Joan Fontaine
Joan Fontaine (born
October 22 1917) is an
Academy Award-winning
Japanese-born
British actress, who became an
American citizen in April 1943.
She was born
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in
Tokyo,
Japan, the younger daughter of Walter de Havilland, and the former Lilian Augusta Ruse, a British actress known by her stage name of
Lilian Fontaine, who married in 1914. Fontaine's father, Walter, was a
British patent attorney with a practice in Japan.
She is the younger sister of actress
Olivia de Havilland, from whom she has been estranged for many years; both attended
Los Gatos High School and the Notre Dame Convent Roman Catholic girls school in
Belmont, California.
At the age of two, Joan's parents divorced. Joan was a sickly child and had developed
anemia following a combined attack of the
measles and a streptococcic infection. Upon the advice of a physician, Joan's mother moved her and her sister to the United States where they settled in the town of
Saratoga, California.
Joan's health improved dramatically and she was soon taking
diction lessons along with her sister. She was also an extremely bright child and scored 160 on an intelligence test when she was three. When she was fifteen, Joan returned to Japan and lived with her father for two years.
When she returned to the U.S., she followed Olivia's lead and began to appear on stage and in films, but was refused permission by their mother, who allegedly favored Olivia, to use the family name. So Joan was forced to invent a name (
Joan Burfield, and later
Joan Fontaine, utilizing her own mother's former stage name).
Joan made her stage debut in the West Coast production of
Call It A Day in
1935 and was soon signed to an
RKO contract.
Her film debut was a small role in
No More Ladies (1935). She was selected to appear in a major role alongside
Fred Astaire in his first RKO film without
Ginger Rogers:
A Damsel in Distress (1937) but audiences were disappointed and the film flopped.
She continued appearing in small parts in about a dozen films but failed to make a strong impression and her contract was not renewed when it expired in 1939, the same year she married her first husband, the late British actor
Brian Aherne. That marriage was not a success.
Her luck changed one night at a dinner party when she found herself seated next to producer
David O. Selznick. She and Selznick began discussing the
Daphne Du Maurier novel
Rebecca, and Selznick asked her to audition for the part of the unnamed heroine. She endured a grueling six-month series of film tests, along with hundreds of other actresses, before securing the part.
The
film marked the American debut of British director
Alfred Hitchcock. In 1940, the film was released to glowing reviews and Joan was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Actress.
She didn't win that year (
Ginger Rogers took home the award for
Kitty Foyle) but Fontaine did win the following year for Best Actress in
Suspicion, which was also directed by Hitchcock.
Both sisters were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942. Fontaine won for her role in
Alfred Hitchcock's
Suspicion (1941). Biographer Charles Higham has described the events of the awards ceremony, stating that Joan "felt guilty about winning; given her lack of obsessive career drive..."
Several years later, when de Havilland won the Oscar, she famously brushed by Fontaine, waiting with her hand extended, because Olivia had allegedly taken offense at a comment Joan made about Olivia's then-husband. Higham records that the sisters always had an uneasy relationship, even since early childhood, when Olivia would rip up the clothes Joan had to wear as hand-me-downs, forcing Joan to sew them back together.
Both sisters have refused to comment on their feud, but Higham has stated that the above described event in 1942 was the final straw for what would become a lifelong feud, but this is debatable.
The sisters finally ceased to speak at all in 1975, because, according to Fontaine, de Havilland had not invited her to a memorial service for their late mother, Lilian de Havilland, who had recently died from cancer, although Olivia claims she told Joan, but Joan brushed her off, saying she was too busy to attend. The truth is hard to get when one is faced with two different versions of the same event.
She went on to continued success during the 1940s in which she excelled in romantic melodramas. Among her memorable films during this time was
The Constant Nymph (1943),
Jane Eyre (1944),
Ivy (1947) and
Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948). Her film successes slowed a bit during the 1950s and she also began appearing in television and on the stage. She won good reviews for her role on
Broadway in
1954 as Laura in
Tea and Sympathy opposite
Anthony Perkins.
During the 1960s, she continued her stage appearances in several productions, among them
Private Lives,
Cactus Flower and an Austrian production of
The Lion in Winter. Her last theatrical film was
The Witches (1966), which she also co-produced. She made sporadic television appearances throughout the 1970s and 1980s and was nominated for an
Emmy for the
soap opera,
Ryan's Hope in 1980.
She resides in
Carmel, California in relative seclusion.
She published her autobiography,
No Bed of Roses, in 1979.
Joan Fontaine was married four times:
*
Brian Aherne (1939 - 1945)
* William Dozier (1946 - 1951)
*
Collier Young (1952 - 1961)
* Alfred Wright, Jr. (1964 - 1969), a magazine editor.
She has one daughter, Deborah Leslie Dozier (born in 1948), from her union with Dozier, and another daughter, Melinda, a Peruvian adoptee, who ran away from home. Fontaine is reported to be estranged from her daughters as well, possibly because she discovered that they were secretly maintaining a relationship with their aunt Olivia.
Joan Fontaine has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1645 Vine Street.
No More Ladies (
1935)
Quality Street (
1937)
The Man Who Found Himself (
1937)
You Can't Beat Love (
1937)
Music for Madame (
1937)
A Damsel in Distress (
1937)
Maid's Night Out (
1938)
A Million to One (
1938)
Blond Cheat (
1938)
Sky Giant (
1938)
The Duke of West Point (
1938)
Gunga Din (
1939)
Man of Conquest (
1939)
The Women (
1939)
Rebecca (
1940)
Suspicion (
1941)
This Above All (
1942)
The Constant Nymph (
1943)
Jane Eyre (
1944)
Frenchman's Creek (
1944)
The Affairs of Susan (
1945)
From This Day Forward (
1946)
Ivy (
1947)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (
1948)
The Emperor Waltz (
1948)
You Gotta Stay Happy (
1948)
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (
1948)
Born to Be Bad (
1950)
September Affair (
1950)
Darling, How Could You (
1951)
The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (
1952)
Something to Live For (
1952)
Ivanhoe (
1952)
Decameron Nights (
1953)
Flight to Tangier (
1953)
The Bigamist (
1953)
Casanova's Big Night (
1954)
Hollywood Mothers and Fathers (
1955) (short subject)
Serenade (
1956)
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (
1956)
Island in the Sun (
1957)
Until They Sail (
1957)
A Certain Smile (
1958)
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (
1961)
Tender is the Night (
1962)
The Witches (
1966)
Busby Berkeley (
1974) (documentary)
The Users (
1978) (TV movie)
All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story (
1982) (documentary)
Good King Winceslas (
1994) (TV movie)
Fontaine, Joan.
No Bed of Roses. Berkley Publishing Group, 1979. ISBN 0425050289
Current Biography 1944. H.W. Wilson Company, 1945.
*
Classic Movies (1939 - 1969): Joan Fontaine*
Joan Fontaine at Classic Actresses*
Rebecca: The Official Joan Fontaine Fanlist
