DeHavilland appeared in Mervyn LeRoy's historical drama "Anthony Adverse" (1936) 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. DeHavilland 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. It garnered deHavilland 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". That same year, she was re-united with Flynn in Michael Curtiz's period action film "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (also 1936), set during the Crimean War which became a box office hit.