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

What was Max Reinhardt like as a director? How did he work with you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Reinhardt was a very ebullient man, marvelous, and his style of direction was a very special one. He loved to act out the parts, all the parts. He loved that, and he expected you -- he had obviously worked each one out -- he expected you to catch his intonations and inflections and duplicate them. So, I would mark the cadence of the way he read the lines -- or spoke the lines, I should say, he never read anything -- and tried to remember them and then reproduce them and have them there for the next rehearsal. I did have a bit of a trouble. I would rehearse quite carefully at the Highland Hotel. That was the name of this little hotel, but then he would get me, you know, "No, no, no, no." He would do it again at the next rehearsal, and I would study, and then I would do it. After, he would say, "Good. Now keep it," and it was the keeping of it that was the problem.

Wasn't it frustrating not to be able to create your own interpretation of the character?

Olivia de Havilland: It was curious. I liked it. It was an interesting problem. It was interesting to try and do it well, but it was imposed direction. In Alice in Wonderland it came from inside out. I just was Alice, so it was quite different. His direction was fascinating. I knew I was learning a lot, but I hoped eventually to have a role which came from inside, and was done creatively.

As it turned out, this performance led to the beginning of your film career. Was it Reinhardt's decision to cast you in the film of Midsummer Night's Dream?

Olivia de Havilland: Yes. After the conclusion of the tour, which took us of course to the San Francisco Opera House and the University of California at Berkeley, it was decided that Reinhardt would make a film of Midsummer Night's Dream, and he wanted to take with him two performers from the stage production: myself, playing Hermia; and of course Mickey Rooney, who was a sensation as Puck in the play, and again in the movie.

What advice would you give to young people today who are interested in going into this field? Should they take the route you did and just jump right in, or would you say go to college if you have a chance?

Olivia de Havilland: Go. Go. There are wonderful courses. There's one in North Carolina that teaches a four-year course. I think it's the North Carolina School of the Arts. I am told that you learn every aspect of the film business: producing, directing, sound, makeup, camera, acting, set designing, costume designing. I don't know if you have to learn advertising or not, but this is wonderful. I would highly recommend anyone who wants anything to do with the film business, especially acting and directing and screen writing, to take a course like that. UCLA has a famous course too, and it is worth looking up what the courses are. I would highly recommend that.

Do you yourself regret not having gone to college and not having been able to take that Mills College scholarship?

Olivia de Havilland: I do regret it. I regret it very, very much. I think those four years are extremely important in university, not only for what you learn, but it gives students a chance to find out what they are best suited to. To be happy in a profession, you have to be temperamentally suited to it as well as have talent and training for it. It is very important to be happy in the profession that you take up in life. I don't know whether this was really the profession I might have taken. I had other interests too, but anyway, life propelled me into the profession. Life and necessity, because of the Depression.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The motion picture business is not easy. It was not easy then. It was hard, really hard, exhausting too, in every way physically. It was a six-day week, and Saturday night, it was the custom to ask at the end of the week -- the actors having gotten up at 5:30, 6:00 in the morning to report to makeup. Women had to report at 6:30 on the set, ready, dressed, up on your lines, and ready to shoot. You would work until 6:00, 6:30 at night, but six days a week. The custom was on Saturday night to excuse the company at 6:00 for dinner and come back and shoot until midnight. I can't tell you how hard that was on us, and how the actors disliked doing it and the camera crew, grips, everyone disliked that very much. You know what I did to get around that? Well, I suggested to the cameraman that we put dark circles under my eyes, that he photograph me very badly, and I would show up in the rushes, and then he would say, "What's the matter with her appearance?" "Well, she was very tired, Jack, after the week." Finally, they abandoned that practice, at least they did with me.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

You've said that in addition to going to college, you believe that American young people should travel abroad.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Olivia de Havilland: For the young who are in college, I think it is terribly important for this country that the young have at least one year of university in some foreign country. It's extremely important to understand another culture, another people. Here we are isolated, this huge continent, isolated from the rest of the world by two great oceans. We don't understand other peoples. It's so ironic, because we are made up of people of every race whose origin -- origins were other countries. We are almost completely ignorant, and we are rather arrogant in our ignorance, and we are going to make terrible blunders that are injurious to other peoples abroad, and in the end, to ourselves. It's imperative.

Otherwise, we will be a retrogressive nation, and we are on our way. I know three university students: one is going to do postgraduate work, a brilliant girl; another, who I think will also do postgraduate work; another who is 19, a sophomore. The 19-year-old has a capacity for analysis, which would be counted as absolutely brilliant in a 45-year-old woman. She can't spell. She knows her way around a laptop with these mechanisms that spell for you, but she can't spell, didn't think it was necessary. Neither can these other two girls. Top students they were. Can't spell. Now that's retrogressive. I'll bet you anything they can't add either, because they've got the calculator. Also, one of the reasons they can't spell is they will watch television, you see, instead of reading books. They won't look up anything in their dictionary even. It is all done by pressing buttons.

