Olivia de Havilland first appeared onscreen as the daughter of a baseball executive that becomes wacky pitcher Joe E. Brown’s wife in one of the actor’s many sports comedies, Alibi Ike (1935). Later that same year, she played Hermia in Warner Bros.’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) before she was paired for the first time with Errol Flynn, in his star-making vehicle Captain Blood (1935). She would appear opposite Flynn in a number of other movies, most notably The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), before she played Melanie in David O. Selznick’s epic production Gone With The Wind (1939), for which she earned her first Academy recognition (and her only Supporting Actress Oscar nomination). A couple of years later, she received her first Best Actress nomination by playing a lonely school teacher who’s preyed upon by a Romanian playboy (Charles Boyer) seeking to enter the United States from Mexico (there was border security between the two countries back then) in the romance drama Hold Back the Dawn (1941). Her younger sister Joan Fontaine won that year for her performance opposite Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Suspicion (1941). Ironically, Grant earned the first of his two Oscar nominations that same year in a different movie, George Stevens’s tear-jerker Penny Serenade (1941), and he never appeared opposite Ms. de Havilland. It took Olivia five years to equal her estranged sister’s achievement, she won the Best Actress statuette for her role in To Each His Own (1946), and three more to exceed it. After earning another nomination for playing an amnesiac that finds herself in a mental institution in Anatole Litvak’s The Snake Pit (1948), the following year she won her second Best Actress Academy Award as The Heiress (1949), which marked her first and only pairing with producer-director Wyler.

Like the actress who shares his same birth date (though not the same birth year), William Wyler collaborated many times with a partner who never achieved the kind of recognition (e.g. from AMPAS) that he did. In Wyler’s case, it was producer Samuel Goldwyn, for whom the director worked on several pictures including their last, the Oscar winning The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Of course, though John Ford did win four statuettes to Wyler’s three, no one has come close to receiving as many Best Director Oscar nominations as Wyler’s twelve, but three out of his first four, and four out of his first six nominations were for films that Goldwyn produced; the director produced four of his last six nominations himself (including The Heiress (1949) and Roman Holiday (1953)). Appropriately, Wyler is also an Irving G. Thalberg Award winner.

Some of the other Olivia de Havilland movies which are shown on TCM that are worth seeing include: Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), Light in the Piazza (1962), In This Our Life (1942), The Male Animal (1942), The Strawberry Blonde (1941), Raffles (1939), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Gold Is Where You Find It (1938), It's Love I'm After (1937), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), and Anthony Adverse (1936).

Some noteworthy William Wyler movies (most of which can be seen on TCM) include: Funny Girl (1968), The Collector (1965), The Children's Hour (1961), Ben-Hur (1959), The Big Country (1958), Friendly Persuasion (1956), The Desperate Hours (1955), Detective Story (1951), Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Little Foxes (1941), The Letter (1940), The Westerner (1940), Wuthering Heights (1939), Jezebel (1938), Dead End (1937), Come and Get It (1936), Dodsworth (1936), These Three (1936), Counsellor at Law (1933), and Hell's Heroes (1930).

Speaking of The Heiress (1949), which was finally released on DVD earlier this year, it’s an outstanding drama which features Ms. de Havilland as a homely (!) young woman that lives at home with her wealthy father (expertly portrayed by Ralph Richardson). He reinforces her insecurities for his own selfish purposes. The story’s chief conflict comes when she is courted by a handsome young man (Montgomery Clift): her father is convinced that the suitor’s only interest is their family money, but she pursues the relationship out of loneliness and, at least in part, because of the encouragement she receives from a family friend (Miriam Hopkins). The ending is exquisite.