(Photo by Paramount Pictures. Thumbnail image: MGM, Warner Bros.)

15 Fresh Olivia de Havilland Movies

Olivia de Havilland, the enduring icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age, made her big screen debut in 1935’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at age 19. Barely out of high school, de Havilland was literally doing the same play in community theater just the year before. She was quickly signed into a studio contract with Warner Bros., where she was paired with Errol Flynn, igniting one of the top on-screen romantic couplings of the era.

Released the same year as Midsummer, the first of their movies was Captain Blood, the swashbuckling classic that has excited audiences and critics for generations. De Havilland would be legally bound to Warner Bros. until 1945 after an acrimonious, lawsuit-filled split, but the 10-year triangle between she, Flynn, and Warners would produce a bounty of Fresh films, including The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. The latter 1938 movie was by far their most successful outing, a grand, colorful, Best Picture-nominated adventure. We called it one of the 300 Essential Movies you need to watch.

Despite the steady roles and growing fame Warner Bros. provided, she flourished most creatively whenever escaping the binding clauses. She was “loaned” out to MGM for 1939’s Gone With the Wind, where she got her first Oscar nomination as Southern belle Melanie Hamilton. Similarly, she was seen by the Academy when working with Paramount in 1941 for the political romantic drama Hold Back the Dawn. After being released by Warners in the mid-1940s, shrewd role selection got her recognized for the rest of the decade, as she won the Best Actress Oscar for 1946’s To Each His Own and 1949’s The Heiress.

1964’s Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte would be her final Fresh movie (she would appear in just five more overall before retiring by 1980). It’s a cracked-up psychological thriller starring other Golden Age legends – Bette Davis! Joseph Cotten! Agnes Moorehead! Mary Astor! – whose behind-the-scenes drama compares to the brazen madness on display. And now, we celebrate the life and career of true Hollywood royalty by presenting 15 Fresh Olivia de Havilland movies. —Alex Vo