Catherine is as hapless as any male noir protagonist, sheltered and eager for love. Not so much in its visual style - Wyler’s blacks are not particularly deep and his shooting style is wider and more reserved, as would befit a period drama - but in its soul. When the dashing but financially insolvent Morris Townsend asks for her hand in marriage, it kicks off a war of wills between the strident, seemingly sincere Morris and Catherine’s suspicious father, leaving Catherine’s affections and dreams of love in the crossfire.Īdapted from a 1947 stage play, itself inspired by Henry James’ 1880 novella Washington Square, The Heiress is a gothic romance but feels strongly of a piece with the film noir genre, which was reaching its zenith in the late 1940s. Shy, self-conscious and hopeless at social events, Catherine is considered a spinster despite being in her early thirties, a hopeless case when it comes to landing a husband. But whereas Melanie is admired - or envied, in the case of Scarlett O’Hara - for her seemingly bottomless reservoirs of poise and grace, no one would feel the same way about Catherine.

Like Melanie, Catherine is a kind-hearted and eager-to-please daughter of a wealthy 19th-century family. Her role as Catherine Sloper in William Wyler’s 1949 film The Heiress - which would win de Havilland her second and final Academy Award for Best Actress - gains some small measure of its power from the audience being familiar with her most iconic performance. The last of the great Golden Age actresses - still kicking as of this writing at the age of 102 - Olivia de Havilland is best remembered for her on and off screen romances with Errol Flynn, and for playing the saintly Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind.

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