Best Actress: Olivia de Havilland II
"Grow a backbone!" I thought many a-time while watching The Heiress...
For her second and final Oscar-winning performance, Olivia de Havilland plays the mousy, uncouth 'heiress', Catherine Sloper. She lives a cursed existence, because her mother was beautiful and died, and all that was left was her, according to her father. She has no social skills or graces, and must be trained by her widowed aunt (played deliciously, as always, by Miriam Hopkins), to no avail.
Until she meets Morris Townsend, a fortune hunter and bad egg played by Montgomery Clift, whom she is intent on marrying despite her father's objections. That Catherine has a monthly allowance from her mother's estate, and that when her father eventually dies she'll gain substantially more, seems to be Morris's prime objective, and Catherine's father is hell-bent on keeping her daughter away from him.
If he wasn't such a jerk then perhaps Catherine would listen to him. But he spends the entire movie—and it's clear, every moment of her life up to this point—disparaging everything about her. Does Catherine really love Morris or does she love the idea of sticking it to her father?
The couple plan to elope but you can see clearly that Morris doesn't want to do this; that he wants the entire fortune that Catherine will inherit, not a 'measly' $20,000 she already gets. He stands her up, and Catherine's heart hardens.
It's here that Olivia's goody two-shoes, doe-eyed Catherine, who just doesn't know any better, switches to a stern spinster (and in my mind, the word spinster doesn't conjure up a woman who's lonely or pitiable, not only because I technically am a spinster too, it means a woman who's mature and strong in her choices. If love finds her, great. If not, she knows how to navigate the world).
And the shift in Olivia's acting here, to a deeper, sterner voice where it was light and naive before; her eyebrows furrowed against her brow where they were once moveable with the innocence of Catherine before this jilting; it's a masterclass. It's almost as though she's a completely different person.
In the final stretch of the movie, Olivia solidifies why she won the Oscar. She gets an audacious monologue against her hateful father (who was a scene-stealing character actor who delighted in trying to mess with Olivia on set, according to reports) and a few terrific scenes with both Miriam Hopkins and Montgomery Clift. And the last minute, where she slowly ascends the staircase, her face turning to stone with every step...that might as well have been her walk up to the stage on Oscar night.
Olivia was nominated against Jeanne Crain (Pinky), Susan Hayward (My Foolish Heart), Deborah Kerr (Edward, My Son), and Loretta Young (Come to the Stable). I would have voted for her!
DID I LIKE THE HEIRESS? I kept waiting for Catherine to come to her senses...better late than never! And yes, I liked The Heiress!
Did you like The Heiress? What are your thoughts on Olivia de Havilland's second and final Oscar win?
Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here.
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