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Olivia de Havilland
Legendary Leading Lady
I knew that I had an audience, that people really were interested in my work, and they would go to see a film because I was in it, and I had a responsibility toward them, among other things. I couldn't bear to disappoint them by doing indifferent work at an indifferent film. And Warner Jack would cast me in an indifferent film and an indifferent role, and I thought, "I'll have to refuse, I must do it," and I did, and of course, I was put on suspension. Now, the contracts allowed that in those days. If you said, "No, I don't want to do this part," they would then suspend the contract for the length of time it took another actress to play the role, and they would take that period of time, tack it on to the end of the contract. So in May of 1943, I found myself with six months of suspension time."
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Olivia de Havilland
Legendary Leading Lady
Olivia de Havilland: There really wasn't any doubt about the right decision for me to take, and one of the nice things I thought was, "If I do win, other actors feeling frustration such as I feel will not have to endure that. They will take the suspension, going without pay of course, but knowing they will not have to serve that time again." And indeed, I didn't realize how much that could mean to other artists in the profession until actually, about two or three years ago. I was at a luncheon in Hollywood, and I sat next to a very charming and very able man, very highly regarded man, Roger Mayer, a lawyer. Now, he was not related to Louis B. Mayer, but he was apparently with Metro [MGM studios] for a certain length of time, and he said, "What that meant to writers, you can't imagine." Writers like Scott Fitzgerald, Faulkner was one. He didn't mention those particular names, but indeed, the names he meant were of equal stature. He said, "Those men would be put under contract, and then assigned something, a scene to write in a film for which they had no natural inclination and no knowledge." I mean, say a western, a writer whose great specialty was the Deep South. He said, "Those men couldn't bear to do a poor piece of work, and they knew that they would, and that they would risk their great international reputations in going ahead and trying to meet the requirement of the studio. Now, when you won your case, they were thrilled, because of course, they were perfectly willing to go without pay until they were assigned some kind of work for which they had a feel and knew that they could do a distinguished piece of work by it."
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Olivia de Havilland
Legendary Leading Lady
I was very, very anxious to be a success for Major Richardson, and there was a boy sitting right there, a big, kind of husky boy, not tall, but muscular, and blue eyes and brown hair and maroon corduroy dressing gown and his gray pajamas, and so I went up to him and I said, "Well, hello there." No reaction. He didn't even look at me. I said, "Well, it's nice to see you today." No reaction. "What's your name?" No reaction. "Well, what state do you come from?" No reaction. I asked five questions. Failed, failed miserably with each question, and I thought, "I am a total catastrophe. I have failed Major Richardson and this experiment." Well, they were all watching me, these doctors, and so I passed to the next patient, and I had much better luck with him, and things began to look brighter, and from then on, they were really very bright. Major Richardson explained to me. He said, "You know, that first boy that you encountered was in a catatonic state, and of course, he wouldn't respond. He was in a totally unresponsive state, but when he comes out of it, he will remember every single detail of what happened in much greater precision and detail than any of us." So, when we finished, he said, "I think it's been a success. Now I want you to do something for me. You have many hospitals on your schedule, at each hospital, I ask you to go first to the post surgeon, and tell him that you would like to visit a psychiatric ward -- and there will be one in every hospital you visit -- and then ask him to ask the doctor -- the psychiatrist in charge of the psychiatric ward -- if he would like you to make that visit. I beg you to do that." So, I said I would do it, and I kept my promise.
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Michael Dell
Founder & Chairman, Dell Inc.
We did a complete, full investigation and found that one of our suppliers, Sony, had made some batteries that had the possibility of this defect. Quite a small likelihood, but still it was there. So we made the decision to recall all of those batteries. Now the interesting thing, if you go back and look at when we made that decision, the popular wisdom was that it was an issue that was unique to Dell, and Dell was the only company in the world that had this problem, and it must've been because Dell did something wrong in the way it designed its computers. Several weeks later, another computer company announced a similar recall for the same Sony batteries. And then several weeks after that, another company. Eventually all of the companies that used the Sony batteries announced recalls. We were very proactive in doing it, and I think our teams did a fantastic job in sort of doing the right thing, when you know you could have had all sorts of arguments about, "Well, it's a really small percentage " or those kinds of things. But we actually knew the problem was there. And you know, even though there were debates about, "Okay. Is it going to be six batteries that fail, or is it going to be ten batteries that fail?" Doesn't really matter. One battery failing is one too many.
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