Plot Intro
It’s World War II and middle-aged fire wardens Jody Norris (Olivia de Havilland) and Lord Desham (Roland Culver) are reminiscing about their lives. When Jody discovers that an American pilot named Gregory Pierson is coming to London on leave, she reveals that the man is her son but he does not know it. Excited about seeing him again, she remembers and recounts the events of her life, and explains why she has had no contact with him for so long…
Oh Olivia. If she had lived just a few months more she would have been our first Best Actress winner to be still alive. As it is, she finally shuffled off the proverbial coil in July 2020 at the whopping old age of 104 although Luise Rainer remains the longest-lived Best Actress winner when she died just 13 days shy of 105. Olivia died with a substantial career under her name and two Best Actress Oscars.
We’ve already written about her younger actress sister, Joan Fontaine who, by this point, had won her only Best Actress Oscar in 1941. Their early lives were relatively similar. Like Joan, Olivia was born in Tokyo and both girls were pushed into the performing arts world by their stage actress mother, Lillian Fontaine. Their parents divorced due to their father’s infidelities and they disliked their later stepfather for his strict child-rearing ways. Olivia performed in theatre in Japan to begin with but she was noticed by Hollywood people and made her film debut as Hermia in 1934’s famous movie production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her career remained in historical dramas and adventures, her most famous (and the film that projected her to stardom) being The Adventures of Robin Hood alongside Errol Flynn in 1938, one of the most iconic and influential action-adventure movies ever made.
This then led to probably her most famous role as Melanie Hamilton in the most financially successful film of all time, Gone With the Wind. Although she lost her Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination to her co-star Hattie McDaniels (who thoroughly deserved it), this is a cracking good performance. Melanie is, on the surface, unassertive, passive, frustratingly accepting of Scarlett O’Hara’s acts of immorality. But, there is an underlining strength and stoicism that keeps you on her side and Olivia exudes that beautifully. One famous scene (of many, many famous scenes) is when Scarlett arrives at a party hosted by Melanie just after she was discovered trying to shack up with Melanie’s husband, Ashley. The audience is fully expecting Melanie, after all this time, to claw Scarlett’s eyes out. But Melanie welcomes her in, a power move like no other that cements the character as more secure, more socially accepted and more stable than Scarlett.
I digress, however. Post-Gone With the Wind, Olivia developed a difficult relationship with her employer, Warner Brothers. She often rejected scripts if she wasn’t receiving a high-enough billing (amongst other reasons) and this led to a couple of suspensions of her contract. Olivia wanted meatier roles than simply the fawning heroine to the Errol Flynn-esque hero. In fact, Flynn and Olivia had a big falling out about this when she was in talks to star with him in historical epic, They Died With Their Boots On, but they reunited when Flynn told the studio he would only do the movie with her in it and it proved to be a big hit. The two collaborated together a few times and seem to have had a strong relationship.
In the early '40s, Warner Bros tried to add 6 months to Olivia’s contract to make up for her time on suspension. In a landmark case, Olivia fought against it and won, winning great respect from her peers and helped diminish the power of the studios over the actors’ lives and contracts.
To Each His Own, was her first film after these legal proceedings had been concluded. Olivia had some influence on the choice of director, a wise thing to have considering she had to age about 30 years during the film’s events. My favourite parts of the film are the segments at the start and end where we see Olivia playing an “older” woman (I think she’s meant to be in her 50s). Olivia displays mannerisms and facial expressions that put the audience directly on the side of someone who has been pushed and pulled about a bit but managed to survive it all. In fact, she’s so good that it makes the flashback (which composes about 80% of the whole story) pretty run-of-the-mill in comparison. I was far more engaged with the character when she was anxiously awaiting the arrival of her estranged son and gradually plucking up the courage to reveal all to him, rather than when she was demurely falling in love with the boy’s father. When she does try and win the boy back from his adoptive mother during the flashback, we see some tremendous overacting from Mary Anderson (who also had a small role in Gone With the Wind) and the whole thing turns into mawkish, unrealistic melodrama. A poor man’s Mildred Pierce.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the relationship between older Olivia and her friend, the posh but perceptive Lord Desham played brilliantly by Roland Culver. Their relationship is neither romantic nor particularly sentimental, but it is fraught with honest, catty one-liners similar to a gay man and his best female friend. My favourite moment was when Desham turns up at a distraught Olivia’s flat and she looks at him with the line “Oh, I’d forgotten about YOU”. Desham also proves to be the hero of the piece, urging and even forcing (in a good way) Olivia to reveal her true identity to her son. It’s a very sweet pairing and I wish the film had been built more around that.
To Each His Own proved to be a successful gamble for Olivia. She semi-method acted the part, using different perfumes for each stage of her character’s life and gradually lowering the pitch of her voice as the character ages and it helped re-establish her career after the turgid drama of her legal trouble with Warner Bros.
There, we will leave her for a few weeks until she wins her second Best Actress Oscar in 1949. On that blog post we will deal more with her difficult relationship with her sister, particularly during their mother’s death.
The final 10 minutes are outstandingly sweet and concludes the story after nearly two hours of relative boredom.
The flashback scenes are packed with lengthy platitudinous dialogue about love and shit. The one that made me laugh the most was when Olivia and her amour manage to have one whilst sitting high up in the sky in an open-air fighter plane with not one gust of wind blowing her hair or drowning out her voice.
Olivia de Havilland passing away in 2020 seems bitterly unfair. At the ripe age of 104, having survived many trials and tribulations (see above for Paul’s potted history), she gets wiped out during a pandemic.
Our last real link to the ‘golden age’, she was an extraordinary presence and her focus and verve as an actress meant she Got It Done - whether it was taking on a studio in court, or delivering excellent performances. As Melly in Gone with the Wind she’s exceptional - making a potentially preachy role somehow accessible and strong. Vivien Leigh is the storm of the film, but Olivia’s subtle, weighted performance anchors it. The two of them together are the reason for its success.
But here we have a very different performance. While the film itself is pretty weak, Olivia’s working hard. During the current day scenes, she is so expertly made up and acting as if she was in her early fifties that I genuinely thought she was older that she was. There’s no vanity, she’s committed to making you see the older, slightly gnarled woman. And as a result, these scenes are the most compelling.
Then we cut back to her as a young woman for the majority of the film. It’s not a good move as the plot is uninteresting and while de Havilland does an accomplished job, it doesn’t particularly stand out as better than any other actress could do. In that sense, it feels a little paint-by-numbers (gasp in this scene, look distraught into the camera in this scene etc. etc.)
It’s only in the framing moments, as an older woman, that de Havilland impresses. She captures the feeling beautifully, looking on desperately as her son - who does not know she is his mother - bounds around, dating women, joining the air force and being a Bright Young Thing. The desire for him to know that she is his mother emanates through these scenes and I’m pretty sure it’s what won her the Oscar.
But ultimately this film could be so much better. Casting an older actress actually in her fifties, and ditching the flashbacks, it could be a story where the audience discover the truth along with her friend - who as Paul says - provides great witty repartee and emotional support. Not one of the best films, but certainly a lot of promise.
A scene when older de Havilland is rushing around her flat trying to make it nice for her son to stay sticks in the mind. It’s full of energy, de Havilland exuding nerves and excitement, and the nice counter-balance of a monotonous maid.
The flashbacks are unimpressive and largely quite dull.
Mark
3/10
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