a plane heading west and ends up falling in love with an American pilot, who is unaware of her true identity.[Note 9] The film was released on October 23, 1943,[145] and did well at the box office. Bosley Crowther called it "a film which is in the best tradition of American screen comedy", and found de Havilland's performance "charming".[149] 
 
 I wanted to do complex roles, like Melanie for example, and Jack Warner saw me as an ingénue. I was really restless to portray more developed human beings. Jack never understood this, and ... he would give me roles that really had no character or quality in them. I knew I wouldn't even be effective. — Olivia de Havilland 
 
 After fulfilling her seven-year Warner Bros. contract in 1943, de Havilland was informed that six months had been added to her contract for the times that she had been suspended. At the time, the studios had adopted the position that California law allowed them to suspend contract players for rejecting a role, and the period of suspension could be added to the contract period. Most contract players accepted this, but a few tried to change the system, including Bette Davis, who mounted an unsuccessful lawsuit against Warner Bros. in the 1930s. On August 23, 1943, acting on the advice of her lawyer, Martin Gang, de Havilland filed suit against Warner Bros. in California Superior Court seeking declaratory judgement that she was no longer bound by her contract[155] on the grounds that an existing section of the California Labor Code that forbade an employer from enforcing a contract against an employee for longer than seven years from the date of first performance. In November 1943, the Superior Court found in de Havilland's favor, and Warner Bros. immediately appealed. A little over a year later, the California Court of Appeal for the Second District ruled in her favor.[155][Note 10] The decision was one of the most significant and far-reaching legal rulings in Hollywood, reducing the power of the studios and extending greater creative freedom to performers.[159] California's resulting "seven-year rule", also known as Labor Code Section 2855, is still known today as the De Havilland Law.[159] Her legal victory, which cost her $13,000 (equivalent to $190,000 in 2018) in legal fees, won de Havilland the respect and admiration of her peers, among them her own sister, Joan Fontaine, who later commented, "Hollywood owes Olivia a great deal." Warner Bros. reacted to de Havilland's lawsuit by circulating a letter to other studios that had the effect of a "virtual blacklisting". As a consequence, de Havilland did not work at a film studio for nearly two years. 
 
 De Havilland became a naturalized citizen of the United States on November 28, 1941, ten days before the United States entered World War II militarily, alongside the Allied Forces.[161][162] During the war years, she actively sought out ways to express her patriotism and contribute to the war effort. In May 1942, she joined the Hollywood Victory Caravan, a three-week train tour of the country that raised money through the sale of war bonds.[163] Later that year she began attending events at the Hollywood Canteen, meeting and dancing with the troops. In December 1943 de Havilland joined a USO tour that traveled throughout the United States, Alaska, and the South Pacific, visiting wounded soldiers in military hospitals.[13] She earned the respect and admiration of the troops for visiting the isolated islands and battlefronts in the Pacific.[165] She survived flights in damaged aircraft and a bout with viral pneumonia requiring several days' stay in one of the island barrack hospitals.[13][165][Note 11] She later remembered, "I loved doing the tours because it was a way I could serve my country and contribute to the war effort." 
 
 Vindication and recognition, 1945–1952 [ edit ] 
 
 After the California Court of Appeal[167] ruling freed her from her Warner Bros. contract, de Havilland signed a two-picture deal with Paramount Pictures. In June 1945, she began filming Mitchell Leisen's drama To Each His Own, about an unwed mother who gives up her child for adoption and then spends the rest of her life trying to undo that decision. De Havilland insisted on bringing in Leisen as director, trusting his eye for detail, his empathy for actors, and the way he controlled sentiment in their previous collaboration, Hold Back the Dawn. The role required de Havilland to age nearly 30 years over the course of the film‍—‌from an innocent, small-town girl to a shrewd, ruthless businesswoman devoted to her cosmetics company. While de Havilland never formally studied acting, she did read Stanislavsky's autobiography My Life in Art and applied one of his "methods" for this role. To help her define her character during the four periods of the story, she used a different perfume for each period. She also lowered the pitch of her voice incrementally in each period until it became a mature woman's voice. Her performance earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946‍—‌her first Oscar. According to film historian Tony Thomas, the award represented a vindication of her long struggle with Warner Bros. and confirmation of her abilities as an actress. 
 
