Victoria Amador - Olivia de Havilland

OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND

OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND

Lady Triumphant

Victoria Amador

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Copyright 2019 by The University Press of Kentucky

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College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,

The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,

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Morehead State University, Murray State University,

Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,

University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,

and Western Kentucky University.

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Unless otherwise noted, photographs are from Photofest.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Amador, Victoria, 1955 author.

Title: Olivia de Havilland : lady triumphant / Victoria Amador.

Description: Lexington : The University Press of Kentucky, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018056745| ISBN 9780813177274 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813177281 (pdf) | ISBN 9780813177298 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: De Havilland, Olivia. | ActorsUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC PN2287.D4 A625 2019 | DDC 791.4302/8092 [B]dc23

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Member of the Association of University Presses

For G., S., K., J., and R., with endless gratitude and love.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Olivia and Me

In 1967 and again in 1969, Gone with the Wind was reissued to American theaters in a 70mm wide-screen print, introducing the classic to a new generation of filmgoers thirty years after its first release. Even then, the film was discussed with a mixture of admiration and concern for its representation of the Confederate, slave-owning South, yet it was still seen as a masterpiece. Along with many other viewers, I was first exposed to the film in 1969, and its grandeur possessed me.

As a young teenager in a tiny Wisconsin farming and manufacturing community, I did two things to facilitate my dreams of a wider worldI read compulsively, and I saw virtually every film that played at the local movie theater, escaping through the written word and the art of cinema. I had read Gone with the Wind in 1968, a rite of passage for many American girls of the time, often encouraged by their older relatives and teachers who had loved the Pulitzer Prizewinning novel by Atlantas Margaret Mitchell. Over a long, frigid Christmas holiday, I was captivated by the panoramic American history and histrionics, by the plot and the characters, by the archetypal American reinvention story of a woman and a nation divided, but particularly by Scarlett OHara.

I dont think it was a coincidence that this Civil Warera heroine in a Depression-era film seemed prescient when I became obsessed a few years later with David Bowies anthemic 1974 Rebel, Rebel. Like me (and virtually every other young person in the Western world), Scarlett was on a mission to live life as she chose. Even more relevant to me and to many other young women, she was, in many ways, a protofeminist. Scarlett didnt like limits or being treated like a child when she knew exactly what she wantedpower, self-determination, and a self-forged identity. She wanted romance with Ashley Wilkes and was ruthless about it. She loved her family and Tara despite herself, and she used every skill, talent, attraction, and strategy she had to fight for their survival. Scarlett didnt have the awareness to see the personal as political, but she did refute the limitations on her gender and her defeated land. Above all, she wanted to do every and any damned thing she desired.

But what about Melanie Hamilton Wilkes? Too nice to emulate. A true personification of Patmore Coventrys treacly tribute to Victorian-era domestic enslavement, An Angel in the House. Melanie was a loyal friend to Scarlett, but who could possibly want to be that good? Melanie wasnt flashy or outwardly fierce; she wasnt funny, wasnt particularly captivating. Margaret Mitchells description of Melanie offers a character who seems pallid compared with Scarlett:

She was a tiny, frailly built girl, who gave the appearance of a child masquerading in her mothers enormous hoop skirtsan illusion that was heightened by the shy, almost frightened look in her too large brown eyes. She had a cloud of curly dark hair which was so sternly repressed beneath its net that no vagrant tendrils escaped, and this dark mass, with its long widows peak, accentuated the heart shape of her face a sweet, timid face but a plain face, and she had no feminine tricks of allure to make observers forget its plainness. She lookedand wasas simple as earth, as good as bread, as transparent as spring water.1

Melanie was a lovely role model for someone bucking for sainthood. She was not, however, an immediately obvious heroine for a troubled teen.

Or so I believed until I saw the film when it finally came to my little Wisconsin town in 1969. I went back several times, alone and with friends. It is the only epic Ive ever tolerated, and it became my favorite all-time film: the Technicolor, Clark Gable, Vivien Leighs magnificence in one of the greatest female screen performances in cinema history, the supporting cast, the Civil War, the sweeping music, the story of survival. Certainly, I was enraptured with Leighs Scarlett, as I expected to be. What was unexpected, however, was my newfound appreciation of Melanie. As portrayed by Olivia de Havilland, Melanie was as indomitable as Scarlett.

I knew de Havillands spirited work from her many films with Errol Flynn shown on television. Her maleficence in Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte and Lady in a Cage, both viewed at the cinema when I was a burgeoning obsessive filmgoer, was delicious to me. But in the actresss Melanie, I saw a character with strength and gentleness, true manners, and an authentic spirit. Her Melanie captured more of Margaret Mitchells evaluation of that Hamilton girl: Ashley had sat on a stool at Melanies feet, apart from the other guests, and talked quietly with her, smiling the slow drowsy smile that Scarlett loved. What made matters worse was that under his smile a little sparkle had come into Melanies eyes, so that even Scarlett had to admit that she looked almost pretty. As Melanie looked at Ashley, her plain face lit up as with an inner fire, for if ever a loving heart showed itself upon a face, it was showing now on Melanie Hamiltons.2

Olivias Melanie was no second chorus to Scarletts beauty or fire; Olivias Melanie was suddenly interesting. After all, Melanie married Ashley (played by Leslie Howard) and gave birth during the siege of Atlanta; she cradled the weeping Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable) when he feared Scarlett would die; she was aware of the gossip about Ashley and Scarlett and loved them both regardless; she was the best friend any woman could have. Scarlett was my idealized self; Melanie was the self I might become. I decided to write a fan letter.