Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Every French Man Has One: by Olivia De Havilland.

Olivia de Havilland had a life full enough before she married a French man - she not only was Errol Flynn's costar in his westerns about Custer and the Melanie Wilkes in the biggest film of that era, Gone With The Wind, but also dated Howard Hughes. Gone With The Wind the film is radically different from the book, not in a small part due to the performers being nothing like the characters they portrayed, and Olivia more than anyone was most unlike Melanie Wilkes - Melanie was timid, brown, quiet, afraid of males, and Olivia is not only beautiful but definitely exudes sexuality and confidence, however tamed.

Then Olivia de Havilland married a French man and went to live in France.

I forget the very innocent explanation of the title (which is why it is funny) but remember the one funny part (it has been an eventful life and a quarter of century post reading this, of which only later few were peaceful if any at all) - it is about her French dressmaker pushing her bosom firmly in with tight controls to tame it down, while she kept pushing it up in the standard Hollywood style to make it look bigger.