Olivia de Havilland recalls wartime shows, enjoys making similar type tours now

OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND was radiant and lovely, like a movie queen ought to be.

"Come on in," she said. "But you'll have to excuse the house — we're raising the roof around here," The carpenters were busy and the interior decorator had just sent over a new chair for Miss de Havilland's bedroom and the delivery boys were struggling up the stairs with it.

She and her French husband, Paris magazine executive Pierre Galante, were literally "raising the roof." Their white stucco house in Paris' 16th Arrondissement was undergoing a complete transformation. Included in the remodeling was a project that heightened the top floor to make space for a playroom for their children.

This day Miss de Havilland had every right to be a bundle of nerves — upset house, a trip to the States to prepare for, plans for a personal appearance at the premiere of her new film in Atlanta. But she displayed the charm and smoothness for which she Is famous as she graciously and naturally received the reporter and photographer from The Stars and Stripes. It was more as though she, in her role as Paris mother and housewife, were having neighbors in for a midmorning cup of coffee.

Although she now lives in Paris, Miss de Havilland is still very much a part of the movies. And she is still enjoying a vast popularity both in the U.S. and overseas, often in remote corners of the world. "I have received letters commenting on films that I'd even forgotten about," Miss de Havilland said as she thumbed through a recent batch of mail. There were letters from Madagascar, East Germany, Yugoslavia and the Far East.

The Oscar-winning actress, whose performances in "The Snake Pit" and "The Heiress" are regarded among the highlights in the history of the cinema, says she likes living in Paris. Business and social engagements keep her occupied, but she has found time in her schedule to keep appointments with some of her favorite people — U.S. servicemen.

Appearing at U.S. military installations is one of the star's old loves. It was her patriotic contribution during World War II. She earned the reputation for being one of the most faithful and favorite celebrities visiting isolated islands and battlefronts in the Pacific during World War II. She risked life and limb in this effort. Once she rode out a crippled plane over the ocean. Another time she came down with virus pneumonia, spent days in an island hospital before doctors finally could diagnose her near-critical case.

She calls herself a "50-cent-a-year" woman, because she is presently under contract with the Army's Special Services for personal appearances for the next two years in Germany, France, Italy or at whatever installation in Europe where she may be invited. She Is paid $1 for the contract.

Last year she was made a honorary member of the 11th Airborne Div and now one of her prized possessions is the khaki jacket tailored to her measurements bearing the 11th's patch on one sleeve and the identification patch, "de Havilland" across the chest.

She has been to Berlin and to bases in Italy. Her summer schedule of tours is booked solid, as far as time and other commitments will allow. Counting her travel time, Miss de Havilland last year devoted nearly a month to visits with U.S. servicemen in Europe.

The $1 contract has helped Miss de Havilland to retain her American citizenship.  She was born in Tokyo of British parents and was naturalized in the U.S. after she went to Hollywood. Now, married to a French citizen, it would be necessary for her to return to the U.S. periodically to retain citizenship. The law provides that if a naturalized citizen remains outside the U.S. for five years, citizenship is lost.

At present, it is expected that Congress will pass a bill waiving the existing law in Miss de Havilland's case. Rep. Francis E. Walter (D-Pa.) recently introduced such a bill. He did not know Miss de Havilland personally, he said, but he was acquainted with her visits to servicemen both during the war and at present. Meanwhile, Miss de Havilland. with a Government contract, can retain her citizenship without interruption of the life she likes best.

Her marriage to Pierre Galante came about in the same storybook manner as the rest of her fabulous life since leaving school at Our Lady's Convent at Belmont, Calif., in 1934; going to drama school and beginning a motion picture career in 1935.

She met the magazine executive on her first visit to France, in 1953. That year she had come to Paris with her young son, Benjamin, on her way to Cannes for the international film festival.

It may have been by coincidence that Galante, a member of the festival committee, was at the airport when she arrived. It also may have been by coincidence that he happened to join her manager and her at lunch one day in Paris. And, by coincidence again, he was at her table every day during banquets at the film festival.

Later Miss de Havilland left for Dallas for a summer theater engagement. Shortly after, there was a cable front Galante. He was coming to Texas.

By now. the actress was aware that the Frenchman's attentions had nothing to do with coincidence. So, to welcome him to Dallas, she decided to please him with something typically French — foie gras and champagne. The fourth day of this diet, though, caused the visitor to say, "I am deeply in love with you, but even though I am French there are two, things I really don't like — goose liver and champagne."

