Joan fontaine

Like her sister, Olivia de Havilland , Joan Fontaine was born in Tokyo, Japan, the location where her father, a British patent attorney, was stationed. She was born on October 22, 1917, and her full name is Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland. The early divorce of her parents and the delicate state of health of Joan, who had anemia at the age of two, decided her mother, actress Lillian Fontaine , to move with her daughters to Saratoga, California. Olivia and Joan studied there, but the latter returned to Japan with her father when she was 15 years old, and she remained there. Perhaps that separation contributed to open the chasm that separates the sisters, and that had its greatest public impact in the respective non-congratulations for winning the Oscar when both were already actresses, Joan first in 1941 forSuspect , and Olivia later in 1946 byThe intimate life of Julia Norris .

The enmity of the two sisters, who never coincided in a movie, is curious and feeds the morbidity. But the truth is that life itself seemed to force them to compete, they went as if stepping on each other’s heels in a mad race to see who would arrive first. It has been said that in the acting career Olivia’s mother was more supportive of Olivia, and Joan had to change her last name to avoid interfering, and after initially toying with the stage name Burfield, she eventually gravitated curiously towards Fontaine’s maternal stage name as well. When it came to making their on-screen debut –before they had both taken their first steps on stage–, the two sisters did so in the same year, 1935, and the same month, June, although it seems that Fontaine won this first bid for the premiere by a single day. No More Ladiesit was a vehicle in the service of Joan Crawford , and Fontaine had a piece of paper.

For several years Fontaine added secondary roles, two of them with George Stevens in Miss Disgraced (1937) -alongside Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers- andGunga Din (1939). It had more weight in other titles such as The Kidnapping of Laura (1938), although they were films close to the B series, of which RKO, the studio that had hired the actress, was kicking. Things progressed little by little, with some gratifying jobs such asWomen (1939) by George Cukor , with an all-female cast where she was again in the shadow of Crawford.

The big break came one night when she had the chance to chat with David O. Selznick , in another example of sibling overlap, since Olivia worked for the legendary producer onGone with the Wind . It was a dinner with a lot of people, and they both chatted about a fashionable novel: “Rebecca”, by Daphne du Maurier . Selznick had taken over the rights, and knowing the actress’s knowledge of the play, he would claim it for a test run for de Winter’s poor second wife. She would end up being selected among dozens of actresses, and the Alfred Hitchcock film Rebecca (1940) would be simply memorable, earning its protagonist an Oscar nomination. The following year Fontaine repeated with the magician of suspense in Suspicion , and this time the statuette did not resist him, beating her own sister who was competing for the prize forIf it didn’t dawn After the war dramaBe True to Yourself (1942), another Oscar nomination came thanks toTHE NYMPH CONSTANT (1943). She thus proved to be the ideal actress for gothic melodrama, fragile and strong at the same time, so she was signed toJane Eyre (Rebel Soul) (1944), where she shared the screen with Orson Welles in the adaptation of the novel by Charlotte Brontë . She was in the prime of her career, and a batch of great movies was yet to come.

Meanwhile, her personal life was not a bed of roses, and significantly so she titled her memoirs, published in 1979. In 1939 she had married actor Brian Aherne , but their differences ended in divorce in 1945. The following year she married the producer William Dozier, of which he had his only offspring in 1948, a girl named Debbie. But the family broke up in 1951. Her other two marriages, which did not come to fruition either, were with the screenwriter and producer Collier Young and with Alfred Wright.

Returning to the cinema, and following in the wake of Olivia, Joan Fontaine placed herself under the orders of the director who made her sister’s first Oscar possible. She was in the pirate movieThe Pirate and the Lady (1944). He would continue to cultivate the sweet and sophisticated image of him inMy four loves (1945) andLive life! (1948), and would accompany the singer Bing Crosby under the orders of Billy Wilder inThe Emperor’s Waltz (1948). But he also plunged into a kind of film noir inAbysses (1947) andBlood on Hands (1948), opposite Burt Lancaster . Thus until perhaps reaching the peak of his interpretive possibilities in the passionately romanticLetter from a stranger (1948), the film by Max Ophüls that adapted Stefan Zweig ‘s novel of the same name, about a woman in love, but tragically marked by the blindness of her lover, who does not recognize such love. From being heartbroken in this film, Fontaine would go on to break hearts inBorn for evil (1950), a title that defines her formidable character.

The 50s would allow the actress to reach genres and types of films that her sister Olivia had already visited. What was missing to address the adventure? Well there goes aIvanhoe (1952) directed by Richard Thorpe . What, my dear, have you never filmed a Shakespeare? Well, marching aOthello (1952), that of Orson Welles, even if it is glancing, like a page, and does not appear in the credits. And she had both of his movies with Mitchell Leisen , just like his little sister, doingBaby, why did you do it? (1951). From this moment on, forgettable titles alternate, with others as exciting as The Bigamist ( Ida Lupino , 1953), Something to Live for (George Stevens, 1953) and Beyond Doubt ( Fritz Lang , 1956). The adaptations of James M. Cain (Two Passions and One Love ) and Francis Scott Fitzgerald (Soft is the night ) were not up to their literary references, although the actress was fine. The withdrawal of the cinema would come withThe Witches (1966), a Hammer horror film. She would still have the Fontaine television presence in various series, including an episode ofAlfred Hitchcock Presents , and another ofHolidays at sea , again chasing here the fraternal shadow; Her last appearance on the small screen was very suitably as a queen, which that was on screen, in the telefilm Good King Wenceslas , in 1994.