 To Each His Own, March 13, 1947 Olivia de Havilland with the first of her two Oscars , this one for, March 13, 1947 
 
 Her next two roles were challenging. In Robert Siodmak's psychological thriller The Dark Mirror (1946), de Havilland played twin sisters Ruth and Terry Collins‍—‌one loving and normal, the other psychotic. In addition to the technical problems of showing her as two characters interacting with each other on screen at the same time, de Havilland needed to portray two separate and psychologically opposite people. While the film was not well received by critics‍—‌Variety said the film "gets lost in a maze of psychological gadgets and speculation"[176]‍—‌de Havilland's performance was praised by Tony Thomas, who called her final scene in the film "an almost frighteningly convincing piece of acting". In his review in The Nation, James Agee wrote that "her playing is thoughtful, quiet, detailed, and well sustained, and since it is founded, as some more talented playing is not, in an unusually healthful-seeming and likable temperament, it is an undivided pleasure to see".[178] While appearing in a summer stock production of What Every Woman Knows in Westport, Connecticut, her second professional stage appearance, de Havilland began dating Marcus Goodrich, a Navy veteran, journalist, and author of the 1941 novel Delilah. They were married on August 26, 1946. 
 
 De Havilland was praised for her performance as Virginia Cunningham in Anatole Litvak's drama The Snake Pit (1948), one of the first films to attempt a realistic portrayal of mental illness and an important exposé of the harsh conditions in state mental hospitals, according to film critic Philip French.[181] Based on a novel by Mary Jane Ward and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, the film is about a woman placed in a mental institution by her husband to help her recover from a nervous breakdown. Virginia Cunningham was one of the most difficult of all her film roles, requiring significant preparation both mentally and physically‍—‌she deliberately lost weight to help create her gaunt appearance on screen. She consulted regularly with psychiatrists hired as consultants for the film, and visited Camarillo State Mental Hospital to research her role and observe the patients. The extreme physical discomfort of the hydrotherapy and simulated electric shock therapy scenes were especially challenging for the slight 5-foot-3-inch (160 cm) actress. In her performance, she conveyed her mental anguish by physically transforming her face with furrowed brow, wild staring eyes, and grimacing mouth. 
 
 I met a young woman who was very much like Virginia, about the same age and physical description, as well as being a schizophrenic with guilt problems. ... What struck me most of all was the fact that she was rather likable and appealing. It hadn't occurred to me before that a mental patient could be appealing, and it was that that gave me the key to the performance. — Olivia de Havilland 
 
 According to author Judith Kass, de Havilland delivered a performance both "restrained and electric", portraying varied and extreme aspects of her character‍—‌from a shy young woman to a tormented and disoriented woman. For her performance in The Snake Pit, de Havilland received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, and the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup.[187] 
 
 In 1949, de Havilland appeared in William Wyler's period drama The Heiress (1949), the fourth in a string of critically acclaimed performances. After seeing the play on Broadway, de Havilland called Wyler and urged him to fly to New York to see what she felt would be a perfect role for her. Wyler obliged, loved the play, and with de Havilland's help arranged for Paramount to secure the film rights. Adapted for the screen by Ruth and Augustus Goetz and based on the 1880 novel Washington Square by Henry James, the film is about a young naïve woman who falls in love with a young man, over the objections of her cruel and emotionally abusive father, who suspects the young man of being a fortune seeker. As she had done in Hold Back the Dawn, de Havilland portrayed her character's transformation from a shy, trusting innocent to a guarded, mature woman over a period of years. Her delineation of Catherine Sloper is developed through carefully crafted movements, gestures, and facial expressions that convey a submissive and inhibited young woman. Her timid voice, nervous hands, downcast eyes, and careful movements all communicate what the character is too shy to verbalize. Throughout the production, Wyler pressed de Havilland hard to elicit the requisite visual points of the character. When Catherine returns home after being jilted, the director had the actress carry a suitcase filled with heavy books up the stairs to convey the weight of Catherine's trauma physically instead of using a planned speech in the original script. The Heiress was released in October 1949 and was well received by critics. For her performance, she received the New York Film Critics Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the Academy Award for Best Actress‍—‌her second Oscar.[192] 
 
