It is said that life is fleeting, but some of us, like me, just go on living so long that journalists who had pre-written my obituary have all since died. I was an actress in Hollywood's Golden Age and had all the catty feuds, illicit scandals, iconic roles, and steamy romances to prove it.
Catty Feud - Tick. Extra points for it being with my own younger sister, Joan Fontaine, who was also an actress. As i was the older sister she was always jealous of me, i said she couldn't use her real last name, 'De Havilland', because that was mine and there couldn't be two us us so she went with Fontaine instead.
Illicit Scandals - Tick. The very much older and very much married, hard-drinking director John Huston. John F Kennedy who was using Hollywood as his own personal harem at the time and he put the moves on me but i dismissed him as a slime-ball, which he was, so i was right.
Iconic role - Tick. Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind, Maid Marian in The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Steamy Romance - Tick. Perm one from Jimmy Stewart, Howard Hughes or Errol Flynn.
My sister and i feuded right up to her death aged 94, she said 'I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because i beat her to it' but strangely enough i didn't give a damn and i was perfectly okay with her winning that one.
I died just after my 104th birthday as the only Gone With The Wind film's lead actor alive, the other three leads had all died more than 50 years ago which is ironic as in the film, i was the only one to die out of all the lead actors.
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