Olivia de Havilland, a Star of ‘Gone With the Wind,’ Dies at 104

Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916, to British parents in Tokyo, where her father, Walter, a cousin of the aviation pioneer Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, ran a firm of patent lawyers, though he was not a lawyer himself. In 1919 her mother, Lillian (Ruse) de Havilland, an elocution teacher, moved with Olivia and Joan, her younger sister by 15 months, to Saratoga, Calif., near San Francisco. The de Havillands divorced, and Lillian married George M. Fontaine, a department store executive. (Olivia’s sister, Joan, took her stepfather’s surname as her stage name.)

Ms. de Havilland was married twice. Both marriages ended in divorce. The first, in 1946, was to Marcus Aurelius Goodrich, a Texas-born novelist, screenwriter and journalist; they had a son, Benjamin, and divorced in 1952. She married Pierre Galante, the author of military histories and at one point editor of the magazine Paris Match, in 1955 after the couple had met in France. They moved to Paris, had a daughter, Gisele, and divorced in 1979. Ms. de Havilland’s son died of Hodgkin’s disease in 1991.

Before she was married, she had romantic relationships with James Stewart, Howard Hughes and the director John Huston, with whom she reunited for a time after her first divorce. By her account she also turned away a smitten young John F. Kennedy, who was visiting Hollywood after his PT-boat service in World War II.

She is survived by her daughter, Giselle Galante Chulack. Joan Fontaine died in 2013 at 96.