Olivia de Havilland on Her Lawsuit Concerning Ryan Murphy (March 2018)

[+ WilliamM]

NY Times

She wore blue velvet: Dame Olivia de Havilland in Paris this month. Credit Julien Mignot for The New York Times

At 101, a Survivor of Hollywood’s Golden Age Throws Down the Gauntlet

In the era of “I, Tonya,” the Oscar-winning actress Olivia de Havilland’s lawsuit against FX and Ryan Murphy Productions has a certain potent symbolism.

 

By PAUL BROWNFIELDMARCH 3, 2018

New York Times

 

 

Emailing from the Paris hotel where she lives, Dame Olivia de Havilland sounded defiant, and understandably so. The topic at hand was her lawsuit against the FX network and Ryan Murphy Productions over her portrayal by Catherine Zeta-Jones in last year’s docudrama “Feud: Bette and Joan,” about the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

 

Ms. de Havilland’s lawyer in Los Angeles, Suzelle Smith, had arranged an electronic question and answer session ahead of a court date much anticipated by both those who remember the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, rapidly receding in a digitized and rightly diversified age. And by the many in the industry who mine recent history for dramatic purposes (consider the Oscar-nominated films ”The Post,” “Darkest Hour” and “I, Tonya”).

 

On March 20, the California Court of Appeals will hear arguments over whether Ms. de Havilland can proceed with her suit, which alleges unauthorized use of her name and likeness to endorse a product — a “right of publicity” claim — as well as false light, which sounds like the old Vaselined lens trick but in fact is a privacy tort akin to libel and defamation.

 

Few expect her to win, but the action is nonetheless reverberating as a kind of last stand against the current bricolage approach to facts.

 

 

Herself the recipient of two Best Actress Oscars, for “To Each His Own” (1946) and “The Heiress” (1949), Ms. de Havilland filed the suit last June, right after “Feud” aired to widespread critical acclaim, and a day before she turned 101. It was also just a few weeks after the queen of England bestowed upon Ms. de Havilland, whose estranged and equally famous sister Joan Fontaine died in 2013, the title of dame for her service to drama.

 

Photo

Ms. de Havilland in 1950 with the Oscars she won for “To Each His Own” and “The Heiress.” Credit Frank Filan/Associated Press

“When ‘Feud’ was first being publicized, but before it went on the air, I was interested to see how it would portray my dear friend Bette Davis,” Ms. de Havilland wrote in an email. “Then friends and family started getting in touch with me, informing me that my identity was actually being represented on the program. No one from Fox had contacted me about this to ask my permission, to request my input, or to see how I felt about it. When I then learned that the Olivia de Havilland character called my sister Joan ‘a bitch’ and gossiped about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s personal and private relationship, I was deeply offended.”

 

The last time Ms. de Havilland had a case before the California Court of Appeals was in 1944. Risking her career, she sued Warner Bros. to get out of her contract, which she had signed in 1936. She had been suspended for refusing parts assigned to her, a common ploy among studio bosses to keep their stars in line, with the missed time tacked on to the length of her deal.

 

She was 28, a brunet ingénue from English stock, raised in what she has wryly called “the most aristocratic village in the prune belt” of Northern California. In the 1930s alone, she had starred with the swashbuckling Errol Flynn in six films, including “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” and was lent out to David O. Selznick for the role that would make her an American treasure:

in “Gone With the Wind.”

 

She won then, tipping the scales of studio autocracy and strengthening a California labor statute. The so-named De Havilland Law prohibits the enforcement of a personal services contract beyond seven years.

 

 

Photo

Ms. de Havilland in her most famous role: Melanie Hamilton in the 1939 film “Gone With the Wind.” Credit Amapa/Reuters

Courts have overwhelmingly supported First Amendment protections for movies and TV shows about figures and subjects in the public interest. But Ms. de Havilland is undaunted.