 After giving birth to her first child, Benjamin, on September 27, 1949, de Havilland took time off from making films to be with her infant. She turned down the role of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, later explaining that becoming a mother was a "transforming experience" and that she could not relate to the character.[194] In 1950, her family moved to New York City, where she began rehearsals for a major new stage production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; it was her lifelong ambition to play Juliet on the stage. The play opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on March 11, 1951, to mixed reviews, with some critics believing the 35-year-old actress was too old for the role. The play closed after 45 performances. Undaunted, de Havilland accepted the title role in the stage production of George Bernard Shaw's comedy Candida, which opened at the National Theatre on Broadway in April 1952. While reviews of the play were mixed, de Havilland's performance was well received, and following the scheduled 32 performances, she went on tour with the company and delivered 323 additional performances, many to sold-out audiences. While de Havilland achieved major accomplishments during this period of her career, her marriage to Goodrich, 18 years her senior, had grown strained due to his unstable temperament. In August 1952, she filed for divorce, which became final the following year. 
 
 New life in Paris, 1953–1962 [ edit ] 
 
 Of course the thing that staggers you when you first come to France is the fact that all the French speak French‍—‌even the children. Many Americans and Britishers who visit the country never quite adjust to this, and the idea persists that the natives speak the language just to show off or be difficult. — Olivia de Havilland in Every Frenchman Has One 
 
 With Pierre Galante and daughter Gisèle, 1956 
 
 In April 1953, at the invitation of the French government, she traveled to the Cannes Film Festival, where she met Pierre Galante, an executive editor for the French journal Paris Match. Following a long-distance courtship and the requisite nine-month residency requirement, de Havilland and Galante married on April 12, 1955, in the village of Yvoy-le-Marron, and settled together in a three-story house near the Bois de Boulogne park in Paris' 16th Arrondissement.[199][200] That same year, she returned to the screen in Terence Young's period drama That Lady (1955), about a Spanish princess and her unrequited love for King Philip II of Spain, whose respect she earned in her youth after losing an eye in a sword fight defending his honor. According to Tony Thomas, the film uses authentic Spanish locations effectively, but suffers from a convoluted plot and excessive dialogue, and while de Havilland delivered a warm and elegant performance as Ana de Mendoza, the film was disappointing. Following her appearances in the romantic melodrama Not as a Stranger (1955) and The Ambassador's Daughter (1956) ‍—‌neither of which were successful at the box office‍—‌de Havilland gave birth to her second child, Gisèle Galante, on July 18, 1956. 
 
 De Havilland returned to the screen in 1958 in Michael Curtiz's Western drama The Proud Rebel, a film about a former Confederate soldier, Alan Ladd, whose wife was killed in the war and whose son lost the ability to speak after witnessing the tragedy. De Havilland played Linnett Moore, a tough yet feminine frontier woman who cares for the boy and comes to love his father. The movie was filmed on location in Utah, where de Havilland learned to hitch and drive a team of horses and handle a gun for her role. The Proud Rebel was released May 28, 1958, and was well received by audiences and critics. In his review for The New York Times, A. H. Weiler called the film a "truly sensitive effort" and "heartwarming drama", and praised de Havilland's ability to convey the "warmth, affection and sturdiness needed in the role".[208] 
 
 One of de Havilland's most noted performances during this period was in Guy Green's romantic drama Light in the Piazza (1962) with Rossano Brazzi. Filmed in Florence and Rome, and based on Elizabeth Spencer's novel of the same name, the film is about a middle-class American tourist on extended vacation in Italy with her beautiful 26-year-old daughter, who is mentally disabled as a result of a childhood accident. Faced with the prospect of her daughter falling in love with a young Italian, the mother struggles with conflicting emotions about her daughter's future. De Havilland projects a calm maternal serenity throughout most of the film, only showing glimpses of the worried mother anxious for her child's happiness. The film was released on February 19, 1962, and was well received, with a Hollywood Reporter reviewer calling it "an uncommon love story ... told with rare delicacy and force", and Variety noting that the film "achieves the rare and delicate balance of artistic beauty, romantic substance, dramatic novelty and commercial appeal". Variety singled out de Havilland's performance as "one of great consistency and subtle projection".[212] 
 
 In early 1962, de Havilland traveled to New York and began rehearsals for Garson Kanin's stage play A Gift of Time. Adapted from the autobiographical book Death of a Man by Lael Tucker Wertenbaker, the play explores the emotionally painful struggle of a housewife forced to deal with the slow death of her husband, played by Henry Fonda. The play opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway to positive notices, with de Havilland receiving her best reviews as a stage actress. Theater critic Walter Kerr praised her final scene, writing, "As darkness gathers, the actress gains in stature, taking on the simple and resolute willingness to understand." The New York World Telegram and Sun reviewer concluded, "It is Miss de Havilland who gives the play its unbroken continuity. This distinguished actress reveals Lael as a special and admirable woman." She stayed with the production for 90 performances. The year 1962 also had the publication of de Havilland's first book, Every Frenchman Has One, a lighthearted account of her often amusing attempts to understand and adapt to French life, manners, and customs. The book sold out its first printing prior to the publication date and went on to become a bestseller.[200] 
 
