Olivia de Havilland and Jacqueline Bisset receive French Honours

[leonid17]

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2010/09/olivia-dehavilland-jacqueline-bisset-receive-french-honors/1

[dirac]

http://content.usato...french-honors/1

Thanks for posting, leonid. Very nice of them to honor de Havilland. I assume Bisset got it for appearing in Day for Night and looking great soaking wet in The Deep.

[miliosr]

Today's New York Social Diary carried some lovely photos of the ceremony (you have to scroll down about two-thirds of the page):

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/1903613

Olivia de Havilland looks great and how nice to see her surrounded by family, friends and admirers. No sign of her sister, though!

[dirac]

Yep, she does look great. Long may she wave.

[MakarovaFan]

Olivia de Havilland really does look great!

[bart]

The Los Angeles Times story has language very similar to that in the article linked by leonid. It adds, however, something I was not aware of:

Sarkozy praised de Havilland's courage for her lawsuit against Warner Bros.

After demanding more substantial scripts from Warner Bros., de Havilland got to co-star with Bette Davis in "In this Our Life" (1942). But she bulked at being typecast as an ingenue so the studio placed her on suspension. When her contract ended, Warner Bros. said she owed them time. She then sued.

The court's landmark ruling in her favor transformed the studio system's hold on stars, giving them more freedom.

"You are a rebel because you are the only one who dared file a suit against the studios to defend the liberty of actors," Sarkozy said. "You won. It's exceptional."

[dirac]

Thanks for pointing that passage out, bart. De Havilland was gutsy but she was not alone. Any Warner star with an independent streak wound up walking out on and/or suing the Brothers at one time or another. James Cagney brought suit against them for breach of contract in the mid Thirties and won. Bette Davis brought suit on grounds similar to de Havilland's in the mid Thirties and lost. Times had changed and I think de Havilland had Screen Actors Guild support and and Davis didn't, but I don't know if that made the difference. Davis received a brutal publicity battering and lost most of her money. If she were around she'd set Sarkozy straight.

[miliosr]

Here is a brief synopisis of the 'de Havilland Law':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Law

I've always thought de Havilland was much like the character of Melanie Hamilton Wilkes -- a somewhat placid exterior but possessed of a steely resolve on the interior.