Miss de Havilland recalls she was more impressed, or perhaps stunned, at first at his gallantry in enduring the pate and champagne for four days than she was with his declaration of love. Shortly after they were married at Yvoy-le-Marron, near Orleans, France. It was April 2, the same day Napoleon had married Marie.

Paris life is interesting, says Miss de Havilland. She didn't know much French on her first visit to France, but now she speaks it welt. Among the Galantes' friends are numerous French film notables. They like to entertain at home and will do so again once the house is finished. Thanksgiving dinner is always a big occasion at the Galante home. Benjamin now is in school in Normandy. The Galantes have a daughter. Gisele, who will be 2 years old this month.

Her new picture, "The Proud Rebel," will be on service screens soon. It to due for an early showing on the Champs-Elysses in Paris. Miss de Havilland attended the premiere In Atlanta, where just 20 years before she had gone for the opening of "Gone With the Wind."

"I'm not sure whether they're going to like me in Atlanta this time," she said before leaving Paris. "Last time I was the shining example of Southern womanhood. This time it's also a Civil War film, but I'm on the other side."

The Olivia de Havilland Interview

Fifty years ago, two-time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland took action to change her career and the lives of all performers. The indomitable actors' advocate (who gladly joined the fledgling Guild on April 29, 1936) successfully sued Warners to get out of an unfair contract in the mid 1940's. "The de Havilland decision", as the landmark case became known in the industry, was a breakthrough for actors who were then able to choose their own roles and career destinies. In an exclusive interview with Screen Actor, Miss de Havilland spoke with Harry Medved about her choice of roles, early Guild meetings, and "the decision" of a lifetime.

Tell us about your first SAG meeting.

I attended some of the big gatherings of SAG members held at the Hollywood Legion Stadium, a large fight auditorium. I recall these as lively affairs with strong and vociferous reactions from the membership. I recollect, in particular, a large assembly where a group of players was seated with the Chairman on a sort of raised platform and that one of them was Joan Crawford, who knitted industriously throughout the meeting. Ralph Morgan was one of our first leaders and he had his hands full, but he made a valiant effort to be equal to the challenge.

Were certain actors reluctant to join the Guild?

The formation of SAG was a very controversial matter and major stars, though protected in many ways by their contracts, were at risk because these agreements not only contained a unilateral yearly option which the producer could exercise at will, but also quite strict provisions regarding behavior offensive to public opinion. A major star's popularity outside the industry could well be diminished by appearing pro-labor in a society still uneasy about unions, and such a star could jeopardize his or her career by seeming to oppose the interests of the employer. Joan Crawford's hearty welcome at an early Guild gathering may have been because her presence showed courage, which everyone else there recognized, and it also showed solidarity with those less well-placed than herself.

Was it necessary for you to keep your SAG membership a secret?

I never made a secret of my membership, but I did incur my mother's shocked disapproval!

How did you feel about your early roles as delicate heroines at Warners?

I detested playing the female leads in Alibi Ike (1935), Wings of the Navy (1939), and other films, but enjoyed Arabella Bishop in Captain Blood (1935) and Maid Marian in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

How did you get cast in Gone With The Wind (1939)? Did you have to fight to show your range?

According to Memo [the Selznick biography], David O. thought that I would be a good choice for the character of Melanie after having screened The Adventures of Robin Hood, a huge money maker for Warners in 1938. George Cukor subsequently asked if I were interested and would I come very discreetly to his office for a reading? I complied and a few days later, equally discreetly, drove to Selznick's house for another reading. That decided the matter for David, but to obtain Jack Warner's agreement was a complicated and suspenseful operation. Finally, Jack Warner took in exchange for me a one-picture commitment which Selznick held for the services of James Stewart.

Was Warners a tough studio to work at?

Warners was a particularly well-equipped, well-run, and well-maintained studio but was also rather cut-and-dried and business-like in its approach to making movies. Very different from Selznick, who was passionate about the films he made. He selected them with great care, and wanted them to be works of art as well as financial successes. At Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, actors could reason with the studio when they felt uncomfortable about a role, they could take a lay-off or a different assignment in its place. At Warner Bros. a suspension was the immediate reply to an actor's disinclination to take on a particular assignment.

What was the effect of the "de Havilland decision" on your fellow actors?

