As July 1st draws closer, you will undoubtedly hear more mentions of the name Olivia de Havilland. Chances are that name rings faint bells somewhere deep in the recesses of your mind. You probably vaguely recall hearing or reading that name before. Perhaps you even link that name with "Gone With the Wind." Odds are that’s where the recollection ends. That’s aright. You have no idea the grievous oversight you’ve just made. Allow me to remedy that.

July 1st will mark Ms. de Havilland’s 100th birthday. Though she has long since retired from the cinema and public service, the mark she has made on film, art and history is truly indelible. I am of the opinion that she has led the most interesting life ever, but I’ll let you be the judge of that at the end of this article.

Olivia was born July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan. Her parents were English, and a little over a year later they gifted young Olivia with a younger sister, Joan, who I’ll come back to later. Olivia’s family was reasonably wealthy. Her cousin founded the de Havilland aircraft company. In 1919, Olivia’s mother persuaded her husband to return to England to raise the girls in a better climate. They made it as far as San Francisco, where the family had to stop on account of Olivia’s tonsillitis. After Joan fell ill with pneumonia, the girls’ mother decided to stay in California indefinitely. Their father abandoned the family and returned to Japan.

Olivia’s mother had been a stage actress, and the artistic apples did not fall far from the tree. Olivia began reciting lines of Shakespeare to practice elocution and soon fell in love with drama. She acted throughout her educational career, and after seeing her as Puck from "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," Max Reinhardt offered her the position of second understudy for the role of Hermia in his production. Fate seemingly intervened. Both the lead Hermia and first understudy left the production, so the role fell to 18-year-old Olivia. During the tour of that production, Reinhardt learned that he would be directing a film version of the play. He cast Olivia as his Hermia, and so she began a tumultuous and trailblazing career.

Young Mickey Rooney played Puck in the film, and he would often lay his head in de Havilland’s lap to power nap, requesting that she wake him up eight lines before his next cue. The two developed a lifelong friendship. Olivia always had a knack for developing lasting and meaningful relationships with costars.

As part of her contract for "A Midsummer Night’s Dream,"Olivia signed on for five years with Warner Brothers. In the Golden Era of Hollywood, when one signed with a studio for any period of time, they essentially became a prop for the studio to use however they saw fit. The actors had little to no say in the roles they were given. Each actor with Warner Bros. could deny up to two roles outright, but they were contractually bound to accept the third offer. They were not allowed to seek or accept roles in films being produced by any other studio. After her film debut, Warner Bros. began typecasting Olivia as a somewhat weak romantic foil. She was paired with upcoming swashbuckling star Errol Flynn. They would go on to star in eight pictures together. Their chemistry was undeniable, but in an ironic twist of fate, they were never actually in love with one another at the same time. They both admitted to secretly harboring feelings but never simultaneously. This teeming tension made scenes in "Captain Blood," "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "They Died With Their Boots On" especially memorable.

As much as Olivia enjoyed the company of Errol Flynn, she was growing restless and resentful of the roles she was being offered. They offered her no challenge, and all seemed to be static and weak maidens.

Meanwhile, David O. Selznick was casting for a film based off some book’s rights he had acquired. The story of Vivien Leigh’s casting is always the interesting story told about "Gone With the Wind"’s pre-production, but Olivia’s ordeal is every bit as interesting. Selznick and then-director George Cukor knew Ms. de Havilland was their perfect Melanie, but she was contracted with Warner Bros. Cukor asked her to come to Selznick’s studio and read for the part anyway, and despite it being a serious breach of her contract, Olivia did just that. Just as he had suspected, Olivia was perfect for the role, and Selznick offered it to her. Jack Warner was not convinced. There was absolutely no way he was offering his young starlet to a rival studio for a supporting role like Melanie. He insisted that Olivia play Scarlett or nothing at all. But Olivia did not want to play Scarlett. She wanted to be sweet and demure Melanie. Olivia would not let this opportunity pass her by; she had to be Melanie. She invited Jack Warner’s wife out for tea and explained her dilemma. Essentially, Olivia went over the head of her studio owner, believing his wife to be the neck that could turn that head whichever way she pleased. It was a risky move, but it paid off. Jack Warner relented after his wife spoke with him, and Olivia was loaned out to Selznick International Pictures.

Filming for "Gone With the Wind" was one of the most turbulent, tense times in Hollywood history. Selznick was a persnickety perfectionist and Cukor did not see eye to eye with him at all. Despite this chaotic backdrop, Olivia made lasting friendships with her costars, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. They would frequently play Battleship between takes. During the filming for the scene where Rhett comes to save Melanie and Scarlett from the burning of Atlanta and return them to Tara, Olivia was feeling a bit mischievous. As she tells it, the devil himself reared up in her mind and compelled her to prank Clark Gable. She found a huge block of cement, tied an end of rope around it, placed it under Melanie’s bed and wound the other end of the rope around her torso. When Clark Gable went to pick her up, he found that he could not lift her. To all the cast and crew, it looked as though the King of Hollywood could not lift little Olivia. Clark did his best not to break character, but after about twenty seconds of trying to lift Olivia, he gave up and exclaimed, “What the devil?!” at which point Olivia grinned and showed him the rope. He laughed, and the moment provided a brief respite of levity for the otherwise frenzied crew.

