Trivia of Olivia de Havilland

Trivia of Olivia de Havilland

*She confessed had an intense crush on Errol Flynn during the years of their filming, saying that it was hard to resist his charms.She and Errol Flynn acted together in eight movies: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Dodge City (1939), Four's a Crowd (1938), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Santa Fe Trail (1940), and They Died with Their Boots On (1941) Both are also featured in a ninth film, Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), although in separate scenes.

*Olivia accepted two film roles turned down by Ginger Rogers: To Each His Own (1946) and The Snake Pit (1948). She won an Oscar for To Each His Own (1946) and was nominated for The Snake Pit (1948). Rogers later regretted turning down the roles and wrote: "It seemed Olivia knew a good thing when she saw it. Perhaps Olivia should thank me for such poor judgment".

*She and Joan Fontaine are the first sisters to win Oscars and the first ones to be Oscar-nominated in the same year.Relations between Olivia and younger sister Joan Fontaine were never strong and worsened in 1941, when both were nominated for Best Actress Oscars. Their mutual dislike and jealousy escalated into an all-out feud after Fontaine won for Suspicion (1941). Despite the fact that de Havilland went on to win two Academy Awards of her own, they remained permanently estranged.As de Havilland once told a reporter: “My sister was born a lion, and I was born a tiger, and in the laws of the jungle, they were never friends.”

*James Cagney has said that she was his favorite leading lady. They appeared together in The Irish in Us (1935), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), and made a most memorable romantic pairing in The Strawberry Blonde (1941).

*In 1943, de Havilland battled Warner Brothers in court over her contract with the film company. This marked the beginning of the end of the studio system as the California Supreme Court ruled in favour of de Havilland who claimed Warner Bros. was forcing her to stay beyond her seven-year agreement. As of 1945, the “de Havilland rule” was put into place by all major Hollywood studios, effectively stating that companies could not sign actors to contracts that extended beyond a maximum of seven calendar years.

*In 1965 she became the first female president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

*Revealed in a UK press interview that she was a great admirer of Queen Mother (whom she had earlier portrayed in the TV film The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982)), stating that she hoped "to follow her example and live many years longer". De Havilland would go onto match and beat the Queen Mother's eventual lifespan of 101 years and 238 days old.De Havilland died at age 104.