I was very proud of that decision, for it corrected a serious abuse of the contract system - forced extension of a contract beyond its legal term. Among those who benefitted by the decision were the actors who fought in World War II and who, throughout that conflict, were on suspension. I was deeply gratified when, returning to MGM after his long and distinguished military service, Jimmy Stewart asked the court on the basis of that decision for a ruling on his contract - and thus the contracts of other actor-veterans - and received, of course, a favorable verdict. When I won the final round of my case on Feb. 3, 1945, every actor was now confirmed as free of his long-term contract at the end of its seven year term, regardless of how many suspensions he had taken during those seven years. No one thought I would win, but after I did, flowers, letters and telegrams arrived from my fellow actors. This was wonderfully rewarding. The Guild served as Amicus Curiae in my case: friend of the Court.

What are your memories of working with future Guild President Ronald Reagan?

Ronnie Reagan was a very sociable creature. Extroverted in the nicest way. When we worked with Errol Flynn on Santa Fe Trail in 1940, Ronnie was already interested in the Guild and would sit beside me on the set to chat about SAG and other things. During night shooting out in the San Fernando Valley, when Flynn continually turned up late for our 9 p.m. call, forcing the cast to work until dawn, Ronnie sought me out and asked me to plead with Flynn to mend his "wicked, wicked ways." I went into Flynn's on-location tent as Ronnie's emissary to persuade him to be on time. To my astonishment Errol was really quite cold with me and said: "Why do you have to put it on a personal basis?" I never understood his behavior and it took me 50 years to figure it out. It wasn't until a White House dinner, when Ronnie reminisced about the night shooting on Santa Fe Trail and how Flynn had re-arranged a photo line-up to Ronnie's extreme disadvantage, that I finally realized that Errol was nettled by Ronnie's popularity on the set and, very possibly, by his affable relations with the leading lady. Evidently Flynn thought Ronnie and I were engaged in a passionate romance. Of course it was nothing of the kind. Ronnie was happily married at the time and I was interested in a shy, tall, blue-eyed actor whose name it will take you much less than 50 years to figure out!

Death finally ended the feud between Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland

This week’s death of Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine at 96 brings to an end to conceivably Hollywood’s longest sibling feud, as her sister, Oscar-winning actress Olivia de Havilland, 97, expressed her grief from her home in Paris. It’s probably the kindest public statement either sister had expressed for decades, as their famous battle had raged for years.

 Joan was born only 15 months after Olivia, sparking a sibling rivalry that began while both were still in cribs, then quickly escalated to all-out physical fights. (In her memoir, No Bed of Roses, Fontaine claimed that de Havilland once fractured her collarbone.) That rivalry intensified when both girls eventually became actresses, possibly to please their stage-struck mother. And by 1940, both women were not just actresses, but extremely prominent ones: de Havilland had started a long and popular screen pairing with swashbuckler Errol Flynn, and snagged the second female lead in the 1939 blockbuster Gone With The Wind, for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Fontaine (who changed her last name twice) won the lead in Hitchcock’s first American picture, 1940’s Rebecca,receiving a Best Actress nomination. At the 1942 Oscars, both were nominated for Best Actress, Fontaine defeated her sister by winning for Hitchcock’s Suspicion, and the battle was on.

The most famous representation of their feud happened in 1947, when de Havilland received her own Oscar for To Each His Own (her first of two). Fontaine, having just presented the Best Actor award, went to congratulate her sister and was famously snubbed, with Olivia walking right by Joan’s outstretched hand. The sisters continued like this, battling over awards, parts, and men (including oil magnate Howard Hughes), but their final rift came when their mother died in 1975. Fontaine says that she wasn’t even informed of her mother’s death; de Havilland said that Fontaine didn’t want to attend the memorial. Their estrangement became permanent. When both were invited to commemorative Oscar ceremonies honoring past winners, they were kept to opposite sides of the stage; in 1989, given adjacent hotel rooms for another Oscar presentation, Fontaine switched rooms, and never attended the Oscars again. 

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg recently interviewed both nonagenarians, shedding some new light on the sisters’ rivalry. At the time, Fontaine told Feinberg that the famous feud with her sister was “nonexistent” and “had no basis.” Nevertheless, it certainly seemed to exist while Fontaine was promoting her autobiography in 1978, when she predicted, "Olivia has always said I was first at everything: I got married first, got an Academy Award first, had a child first. If I die, she'll be furious, because again I'll have got there first!" But de Havilland’s rare public statement this week seemed to contain only grief: "I was shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of my sister, Joan Fontaine, and my niece, Deborah, and I appreciate the many kind expressions of sympathy that we have received." All it took to end their feud was death.   

Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland, in full Olivia Mary de Havilland   (born July 1, 1916, Tokyo,Japan), American motion-picture actress remembered for the lovely and gentle ingenues of her early career as well as for the later, more substantial roles she fought to secure.

The daughter of a British patent attorney, de Havilland and her younger sister, Joan Fontaine, moved to California in 1919 with their mother, an actress. While attending school, de Havilland was chosen from the cast of a local California production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to play Hermia in a 1935 Warner Brothers film version of that play. As the sweet-tempered beauty to Errol Flynn’s gallant swain, she appeared in many costume adventure movies of the 1930s and ’40s, including Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and They Died with Their Boots On (1941). She also played romantic leading roles in Strawberry Blonde (1941), Hold Back the Dawn (1941), and The Male Animal (1942) and portrayed Melanie Wilkes inGone with the Wind (1939).

In 1945 de Havilland won a precedent-setting case against Warner Brothers, which released her from a six-month penalty obligation appended by the studio to her seven-year contract. Free to take more challenging roles, she gave Academy Award-winning performances in To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949). She also gave a superb performance in The Snake Pit (1948). De Havilland moved to France in 1955 and worked infrequently in films after that, most memorably in The Light in the Piazza (1962), Lady in a Cage (1964), and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). She also appeared in a number of television plays.

'She will never forget her': Agony of actress Olivia de Havilland as death of her sister Joan Fontaine finally brings an end to their life-long feud

Hollywood legend Olivia de Havilland was today ‘in mourning’ over the death of her equally famous sister Joan Fontaine, telling friends: ‘I’ll never forget her’.

The Oscar-winning actress is now almost 97, and living in an upmarket apartment block close to the Arc de Triumphe in Paris.

She and her sister were notorious for their bitter quarrels, and barely spent any time together during their long and successful screen careers.

But on Monday Ms De Havilland issued a statement saying she was ‘shocked and saddened’ by Joan’s death on Sunday at the age of 96.

‘Joan was her kid sister – of course she’s hugely sad at her passing,’ said one of Ms De Havilland’s friends in the French capital.

‘She’s certainly in mourning and has made it clear that she will never forget Joan.’

Olivia has been bombarded with flowers and letters since Sunday night, and said in her statement that she was overwhelmed by ‘the many kind expressions of sympathies.’

Ms De Havilland and Ms Fontaine, who lived in California at the time of her death, were among Hollywood's most famous sisters.

Both were nominated for the best actress Oscar in 1941, and Ms Fontaine won it for her role in the film ‘Suspicion’.

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Long feud: Sisters Olivia De Havilland and Joan Fontaine were born just 15 months apart

Recalling the awards ceremony many years later, Ms Fontaine said: ‘All the animus we'd felt toward each other as children, the hair pullings, the savage wrestling matches, the time Olivia fractured my collarbone, all came rushing back in kaleidoscopic imagery.

‘My paralysis was total. I felt Olivia would spring across the table and grab me by the hair.

Left to right: Fontaine opposite Laurence Olivier in Rebecca (he had wanted the part of the second Mrs de Winter to go to his real life soon-to-be wife, Vivien Leigh); and with Orson Welles in Jane Eyre

Joan Fontaine, star of Hitchcock classics, dies at 96

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'I felt age 4, being confronted by my older sister. Damn it, I'd incurred her wrath again!’

Ms De Havilland is hugely respected in France, and was awarded the Legion of Honour by the then President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2010.

She won two Oscars in all, including one for her part in in the 1947 film ‘To Each His Own’. 

Joan Fontaine (left) said the sibling rivalry was encouraged by their ambitious stage mother. It may have also had something to do with their similarity (the photo on the right, for example, is of Olivia de Havilland)

Olivia de Havilland pictured with Frederic Mitterrand at the 36th Cesar French Film Awards in Paris in 2011

When Fontaine tried to congratulate her for the 1947 award, Ms De Havilland ignored her, with a spokesman saying: ‘This goes back for years and years, ever since they were children.’

Ms Fontaine once told The Hollywood Reporter: ‘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.’

The Last Star: An evening with Olivia de Havilland

In 1940, 'Gone With the Wind' swept the Academy Awards. Now, 75 years later, Olivia de Havilland, the film's last surviving star, talks about losing to Hattie McDaniel, swooning for Errol Flynn, and vowing, at 98, to live at least a century.

