Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland was a British-American actress. The major works of her cinematic career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films and was one of the leading actresses of her time. At the time of her death in 2020 at age 104, she was the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award winner and was widely considered as being the last surviving major star from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Her younger sister was Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine.
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was an English-American actress who is best knowns for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the "Golden Age". Fontaine appeared in more than 45 films in a career that spanned five decades. She was the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland. Their rivalry was well-documented in the media at the height of Fontaine's career.
Bowen Charlton "Sonny" Tufts III was an American stage, film, and television actor. He is best known for the films he made as a contract star at Paramount in the 1940s, including So Proudly We Hail!. He also starred in the cult classic Cat-Women of the Moon.
Clara Lou "Ann" Sheridan was an American actress and singer. She is best known for her roles in the films San Quentin (1937) with Humphrey Bogart, Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) with James Cagney and Bogart, They Drive by Night (1940) with George Raft and Bogart, City for Conquest (1940) with Cagney and Elia Kazan, The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) with Bette Davis, Kings Row (1942) with Ronald Reagan, Nora Prentiss (1947), and I Was a Male War Bride (1949) with Cary Grant.
George Brent was an Irish-American stage, film, and television actor. He is best remembered for the eleven films he made with Bette Davis, which included Jezebel and Dark Victory.
My Cousin Rachel is a 1952 American romantic mystery film directed by Henry Koster and starring Olivia de Havilland, Richard Burton, Audrey Dalton, Ronald Squire, George Dolenz and John Sutton. The film is based on the 1951 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier.
Little Women is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by George Cukor, and starring Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee, and Jean Parker. The screenplay, written by Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman, is based on the 1868-1869 two-volume novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott.
John Elmer Carson, known as Jack Carson, was a Canadian-born American film actor. Carson often played the role of comedic friend in films of the 1940s and 1950s, including The Strawberry Blonde (1941) with James Cagney and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) with Cary Grant. He appeared in such dramas as Mildred Pierce (1945), A Star is Born (1954), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). He worked for RKO and MGM, but most of his notable work was for Warner Bros.
Reginald Lawrence Knowles, better known as Patric Knowles, was an English film actor. Born in Horsforth, West Riding of Yorkshire, he made his film debut in 1932, and played either first or second film leads throughout his career. He appeared in films from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Thank Your Lucky Stars is a 1943 American musical comedy film made by Warner Brothers as a World War II fundraiser, with a slim plot involving theater producers. The stars donated their salaries to the Hollywood Canteen, which was founded by John Garfield and Bette Davis, who appear in this film. It was directed by David Butler and stars Eddie Cantor, Dennis Morgan, Joan Leslie, Edward Everett Horton and S.Z. Sakall.
In This Our Life is a 1942 American drama film, the second to be directed by John Huston. The screenplay by Howard Koch is based on the 1941 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Ellen Glasgow. The cast included the established stars Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland as sisters and rivals in romance and life. Raoul Walsh also worked as director, taking over when Huston was called away for a war assignment after the United States entered World War II, but he was uncredited. This film was the third of six films that de Havilland and Davis starred in together.
Mary Frances Gifford was an American actress who played leads and supporting roles in many 1930s and 1940s movies.
Hitler's Children is a 1943 American black-and-white war film made by RKO Radio Pictures. The film stars Tim Holt, Bonita Granville and Kent Smith and was directed by Edward Dmytryk from an adaptation by Emmet Lavery of Gregor Ziemer's book Education for Death.
Princess O'Rourke is a 1943 American romantic comedy film directed and written by Norman Krasna, and starring Olivia de Havilland, Robert Cummings and Charles Coburn. Krasna won the 1944 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Behind the Rising Sun is a 1943 American war film based on the 1941 book Behind the Rising Sun written by James R. Young. Later-blacklisted Edward Dmytryk directed the film, and it stars Margo, Tom Neal, J. Carrol Naish, Robert Ryan and Gloria Holden.
Bride by Mistake is a 1944 American romantic comedy film directed by Richard Wallace, and starring Alan Marshal and Laraine Day.
The Woman He Loved is a 1988 British HTV made-for-television romantic drama film for ITV about the abdication of Edward VIII. Directed by Charles Jarrott, it stars Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour and Olivia de Havilland. Jane Seymour was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film at the 46th Golden Globe Awards and Julie Harris was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie. Costume designer Robin Fraser-Paye was also nominated for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Costume Design for a Miniseries or a Special. It was partly shot at Shirenewton Hall in Monmouthshire. This was Olivia de Havilland's final acting role, before her death in 2020.
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA executive David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name. Two years later, another Kennedy concern, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum.
The Well Groomed Bride is a 1946 American romantic comedy film directed by Sidney Lanfield and starring Olivia de Havilland, Ray Milland, and Sonny Tufts. Written by Claude Binyon and Robert Russell, the film is about a man and a woman who fight over the last bottle of champagne left in San Francisco—he wants it to christen a new aircraft carrier, and she wants it as the centerpiece for her upcoming wedding reception. During the course of their fierce battle over the bottle, the two fall in love. This was de Havilland's first film after a two-year legal battle she waged against Warner Bros. regarding her rights under her contract.
The Falcon and the Co-eds is a 1943 film under the direction of William Clemens, and produced by Maurice Geraghty, the same team that had worked on The Falcon in Danger (1943) and would stay together for the next film in the Falcon series. The Falcon and the Co-eds was the seventh of 16 in the Falcon series. The story and screenplay was by Ardel Wray, a frequent collaborator with Val Lewton in his RKO horror series, who added supernatural elements to the proceedings.
