The last great star of the 1930s condemns hit FX docudrama that depicted her as a gossip who called her sister a ‘bitch’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The words come via email but the voice echoes down from Hollywood’s golden age.



“The creators of Feud used my identity without my consent and put false words in my mouth, including having me publicly calling my sister, Joan Fontaine, a ‘bitch’.”

It is Olivia de Havilland, aged 101, writing to the Guardian this week from the Paris hotel – a 19th-century chateau – she calls home.

She said no such thing, she says, yet the FX Network docudrama Feud: Bette and Joan, about the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, showed otherwise, depicting Dame Olivia as a vulgar gossip.

“The show was designed to make it look as if I said these things and acted this way. I feel strongly about it because when one person’s rights can be trampled on this way, the rights of others who are more vulnerable can be abused as well.”

Fighting words because De Havilland, the last great star from the 1930s, has broken near Garbo-esque seclusion from France, her home since 1954, to file a lawsuit over her portrayal by Catherine Zeta-Jones in last year’s Emmy-nominated television drama.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Catherine Zeta-Jones as Olivia de Havilland in Feud: Bette and Joan. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Her case against the FX network and Ryan Murphy Productions opens in a Los Angeles court on Monday, pitting the woman who played Maid Marion in the 1938 swashbuckler The Adventures Of Robin Hood against a formidable Hollywood coalition, with potentially profound consequences for the entertainment industry.

De Havilland claims Feud’s makers misappropriated her name, likeness and identity without her permission and used them falsely to exploit their own commercial interests, inflicting emotional harm and sullying her reputation.

The case could turn on seemingly whimsical details: were Feud’s writers justified in turning “Dragon Lady” - De Havilland’s nickname for her sister – into “bitch”?

Does her blurting “Oh, Christ, son of a bitch” after fluffing a line in a vintage blooper reel from a 1946 film, Devotion, in which she plays Charlotte Brontë, give Feud extra licence to use the word?

FX denies wrongdoing, saying De Havilland’s consent was not needed because the show falls under protected speech around fictional works in the public interest. And that in any case her portrayal was positive.

De Havilland is a beloved legend once dubbed the “queen of radiant calm”. But some observers warn of dire precedent if she prevails – that films such as I, Tonya or The Post, depicting real people, might never be made or diluted to anodyne blandness.

The life lessons that Olivia de Havilland can teach us | Vanessa Thorpe Read more

“It would bar the telling of true stories without the permission of those depicted,” said Jennifer Rothman, a Loyola law school professor and author of a forthcoming book, The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World. “This would effectively shut down critical commentaries about real people whether in movies, television shows, or written biographies, documentaries, and potentially even in news coverage. This is a chilling prospect.”

Launching into battle four months shy of her 102nd birthday may surprise those who remember De Havilland for playing demure romantic interests opposite Errol Flynn, James Cagney and Montgomery Clift. Her role as Melanie Hamilton, the sweet foil to Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, and two subsequent Oscars cemented De Havilland as a national treasure.

In real life she has a combative streak and, as the studio boss Jack Warner once noted, “a brain like a computer concealed behind those fawn-like eyes”.

She bristled at studio control and fought for more complex roles to escape typecasting as a demure ingenue. In 1943 she successfully sued Warner Brothers, securing a landmark ruling that in effect ended actors’ contract servitude as well as the old studio system – one reason De Havilland won a four-minute standing ovation when presenting an Oscar in 2003.

De Havilland also carried on a lifelong feud with her sister Joan Fontaine, a fellow Oscar winner and Alfred Hitchcock favourite, in an off-screen sibling drama which continued until Fontaine’s death at the age of 96 in 2013.

FX’s Feud focuses on the battle for Hollywood supremacy between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, respectively played by Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon, building the story around the filming and aftermath of their 1962 pairing in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Olivia de Havilland in 2011. Photograph: Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images

The eight-part docudrama was co-created by the writer and producer Ryan Murphy, the force behind Glee, Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story. He said last year he did not contact De Havilland, who was a close friend of Davis and is Feud’s only living protagonist, in order not to “intrude”.

She is played by Zeta-Jones, who wears the same blond coif and black dress De Havilland wore to the 1978 Oscars. Zeta-Jones opens the series with the line: “For nearly half a century, they hated each other, and we loved them for it.”

FX, which did not respond to an interview request, has cited the US constitutional right to free speech in relation to a public issue, and what it says is the positive depiction of De Havilland as a “wise” counsellor to Davis.

The Motion Picture Association of America and Netflix, which has signed a producing deal with Murphy reportedly worth $300m, have filed an amicus brief urging the court to throw out De Havilland’s case.

The actor does not seem intimidated.

“I have spent a good portion of my life defending the film industry,” she emails. “However, studios, which choose to chronicle the lives of real people, have a legal and moral responsibility to do so with integrity. They have a duty not to steal the value of an actor’s identity for profit … I am fortunate to be able to be the standard bearer for other celebrities, who may not be in a position to speak out for themselves under similar circumstances.”

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Her lawyer, Suzelle Smith, said FX sought to create an exception to the legal rules for docudramas so that Hollywood could publish knowing falsehoods about living people and use their names and identities without consent or compensation. “The law does not protect studio profits made from printing lies.”

In contrast, Rothman, the law professor, warned that if De Havilland wins, film-makers, authors and journalists may no longer be able to tell stories based on true events or write biographies without permission, posing “a fundamental threat to public discourse, history, art, and even to democracy itself as public figures could censor disagreeable portraits of them”.

De Havilland says that mischaracterises her case.

Fanciful or not, being a threat to democracy would suggest it’s never too late to break typecasting.