It’s time for another post in which I try to put together a few golden age cinema stories connected by a thin, sometimes very thin, connecting link. Today I’m going to start with Olivia de Havilland.
Olivia de Havilland was one of the great film stars of Hollywood’s golden age. Amazingly she died only fairly recently in 2004 having lived to be 104 years old. She appeared in eight classic films with fellow star Errol Flynn, including The Adventures of Robin Hood in which she played Maid Marian to Flynn’s Robin Hood. Flynn claimed in later years to have been in love with Olivia but nothing ever happened between the couple, or so they both said.
In my favourite Hollywood book Bring on the Empty Horses, David Niven paints an excellent portrait of Flynn. You always knew where you were with Errol, wrote Niven -he always let you down.
Flynn hailed from Tasmania, an island state of Australia. In Australia he became involved in a film production called In the Wake of the Bounty, a documentary film about the mutiny on the Bounty that featured reconstructions with Flynn as Fletcher Christian. After this he made his way to the UK where he became an actor and spent many years in repertory in Northampton. He was fired from Northampton rep but was spotted by producer Irving Asher and given a part in a film made at Teddington Studios in 1934. The film was Murder in Monte Carlo which has since been lost but apparently Asher, who worked for Warner Brothers, sent word to Hollywood recommending Flynn for a contract. After a successful screen test Flynn was given the starring role in the swashbuckling adventure, Captain Blood, after Robert Donat turned down the role. The film was a great success and made stars of Flynn and co-star Olivia de Havilland.
Olivia began living in Paris in the 1950s but continued acting not only in films but also on television and on the stage. She received numerous awards and she and her sister are the only siblings ever to both receive Academy Awards.
Olivia’s sister was Joan Fontaine and the two had a famous feud or falling out which seemed to consume most of their lives. Olivia seems to have ‘blanked’ Joan when Joan won an Oscar for her role in ‘Suspicion’ in 1942. They seemed to become friendly for a while until they differed about looking after their elderly mother.
My favourite of Joan’s films and perhaps her most well known was Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Joan played the part of a shy young girl who falls for Maxim de Winter, played by Laurence Olivier.
Rebecca was filmed in 1940 and was Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film. In Monte Carlo a shy young girl played by Fontaine encounters English gentleman Maxim de Winter and thinks he is about to jump off a cliff. Later the two fall for each other and marry but the new Mrs de Winter -her actual name is never revealed- seems to feel Maxim’s love for Rebecca, his late wife, is overshadowing her life. It’s a great film and one of Hitchcock’s best. Olivier apparently wanted his wife, Vivien Leigh, to play the part which Hitchcock ultimately gave to Joan.
Vivien Leigh was the surprise choice to play Scarlett O’Hara in the film version of Gone with the Wind. The film was a major film adaptation of the book by Margaret Mitchell which had been a huge success and producer David O Selznick bought the film rights. Production was delayed for a long while as Selznick was determined to get Clark Gable for the part of the roguish Rhett Butler. Another delay was a distribution deal with MGM which couldn’t be finalised until Selznick’s then current deal with United Artists had expired. Selznick used the delay to promote a huge search for an actress to play the part of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoilt daughter of a plantation owner in the deep south of America. He eventually chose Vivien who was in the USA visiting her husband who of course was filming Rebecca.
Clark Gable was known as the ‘King of Hollywood’ and in 1935 he made a film with Loretta Young called The Call of the Wild. During the production, Young became pregnant with Gable’s child. Their daughter Judy Lewis was born on November 6th 1935. Loretta hid her pregnancy and gave birth in secret and then later arranged to ‘adopt’ the child. Judy never knew the circumstances of her birth although it was an open secret to many in Hollywood. When she finally learned of the rumours, she confronted her mother who admitted she and Gable were her biological parents.,
In 1939 Gable married Carole Lombard. She was a great star particularly in the screwball comedies of the day and Gable adored her. They met while making the film No Man of her Own in 1932 but nothing romantic happened until they met again at a Hollywood party in 1936. Gable was separated from his then wife Ria Langham but still married. Eventually she agreed to a divorce and Gable was free to marry Lombard.
When World War II began, Carole travelled to Indiana to a war bond rally where she raised over 2 million dollars for the American war effort. She and her colleagues were due to return to Los Angeles by train but decided to take a faster option and fly. The flight crew of the aircraft were thought to have been in difficulty crossing the mountains surrounding Las Vegas as safety beacons had been turned off in case Japanese bombers tried to enter the area. The aircraft crashed into the mountains and all on board were killed. Gable was devastated. Afterwards he joined the US Air Force and saw action over Germany as a gunner.
In 1960 Gable began work on his final film, The Misfits. The screenplay had been written for Marilyn Monroe by her husband, playwright Arthur Miller. She was not happy playing a character called Roslyn who she felt was based too much on herself. She and Miller were at the end of their marriage and their deteriorating relationship caused tensions on the set. Miller was stressed as he was doing multiple rewrites. Monroe was frequently late or didn’t turn up for work or didn’t know her lines while Gable, the complete professional was on time and word perfect every day. Director John Huston had to hold all the differing elements together but the film was finally completed. It was the final film for both Monroe and Gable. He died some weeks after filming completed aged only 59 and despite having two other marriages after Lombard, was laid to rest beside her.
Another star of The Misfits was Montgomery Clift. He was also a ‘method’ actor and along with Marlon Brando and James Dean was one of the three great method actors of the 50s and 60s. I have always thought that his first film was The Search, a film made in bombed out post WWII Berlin in which Clift played a US army soldier who helps a refugee boy find his mother. Clift gave such a natural performance that director Fred Zinnemann was asked where did he find a soldier that could act so well?
Clift’s actual first film was one of my personal favourites, Red River with John Wayne, a western about an epic cattle drive across the US. The Search, despite being filmed later was actually released first.
Clift became great friends with Elizabeth Taylor and the two made many films together. In 1956 while filming Raintree County, Clift was involved in a terrible car crash in which he suffered severe injuries to his face, particularly the left side. Taylor comforted Clift in the wreck of his car while they waited for the emergency services. Clift returned to complete Raintree County after taking two months off to recuperate from plastic surgery.
Montgomery Clift was a homosexual in a time when such things were covered up by Hollywood and his sexuality was not mentioned in public until Elizabeth Taylor spoke about it in a speech in 2000.
After the success of The Search, Paramount offered Clift a major contract which he accepted and the first film he made for the company was The Heiress directed by William Wyler.
Bringing us full circle, Clift’s co-star in The Heiress was Olivia de Havilland.
David Niven mentions the visits he had in England from Gable in his book Bring on the Empty Horses. His wife once found Clark in the garden of their small cottage, his head in his hands, crying for his dead wife.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 