Olivia and Errol. Star Quality. And sword fights to boot!
Thought we’d break with another election wrap up?. Forget it. There’s so much in this world to celebrate, and if you’re not over the election, think again, for now we have something completely different.
Olivia de Havilland turned 100 this week! And by all accounts she’s clever still, and though Errol died back in 1960, she lives on, as all anointed romantics do, in Paris.
Olivia knows politics is crazy, and is alone as a last vital link between the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’, and the shabby thing they call cinema today. And I’ll tell you why, because, she’s adorable. And like all goddesses… Immortal! Who could forget that scene in Captain Blood when she bought Errol cheap at the slave market. What an eye for a bargain!! Or as Maid Marian, in arguably the best Robin Hood ever. And if you don’t believe me, vomit once as you see how Russell Crowe murdered it… And then vomit again, when you see how Kevin Kostner, murdered it once more for good measure.
As Maid Marion. Sets constructed of real cardboard and Plaster of Paris!
Olivia done good, and when you think that it cost five cents way back in 38 in the US to watch a flick, (perhaps threepence in OZ) the film grossing several millions puts other great films , such as Kung Fu Panda, Rocky 1V and Independence Day 2 well and truly in the shade. What makes these films endure? It’s not the scratchy visuals, the muffled soundtrack and abundance of Hollywood corn, or the thrill of hyper enhanced technicolour. No! It’s neither of these, it’s the artifice of a genre in which the hero is hamming it up and there’s always a ride into the sunset. And though the studio system burnt more careers than Pol Pot, they seem to be having fun. And when Olivia laughs, the sun, and the entire nebula adjacent gamma epsilon star system four, (adjacent five), is snuffed out.
It’s the raw power of vaseline coated lenses, violins, overblown naivety, of craft and the lightness of touch when ‘touch’ is rote learnt to perfection. And it all comes gift wrapped with the obligatory bucketload of schmalz.
In ‘Gone with the Wind’, ( centre just in case you thought it might be one of the other two).
Who could forget her in all those other Errol Flynn films? Though we may find, some of them so execrable it’s almost painful to watch. Yet, there she is, anointing the screen with her presence, and laughing in that ‘I cannot believe that aint rehearsed and cardboard’, candor. But oh! She’s so much more convincing than anything performed by a Nicole, a Kate, or a Merrill. I suppose its because the modern genre demands seriousness, demands, introspection and gravitas, it seems shabby. Whereas everything Olivia is in, just jumps off the screen. Cos you know it’s artifice! And ultimately entertainment.
A hundred years from now people will say; ‘Malcolm Who’? correction; about three weeks from now…
Olivia, you goddess, you. Frozen in perpetuity as you were at eighteen in ‘Captain Blood’, and immortalised in ‘Gone with the Wind’, a perfect foil to that other super nova of the theatrical arts Vivienne Leigh. But I spose its cos we’re all more mundane, and when an actress farts it’s news 24/ 7. Well the fact of the matter is that Olivia never farted, she never went to the toilet, and i’ve been told by none other than Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, that she never ever, put a knife in her mouth, or burped. Not once. That’s star quality, and there, we have it as a proven fact that Paris, since Marlene died is still intact because the spirit of Hollywood and the ‘Golden Age’ lives on in her likeness. Poised somewhere between 1937 and eternity.
Nigel and Basil in discussion with Errol on his next film.
If Paris was a woman? Seek no further. Paris is Olivia. Celebrate with us this centenary. And know that for just this moment, that politics, is where it belongs. Allegedly on the cutting room floor.