The famous scene where Scarlett vows to never go hungry again almost did not happen. The script called for Scarlett to vomit and retch, but Vivien Leigh insisted these were not things a lady would do on camera. She refused. Never one to shy from the camera, Olivia offered to record that brief segment instead. The gagging you hear in the film is not Vivien Leigh at all. It is Olivia de Havilland.

For her role as Melanie, Olivia was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards. She lost to Hattie McDaniel who had played Mammy.

After the success of Gone With the Wind and finishing her many-picture partnership with Errol Flynn, Olivia was certain she would be offered meatier roles. She was not. Warner Bros. kept giving her shallow parts, and Olivia was tired of it. She felt that she should be in charge of the artistic direction of her career and that she should not be treated like the property of the studio. She filed a lawsuit and continuously appealed her claim all the way up to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in her favor. This was a great personal victory for Olivia and all actors, but it came at a serious price. Most studios were bitter at having lost the right to force actors into certain roles and films, so they refused to cast Olivia, holding her solely responsible for the change. Olivia persevered, and when she did find work, it was always on a project she was particularly passionate about and a role she really wanted to play. Essentially, we have Olivia to thank for the way Hollywood operates today.

Around this time in her life, Olivia was introduced to a young JFK, and he was smitten. He was so taken with the actress--who never returned his affection--that he showed up unannounced at her house, awkwardly sat in silence with her and stumbled into the closet as he tried to leave, knocking all of her tennis equipment off its shelf and onto his head. She effectively disarmed America’s most notorious womanizer.

Olivia’s younger sister, Joan, was also bitten by the acting bug. The sisters were often at odds because their mother so obviously favored Olivia. When Joan decided to pursue acting as a profession, their mother forbade her from using the family name since Olivia was already using it. Joan de Havilland then became Joan Fontaine, and she never fully recovered from the slight. In 1941, both Olivia and Joan were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Joan for Hitchcock’s Suspicion and Olivia for Hold Back the Dawn. The statuette went to Joan, and when Olivia held out her arms to congratulate her sister with a hug as she made her way to the stage, Joan blew right past her. Olivia was shocked and hurt, and the rivalry only embittered from there.

Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland are the only siblings to both win Best Actress Oscars. They were the only siblings to ever be nominated against one another for a lead acting Oscar. Joan may have earned the honor first, but Olivia was really the victor in the end. Joan only ever won for her role in "Suspicion," but Olivia won twice, once for "To Each His Own" and once for "The Heiress." Only twelve women have ever won Best Actress twice. This makes Olivia tied with Meryl Streep for Best Actress awards. She repaid Joan’s slight when accepting her first Oscar by refusing her sister’s congratulatory handshake.

Despite her volatile dynamic with her sister, Olivia attempted to repair their relationship later in life. She kept contact with Joan’s children, which angered Joan and caused more strife between the sisters. After their mother’s death while Joan was on tour with a traveling production company, the sisters completely fell out of touch. Joan always held that Olivia was jealous because she had received an Oscar and married first, and she declared that if she died first Olivia would be bitter about that, too. As fate would have it, Joan did die first. Rather than envy, Olivia only claimed that she was shocked and saddened because she did not even know her sister was in failing health, and so ended the most brutal sibling rivalry Hollywood has ever known.

Olivia had starred with a young Ronald Reagan in a film she made with Errol Flynn called "Santa Fe Trail". Like many of her costars, Olivia kept in touch with Ronnie. They had a lush and lifelong friendship. It was actually Olivia who persuaded Ron to join the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG), and she helped him to rise through the ranks. She encouraged him, praising his eloquence and affability, and in 1947 she convinced him to run for president of SAG. It was Olivia de Havilland who got Ronald Reagan into politics and set him on the course that eventually led to the White House.

Olivia eventually gave up acting and relocated to Paris, where she has remained for decades. She received the National Medal of the Arts from George W. Bush. She has stated that, “I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time leave this life, I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic crossword.”

Olivia herself is something of a cryptic British crossword. She has given the world so much and transcended time and all other boundaries. She has been so much more than a movie star. She was a groundbreaking actress who refused to compromise her creative vision. She was a dear friend to so many of Hollywood’s greats. She was an Academy Award winner. She was an older sister. She was Errol Flynn’s romantic foil. She was Melanie Hamilton Wilkes. She was JFK’s unrequited love. She was the reason Ronald Reagan got into politics. She was so many things, but above all, she was and is a woman who enjoys making people feel. She is the last true vestige of the Golden Age of Hollywood, which is fitting since she was the one who paved the way for Hollywood’s transitional years. She is the epitome of that era––class, poise, regality, kindness, beauty and that quality that you cannot quite name, but no one has had it sense. That quality that only existed with people like Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Vivien Leigh, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Mickey Rooney and their contemporaries. Olivia is the last true example of that. She is all that remains of that pretty world in which gallantry took its last true bow. We must celebrate her life and times because when she is gone, so to will that world cease to exist. When Olivia departs, she will take that world with her, and though we can find it again by watching old films, it will be different knowing none of it remains in the real world. That part of our culture will end with Olivia de Havilland. We will look for it only in films because it will be nothing more than a dream remembered. A civilization gone with the wind.