. But if De Havilland’s actions took some by surprise, it shouldn’t have. Whatever you think of the merits of her position — or the even more dubious merits of “Feud: Bette and Joan” — it was hardly the first time she had struck an important blow at a system with a long and lucrative history of treating actors like property in general, and of stifling, exploiting and underestimating women in particular. Crucially, she had proved more successful in her litigation against Warner Bros.
She had first signed that contract when she played Hermia in Max Reinhardt’s 1935 film of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — a luminous debut landed on the strength of her performance in a community theater production at age 18. Her films at Warner Bros.
De Havilland’s splendid performance as Maid Marian in “The Adventures of Robin Hood” , directed by Curtiz and William Keighley, remains some of her best-loved work. But she knew she was destined for greater opportunities than the romantic interests, comic foils and second bananas that Warner Bros. threw her way. One of those post-WB opportunities led to the 1946 melodrama “To Each His Own,” which earned De Havilland her first Oscar for lead actress.
I’ve said deliberately little so far about “Gone With the Wind,” a movie whose recent streaming-era controversy has already generatedthis year and a title that dominates the headlines announcing De Havilland’s death. To see the film is to understand why. In that defiantly contested, defiantly beloved 1939 landmark, she took on the role of the saintly Melanie Wilkes — a role so clearly destined for her that she managed to do it for David O. Selznick while still under contract at Warner Bros.
Defying the truism that you can’t make a virtuous character interesting, De Havilland’s Melanie serves as both a welcome corrective to the selfish Scarlett O’Hara and, remarkably, Scarlett’s most sincere and persuasive defender. Her tenderness becomes the prism through which we come to love and accept Scarlett for ourselves. And yet, no less than her contemporary Catherine Sloper, struggling north of the Mason-Dixon line, Melanie turns out to be no pushover.
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