Olivia de Havilland: 'er gone (with the wind)
Dame Olivia de Havilland, one of the last survivors of Hollywood's Golden Age
, has died, aged 104.*
She starred in some bloody good films, including classics like The Adventures of Robin Hood; The Charge of the Light Brigade; and Captain Blood, all with Errol Flynn. And if you haven't watched The Dark Mirror, you might like to do yourself a favour and rectify that oversight.
Famously, or infamously, she and her younger sister, Joan Fontaine, had a long-running feud which finally ended with Fontaine's death in 2013
.
Fontaine had been quoted as saying: "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 issued a statement saying she was "shocked and saddened" by her sister's death.
Touching.
Her most well-known role was that of Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind, for which she received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress, losing out to her co-star, Hattie McDaniel. I've never watched the film in its entirety; the little that I have seen is mawkishly melodramatic for my taste. But melodramatic is something that de Havilland excelled at.
The film did inspire one of the greatest promotional posters of all time though!
* One of the last survivors? At the age of 104, it begs the question as to how many are left! Kirk Douglas died earlier this year, at the age of 103, and his Hollywood screen career started a decade later in the mid '40s. But, if you accept the definition of the Golden Age of Hollywood
as used in film criticism, it extends through to the '60s, which seems wantonly liberal on so many levels. Prosaically, this cut-off is related to antitrust and competition factors, rather than to more romantic notions of vogue; style; mystique, and the like. (rolleyes)
So, there's plenty more survivors left.