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(John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images; Reed Saxon/AP)

Gone With The Wind

Posted January 29 2015 — 11:04 AM EST

The petite woman with an elegant swoop of white hair and a neat dash of red lipstick stands to greet her visitor with a hug. “Good evening!” Olivia de Havilland says, leaning in for a Continental two-cheek kiss. It is early January in Paris, and the actress has invited a journalist over for champagne and a chat. She is, of course, impeccably dressed in an embroidered black velvet gown and gold Chanel ballet flats, a strand of pearls knotted chicly at her chest.

The stately town house that has been de Havilland’s home for the past 58 years is undergoing repairs, so she receives her guest in her temporary quarters: a suite in an exclusive hotel that is located, quite fittingly for this grande dame of the silver screen, in a 19th-century château.

An assistant pours bubbly into two flutes. “What are we toasting?” de Havilland asks, raising her glass.

How about the hostess herself?

At 98, Olivia de Havilland is the last great star of Hollywood’s golden age, a woman who began her career during the rise of Technicolor in 1935, formed one of the most indelible screen couples of all time with Errol Flynn, and went on to work with James Cagney, Rita Hayworth, Montgomery Clift, Bette Davis, Richard Burton, Clark Gable, and Vivien Leigh. With her deep brown doe eyes and apple-cheeked smile, the two-time Best Actress winner excelled at playing heroines whose demure bearing belied a feisty core. The most famous of these great ladies was Melanie Hamilton, the tenderhearted foil to Leigh’s scheming Scarlett O’Hara in 1939’s Gone With the Wind. Based on Margaret Mitchell’s best-seller, the beloved epic has sold more tickets in its lifetime than any other film. And 75 years ago it cleaned up at the Academy Awards, winning eight of its 13 nominations.

Having outlived all of her costars (as well as the movie’s mad-genius producer, David O. Selznick, and the three directors he hired to steer the massive ship), de Havilland has been GWTW’s principal spokesperson for almost five decades, the sole bearer of the Tara torch. It’s a privilege she calls “rather wonderful,” as her affection for the film is genuine and deep. She’s seen GWTW “about 30 times,” she says, and still enjoys watching it for the emotional jolt it brings as she reconnects with those costars—Gable, Leigh, Hattie McDaniel, and Leslie Howard—who have long since passed on.

“Luckily, it does not make me melancholy,” she says via email a few days after our meeting. (Though an expert raconteuse, she’s conscientious about facts—”I want to be a font of truth”—and will discuss the finer points of her career only in writing.) “Instead, when I see them vibrantly alive on screen, I experience a kind of reunion with them, a joyful one.”

Joy seems to be a dominant emotion in de Havilland’s world—at least this evening. Though her vision and hearing are somewhat limited, her mind is sharp. She is witty, warm, and engaged, her eyes bright as she spins yarn after lively yarn over the course of a three-hour conversation. “How’s this for an histoire?” she says in her deep, rich voice before launching into a tale of a slapstick bedpan mishap during a stay in a French hospital. Her speech is peppered with throwback words like golly, marvelous, and splendid. More than once, she summons her assistant by cupping her hands around her mouth and playfully calling, “Oh, dear giiirl!”

Her memory is enviable: She vividly recalls lying in her crib as a baby and hearing the clink-clink of her nanny preparing her bottle. And she is delightfully open about her age. While discussing her day-to-day life at the hotel, for instance, she gets a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she describes the handsome fellows from room service. “How many women in this world are served breakfast in bed every morning by a gorgeous young man? I am,” she says. “So how do I feel about older age? Crazy about it! Wouldn’t trade it for anything!”

Even before GWTW, de Havilland was a star. Born to British expats in Japan, she was raised in Saratoga, Calif., and became a contract player at Warner Bros. at age 18. It was there that she met Errol Flynn, the dashing Aussie playboy with whom she shared the screen eight times, most memorably in 1938’s giddy frolic The Adventures of Robin Hood, in which she played a spirited Maid Marian. Their chemistry was instant, yet despite rumors, de Havilland maintains they were never lovers off screen. “Oh, Mr. Flynn, Mr. Flynn, Mr. Flynn! A cantankerous fate kept us together in films and apart in real life,” she writes. “Much as I have sometimes mourned this, if it had been otherwise I would never have played Melanie” and many others. “And who can say that our union would have lasted?” (Even over email, de Havilland is every bit the dowager of theatricality you want her to be.)