 

“A large part of the reason I decided to move forward with my action against Fox is that I realize that at this stage of my life and career I am in a unique position to stand up and speak truth to power — an action that would be very difficult for a young actor to undertake,” she wrote. “I believe in the right to free speech, but it certainly must not be abused by using it to protect published falsehoods or to improperly benefit from the use of someone’s name and reputation without their consent. Fox crossed both of these lines with ‘Feud,’ and if it is allowed to do this without any consequences, then the use of lies about well-known public figures masquerading as the truth will become more and more common. This is not moral and it should not be permitted.”

 

Ms. de Havilland agrees to interviews sparingly, often mentioning her love of Champagne, and has never cooperated with an official biography. Hollywood chroniclers have described relationships with Mr. Flynn, John Huston and Howard Hughes, but she has remained regally mum, in contrast to her voluble friend Ms. Davis, who died in 1989.

 

 

 

Then came “Feud.”

 

A lavish piece of early 1960s period dish, it had considerable pedigree in its Oscar-winning leading ladies, Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis and Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford, and Mr. Murphy, whose portfolio of prestigious docudramas includes “The People vs. O. J. Simpson” and “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” both part of his “American Crime Story” serial.

 

“Feud” explores Ms. Davis’s and Ms. Crawford’s longtime hatred for each other and their uneasy alliance during the making of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,” the 1962 horror movie that finally united them onscreen. Directed by Robert Aldrich, it was a surprise hit in a Hollywood being slowly subsumed by the counterculture, featuring a sadistic Ms. Davis in Kabuki makeup mentally torturing her paraplegic sister, played by Ms. Crawford.

 

Photo

From left, Susan Sarandon, Ryan Murphy and Jessica Lange at a “Feud” event in 2017. Credit Rabbani and Solimene Photography/Getty Images

For her performance, Ms. Davis received her final Best Actress nomination, evidently sending the spurned Ms. Crawford on a furious campaign of Oscar-night, anti-Bette subterfuge. (One cannot imagine Frances McDormand and Meryl Streep clashing like this.) In the end, Ms. Davis lost to the absent Anne Bancroft for “The Miracle Worker,” and a triumphant Ms. Crawford strode onto the stage to accept the statuette in Ms. Bancroft’s honor.

 

Ms. de Havilland’s character is used as a framing device for the Davis-Crawford cage match that unfolds in “Feud,” opening the series with the lines: “For nearly half a century, they hated each other, and we loved them for it.” Ms. Zeta-Jones is posed on a love seat at the 1978 Oscars, giving an interview. “Feud” meticulously copied the black dress and sheer caftan the real Ms. de Havilland wore to the Oscars that night, as well as her glittering pendant and blond coif. This physical copycatting is behind Ms. de Havilland’s right-of-publicity claim. Her claims of false light relate to the interview itself, which she says she never gave.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo

Catherine Zeta-Jones, left, as Olivia de Havilland, and Ms. Sarandon as Bette Davis in the FX show “Feud: Bette and Joan.” Credit Suzanne Tenner/FX

Legal observers were surprised.

Photo

“Feud” is more succinct. “You know what my bitch sister has taken to telling the press?” Ms. de Havilland’s character says to Ms. Davis in “Feud.” “That I broke her collarbone when we were children.”

“We thought ‘bitch’ was more mainstream and would be better understood by the modern audience than ‘Dragon Lady,’” Tim Minear, a writer on the show, explained in court documents.

New York Times

Asked via email if her retirement from acting was a decision she came to with ease or difficulty, Ms. de Havilland said: “I would like to answer your question with another: How many roles of significance are written for women of advanced years?”

Edited March 4, 2018 by WilliamM

[+ WilliamM]

Good for her. But, who remembers the mini series less than a year later? Murphy promises much but seldom delivers.

 

 

The last thing Murphy expected from a women 100/101 years old.:cool:

[+ nycman]

While I am a huge proponent of the First Amendment.....I have to

admit that I hope she prevails (against all odds though it may be).

 

I don’t think the first amendment gives you the right to say whatever

the fuck you want about someone...famous or not.

 

Although few expect her to succeed, the fact that the suit wasn’t dismissed

out of hand under the “anti-Slaap” statue surprised the fuck out of everyone.

She may just be the right person at the right time. I wouldn’t count her out yet!

 

Give’m hell Melanie Hamilton Wilkes!.....Give’m hell!