Olivia De Havilland

I was sorry to hear of the death of the actress Dame Olivia De Havilland (born 1916 in Tokyo) of natural causes at the age of 104 in Paris on 26th July 2020. Olivia made her stage debut as Alice in a production of Alice in Wonderland by the Saratoga Community Players in 1933. Judging from a photograph it involved the background story of Lewis Carroll telling her the story, here over a game of chess, he has a pipe (Dodgson never smoked). Susan Coulby supplied the fascinating image of four stills:- Alice with the Gryphon, Duchess, Humpty Dumpty, and in court. She next appeared as Puck in their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Olivia is the last icon of the Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema, she made 49 films and many are classic's: she played Hermia in the shimmering Warner Brother's film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Captain Blood, as Maid Marion in The Adventures of Robin Hood, Gone with the Wind, as Mary Custer in They Died with Their Boots On, The Snake Pit, The Heiress, and Airport 1977.

Stephen Martin.