Fun as the Flynn pictures were, the actress felt confined at Warner Bros., which cast her in one stock love-interest part after another. If she turned a role down, she was suspended. “What bothered me was playing one-dimensional parts in films which were really about ‘Boy Meets Girl,’ ‘Will Boy Get Girl?’ (He always did),” she emails. “Those roles were intended simply to fill the routine function of ‘The Girl.’ Little, if any, character development was involved.” For a woman who herself was so much more than just “The Girl” in real life, she needed more.

So when an offer came from Selznick to play a character as fully drawn as Melanie—whose trials include giving birth while Atlanta falls to the Yankees—de Havilland knew it could spring her from her creative prison. “The role was just what I wanted, and just what I needed,” she says. Gentle and sincere, her performance earned de Havilland her first Oscar nomination, for Supporting Actress. But at the ceremony, the name called was Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy.

De Havilland was crushed. “When I returned home on Oscar night, aged 23 and the loser of the award…. I was convinced there was no God,” she says via email. But when she considered the historical significance of McDaniel becoming the first African-American to win, her loss didn’t seem so dramatic. And she cheered herself up by interpreting the Academy’s decision as vindication that she belonged in the lead category all along. “About two weeks later, I woke up and thought, ‘Oh, how wonderful! I wasn’t a supporting actress, and Hattie was, and she won! Those blessed voters were not misled for one minute…. I’d rather live in a world where someone who is a supporting actress wins against someone who, instead, is a star playing a starring role!… There is a God, after all!’ “

The real disappointment came back at Warner Bros., which still refused to offer her roles that cracked the superficial ingenue mold. So in 1943, de Havilland fought back. When the studio tried to extend her contract beyond seven years, she sued and won. Her moxie—a quality hardly encouraged in women back then—changed the industry. To this day the law that makes such practices illegal is called the de Havilland Decision. (The honor, she says, feels “absolutely marvelous!”)

For her, the ruling meant artistic freedom at last, and she made the most of it by entering into a golden age of her own. In 1947 she won Best Actress for her portrayal of an unwed mother in To Each His Own. In 1949 she was nominated again, for The Snake Pit, in which she starred as a patient in a mental hospital. On a roll, she then closed out the decade with William Wyler’s 1949 masterpiece, The Heiress. For her turn as a naive young woman who falls for a fortune hunter (Montgomery Clift), the Academy rewarded her with a second Best Actress statuette.

It was no less a figure than James Stewart, an ex-beau, who handed her the trophy on Oscar night. “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!” she writes. “How extraordinary that, almost exactly 10 years after we first met and you escorted me to the New York premiere of Gone With the Wind, it should be you who presented me with that second Oscar and escorted me off stage at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.”

As the hours glide by on this January evening, de Havilland reassures her guest that she is not overstaying her welcome. Gesturing to the champagne flute (which has been refilled numerous times), she says, “You pay attention to the little glass in front of you. When it’s empty, let that be your signal.” And so we keep drinking and talking.

When de Havilland moved to France in 1953 to marry her second husband, a Frenchman, she was all too happy to bid adieu to Hollywood, where television had begun to eclipse film. “The Golden Era…was dying and I knew that whatever replaced it would not be its equal,” she writes. So she focused on her children, Benjamin and Gisèle, took the occasional job by “commuting to Hollywood,” as her son once put it, and earned an Emmy nomination in 1987 for her role as a Russian empress in the NBC miniseries Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna. Even after her second divorce in 1979, living abroad afforded her a life of great privacy, which she continues to cherish. Tabloids frothed for years over her relationship with her sister, the actress Joan Fontaine, which was famously strained, at least according to Fontaine, who wrote about it in her 1978 autobiography. De Havilland, however, does not discuss it. (Fontaine died in 2013.)

Though she lives alone, de Havilland is far from lonely. She regularly speaks on the phone with Gisèle, who lives in California. (Benjamin passed away in 1991 from over-radiation following his treatment for cancer.) Depending on her energy level, she entertains about once a week. She is still a dues-paying member of the Academy and follows nomination season “with extreme interest,” but because of her declining eyesight, she no longer watches many films and does not vote. She can still do crossword puzzles, though, and in the coming months she hopes to make progress on the autobiography she began a few years ago. She’s written five chapters in the same buoyant style that she used in her charming 1962 book of essays, Every Frenchman Has One. A lover of words, she is enjoying mining her rich, long life for remembrances.

And if she has anything to do with it, she will collect many, many more. Because this formidable woman has every intention of celebrating her 100th birthday come July 1, 2016. “Oh, I can’t wait for it,” she says. “I’m certainly relishing the idea of living a century. Can you imagine that? What an achievement.”