 Later films and television, 1963–1988 [ edit ] 
 
 In 1964, de Havilland appeared in her last two leading roles in feature films‍—‌both psychological thrillers. In Walter Grauman's Lady in a Cage, she played a wealthy poet who gets trapped in her mansion's elevator and faces the threat of three terrorizing hooligans in her own home. Critics responded negatively to the graphic violence and cruelty shown on screen. A. H. Weiler of The New York Times called it a "sordid, if suspenseful, exercise in aimless brutality".[216] That same year, de Havilland appeared in Robert Aldrich's Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte with her close friend Bette Davis. After Joan Crawford left the picture due to illness, Davis had Aldrich fly to Switzerland to persuade a reluctant de Havilland to accept the role of Miriam Deering, a cruel, conniving character hidden behind the charming façade of a polite and cultured lady. Her quiet, restrained performance provided a counterbalance to Davis. Film historian Tony Thomas described her performance as "a subtle piece of acting" that was "a vital contribution to the effectiveness of the film". The film was well received and earned seven Academy Award nominations.[220] 
 
 As film roles became more difficult to find, a common problem shared by many Hollywood veterans from her era, de Havilland began working in television dramas, despite her dislike of the networks' practice of breaking up story lines with commercials. Her first venture into the medium was a teleplay directed by Sam Peckinpah called Noon Wine (1966) on ABC Stage 67, a dark tragedy about a farmer's act of murder that leads to his suicide. The production and her performance as the farmer's wife Ellie were well received. In 1972, she starred in her first television feature film, The Screaming Woman, about a wealthy woman recovering from a nervous breakdown. In 1979, she appeared in the ABC miniseries Roots: The Next Generations in the role of Mrs. Warner, the wife of a former Confederate officer played by Henry Fonda. The miniseries was seen by an estimated 110 million people‍—‌nearly one-third of American homes with television sets.[224] Throughout the 1970s, de Havilland's film work was limited to smaller supporting roles and cameo appearances. Her last feature film was The Fifth Musketeer (1979). During this period, de Havilland began doing speaking engagements in cities across the United States with a talk entitled "From the City of the Stars to the City of Light", a program of personal reminiscences about her life and career. She also attended tributes to Gone with the Wind. 
 
 In the 1980s, her television work included an Agatha Christie television film Murder Is Easy (1982), the television drama The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982) in which she played the Queen Mother, and the 1986 ABC miniseries North and South, Book II.[1] Her most notable performance of the decade was in the television film Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986) as Dowager Empress Maria, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film.[227] In 1988, de Havilland appeared in the HTV romantic television drama The Woman He Loved; it was her final screen performance.[1] 
 
 Retirement and remembrance, 1989–present [ edit ] 
 
 In retirement, de Havilland has remained active in the film community. In 1998, she traveled to New York to help promote a special showing of Gone with the Wind.[228] In 2003, she appeared as a presenter at the 75th Academy Awards, earning a six and a half minute standing ovation upon her entrance.[227][229] In 2004, Turner Classic Movies produced a retrospective piece called Melanie Remembers in which she was interviewed for the 65th anniversary of the original release of Gone with the Wind. In June 2006, she made appearances at tributes commemorating her 90th birthday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.[194] 
 
 On November 17, 2008, at the age of 92, de Havilland received the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people of the United States. The medal was presented to her by President George W. Bush, who commended her "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."[231][232] The following year, de Havilland narrated the documentary I Remember Better When I Paint (2009),[233] a film about the importance of art in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.[233] 
 
 In 2010, de Havilland almost made her return to the big screen after a 22-year hiatus with James Ivory's planned adaptation of The Aspern Papers but the project never got made.[234][235] On September 9, 2010, de Havilland was appointed a Chevalier (knight) of the Légion d'honneur, the highest decoration in France, awarded by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who told the actress, "You honor France for having chosen us."[236] In February the following year, she appeared at the César Awards in France, where she was greeted with a standing ovation.[Note 12] De Havilland celebrated her 100th birthday on July 1, 2016.[238] 
 
