Olivia de Havilland Interview (page: 6 / 9) Legendary Leading Lady	Print Interview

Before we go on, let's talk about your family and childhood. We were surprised to learn that you were born in Tokyo, Japan. How did it happen that you were born in Tokyo?

Olivia de Havilland: The natural reply is, "My parents were there at the time," but of course, there's more to the story than that. My father went out to Japan as a very young Cambridge graduate in 1893 to teach in Anglican missionary schools. He was 21. My mother went out much later, in 1907, when she was 21. She went out to teach choral singing to an Anglican community. In the last days of her life, I said, "Mother, do you mean to tell me that you went out to Japan in 1907 at the age of 21 without a chaperon?" and she said, "I was in charge of the captain. He went mad in the Malay straits." I said, "Mother, were you the cause?" and she replied, "There were some who said so." That was my mother. My mother was quite a remarkable person, and she had great charm.

She studied acting as well, didn't she?

Olivia de Havilland: That all came about in a most extraordinary way. She soloed at St. Andrew's Anglican Church in Tokyo, and one day a woman came up to her and said, "You have a very beautiful voice" -- it was a warm soprano -- "and I would like to write a musical play for you." This alarmed my mother because she knew all about singing and music, but she knew nothing about acting. So she thought, "Well, maybe I should learn about acting, and she went back to England." It must have been 1911. I know for a fact because I have done a lot of research, having a passion for accuracy. She enrolled in January of 1912 at Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Academy, which in a few years was licensed as the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, known familiarly today as RADA. When she finished her courses there, the representatives, agents, would come and audition the students right there. They were interested in her largely because of her beautiful singing voice, and so she did get some concert engagements after that, between the summer of 1912 and the summer of 1914.

My father had courted her unsuccessfully in Japan. He had been interested in her for seven years; he told me this story himself. When World War I came along in August of 1914, of course, as an Englishman, he sailed all the way back to England to offer his services. He was a very good shot, but he was over 40 by then. They said, "We're not really looking for chaps like you, not at your age. Go back to Japan, and proceed as you are in your business." He had bought a firm of international patent attorneys, quite different from the way he started out as a teacher, but anyway, it was a very successful international firm. So he decided to look up my mother, and again, he proposed to her. She was not at all in favor, but he persuaded her to flip a coin. She lost, which meant she had to marry, and off they went.

So you were born after they returned to Tokyo?

Olivia de Havilland: Eventually. I was born July the 1st, 1916. My sister was born October 22nd of 1917. I learned Japanese first, and people ask me, "Can you still speak Japanese?," and I say, "Ich ni sanshi go roku shichi hachi kyu ju." Counting up to 10 in Japanese.

Did your parents both speak Japanese?

Olivia de Havilland: Oh yes, indeed. My mother loved her life in Japan.

How did you come to move all the way from Tokyo to Saratoga, California?

Olivia de Havilland: Well this is really quite astounding. Soon after they arrived as a married couple in Tokyo, my mother became interested in amateur theatricals in Tokyo. The British apparently had a renowned amateur theatrical company in Tokyo. She performed in a musical play, perhaps written by the very lady who came up to her that day several years before and admired her voice. It was Kismet. Everybody thinks that the first musical version of Kismet was the one that had such great success in New York City in the 1950s. Well it wasn't. It was this performance, presented in the summer of 1918 in Tokyo, Japan. The King's brother, Arthur, the Duke of Cornwall, was making a state visit representing the British government, the crown, in Japan, and between the Japanese and the British, a program for his visit had been laid out, and one of the chief events in this program was for his Royal Highness to witness the musical play Kismet starring my mother. I have a letter written by an officer at the British embassy telling her of the Duke of Cornwall's great pleasure in the performance That was a tremendous event in my mother's life , you can well imagine. I think my father was quite pleased about that sort of thing too.

They had two properties up in Karuizawa in the mountains for the summer. People fled Tokyo in the summer because the heat is quite extreme. Unfortunately, in this great triumphant moment in my mother's life, a missionary's wife came to call on her one day at Karuizawa and said, "Do you know it is the talk of Tokyo that your husband is having an affair with one of the maids in the household?" You cannot imagine the humiliation that would be for a woman in this small foreign community of diplomats and businessmen. The story that I heard from my mother was that she went down to Tokyo and went into the house, and sure enough, in one of the maid's rooms, she found my father's coat and watch. From then on, of course, the marriage was doomed. She would not go back to that house again, and I don't think she wanted ever to go back to Tokyo again. That was the degree of her humiliation.

