The Heroine of Hollywood

In the seventh year you shall set them free (Deut. 15:12)

After spending 18 months in legal and professional limbo, de Havilland won the case and her free agency when, in 1944, the California Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Warner Brothers had appealed: The studio could not extend her seven-year contract. At 5’ 3” and scarcely 100 pounds, de Havilland looked unintimidating, but her iron resolve was draped in velvet and silk.

When I asked her about the suit in 1998, she cited Deuteronomy 15, which stipulates that, in the seventh year, slaves shall be freed. “It seemed to me positively unbiblical to hold me to that contract for more than seven years,” she purred in her mellifluous voice. (By then, she was a lector at the American Cathedral in Paris.)

For the very deep diggers;
law.justia.com…

— Tim