O'Toole and Joan... 
Fontaine both passed away today. Two more from my youth... 
gone--
Posted on 12/15/2013 5:16:52 PM PST by Borges
The star of the Hitchcock classics "Suspicion" and "Rebecca" famously won an Oscar in 1942 over her bitter rival -- her older sister Olivia de Havilland.
Joan Fontaine, the polished actress who achieved stardom in the early 1940s with memorable performances in the Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion — for which she earned the best actress Oscar over her bitter rival, sister Olivia de Havilland — and Rebecca, has died. She was 96.
THR awards analyst Scott Feinberg spoke with the actress' assistant, Susan Pfeiffer, who confirmed the death of natural causes Sunday at Fontaine's home in Carmel, Calif. Fontaine earned a third best actress Oscar nomination for her role in The Constant Nymph (1943), She also was notable as Charlotte Bronte's eponymous heroine in Jane Eyre (1944) opposite Orson Welles; in the romantic thriller September Affair (1950) with Joseph Cotton; in Ivanhoe (1952) with Robert Taylor; and in Island in the Sun (1957), where she plays a high-society woman in love with an up-and-coming politician (Harry Belafonte).
It was Hitchcock, with his penchant for “cool blondes,” who brought Fontaine to the forefront when he cast her as the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca (1940), the director’s American debut. Her performance as the new wife of Laurence Olivier in a household haunted by the death of his first wife earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. A year later, Hitchcock placed her opposite Cary Grant in Suspicion, and she won the Oscar for her turn as Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth, a shy English woman who begins to suspect her charming new husband of trying to kill her. She thus became the only actor to win an Oscar in a Hitchcock film. Among those Fontaine beat out at the 1942 Academy Awards was her older sister de Havilland, up for Hold Back the Dawn (1941). Biographer Charles Higham wrote that as Fontaine came forward to accept her trophy, she rejected de Havilland’s attempt to congratulate her and that de Havilland was offended. The sisters, who never really got along since childhood, finally stopped speaking to each other in the mid-’70s. De Havilland, a two-time Oscar winner, is 97 and living in Paris.
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland was born in Tokyo on Oct. 22, 1917, to British parents. Her father was a patent attorney who had a thriving practice in Japan. Due to the ill health of her and Olivia, their mother, Lilian, moved them to California and pushed them into acting. While de Havilland pursued acting, Fontaine returned to Tokyo and attended the American School. Ultimately, their parents divorced and Fontaine returned to the U.S. at age 17 to live in San Jose, Calif. As de Havilland was already having some success as an actress, Fontaine joined a local theater group and moved to L.A. She received a screen test at MGM and was given a bit part in No More Ladies (1935), credited as Joan Burfield. After changing her last name to Fontaine (from her stepfather, George Fontaine) to avoid confusion with her sister, she signed with RKO and garnered small parts in several movies, including The Women and Gunga Din, both released in 1939. Capitalizing on her emotional turns in Rebecca and Suspicion, Fontaine appeared in several romantic films in the ’40s, including Constant Nymph (where she falls for composer Charles Boyer), Frenchman’s Creek (1944), The Affairs of Susan (1945), From This Day Forward (1945) and Ivy (1947). Fontaine moved into more mature roles in the movies and starred on Broadway opposite Anthony Perkins in Tea and Sympathy in 1954. Her last movie appearance was in The Witches (1966). Fontaine made regular TV appearances in the late ’50s and early ’60s and served as a panelist on the game show To Tell the Truth from 1962-65. In 1986, she co-starred in the TV movie Dark Mansions and the miniseries Crossings, and her last credited performance came in the 1994 telefilm Good King Wenceslas. Fontaine was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1980 for her guest-starring stint in the soap opera Ryan’s Hope and served as jury president at the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival. In 1978, she published her autobiography, No Bed of Roses, which detailed her feud with de Havilland. Off the screen, Fontaine was a licensed pilot, an accomplished interior decorator and a Cordon Bleu-level chef who was married and divorced four times. In the ‘40s, she and William Dozier, the second of her four husbands, formed Rampart Productions, which oversaw her 1948 film Letter From an Unknown Woman, Billy Wilder’s The Emperor Waltz (1948) starring Bing Crosby and Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948) with Burt Lancaster. In 1939, Fontaine married British actor Brian Aherne, and they divorced in 1945. She was married to Batman TV show producer Dozier from 1946-51, to producer Collier Young from 1952-61 and to journalist Alfred Wright Jr. from 1964-69.
And now I’m off to shuteye land. 5am comes mighty early...
You’uns have yourselves a great night...
Filthy lifeforms.
You too...stay warm!
RIP. She and her sister had/have two of the best names (as in the elegant sound of them, to this American pair of ears) for movie stars.
“...their mother played one off against another, making them compete with each other in unhealthy ways.”
Very sad.
RIP Joan Fontaine.
“She was also in “Gone With the Wind”.
Olivia DeHavilland is in GWTW, not her sister Miss Fontaine.
And she is GREAT in it!
O'Toole and Joan... Fontaine both passed away today. Two more from my youth... gone--
“...a lot of people have died.”
As my snarky Irish grandmother would say: people are dying who never died before.
“We won’t know if they’re famous for another 20 or so years, if they’re born today...”
Well, except for that wee British Royal born earlier this year.
And my grandson, I feel sure he’ll be famous someday, I just hope it’s for good! He’s a very nice little boy, as I’m sure Kate’s baby is too.
Amen to that.
Loved Parker in “The Man With The Golden Arm”. Sinatra was also great in it, and it was one of Kim Novak’s better roles, IMO.
Billy Jack died, too. The original Billy Jack, Tom Laughlin.
In addition to Parker and Fontaine, I also read that another familiar 1940s/50s actress, Audrey Totter, 95, also died a few days ago. Don’t think it was posted here, but I saw it reported elsewhere.
“Arsenic and Old Lace”
Oh God, I hated that classic film. I hated it so much I have no idea why I watched it all the way through the end.
Never seen it.
The funny thing about Gone With The Wind is of the main four actors (Gable Leigh Howard and De Havilland) Olivia has outlived the others but in the movie itself her character Melanie is the only one of the main four that dies. If Olivia makes it she will turn 100 in 2016. She has probably outlived almost everyone associated with Gone With the Wind including the child actor who played Rhett and Scarlett’s daughter.
I always thought Rhett should have gone after Melanie; they would have been perfect together.
Bitch Scarlett should have ended up with her precious 3/4 of a fag, Ashley.
I always enjoyed “Arsenic and Old Lace.” But I remember when I saw Cary Grant during the time he was going around on a tour of colleges (shortly before he died), and taking questions from the audience, someone asked him about the movie, and he stated he LOATHED his performance in it. Felt he played it too broadly. Wasn’t happy at all about the film.
Actually, he had a point. The film is undeniably funny, but was a tad too overdone, in both the direction and some performances. If it had been toned down just a smidgeon, with more subtlety and more dryness, I think the film would have been even better.
No kidding...53 Dallas Cowboys died today from asphyxiation.
I’m trying to think of a comedy that I’ve seen that I would rate as poorly. “Flubber” with Robin Williams and “Inspector Gadget”, maybe “Men in Black 2”. Even those while incredibly stupid weren’t torturous to watch like this movie.
Maybe it’s just me.
On IMDB I set it to show me “love/hate” when it comes to reviews
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036613/reviews
I’d consider giving another it chance, it was a while ago I saw, but I read a review from this guy who said he saw it as a teenager and still hates it.
I also hated “Field of Dreams”. It can lonely hating a classic movie that most people LOVE.
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