Short Biography

Daughter of actress Lillian Fontaine and older sister of actress Joan Fontaine. Once engaged to James Stewart during the early 1940`s. She starred in a total of nine movies with Errol Flynn. Was very close friends with Ronald Reagan, and Bette Davis.

Olivia de Havilland is the last surviving principal cast member from Gone With the Wind. She played Melanie, the sweet southern belle with a backbone of steel, and de Havilland is reportedly very much like the character she portrayed. De Havilland won two Oscars, for To Each His Own, a 1946 drama in which her character became pregnant out of wedlock, and three years later as The Heiress, in which Montgomery Clift might be pursuing her only for her money. She was also nominated for Hold Back the Dawn, in which Romanian Charles Boyer might be pursuing her to marry his way to US citizenship, for The Snake Pit, where her character was committed to an insane asylum, as well as for Gone With the Wind.

De Havilland got two big breaks in one summer production of A Midsummer Night`s Dream. First, she understudied for Gloria Stuart`s character, Hermia, and in true Hollywood fashion got the role when Stuart had to drop out. Then Warner Brothers decided to film the stage production as a feature, and De Havilland signed a seven year contract with the studio.

Warner Bros. typecast de Havilland as a sweet, innocent damsel in distress, and that became her enduring screen persona. She proved perfect rescue fodder for Errol Flynn, and they made eight films together, including the classics The Adventures of Robin Hood (she was Flynn`s Maid Marian), Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and They Died with Their Boots On. De Havilland was reportedly infatuated with Flynn, and while she never confirmed an affair, she has said, "He was the one I enjoyed kissing most. When I was working with him, I could hardly wait to get to rehearsal".

Gone With the Wind was, of course, a wildly popular novel before it became the biggest movie of its time. While the film`s producers scoured the nation looking for an actress to play Scarlett O`Hara, de Havilland was one of the few `name` actresses at the time not pleading for the role. Instead she wanted to play Melanie, a supporting role, and she convinced Warner Brothers to "loan her out" to a rival studio for the production. There were problems on the set, and the film went through several directors. One of them, George Cukor, was a gay man known as a "woman`s director" and Clark Gable felt that his character was getting short shrift, so Cukor was fired. Victor Fleming received the sole screen credit as director despite directing only about half of the film, but he simply loathed actresses, leaving de Havilland so fearful that she would sneak off to have Cukor help with her role.

When she returned to Warner Brothers after Gone With the Wind, de Havilland was dismayed that, despite her Oscar nomination, Warners wanted her to resume playing ingenue roles. She begged for more substantial parts, but the studio continued to cast her in light romantic comedies.

When de Havilland was "loaned out" again for the drama Hold Back the Dawn in 1941, she was again Oscar-nominated, but found herself competing with her sister, Joan Fontaine, who had been nominated for Alfred Hitchcock`s Suspicion. The two actresses had been fiercely competitive even as children, and Fontaine, who is one year younger

Miscellaneous Information

Friends and Family

Gloria Stuart [Friend]

Walter Augustus de Havilland [Father]

Bette Davis [Friend] (one of her best friends)

Ronald Reagan [Friend]

Joan Fontaine [Sister] (Have not spoken to one another in years,)

Lillian Fontaine [Mother] (She was also an actress.)

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