Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Cover of first annual commencement program from collection of historian Bill Wulf

Picture from the Past

John S. Baggerly

LGHS grad needed no lessons in how to speak

Earlier this spring Los Gatos High School students were heard to ask, "What is the de Havilland Cup?"

By now they know that Julia Drees, a senior, is the 1997 winner of the annual award for public speaking.

What they may not know is that the trophy for public speaking is named for Olivia de Havilland, a 1934 LGHS graduate, who became a leading player in the movie classic Gone With the Wind and twice a winner of Oscars for leading actress.

At Saratoga Grammar School she was an excellent student and speaker and at LGHS delivered her class' commencement address in what became the Prentiss Brown Theater.

Following World War II, when high tech replaced the fruit industry in Santa Clara County, schools doubled and tripled in size and local graduation ceremonies were moved to the school's spacious front lawn.

In 1988, de Havilland was invited to be the commencement speaker at the school's June 17 ceremonies on the front lawn. She readily accepted and came here from her home in Paris.

She arrived a week before graduation day and took rooms at the Saratoga Inn, where she prepared for her talk and granted interviews to the metropolitan and local press. She was somewhat like the statesman who said, "If you want me to talk for an hour, I'll start right now. If you want me to talk for five minutes, it will take me a week to prepare."

She was right at home at the Inn, having worked there as a schoolgirl and acted in the Theater of the Glade. The Glade's stage was at the rear of the inn and patrons sat in chairs on a lawn that extended to Saratoga Creek behind the Inn. She also acted with theater groups on the peninsula.

From her headquarters at the Inn, de Havilland set up meetings with Principal Ted Simonson to view her speaking venue, a platform on the upper section of the lawn near the school entrance, facing the assembled graduates and public.

In her talk to the graduating class, she could have mentioned that as a student she won the Miller Cup by delivering a designated piece of literature given by all contestants. For the de Havilland Cup, contestants deliver material of their own choosing. A glance at the trophy indicates that girl and boy winners are about equal.

LGHS English/drama teacher Don Scott (now retired) was a ready aide on all things de Havilland, such as her Oscars for To Each His Own in 1946 and The Heiress in 1949. Her part as Melanie in Gone With the Wind was Scott's favorite de Havilland performance. Her excellent grades at LGHS earned her a scholarship to Mills College, which she declined in order to take a fling at Hollywood.

Early in her career a movie director said of her and her sister, Joan Fontaine, "We didn't have to teach these girls how to speak." Hollywood recruited dozens of pretty girls, but many of them needed extensive elocution lessons.

All during her career and retirement, Olivia returned to visit her mother, Lillian Fontaine of Saratoga, and Claire Loftus of Los Gatos. The two women, fast friends, produced plays locally.

While here in 1988, de Havilland was the center of a reunion of 1930s graduates.

Today de Havilland is part of curator Mary Foster's Forbes Mill exhibit commemorating the art works of Engerson and Dennison of Alma. It was they who drove de Havilland to Hollywood for her debut into the movies.

Today, de Havilland lives in Paris. She is working on a family biography which includes an ancestor who invented the de Havilland airplane.

[ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ]