After all tomorrow is another day-Profile on Olivia De Havilland

"One day, I came back from location for Dodge City. It must have been early December -- very late November in any case -- of 1938, and the phone rang. The voice said, "You don't know me. We've never met, but I am George Cukor. I have been supervising the preparation of Gone With the Wind, and I will be directing the movie. We are in the process of casting, and I would like to know if you would be interested in playing the role of Melanie." Well, I said, "I certainly would," and then he said, "Would you consent to doing something highly illegal?" Well, I said, "What would that be?" And he said, "You are under contract to Warner Brothers. We have no right to ask this of you, but would you come secretly -- tell no one -- to the studio? ..." I said, "Yes. I'd be delighted to do this highly illegal thing." So, I did, and I read the lines for George Cukor, and he said, "I think I must call David," and he called David Selznick and said, "David, I think you must hear Miss De Havilland read the part of Melanie," said Oscar winning screen legend Olivia De Havilland

Olivia De Havilland, one of the Hollywood's last surviving greats, born in Tokyo, Japan July 1, 1916.

Best known for her role as Melanie in "Gone With the Wind," not all of de Havilland's roles were as rewarding or exciting as Melanie Hamilton. Many of her early roles as a leading lady were simply the love interest of the leading man, such as Errol Flynn with whom she starred in nine movies together.

"The life of the love interest is really pretty boring. The objective is the marriage bed. That's what the heroine is there for, and "Will he win or will he not? Will they finally make the marriage bed? The heroine really heroined. She really had nothing much to do except encourage the hero, and at the right moment... and you can't imagine how uninteresting that can be, the route. The objective might have been different, but anyhow the route is very boring. So I longed to play a character who initiated things, who experienced important things, who interpreted the great agonies and joys of human experience, and I certainly wasn't doing that on any kind of level of a significance playing the love interest," said De Havilland about her earlier films such as Dodge City (1938).

Her early rolls with Flynn were not what you would call unenjoyable, as De Havilland had a crush on him and said it was "love at first sight" when they first met for the filming of "Captain Blood" in 1935.

In her early career, De Havilland was frustrated with the roles she was playing and tired of being the inginue as well.

"They (Warner Brothers) had two ingenues, one was brunette, and one was blond, and the blond one was Anita Louise ...and they had Olivia de Havilland, the brunette ingenue. Well that's how the casting went, you see. It was either the brunette ingenue or it was the blond ingenue. It was confining in that way. I had no real opportunity to develop and to explore difficult roles, and that was tiresome."

Finally, De Havilland won the role of Melanie in the groundbreaking film "Gone With the Wind" in 1939 and was nominated for her first Oscar.

She did not win her first Oscar until 1947 for the film "To Each His Own" and won a second Oscar for "The Heiress" in 1950. In all, De Havilland was nominated for five Academy Awards.

De Havilland's career was not all just awards and glory, but also characterized with contract related court battles with Warner Brothers. She was put on suspencion for refusing to do certain roles, and when her contract came up she was going to be forced to make up the time she lost on suspencion.

De Havilland sued and won and changed the industry with that one case making it so that actors under contract were not treated as poorly.

After a long career that spanned from the 1930's to the 1980's, Olivia De Havilland has now retired and is writing her autobiography in France where she lives.

She still says that the role of Melanie in "Gone with the Wind" that made her a full-fledged star will always remain her favorite.

"I didn't want to play Scarlett. I wanted to Melanie. It's because I was so young. I had for four years been earning my own living, going through all the problems of a career woman, self-supporting and even contributing to the support of others, which is what Scarlett did. So, I knew about being Scarlett in a sense, but Melanie was someone different. She had very, deeply feminine qualities. Scarlett was a self-absorbed person," De Haviland said. "Career women have to be, that's all there is to it. But, Melanie was 'other people-oriented,' and she had these 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 one way I could contribute to their being kept alive was to play Melanie, and that's why I wanted to interpret her role. "


To Each His Own
Profile with Actress/Writer Olivia De Havilland

Age: 93
Siblings: Joan Fontaine
Number of Spouses: 2
First Film: Alibi Ike (1935)
Best Friend: Bette Davis