[photo credit: Pasadena Senior Center]
Steven C. Smith will present “Olivia de Havilland: The Woman Who Changed Hollywood” at the Pasadena Senior Center, using film clips and recorded interviews with de Havilland herself to trace how the two-time Academy Award winner’s 1943 lawsuit against Warner Bros. produced an appellate ruling that reshaped the balance of power between talent and the studios. The presentation is part of the center’s Masters Series Lifelong Learning program.
De Havilland had signed her contract with Warner Bros. in 1936. By 1943, the studio had suspended her multiple times for refusing roles she considered beneath her abilities, then added the suspension periods to the end of her contract, claiming she owed additional time. On August 23, 1943, backed by the Screen Actors Guild, she sued.
The move carried considerable risk. Other prominent actors, including Bette Davis, had tried to break free of studio contracts and failed. “A lawsuit like this could have destroyed her career at a time when it was just blossoming,” Thomas J. Stipanowich, a professor of law at Pepperdine University, told Variety.
On December 8, 1944, the California Court of Appeal for the Second District ruled unanimously in de Havilland’s favor, holding that seven years from the start of service means seven calendar years — period. Suspension time could not extend the contract. The decision, interpreting California Labor Code Section 2855, became known as the De Havilland Law. It remains in force.
Warner Bros. studio chief Jack Warner tried to pressure other studios not to hire her. De Havilland found work at Paramount anyway, and won her first Best Actress Oscar for “To Each His Own” in 1946. She won a second for “The Heiress” in 1949. Her filmography, spanning 1935 to 1988, includes 49 features. She is remembered for roles in “Gone with the Wind” and “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” and before her death in 2020 at the age of 104, she was widely considered the last surviving major star from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
The ruling’s reach extended well beyond de Havilland’s career. Johnny Carson later cited the law to renegotiate his contract with NBC, and the band Thirty Seconds to Mars invoked it in resolving a recording contract dispute in 2009, according to published legal analyses.
Smith, who specializes in Hollywood history, has produced more than 200 documentaries, with credits including collaborations with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Robert Redford, according to the event description. He has spoken at the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. His books include biographies of composers Bernard Herrmann and Max Steiner, and his most recent work is “Hitchcock & Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores That Changed Cinema,” published by Oxford University Press.
The presentation takes place Tuesday, March 31, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Pasadena Senior Center, 85 E. Holly Street. Tickets are $15 for members and $18 for non-members. Registration is suggested but tickets will be available at the door. The program is in-person only and will not be recorded. For more information, contact Annie Laskey at (626) 685-6702 or visit www.pasadenaseniorcenter.org.
The Pasadena Senior Center, which opened in 1960 as the first nonprofit senior center in Southern California, operates as a donor-supported organization without city, county or state funding for its operations.
De Havilland lived the last decades of her life in Paris. She never stopped being asked about the lawsuit. The case that changed Hollywood was filed by a woman who was 27 years old.
MASTERS SERIES LIFELONG LEARNING — OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND: THE WOMAN WHO CHANGED HOLLYWOOD Date & Time: Tuesday, March 31, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Venue: Pasadena Senior Center, 85 E. Holly Street, Pasadena, CA 91103. Phone Number: (626) 795-4331. Website: https://www.pasadenaseniorcenter.org/activities-events/special-events/2281-masters-series-lifelong-learning-olivia-de-havilland-the-woman-who-changed-hollywood