 In June 2017, two weeks before her 101st birthday, de Havilland was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to drama by Queen Elizabeth II.[239] She is the oldest woman ever to receive the honour. In a statement, she called it "the most gratifying of birthday presents".[240][241] She was unable to travel to London to attend the investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace due to health issues concerning her advanced age. Therefore, she received her honor from the hands of the British Ambassador to France at her Paris apartment in March 2018, 4 months before her 102nd birthday. Her daughter Gisèle was by her side.[242] 
 
 Personal life [ edit ] 
 
 Relationships [ edit ] 
 
 Although known as one of Hollywood's most exciting on-screen couples,[227] de Havilland and Errol Flynn were never involved in a romantic relationship.[243] Upon first meeting her at Warner Bros. in August 1935, Flynn was drawn to the 19-year-old actress with "warm brown eyes" and "extraordinary charm". In turn, de Havilland fell in love with him,[243][Note 13] but kept her feelings inside. Flynn later wrote, "By the time we made The Charge of the Light Brigade, I was sure that I was in love with her." Flynn finally professed his love on March 12, 1937, at the coronation ball for King George VI at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where they slow danced together to "Sweet Leilani" at the hotel's Coconut Grove nightclub. "I was deeply affected by him", she later remembered, "It was impossible for me not to be." The evening ended on a sobering note, however, with de Havilland insisting that despite his separation from his wife Lili Damita, he needed to divorce her before their relationship could proceed. Flynn re-united with his wife later that year, and de Havilland never acted on her feelings for Flynn.[243][Note 14] 
 
 In July 1938, de Havilland began dating business tycoon, aviator, and filmmaker Howard Hughes, who had just completed his record-setting flight around the world in 91 hours.[13] In addition to escorting her about town, he gave the actress her first flying lessons. She later said, "He was a rather shy man ... and yet, in a whole community where the men every day played heroes on the screen and didn't do anything heroic in life, here was this man who was a real hero."[13] In December 1939, she began a romantic relationship with actor James Stewart. At the request of Irene Mayer Selznick, the actor's agent asked Stewart to escort de Havilland to the New York premiere of Gone with the Wind at the Astor Theater on December 19, 1939. Over the next few days, Stewart took her to the theater several times and to the 21 Club. They continued to see each other back in Los Angeles, where Stewart provided occasional flying lessons and romance. According to de Havilland, Stewart proposed marriage to her in 1940, but she felt that he was not ready to settle down. Their relationship ended in late 1941 when de Havilland began a romantic relationship with film director John Huston while making In This Our Life. "John was a very great love of mine", she would later admit, "He was a man I wanted to marry."[Note 15] 
 
 Marriages and children [ edit ] 
 
 c. 1952 With her son Benjamin, 
 
 On August 26, 1946, she married Marcus Goodrich, a Navy veteran, journalist, and author of the 1941 novel Delilah. The marriage ended in divorce in 1953. They had one child, Benjamin Goodrich, who was born on September 27, 1949. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of 19,[227] but was able to graduate from the University of Texas. He worked as a statistical analyst for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California, and as an international banking representative for the Texas Commerce Bank in Houston.[227] He died on October 1, 1991, in Paris at the age of 42 of heart disease brought on by treatments for Hodgkin's disease, three weeks before the death of his father.[254][255] 
 
 On April 2, 1955, de Havilland married Pierre Galante, an executive editor for the French journal Paris Match. Her marriage to Galante prompted her relocation to Paris. The couple separated in 1962, but continued to live in the same house for another six years to raise their daughter together.[228][256] Galante moved across the street and the two remained close, even after the finalization of the divorce in 1979.[228] She looked after him during his final bout with lung cancer prior to his death in 1998. They had one child, Gisèle Galante, who was born on July 18, 1956. After studying law at the Université de Droit de Nanterre School of Law, she worked as a journalist in France and the United States.[227] Since 1956, de Havilland has lived in the same three-story house near Bois de Boulogne park in the Rive Droite section of Paris.[200] 
 
 Religion and politics [ edit ] 
 
 De Havilland was raised in the Episcopal Church and has remained an Episcopalian throughout her life.[257][Note 16] After moving to France, she became one of the first women lectors at the American Cathedral in Paris, where she was on the regular rota for Scripture readings. As recently as 2012, she was doing readings on major feast days,[257] including Christmas and Easter. "It's a task I love", she once said.[194] In describing her preparation for her readings, she once observed, "You have to convey the deep meaning, you see, and it has to start with your own faith. But first, I always pray. I pray before I start to prepare, as well. In fact, I would always say a prayer before shooting a scene, so this is not so different, in a way."[257] De Havilland prefers to use the Revised English Bible for its poetic style.[257] She raised her son Benjamin in the Episcopal Church and her daughter Gisèle in the Roman Catholic Church, the faith of each child's father. 
 
