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Olivia de Havilland Interview (page: 8 / 9)Legendary Leading Lady
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Not long after that you were discovered by the great German director Max Reinhardt, who cast you in A Midsummer Night's Dream. How did that come about?
Olivia de Havilland: Oh, yes. Well, the second production that Freddy Stover and Dorothea decided to present in the village of Saratoga was to be an outdoor production. Dorothea's mother, Mrs. Johnston, owned the Saratoga Inn. It had lovely gardens in front, and something magical behind. You took a pathway down to the village creek, and there was this wonderful grove of sycamore trees surrounding the village creek, the perfect site for an outdoor production of Midsummer Night's Dream. This was scheduled for June, after I graduated from high school. I was to play Puck. I helped to make my own costume. Mrs. Johnston made the other costumes, and Freddy again designed the sets, and this time, he played Bottom.
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It was the Depression. I knew I had to go to college. There was no question about it. In Saratoga, the girls all went to college. It was unthinkable if you didn't. Whereas, in England, of course, it was unthinkable that a girl would go to university, and so I tried out for a scholarship and took an exam at Stanford, sat at Stanford for Mills [College], passed in group one, and won the scholarship. This I knew as early as, I think, April of 1934, before I graduated. Mills was known for its drama and speech arts course, and I thought, "Well, I'll major in that, I think, because, well, I don't know what else to major in. So, I'll major in that, and the main thing is I hope that -- I don't know what I really want to do in life. I should have a career. I would like to have a profession." We were all encouraged, the girls were, more or less, to think about that in those days, because of the Depression. And so I thought, well, at least I will have these four years, sort of sequestered from life and studying, and I'll take this major in drama and speech arts and hope to win a scholarship for the following year, because the only way I can get through college is by doing that, but I hope I'll find what I really should do in life. And all of us, I think, were brought up with a sense that we had a place in life, that there was a right course for each of us to take, which would be the right course, a special pathway individual to ourselves.
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I read in the newspapers that Max Reinhardt, who was the greatest living theatrical personage of the day, would be presenting Midsummer Night's Dream in the Hollywood Bowl, the San Francisco Opera House, and the Faculty Glade and the Greek Theater at the University of California in Berkeley. Well, I thought, "Golly, if I could watch his rehearsals, I will be so good at everything I try to do. I will have learned so much, and I will have such prestige, in my drama and speech arts course at Mills, that I am sure to win my sophomore scholarship."
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So it turned out that Dorothea Johnston knew Professor Sibley of the University of California and his daughter, Katherine Sibley, whose idea all this was. Katherine Sibley had gone off to Europe at a time when there were no arts or theater festivals in the United States, but Europe was alive with them. It was very fashionable to go for the season and do all the festivals. It was she who said to her father, "Why can't California have a festival?" Obviously a very, very good idea, so the California Festival Association was formed. Dorothea, knowing Katherine Sibley, asked her if I might watch the rehearsal. Katherine Sibley came down and saw one of our performances of Midsummer Night's Dream. I must tell you about those performances. The audience sat on a platform constructed over the village stream, rather festive in its feeling right then and there, and we had a full moon for all three performances. It was pretty magical.
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Katherine Sibley came to one of the performances, and she said, "Yes, I will try to arrange this for you." And when Felix Weissberger came ahead to the University of California to examine the Faculty Glade and the Greek Theater -- he was Reinhardt's casting director or sort of general manager of the production -- she made an appointment for me to meet him up there for dinner at a little restaurant near the campus, and he said, "I'd like to hear your reading of Puck," and it just so happened that I had brought with me my gym bloomers and my tennis shoes. So we retired to the faculty room, and I put on my gym bloomers and I put on my tennis shoes, and I leapt all over the tables and chairs of the faculty room, giving my exuberant performance of Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream. To my astonishment, Felix Weissberger, watching this extraordinary performance, said, "I would like you to meet me tomorrow morning in San Francisco, which is where I am staying, at my hotel at 9:30, and I want you to study the part of Hermia." Well, this was quite a request, but I was keen for it.
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Dorothea drove me all the way down to Saratoga that night, 35 miles an hour.
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It took us almost two hours to get there, 35 miles up the valley to San Francisco to meet on time -- and we were on time -- Felix Weissberger, at his hotel, and there I read the lines of Hermia. But at the end of this reading -- I was 17 -- he said, "If you come down to Hollywood in four weeks time, you may understudy the role of Hermia." Well, can you imagine what that meant? Incredible news! I was now going to be an official member of the Reinhardt company. Well, I was going to get a scholarship straight through my senior year, no question about that, with this kind of prestige and learning experience.
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Well, in four weeks time I was down there. Two artists drove me down. They saw to it that I was established in a very nice, very respectable little hotel run by Ruth B. Kinney. She was a lady lawyer, and I shared her bathroom with her, so she could keep her eye on me at all times and protect me from whatever dangers lurked in this strange city of which I had no knowledge. I found Felix Weissberger, and was disappointed to learn I was not the first understudy. I was the second understudy. The first understudy was a darling girl from Palo Alto, Jean Rouverol, who was under contract to Paramount. You will never guess who was cast as Hermia. None other than a graduate of UC, also under contract to Paramount, named Gloria Stuart who years later won an Academy Award for her performance in Titanic! I owe a lot to her. I owe my whole career to that lady. She could not come to the rehearsals because, on loaner from Paramount, she was making a film at Warner Brothers. They thought the film would finish in good time, so that she would be able to actually perform in the play, but she was able to come to only three rehearsals. Then Jean Rouverol dropped out; she had to make a film with W.C. Fields at Paramount.