They then decided that my mother had to find some place, preferably outside of Japan. There were several possibilities, and the final decision was that my father would buy some land near Victoria on Vancouver Island. Fourteen acres, that was his ideal. He would find us a very pleasant house, and then he would make regular visits to us from Tokyo by the northern route, which was only a week at sea. If you cross from Tokyo to San Francisco, it is two weeks, but not the northern route to Canada. That seemed a very reasonable plan. They intended to go first to San Francisco, so that we could consult Dr. Langley Porter, who was one of the first pediatricians and a renowned one. His fame had reached Tokyo, Japan. We never got to Vancouver Island. We never proceeded up the coast to Canada, because Langley Porter took one look at my tonsils and said, "These have got to come out immediately." I remember my father leaving us. Out came my tonsils. I can remember that very well. My mother leased a flat in a small house that belonged to a San Francisco family I think my father must have known in business, and we stayed there for six months. Then we went down to the Vendome Hotel for a week or two in San José. It was a beautiful Victorian hotel, and people from the East Coast used to come out and spend the winters there, beautiful grounds, and she liked it very much.

I can remember New Year's Eve at the Vendome, 1920. I remember my mother was all excited and dressed up for this gala New Year's celebration. We stayed on there for a little over six months. I remember my father joining us. I think it must have been for my fourth birthday. We didn't see him for many years after that. I failed to mention along the way that on New Year's Eve at the gala at the Vendome Hotel, my mother had met a widower of French Canadian descent, a very prosperous, highly respected businessman in San José. He was a part-owner and general manager of the best department store in San José, Hale Brothers. His name was George Milan Fontaine, and, of course, he was as struck by my mother as my father had been.

The San Francisco fog followed my mother down to San José, which wasn't a bit favorable to her two children, and she rather liked the idea of escaping it entirely. She heard of a village across the valley in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, on the other side of which, of course, is the Pacific Ocean. So she crossed the valley, 12 miles, to the foothills one day and took us to lunch at this chalet on Oak Street, and it was called Lundblad's Lodge. The proprietors were Swedish, and Mrs. Lundblad was the most wonderful cook in the entire world. The Canterbury bells and hollyhocks grew in abundance in the garden, and it was a marvelous place for children. My mother decided, of course, that she would like to settle in this lovely little village surrounded by prune orchards and apricot orchards and pear orchards and with hills all about covered in the springtime with all sorts of beautiful wildflowers of every color and California poppies. In the grounds of the little garden, the front garden of Lundblad's Lodge, there were hummingbirds and bluebirds and woodpeckers and all kinds of birds and beautiful butterflies, swallowtail butterflies, yellow and black, and little blue butterflies and monarch butterflies. We lived this marvelous life in nature, surrounded by nature. My mother then bought some property in a sort of development, three lots, what was called La Paloma Terrace. The number was 231 La Paloma, and now it is 20250. What has happened to this world? Anyway, she bought the land and found an architect she liked and built a house.

Many years later, in the early '50s, I asked my father to come down to Los Angeles and visit me in Beverly Hills. I was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel at that time with my little son, Benjamin Briggs Goodrich, descended from one of the founders of the Republic of Texas, his namesake too.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I asked my father to come down, and he said to me one day, "You know, I never could understand your mother, what caused the breach?" and I said, "Well, Father, it's because a missionary's wife told her in Karuizawa that summer, that fatal summer of 1918 after her great triumph, that you were having an affair with one of the maids in the household," and he said, "Oh?" And I said that, "My mother found your gold watch in one of the maid's rooms." He said, "My gold watch?" He was really quite puzzled by that. He said, "You know, I had a great friend who was in British intelligence, and he was the protector, as it were, of a young Japanese, and she came -- the situation became dangerous for her, and my friend asked me if I would shelter her in the house, and I said of course, and so I let her stay in the house." Isn't that extraordinary? That whole terrible break occurred through a total misunderstanding. Somebody said to me, when I told them this story, "Which story do you believe, your mother's or your father's?" and I thought, "Well, my mother's story, was it for her a true story?" My father's story, I think, was the true story. I really do think that. Yes, because he was a rather prudish man, and he was 36 years old, he confided to me -- he was the son of a vicar -- before he had any sort of well, "experience," as it were. And I think that was arranged by the Japanese, probably with one of those lovely ladies who are trained in conversation, in music, and in other arts as well.

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