 As a United States citizen,[162] de Havilland became involved in politics as a way of exercising her civic responsibilities.[194] She campaigned for Franklin D. Roosevelt's re-election in 1944.[194] After the war, she joined the Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, a national public policy advocacy group that included Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, Groucho Marx and Humphrey Bogart in its Hollywood chapter.[194] In June 1946, she was asked to deliver speeches for the committee that reflected the Communist Party line‍—‌the group was later identified as a Communist front organization. Disturbed at seeing a small group of Communist members manipulating the committee, she removed the pro-Communist material from her speeches and rewrote them to reflect Harry S. Truman's anti-Communist platform. She later recalled, "I realized a nucleus of people was controlling the organization without a majority of the members of the board being aware of it. And I knew they had to be Communists."[194] 
 
 She organized a fight to regain control of the committee from its pro-Soviet leadership, but her reform efforts failed. Her resignation from the committee triggered a wave of resignations from 11 other Hollywood figures, including future President Ronald Reagan.[194][Note 17] In 1958, she was secretly called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and recounted her experiences with the Independent Citizens' Committee.[194] 
 
 Relationship with Joan Fontaine [ edit ] 
 
 Joan Fontaine and Gary Cooper at the Academy Awards, 1942 
 
 De Havilland and her sister Joan Fontaine are the only siblings to have won Academy Awards in a lead acting category.[264] According to biographer Charles Higham, the sisters always had an uneasy relationship, starting in early childhood when Olivia had trouble accepting the idea of having a younger sister, and Joan resenting her mother's favoring Olivia. Olivia would rip up the clothes that her sister was given to wear as hand-me-downs, forcing Joan to stitch them together again.[265] This tension was made worse by Fontaine's frequent childhood illnesses, which led to her mother's overly protective expression, "Livvie can, Joan can't." De Havilland was the first to become an actress, and for several years Fontaine was overshadowed by her sister's accomplishments. When Mervyn LeRoy offered Fontaine a personal contract, her mother told her that Warner Bros. was "Olivia's studio" and that she could not use the family name, "de Havilland". 
 
 In 1942, de Havilland and Fontaine were both nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress‍—‌de Havilland for Hold Back the Dawn and Fontaine for Suspicion. When Fontaine's name was announced as winner, de Havilland reacted graciously saying, "We've got it!" According to biographer Charles Higham, Fontaine rejected de Havilland's attempts to congratulate her, leaving the other offended and embarrassed. 
 
 Their relationship was further strained in 1946 when Fontaine made negative comments to an interviewer about de Havilland's new husband, Marcus Goodrich. When she read her sister's remarks, de Havilland was deeply hurt and waited for an apology that was never offered.[269] The following year after accepting her first Academy Award for To Each His Own, de Havilland was approached backstage by Fontaine, who extended her hand to congratulate her; de Havilland turned away from her sister.[269] The two did not speak for the next five years after the incident.[Note 18] This may have caused an estrangement between Fontaine and her own daughters, who maintained a covert relationship with their aunt, de Havilland. 
 
 Following her divorce from Goodrich, de Havilland resumed contact with her sister,[269] coming to her apartment in New York and spending Christmas together there in 1961.[269][270] The final break between the sisters occurred in 1975 over disagreements over their mother's cancer treatment‍—‌de Havilland wanted to consult other doctors and supported exploratory surgery; Fontaine disagreed. Fontaine later claimed her sister had not notified her of their mother's death while she was touring with a play‍—‌de Havilland in fact had sent a telegram, which took two weeks to reach her sister.[265] The sibling feud ended with Fontaine's death on December 15, 2013.[269][Note 19] The following day, de Havilland released a statement saying she was "shocked and saddened" by the news.[273] 
 
 Career assessment and legacy [ edit ] 
 
 [274] Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6762 Hollywood Blvd. 
 
