Читать книгу Breaking into Acting For Dummies - Larry Garrison - Страница 53

In the mid-1940s, studios dictated the roles that actors could play. Actors often had to change their appearance for different roles and appear in less-than-satisfactory roles that could potentially damage an actor’s fledging career. If an actor rejected a particular role, the studio could suspend that actor from working. Because actors were under contract to work for one particular studio, studios essentially dictated the future of an actor’s career.

Even worse, studios would often extend an actor’s contract against his or her will, effectively enslaving that actor to that studio. After appearing as Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind, actress Olivia de Havilland rebelled against the restrictions in her contract and wound up getting a six-month suspension from Warner Brothers Studio as a result.

So Olivia took Warner Brothers Studio to court to fight for her right to choose her own roles. After three years, the courts decided in Olivia’s favor and ruled that she could leave her contract with Warner Brothers. This court battle became known as the “de Havilland decision,” and it forever changed the way actors and studios worked together.

After the courts allowed Olivia de Havilland to get out of her contract with Warner Brothers, other major film stars began using the de Havilland decision to justify getting out of their contracts as well, further strengthening the role of the then-fledgling Screen Actors Guild.

Today, actors regularly work for different studios and have the freedom to choose their roles at any time. Of course, judging from some of the roles actors have chosen, they still manage to appear in bombs every now and then, but at least now they have no one to blame but themselves.