Hollywood (1942)

Fresh Out of Sugar By LEE BENNETT I "It takes a bad woman to make good in Hollywood!" Olivia de Havilland speaking, boys and girls. Yes, Olivia, the gentle, brown-eyed beauty who is the screen personification of all that is good and pure and true in womanhood. "You get creatively ill if you do nothing but goody roles," declares Olivia. "You get bored. The sameness, the monotony, the synthetic quality of the women who are always good, who never lose their temper, who are long-suffering and so placid you want to stick pins in them, puts ambition and interest in moth-balls. Give an actress a sufficient number of these women to play, and she can kiss her career good-bye." Olivia, who has portrayed her share of these decorative dumb-bells, says "never again." "Rarely does a portrayal of a 'good' woman increase the artistic stature of an actress. Melanie in Gone With the Wind and Emmy Brown in Hold Back the Dawn were exceptions. "But both these women had character, spiritual stamina and inner integrity. 'Good' parts must be great parts, such as these, and there are not enough of them. The usual 'good' woman in pictures has a wishbone for a backbone. "Their counterparts in real life are the sort of women to whom we are kind and of whom we are tolerant. We have neither respect nor admiration for them. We accept them casually as a necessary inconvenience, and avoid them whenever we can. "If an audience gets that reaction to a character on the screen, it is a step down for the actress playing it. "We Americans admire success above everything else. We admire it primarily because it requires courage and strength and a lack of self-deception to achieve it. It requires ability and aggressiveness. You can't sit back and wait for the fates to pour fortune in your lap. You run after it and grab it by the coat-tails. "We respect women who do successful work. We may not like them. We may censure them. But we admire them for their force, and their singleness of purpose. "They are usually interesting women, for they dare break conventions, if necessary. They do the unusual, and in that sense they are not only interesting, but stimulating. They are independent. They stand on their own feet, ask quarter of no one, and do their job. They are a challenge to our imagination. "I have yet to see a producer give a second look or a second thought to an actress who is consistently a straw in the wind on the screen. When really handsome roles are being passed out, the sweet little darling NOVEMBER, 1942 doesn't get a look-in. In that sense, it takes a 'bad' woman to make good in Hollywood! "But when a girl has played earthy roles, roles of realism, successful women — whatever talent a girl has, comes out. Producers see it, and spot her for better things. She has made her impression, with the help of a lusty role. "I presume I'll get an argument on that score, because it was Melanie, the prize of all good women, who really marked the beginning of a real career for me. But Melanie was not only good — she was intelligent as well. She was a great woman, and her goodness was an active, almost aggressive force. She was a working, positive power for good." Perhaps the true measure of the role's greatness is best gained by the effect it had on Olivia herself. Before she went into the picture she was not too well and not too happy. The first few days on the set she suffered agonies of timidity. She was uncertain of herself. But as she began to interpret the character of Melanie, she was infused with strength. The responsibility of bringing this personality intact to the screen stimulated her enormously. Olivia was never tired during those long months of production. She was never so well physically, never so divinely happy. She could find no explanation for the phenomenon. As Melanie had no conflicts within herself, so Olivia shared that pervading sense of serenity. "There was a time when goodness in itself, for its own sake, was in vogue on the screen," Olivia points out. "The sunbeam actresses had their day and faded. But every actress who today is still at the top is the actress who even in that period had guts and realism on the screen. The characters may not have been admirable from the copy-book standpoint, but they were unforgettable, and certainly a show-case for talent. "There is a more acutely personal angle to this consistent acting of goody roles. Time and again I have seen it proven that if an actress is something of a hussy on the screen, she isn't given to so many minor ex[ Continued on page 32] Olivia de Havilland declares she's suffering from artistic indigestion due to an overdose of sweet-girl roles. Inset: A gag shot indicative of Olivia's rebellion. She's in Warners' Princess O'Rourke