STACK #148 Feb 2017

NEWS EXTRAS

had a guaranteed outlet for any of their motion pictures. It was a devastating blow for the movie moguls. Worse was to follow for the moguls when just a year later, the full impact of an entirely separate legal case – that had its origins in 1943 – adversely affected a key element of the studio system. Olivia de Havilland was under contract with Warner Bros. and, much to this serious actress's chagrin, was often cast alongside the swashbuckling Errol Flynn as his "love interest". However, when she was loaned out by the studio, first to MGM for Gone with the Wind (1939) and then to Paramount for Hold Back the Dawn (1942), both her performances Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The actress would co-star with Flynn in no less than eight Warner Bros. "historical adventure movies".

Publicity shot of James Stewart in Winchester 73 (1950)

boss Louis. B. Mayer threatened the actor with "...you'll never work in this town again". To which Stewart replied, "You know what Mr. Mayer? I don't know that I even want to be an actor anymore". When the judge ruled in Stewart's favour, MGM did not challenge the decision. Stewart eventually signed up with the MCA agency and Lew Wasserman took over as his personal agent. In 1949, Wasserman negotiated with Universal studios to finance two motion pictures starring his client. The deal was that the actor would take no up-front fee but instead share a percentage of the net profits. If the films were successful it would earn Stewart a lot more than he might have otherwise been paid. The first of these two pictures, Winchester '73 (1950), became a massive box office hit and this one movie alone would go on to deliver over half a million dollars into Jimmy Stewart's bank account. Olivia de Havilland's action against Warner Bros. rewrote motion picture history as a stand against the ruthless exploitation of movie stars by the studios. And James Stewart's arrangement with Universal established a precedent for points, or percentage deals, that would eventually break the studio's firm hold on employees' long-term contracts. The "old style" movie industry was now in total turmoil, with the moguls desperately trying to regain control of their moneymaking machine. But the mass production of an invention – whose full development had been held up by the war – would soon deliver the final and fatal blow to the Hollywood studio system.

Olivia de Havilland's make-up test shot for Princess O'Rourke – the film that prompted her to sue Warner Bros. over contract rights.

...you'll never work in this town again

Havilland's studio contract. After many months of endless hearings, the Los Angeles Superior Court finally found in her favour. Her legal triumph (still known today in US legal terms as "The de Havilland Decision") sent shock waves throughout Hollywood, as movie employee contracts were at the very heart of the studio system. A furious Jack Warner, head of WB Studios, immediately blacklisted de Havilland, threatening any other studio who wanted to hire her with a lawsuit if they did so. Consequently, Miss de Havilland was not offered any film work for three long years. This unfair punishment alarmed the majority of contracted movie stars, who decided it best to maintain the status quo. But when James Stewart, a former lover of Miss de Havilland's, returned to Hollywood after the war, in which he had served as a bomber commander in the US Air Corps, he too decided to take his case to court. This was in regards of the term of suspension being added to his contract whilst serving his country in the armed forces. Studio

garnered her Academy Award nominations. This was proof to de Havilland that the maudlin films she was forced to appear in at Warner's were holding her back as a dramatic actress. However, her continual request that she be given better scripts with top rate directors fell on deaf ears. She had been suspended several times during her eleven-year tenure at WB for refusing some of the mundane roles offered to her. But after completing the hopelessly trivial Princess O'Rourke (1943), she refused to report to the studio. She was informed by the studio legal department that her contract would be extended for aggregates of the lay-offs and her non-attendance period. Foreseeing years of endless suspensions and extensions that would shackle her to WB for the rest of her acting life, she hired a first class attorney to get her out of her contract. Invoking California's ancient anti- peonage law, that limited seven calendar years as the maximum in which an employer could enforce a contract against an employee, her attorney filed for declaratory relief from Miss de

To be concluded...

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