Reading! Think of what the brain goes through! It is a very, very special function. When you read, you visualize. You imagine the characters. When you go and watch television, it is not only physically passive -- reading is physically passive certainly -- but it is all done for you. It does arouse your interest, your full attention, and your emotions, but by a different process. The other process, the capacity to envision yourself, is very important to develop. If you do that, you are apt to learn to spell anyway, because you will see the difference between words that sound the same, like "manor," m-a-n-or, and "manner," m-a-n-n-e-r, and how they are used, how they are spelled differently. Oh, it is imperative, and I think something has to be done to encourage them to learn to spell, to read, to add and subtract.

You have said that reading biographies was of great interest to you when you were a young woman.

Olivia de Havilland: Biographies I found fascinating. I would visualize Michelangelo. There was someone called Steinmetz who was a scientist. Can you imagine me, no talent for science at all, riveted by the story of Steinmetz? What other biographies riveted me? Fannie Campbell, from a great British acting family in the 19th century, she came to America, and she went on a lecture tour all over this country when it was just developing. I thought that was so enthralling, courageous. Look at the adventures, at how she learned, what she learned. There came a time in my life when it was suggested that I do a lecture tour, and do you know I did what Fannie Campbell did. I had wanted to do it when I read the book about her, and by heaven, years later, that's what I did. It was very reassuring. I went all over this country. It was going through a very tough period, and I met nice people everywhere, very reassuring.

You had initially shown an interest in teaching. You've said how important teachers were in your life, and that in a way, you see teaching as a sacred profession.

Olivia de Havilland: Yes, it is. Think of them. Any profession that really serves humanity and affects humanity for the good is, in a way, a sacred profession: the medical profession, the nursing profession. But the teaching profession? A whole civilization! Civilizations are formed by teachers. Our country depends on them. Our young depend on them. Our lives depend on them.

Do you think you would you have enjoyed being a teacher?

Olivia de Havilland: I did think about it. It's such a thrilling thing to do. When I was very young at school, I was good at my studies. I remember that George Edward Morris's mother asked my mother if I would coach him every week, Saturday, and my mother said, "Yes, Olivia could do that," and George Edward Morris's mother said, "I will pay 25 cents an hour for this." Well, that was a huge sum. So I very happily coached George Edward Morris in spelling, reading, and arithmetic. He was ten, I think. I hope his spelling improved. I hope he did improve in his studies.

When I got to high school I was full of despair and thought I would never be able to do Latin, but through my mother's helping me with my homework for two weeks, I became quite good at it. In fact, they had to invent a new grade. It was A-plus because I was that far ahead of the other students, and to give me an A was unfair. So it became known that I was pretty good at Latin. Sybil Lord's mother called up my mother and said, "Would you let Olivia coach Sybil in Latin?" I think she was willing to pay something like 50 or 75 cents an hour for this. Well, I was very happy to coach Sybil Lord in Latin!

You've lived in France for many years now. You speak French, and you have written very charmingly about life in France. Do you think that living there has changed your perspective?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Olivia de Havilland: It's been an extraordinary experience, absolutely extraordinary to learn about another culture and other people. It is an immense privilege and an exciting adventure. Not only that, but just living in Europe has been an extraordinary experience, because I have been living in a culture of peace. Those 19-year-old American boys -- Omaha Beach, and up and down that coast, they didn't die for nothing. Think of it. Europe, with all these different countries, each country separate from the other in terms of history, culture, language, all of them for 2,000 years and more at war with each other, generation after generation, and all of a sudden, after World War II, they didn't want to kill each other anymore, and we now have the European Union. It is a miracle. And the culture there is, indeed, a culture of peace, and the thought of solving a problem, a disagreement through war, unthinkable. Unthinkable.

Imagine if the United States had been created 2,000 years ago and from then until now, Nevada had declared war on California regularly all through those centuries. If Florida had been at war with Alabama, North Dakota with South Dakota, Oregon with Washington and Idaho and Montana and the rest of them, Nebraska, Mississippi, all at war with each other for 2,000 years, and suddenly, one day they decide they don't want to kill each other anymore. That's what's happened in Europe. War is a very stupid way to settle a disagreement. Unthinkable. Won't do. And in Europe, you have the feeling that the whole human race has been raised to another level by what has happened there.

What is your sense of the American Dream? Does it still hold true for you?

Olivia de Havilland: I think we have abandoned our dream, and we must get back to it. We must. We absolutely must.

Looking back on your career, what are the roles that are closest to your heart? Melanie?

Olivia de Havilland: Melanie, of course. Look at what she experiences in terms of life experience in that film, a great progression and development of character! And then To Each His Own, the development of the character there was just marvelous. As an acting problem, of course, Dark Mirror. That film is not close to my heart. I am glad I did it, but you cannot say it's close to my heart, but there was Jody Norris, very close to my heart, in her development, and certainly Virginia Cunningham, as you well know by now, in The Snake Pit, and Catherine Sloper in The Heiress. Look at what she underwent, discovering that her father did not love her and didn't even like her, and that the man she loved didn't love her either. In a woman's life those are enormous experiences. I wanted to play her.

"Difficult work, done well," you said earlier. How do you think the world of film is different today than in the 1930s and '40s, when you were so busy at the studios?

Olivia de Havilland: I'm not very familiar with it today. I suppose you would like to know how actresses of my day differ from actresses of today. Well, the actresses of today are richer.

They make more money per picture, that's for sure. Thank you for giving us so much of your time and sharing so many memories with us.

Olivia de Havilland: It was a great pleasure. A great pleasure.

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