Olivia de Havilland & “Gone With the Wind”

The actress Olivia de Havilland just celebrated her 100th birthday. Her Hollywood career began over 80 years ago, making her likely the longest term living celebrity. Only Queen Elizabeth, who became heir to the throne 80 years ago, perhaps equals the longevity of her fame.

De Havilland, whose parents were English (her father deserted the family for a  Japanese maid) was raised in the Episcopal Church, in which she remains active.  For many years she’s been (or was) the lector at the Episcopal Cathedral in Paris, where she’s lived for 60 years.  Her dramatically trained voice doubtless has delighted the congregation there and added extra verve to Bible readings. In an interview with a cleric several years ago she shared about her careful preparation: “But first I always pray. I pray before I start to prepare, as well. In fact, I would always say a prayer before shooting a scene, so this is not so different, in a way.” She also recounted Jimmy Cagney’s advice to her about performing: “All I know is that you have to mean what you say.”

One of her first films was 1936’s Charge of the Light Brigade with Erol Flynn, which I enjoyed on television as a boy 40 years later. She had an apparently unconsummated romance with the womanizing Flynn, with whom she also starred in Robin Hood, They Died With Their Boots On (about George Custer) and, more forgetably, Santa Fe Trail, which co-starred Ronald Reagan.

De Havilland’s most famous role was as saintly Melanie in Gone With the Wind, of which she’s the only surviving actor. The 80th anniversary of its publication coincided with her centenary. The novel remains a bestseller, and the film is the biggest box office success ever. She explains its universal appeal as a timeless story of a people defeated in war. Critics sometimes not unfairly cite its racial stereotypes in portrayals of slaves and black servants.

Producer David Selznick, a liberal Jew, was determined to not become D.W. Griffith, the great silent film maker of the infamous Birth of a Nation, which celebrated the Klan. Gone With the Wind, which came 20 years later, contrasts with the earlier film in some important ways. The central scene in Birth of a Nation features a black man attempting to rape a white woman. In Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara is assaulted by a white man, in seeming Confederate garb, and rescued by a black man, who grabs the white man by the throat just in time.

There’s also arguably a more subtle, subversive message. In Gone With the Wind, all the white characters are devious, clueless, or detached from reality. The only consistently sensible mind and voice belong to Mammy, the slave and later servant played by Hattie McDaniel, the first black performer to win an academy award, or even to attend the ceremony as an invited guest. She was herself the daughter of slaves, her father was wounded in the Union Army, and her grandmother, she recalled, had been a Mammy type character. Near the film’s end, her employer Rhett Butler, played by Clark Gable, salutes her savvy good sense by sharing laughs and a glass of sherry with her. He had earlier told Scarlett that Mammy was a “smart old soul” and “one of the few people whose respect I’d like to have.” Gable refused to attend the film’s premier in segregated Atlanta that effectively excluded McDaniel, who graciously insisted Gable go.

McDaniel was criticized in some black newspapers for contributing to stereotypes by typically portraying slaves and servants.  She appeared in such a role again with de Havilland and Erol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On.  McDaniel, who was raised Baptist by her preacher father and Gospel-singing mother, who began her career by singing spirituals in church, and who said God always came first, was unintimidated and offered no apologies. She was a talented actress who accepted the roles offered her.  Tragically, she died in 1952 at only age 57 after launching a very popular television series.  Had she lived as long as de Havilland, doubtless she would be justly celebrated for her talents, grace and accomplishments.

Decades later, de Havilland recalled that she eventually thought McDaniel’s win of the Academy Award was “marvelous,” even though she had been her direct rival as a fellow supporting actress.  A racial bias would have preferred de Havilland, who after her rejection fled the Academy Awards to weep in a kitchen, until she pondered the meaning of McDaniel’s success:

I thought that was marvelous. I didn’t right away. The night of the awards, oh, there was no God! He didn’t exist! I ceased to believe in Him! And then two weeks later, I woke up one morning and I thought, “What a wonderful world!” I saw an entirely different perspective, a true perspective, and I thought, “This is thrilling, that they were not deceived for a minute and they voted for Hattie, and she got it!