Olivia de Havilland, who starred in dozens of movies through the 1930s and ’40s, has died at age 104. She died at her home in Paris of natural causes, her publicist, Lisa Goldberg, confirmed.
De Havilland was known for playing the good girl — pure hearted, pensive, deeply emotive — during Hollywood’s golden era. But of all her good-girl roles, she’s best remembered for Melanie, Scarlett O’Hara’s sweet foil in Gone With the Wind. Patricia White, a professor of film studies at Swarthmore College, says de Havilland’s Melanie was like a heroine from an 18th-century British novel: full of composure, with an unflashy beauty.
“Olivia really was perfect for Melanie,” White says. “She brings that sort of plain look to all of her viewers, allowing them to sort of see a non-glamorous person, like perhaps themselves, as the heroine in their own stories.”
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