At 101, a Survivor of Hollywood’s Golden Age Throws Down the Gauntlet
When I then learned that the Olivia de Havilland character called my sister Joan ‘a bitch’
and gossiped about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s personal and private relationship, I was deeply offended.”
The last time Ms. de Havilland had a case before the California Court of Appeals was in 1944.
“Feud,” she claims, as a work of historically convincing fiction, falsely exposes her as a hypocrite — “with a public image of being a lady
and a private one as a vulgarity-using gossip,” violating Ms. de Havilland’s hard-earned reputation for “honesty, integrity and good manners.”
But the legal action arrives during a content boom
that has sent writers — and big-league actors and producers — raiding recent history sometimes before it has pickled, looking for figures and epochs to refashion as entertainment.
“It is unusual for this type of case to proceed past anti-Slaap,” said Jennifer Rothman, a professor at Loyola Law School and the author of a forthcoming book called “The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World.” If the de Havilland decision were allowed to stand, Ms. Rothman said, “then
that upends the film industry, the TV industry, the video game industry.
“The type of claims pursued by a celebrity like Olivia de Havilland here deserve especially heightened scrutiny because docudramas, biopics
and historical dramas — which by design do not portray individuals or events literally or with obedience to historical fact — often depict real people who may not like, and may even be offended or embarrassed by, how they are portrayed,” the M. P.A.
On March 20, the California Court of Appeals will hear arguments over whether Ms. de Havilland can proceed with her suit, which alleges unauthorized use of her name and likeness to endorse a product — a “right of publicity” claim — as well as false light, which sounds like the old Vaselined lens trick
but in fact is a privacy tort akin to libel and defamation.
