Every Frenchman Has One - by Olivia de Havilland Hardcover

Book Synopsis

Back in print for the first time in decades--and featuring a new interview with the author, in celebration of her centennial birthday--the delectable escapades of Hollywood legend Olivia de Havilland, who fell in love with a Frenchman--and then became a Parisian

In 1953, Olivia de Havilland--already an Academy Award-winning actress for her roles in To Each His Own and The Heiress--became the heroine of her own real-life love affair. She married a Frenchman, moved to Paris, and planted her standard on the Left Bank of the River Seine. It has been fluttering on both Left and Right Banks with considerable joy and gaiety from that moment on.

Still, her transition from Hollywood celebrity to parisienne was anything but easy. And in Every Frenchman Has One, her skirmishes with French customs, French maids, French salesladies, French holidays, French law, French doctors, and above all, the French language, are here set forth in a delightful and amusing memoir of her early years in the "City of Light."

Paraphrasing Caesar, Ms. de Havilland says, "I came. I saw. I was conquered."

Review Quotes

New York Times Bestseller

"Delightfully witty... [de Havilland's] tone might be playful, but her talent was, and is, serious."
--Entertainment Weekly

"Charming, cheeky fun...[with] plenty of nostalgic pleasure."
--Vogue.com

"Sensational."
--Parade.com (13 Summer Reads That Are Must-Haves for the Beach)

"I found myself supremely enchanted by Every Frenchman Has One....[L]ittle did I imagine that this tome inspired by her 1953 move to Paris following her marriage...would reveal such a marvelous reserve of mischievous wit and self-deprecating humor.... Like a delicious collection of bon bons waiting to be gobbled, juicy anecdotal material is mined from an array of inviting topics.... A charming book."
--Susan Wloszczyna, Buffalo News

"An undiluted pleasure."
--Peter Tonguette, Columbus Dispatch

"A light-hearted but also penetrating look at adjusting to French life...[with a] surprisingly vibrant sense of humor."
--Martin Rubin, Washington Times

"Delightful."
--People

"Disarmingly self-deprecating...[an] amusing outsider look at Paris."
--Huffington Post

"An unending battle with law, custom, society, fashion... sales clerk and landlord... Who laughs last laughs best. She does and you along with her."
--New York Herald Tribune

"A rib-tickler... excellent."
--New York Mirror

"Lively and pleasant... wicked and roguish."
--Oakland Tribune

"Nostalgic, provocative."
--New York Times

"Miss de Havilland Tells All..."
--Chicago Tribune

"Her seven-year stint as Mme. Pierre Galante, a sharp-eyed Franco-U.S. housewife and what she found out about French husbands... a happy Jean Kerr-ish account... a funny one..."
--Life

About the Author

Olivia de Havilland began her film career at the age of eighteen playing Hermia in Max Reinhardt's motion picture presentation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Her films have included The Adventures of Robin Hood, Gone with the Wind, The Snake Pit, and Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte. Over the course of her esteemed career, she has won two Academy Awards (for her leading roles in To Each His Own and The Heiress), as well as two New York Critics Awards, two Golden Globes, and a National Board of Review Award. In 2008 she received the National Medal of Arts, and in 2010, the French Legion of Honour. She lives in Paris.