page_title: Olivia de Havilland
section_title: Early films, 1935–1937
hierarchical_section_title: Olivia de Havilland / Career / Early films, 1935–1937
caption_attribution_description: Screenshot of Olivia de Havilland from the film Call It a Day
context_page_description: Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland DBE was a British-American actress. The major works of her cinematic career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films and was one of the leading actresses of her time. She was the last major surviving star from the Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema and the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award winner until her death in July 2020. Her younger sister was the actress Joan Fontaine.
  De Havilland first came to prominence with Errol Flynn as a screen couple in adventure films such as Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood. One of her best-known roles is that of Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind, for which she received her first of five Oscar nominations, the only one for Best Supporting Actress.
  De Havilland departed from ingénue roles in the 1940s and later distinguished herself for performances in Hold Back the Dawn, To Each His Own, The Snake Pit, and The Heiress, receiving nominations for Best Actress for each and winning for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She was also successful in work on stage and television.
context_section_description: De Havilland made her screen debut in Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was filmed at Warner Brothers
  studios from December 19, 1934, to March 9, 1935. During the production, de Havilland picked up film acting techniques from the film's co-director William Dieterle and camera techniques from cinematographer Hal Mohr, who was impressed with her questions about his work. By the end of filming, she had learned the effect of lighting and camera angles on how she appeared on screen and how to find her best lighting. Following premieres in New York City and Beverly Hills, the film was released on October 30, 1935. Despite the publicity campaign, the film generated little enthusiasm with audiences. While the critical response was mixed, de Havilland's performance was praised by The San Francisco Examiner critic. In his review in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Winston Burdett wrote that she "acts graciously and does greater justice to Shakespeare's language than anyone else in the cast". Two minor comedies followed, Alibi Ike with Joe E. Brown and The Irish in Us (both 1935) with James Cagney. In both films, she played the sweet and charming love interest‍—‌a role into which she would later become typecast. After the experience of being a Reinhardt player, de Havilland felt disappointed being assigned these routine heroine roles. In March, de Havilland and her mother moved into an apartment at the Chateau des Fleurs at 6626 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood.
  Although Warner Brothers studio had assumed that the many costumed films that studios such as MGM had earlier produced would never succeed during the years of the American Great Depression, they nonetheless took a chance by producing Captain Blood (also 1935). The film is a swashbuckler action drama based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini and directed by Michael Curtiz. Captain Blood starred a then little-known contract bit-part actor and former extra, Errol Flynn, alongside the little-known de Havilland. According to film historian Tony Thomas, both actors had "classic good looks, cultured speaking voices, and a sense of distant aristocracy about them". Filmed between August 5 and October 29, 1935, Captain Blood gave de Havilland the opportunity to appear in her first costumed historical romance and adventure epic, a genre to which she was well suited, given her beauty and elegance. In the film, she played Arabella Bishop, the niece of a Jamaica plantation owner, who purchases at auction an Irish physician wrongly condemned to servitude. The on-screen chemistry between de Havilland and Flynn was evident from their first scenes together, where clashes between her character's spirited hauteur and his character's playful braggadocio did not mask their mutual attraction to each other. Arabella is a feisty young woman who knows what she wants and is willing to fight for it. The bantering tone of their exchanges in the film‍—‌the healthy give-and-take and mutual respect‍—‌became the basis for their on-screen relationship in subsequent films. Captain Blood was released on December 28, 1935, and received good reviews and wide public appeal. De Havilland's performance was singled out in The New York Times and Variety. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The popular success of the film, as well as the critical response to the on-screen couple, led to seven additional collaborations.
  De Havilland appeared in Mervyn LeRoy's historical drama Anthony Adverse (1936) with Fredric March. Based on the popular novel by Hervey Allen, the film follows the adventures of an orphan raised by a Scottish merchant, whose pursuit of fortune separates him from the innocent peasant girl he loves, marries, and eventually loses. De Havilland played a peasant girl, Angela, who after being separated from her slave-trader husband, becomes opera star Mademoiselle Georges, the mistress of Napoleon. The film earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. It garnered de Havilland good exposure and the opportunity to portray a character as she develops over time. 
caption: In Call It a Day, 1937
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image ExifOffset": "38", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "481", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "359"}