De Havilland recalls wonder of 'Gone With the Wind'
By Ron Givens
(N.Y.) DAILY NEWS
NEW YORK - One of Olivia de Havilland's greatest scenes took place way, way off the silver screen. It was, in fact, the performance that earned her the role of Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in "Gone With the Wind," coming back to theaters tomorrow.
The scene takes place in 1938 at the home of David O. Selznick, the mega-producer who was then putting together the epic film that would premiere the next year. The 22-year-old de Havilland is Melanie and director George Cukor -- a gay, roly-poly man with a mop of black curly hair and black-framed glasses -- is Scarlett O'Hara. The audience is Selznick.
"George gave a very passionate performance, clutching the drapes. I thought it was the wildest spectacle imaginable," says de Havilland. "But a part of me kept control and played it as if Scarlett was there. It was a miracle that I managed to do it. And it was because of that scene that I was chosen."
Remembering this audition, de Havilland's eyes light up and she fairly hoots with pleasure. The two-time Oscar winner (best actress honors for 1946's "To Each His Own" and 1949's "The Heiress"), who will turn 82 in July, looks positively regal, with her swept-up, silvery coif and her erect, perched-on-the-edge-of-the-chair posture, but she couldn't be more charming and down-to-earth. Before the interview commences, she hops up and moves her chair a little closer to make sure she can hear the conversation clearly.
She has come to town from Paris, where she has lived since the mid-50s, to promote the movie that made her a major star. "It was the happiest experience of my career," says de Havilland, whose throaty voice has a way of caressing and projecting language in a sensuous, musical way. "Certainly, there were tremendous difficulties along the way, but it was the happiest."
While de Havilland has some amusing memories of the "GWTW" production -- during rehearsals of the birthing scene, she was tethered to a concrete block, so that Clark Gable got stuck when he tried to lift her -- her recollections also turn sad. Victor Fleming, the second director on the project, suffered a nervous breakdown.
And Vivien Leigh, a delicate actress who had the most grueling schedule of all the actors, suffered physical hardship. "On the last day of the production, I went on the set because there was going to be a small reception, and when I passed Vivien Leigh, I didn't recognize her. She seemed diminished by the enormous effort."
The release of "GWTW" made de Havilland a major star. Previously, she had built a solid reputation as an endearing leading lady, mostly in adventure pictures such as "Captain Blood" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood," costarring in both with Errol Flynn.
But instead of casting her in more prestigious projects, de Havilland's studio, Warner Bros., put her in run-of-the-mill flicks. "I thought it was so unfair to the public and so dangerous to me to be assigned to that kind of material now that the public really expected a lot out of me," she says. "They wanted to exploit in an inferior way the renown and acclaim of 'Gone With the Wind.'"
Relations between de Havilland and Warner Bros. became so strained that she sued in 1943, and the case broke the stranglehold that film companies had on actors in Hollywood. It was a risky move. "They did say I'd never work again," she remembers, "but that turned out not to be true at all, and wasn't that wonderful? I got to choose the pictures I wanted to do, and that was thrilling."