Catherine Sloper, in William Wyler’s movie “the Heiress”, is one of Olivia de Havilland’s greatest characters. There is a scene in which the woman sits quietly stitching a tapestry. Embroidery has been one of her solitary pleasures. Her father says that this is the only thing she would be good at. This is a classic emblem of women’s work, of the meek spinsterhood, expressed in the movie and it seems that the character Catherine has largely resigned herself. 

Continuing the movie something happens and permanently shifts the life of this woman, who was once earnest and unassuming. This was a product of her environment, which became a fierce rebuke of it. We can see this change in the elegance, kind characteristics of Catherine, transformed into angry and strong. We can also see it from her voice and her expressions saying, “Yes I can be cruel, I have been taught by masters”. 

When you listen to that line you cannot pass without connecting it with the life of the real actress De Havilland and her own film career, it seems like she knows what she is talking about. 

The story in “The Heiress” was inspired by Henry James' novel “Washington Square”. The story is for a woman whose compassion and lack of confidence make her uniquely vulnerable to the two-man in her life: her father and her suitor. 

The death of this valuable actress Olivia de Havilland has served one of the last remaining ties to the classic studio system and the Golden Age of the film industry. The actress had lived in Paris for a long time and her last movie was “The woman he loved”. 

In 2016 she gave a rare interview about her sister Joan Fontaine, and the rumors about them both finding themselves up for lead actress in the Oscars. De Havilland was about to win the Oscars two times. She was also a presenter at the Academy Awards in 2003. She was standing on the stage, dressed up in blue, captured by the obvious affection of the crowd, on soundtrack music from “Gone with the wind”. This movie had cemented Olivia a Hollywood legend. 

That night one of the Oscars was won by Catherine Zeta-Jones, who later will play De Havilland in “Feud: Bette and Joan.” Because of this project, De Havilland sued the network and Ryan Murphy Productions for misuse of her identity. She filed her lawsuit in June 2017, when she was almost 101 years old. The lawsuit was not successful, and De Havilland’s actions were not surprising. This is not the first time when she struck an important blow. 

Her litigation against Warner Bros, seven decades earlier, was more successful. She sued the studio to release her from her contract. This was a groundbreaking assertion of professional autonomy from an actor. It proves that she had learned to armor herself against the directors, costars, and studio executives and fight for the big roles, that she knew she was born to play. 

She had signed the contract with Warner Bros when she performed Hermia in the film “A midsummer night’s dream” by Max Reinhardt. This movie was a luminous debut of her career in community theater on 18 years. Her movies in Warner Bros brought her a lot of success. Her wonderful performance as Maid Marian in “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, directed by Curtiz and William Keighley, was some of her best work ever done. 

All that time she knew that she could grab bigger opportunities. One of those bigger roles was the
melodrama “To Each His Own”, with which she earned her first Oscar for lead actress. The second Oscar she earned 3 years later with “The Heiress”.

Her last movie gave her the opportunity to play with her friend Davis. At first, we were supposed to play Crawford. She took the role of Melanie Wilkes in “Gone with the wind”, and she did that for David O. Selznick while she was still under the contract at Warner Bros.