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I was the first understudy. I took all the rehearsals, all but three, and I started receiving Max Reinhardt's direction. Well, well, well! And it turned out that, as the days went by and weeks passed and as the opening night drew closer, it was evident that the company could not get along without this -- by this time, I was 18 -- 18-year-old school girl who was understudying Hermia. They couldn't have the rehearsals without her. They had to have her. I understood this, that I had this huge responsibility toward this company, and Herr Professor Doktor Reinhardt, the California Festival Association and the Hollywood Bowl, the San Francisco Opera House even, but certainly the Hollywood Bowl, and I thought, well, the day for enrollment at Mills was getting closer, and I wasn't going to be able to report. I had to stick with the company.
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So I wrote to the Dean of Women and explained why I couldn't report, and she wrote back. I think her name was Miss Daikin. She wrote back and said, "That's quite all right. Don't worry about it. Your scholarship will be perfectly good in February for the spring term."
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Now the day approached, opening night, and five days before that fatal night, September 17th, 1934, Jesse Wadsworth, Gloria Stuart's agent, came to morning rehearsal it was, and said to Reinhardt, "We're very sorry, but Miss Stuart will not be able to go on opening night." So Reinhardt turned to me -- Herr Professor Doktor -- and he said, "You will play the part." And I did, but I must tell you, that opening night is a night I hope never to live through again, at least the first part of it. It was just the first part. I had a terrible attack of stage fright. I never did with Alice in Wonderland. For my supper, I had brought tomato juice and there we were in the wings -- oh, and I must describe to you the set. Oh how wonderful it was in the wings, and I had to go behind the bushes, and I lost my tomato juice and the first assistant had to take me by the shoulder and say, he said to me, "You're on!" and he pushed me on the stage.
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Now terrified, I went with the three other lovers. We're on the stage for our first scene, which was with Theseus and Hippolyta. Theseus was played by John Lodge, who later became the Governor of Connecticut. He belonged to that famous Lodge family of New England.
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I knew that the cue for my first lines came from Theseus. So I watched him very carefully, and he was talking, and then he closed his mouth and he looked at me expectantly, and I thought, "Oh. Well, this is when I'm supposed to speak." And I opened my mouth, and these perfectly strange words came out, and he didn't look at all surprised, and then his mouth opened, and other words came out of his mouth, and then he closed his mouth, and then I spoke. I opened my mouth and other words came out, and nobody looked surprised and nobody looked embarrassed or thunderstruck or horrified, and then it was time for the four lovers to make their exit, and we trooped down and made our exit around the rim of the stage, and there was this great round of applause. It was so surprising and so absolutely wonderful that I couldn't wait to get back on stage, and I didn't have stage fright from that moment on, not in that performance.
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Now, I've got to tell you what Reinhardt did with the Bowl. There is that great shell that is normally present, sort of encompassing the stage of the Hollywood Bowl where the symphony orchestra so often plays. That great shell was slid behind an arm on a railroad, on tracks, so that you couldn't see it, and on the stage, he built a great hill, and into that hill were planted five huge oak trees, and the whole hill was covered with grassy turf. To the left, as you are facing the stage, there was a platform, a very high platform, screened with bushes and branches. The Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra was situated there, so that when they played Mendelssohn's music, you didn't know where it was coming from. It just filled the night, but you didn't know its source. There were bushes on the stage too -- the famous episode of the tomato juice. At the crest of the hill, he built a bridge right over what I think is now the parking lot and maybe even Highland Avenue. He built it from the crest of the hill right over to a mountain, and he carved a winding path that led from the other side of the hill right to the bridge. He also had this dark hill wired, so that tiny little lights like fireflies came on at the beginning of the performance, when the mysterious music of Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream suite began to float on the night air.
This was during the Depression, and he engaged 100 boys from the CCC -- Civilian Conservation Corps -- young people who the government was seeing to it that they had work to do and could feed themselves. You can't imagine the state the country was in then. I think they got a dollar a night. They were dressed in Greek togas. The whole performance was costumed in some Baroque and some sort of Greek costumes. Greek Baroque! They were torch-bearers. As the music began to play and the lights flickered all over the dark mountain, over this crest of the mountain came these torchbearers, and you saw a hundred torches winding down this pathway, then over the bridge, and they split and lined the sides of this great hill where the court ladies then assembled, and court gentlemen, and finally Theseus and Hippolyta make their entrance and eventually the four lovers. That was something remarkable. That was in the tradition of European festivals, and that was the genius of Max Reinhardt. Do you know, no one knows his name today? That is so dreadful.
Olivia de Havilland Interview, Page:
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This page last revised on May 05, 2008 13:50 EST
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