 De Havilland's career spanned 53 years, from 1935 to 1988.[1] During that time, she appeared in 49 feature films, and was one of the leading movie stars during the golden age of Classical Hollywood. She began her career playing demure ingénues opposite popular male stars, including Errol Flynn, with whom she made her breakout film Captain Blood in 1935. They would go on to make eight more feature films together, and became one of Hollywood's most popular romantic on-screen pairings.[227] Her range of performances included roles in most major movie genres. Following her film debut in the Shakespeare adaptation A Midsummer Night's Dream, de Havilland achieved her initial popularity in romantic comedies, such as The Great Garrick and Hard to Get, and Western adventure films, such as Dodge City and Santa Fe Trail.[1] In her later career, she was most successful in drama films, such as In This Our Life and Light in the Piazza, and psychological dramas playing non-glamorous characters in films such as The Dark Mirror, The Snake Pit, and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte.[227] 
 
 During her career, de Havilland won two Academy Awards (To Each His Own and The Heiress), two Golden Globe Awards (The Heiress and Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna), two New York Film Critics Circle Awards (The Snake Pit and The Heiress), the National Board of Review Award, and the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup (The Snake Pit), and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination (Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna).[275] 
 
 For her contributions to the motion picture industry, de Havilland received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6762 Hollywood Boulevard on February 8, 1960.[274] Since her retirement in 1988, her lifetime contribution to the arts has been honored on two continents. In 1998, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hertfordshire in England.[276] 
 
 Receiving the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush, 2008 
 
 In 2006, she was inducted into the Online Film & Television Association Award Film Hall of Fame.[277] 
 
 The moving-image collection of Olivia de Havilland is held at the Academy Film Archive, which preserved a nitrate reel of a screen test for Danton, Max Reinhardt's never-produced follow-up to A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935).[278] 
 
 De Havilland, as a confidante and friend of Bette Davis, is featured in the series Feud: Bette and Joan, portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones. In the series, de Havilland reflects on the origins and depth of the Davis-Crawford feud and how it affected contemporary female Hollywood stars. On June 30, 2017, a day before her 101st birthday, she filed a lawsuit against FX Networks and producer Ryan Murphy for inaccurately portraying her and using her likeness without permission.[279] Although FX attempted to strike the suit, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Holly Kendig ruled in de Havilland's favor, and granted de Havilland an advanced court date in November 2017, where the judge ruled in her favor.[280] An appeal of the judge's ruling was argued in March 2018.[281] The three-judge panel decided against the defamation suit brought by De Havilland, in a ruling that affirmed the right of filmmakers to embellish the historical record and that such portrayals are protected by the First Amendment.[282] De Havilland appealed the decision to the US Supreme Court in September 2018, however a review was denied.[283][284] 
 
 Honors and awards [ edit ] 
 
 Filmography [ edit ] 
 
 See also [ edit ] 
 
 References [ edit ] 
 
 Notes [ edit ] 
 
 Citations [ edit ] 
 
 Bibliography [ edit ]
– Joan Fontaine, who won the Best Actress Oscar in 1941 for her role opposite Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion, died peacefully in her sleep at her Carmel, Calif., home yesterday at age 96, the AP reports. Fontaine was also nominated for Oscars for her lead roles in The Constant Nymph and Hitchcock's Rebecca; played Jane Eyre opposite Orson Welles; appeared in films by Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, and Nicholas Ray; played opposite stars including Bing Crosby, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Crawford; and was nominated for an Emmy in 1980. She was also involved in what the AP calls "one of Hollywood's legendary feuds" with her own older sister, Olivia de Havilland, who lost out on the Best Actress to Fontaine in 1941. "I felt Olivia would spring across the table and grab me by the hair," Fontaine later wrote, according to the Washington Post. Fontaine later wrote in her memoir about a rivalry that had existed since childhood, and once told a reporter, "I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!" (De Havilland, who ended up besting Fontaine with two Oscars, is currently living in Paris, age 97, the Hollywood Reporter notes.) When de Havilland won her own Oscar in 1947, Fontaine tried to congratulate her and was rebuffed. Fontaine ultimately left Hollywood after being asked to play Elvis Presley's mother, explaining that the role simply "wasn't my cup of tea." She spent 25 years in New York, appearing in dinner theater plays and on Broadway, and appeared on TV quite a bit in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. She was married four times, and had two children. Click for more on her 71-year feud with de Havilland.