Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Employee In A Cage? Olivia De Havilland, Warner Bros. Pictures, And The ‘Limit Case’ Of Star Employment, Matt Stahl

FIMS Publications

In 1944, two California courts agreed with actor Olivia De Havilland’s claim that the state’s seven year limit on the enforceability of employment contracts applied to her 1936 contract with Warner Bros. Pictures, and refused to enforce the contract beyond its seventh anniversary. This article revisits the well-known De Haviland v. Warner Bros. Pictures (1944) Appellate Court decision, and its lesser-known, lower court antecedent, in order to explore the decisions’ related but distinct assumptions about employment, employers, and employees. Both courts agreed (1) that employees need protection from excesses of employee power, (2) that employment is a public, social phenomenon, …