The Londoner: Olivia de Havilland ‘dodged Ted Heath proposal’

Life could have been very different for Olivia de Havilland, who died yesterday at the age of 104.

The film star once steered then British prime minister Ted Heath away from proposing to her, according to broadcaster Matthew Sweet.

Sweet told us he spoke to De Havilland in 2000 and she said “she had a conversation with Ted Heath where he was clearly going to propose to her and she had diverted the conversation to avert him”. As for why she turned down the PM, who ran the country from 1970 to 1974, Sweet said that though they were friends she didn’t fancy him.

He explained that while Heath “never popped the question, she was really sure he was going to. She said they were walking outside in a garden”. Possibly, Sweet mused, it was the Downing Street garden itself.

De Havilland starred in Gone with the Wind in 1939, and later won two Oscars for Best Actress.

Sweet, who recalled “a person of amazing courage, integrity and bloody mindedness,” drew the revelation from De Havilland over an afternoon “sitting on a chaise longue in her front room” where “a uniformed maid kept bringing macaroons”. A major missed opportunity.

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