Sisters Who Aren’t Loving Their Sister ~ A Tale of a Hollywood Sibling Rivalry

Hey, do you know that it is Joan Fontaine’s 92^nd birthday today?  Okay, let me try this again.  How many of you know who Joan Fontaine is?  Well, that is just sad.

                For some time I have wanted to write this article and because today is Joan’s birthday, and she is 92, and her big sister is Olivia de Havilland, who is still alive, but I felt I didn’t have a lot of time to diddle-daddle.   Most folks probably remember de Havilland as  Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in ‘Gone With the Wind.’  Since that movie was made in 1939, I imagine she is probably one of the few people who was involved with its production that is still drawing breath.  This probably proves the point that I have been thinking to myself; if I wrote this article in the late 30’s, as the dust bowl was blowing through my part of the country, this article would be quite the must read, but since it is 2009 I might be able to only entice Peter Joseph Swanson to give it a looky loo.

                What I love about this story is that both women were respected actresses who didn’t really seem to have that Lindsanity Lohan gene – on the surface at least.  It wasn’t as if they were doing Judy Garland things like show up on a film set smelling of booze and about to pass out from sleeping pills.  No, these women thought of themselves as professional actors and did the jobs they were assigned (even if it meant marrying your first cousin which unintentionally caused spite by a certain Southern spitfire).  Yet you have to ask yourself why would two such individuals, sisters no less, not like each other? 

                Their story starts in 1916 and 1917 in Tokyo, Japan where they were born into the family of a British patent attorney and his actress wife.  Things weren’t so happy go lucky in Japan apparently because the girls’ parents divorced and their British mum decided to move to sunny California with her two girls in tow (actually she moved to Saratogo, CA because of Joan’s poor health). 

                It was Olivia who was discovered first and started to make a name for herself, first on the stage and then in such movies as ‘Captain Blood’ where she co-starred with Errol Flynn – they made eight films together.  For some reason Joan moved back to Tokyo to be with her father (rumors are that her sister was their mother’s favorite – “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”) but returned to the states and took the surname of her stepfather George Fontaine (there were conflicting stories about this point).  Both ladies earned their acting street cred fairly early in their careers.  De Havilland was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in ‘GWTW’ but lost out to Hattie McDaniel who played Mammy in the film.  That was okay because she was soon nominated for Best Actress for ‘Hold Back the Dawn’ (which is a movie title that only black and white films could dare call itself) in 1941 the but lost to…oh, you know who she lost to.  Fontaine won for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion’ a film noteworthy because it was the only movie to produce a best acting Oscar directed by the iconic Hitchcock.  Perhaps, it made de Havilland happy to know that her sister lost the year before for her role in ‘Rebecca’ which with ‘Jane Eyre’ is one of the movie roles of which she is best known. 

                Oh my, here’s some of the juice I heard, their animosity may have begun when they were kids and Joan would have to wear her sister’s outgrown clothing…but not before Olivia tore them apart and Joan had to sew them back together using her tears as thread (the last part was an embellishment on my part).  Later when they were being nominated for a certain nude statuette the sister with the lesser career drive won while the other one had to smile and clap and ironically give the performance of her life as if she was really happy her little sis won.  Of course she gave Joan a dress that she had worn before and then shredded it and told her sister that girls who sleep in cinders couldn’t go to the Academy Awards and dance with Oscar (once again this is an embellishment on my part).  Actually, it might have been Joan who was the bitch by pointedly ignoring Olivia who wanted to congratulate her on winning which caused some comment amongst the non-televised crowd.  So here’s the lesson kids: if you have a younger sibling that has to wear your hand-me-downs, don’t tear them up and then require said sib to then sew them up with anger and resentment in their heart because someday both of you might be up for the same best acting award and now the Academy Awards are televised. 

                Here’s the really good stuff.  The sisters would infrequently talk to each other up until 1975 when their mother died and Fountaine claimed de Havilland didn’t invite her to the memorial service, while Olivia claims she told Joan about it but Joan was too busy to attend.  In Joan’s defense, according to her IMDB profile, she did star in an episode of the TV show ‘Cannon’ that year.  Further get this, Fountaine is alleged to have a strained relationship with her two daughters because they have kept in contact with Aunt Olivia – one daughter even ran away from home.  Where in the hell is the Lifetime network on this story?

                Some other differences are that Fontaine spent the majority of her active career with MGM while de Havilland was with Warner Brothers.  Joan was married four times and as mentioned above, has two daughters.  Olivia was married twice and has a child from each relationship.  I should note that her first marriage lasted for less than a month.  Neither sister has ever publicly commented about their feud although Fontaine has hinted that “their feud” was a creation of the Hollywood publicity department and then went on to talk about how each of them have a temper…so I suppose technically one has spoken a bit about their estrangement.

                So here is the situation right now, somewhere in Paris it is probably early morning and Olivia is tossing and turning in bed trying to get out of her mind that it is her sister’s 92^nd birthday.  She has lived in Paris since the 1950’s and is dreaming everything I am writing about in French.  She knows that it is just early evening in Carmel, California where her sister, a naturalized American citizen no less, is sitting on her deck awaiting the sunset and thinking of things as they were…and what they could have been.  Olivia knows that her sister was tested young to have a very high IQ but with her massive intelligence is that stubborn streak that has propelled to continue to live just say she outlived Olivia.  Olivia wants to call her, but something keeps getting in the way.  She has just given birth and is traveling through a recent war zone in the back of a wagon after being abandoned by the man who has led her son, a slave, another woman, and herself out of the bonfire that was Atlanta.  He gave a stirring speech about lost causes and honor and then left them, his small female party (who have always been treated as children thus have the intellectual and emotion development of ten year olds) to their own wits…wait, that was a movie she was in.  Something is in the wind saying call her…call her.  Olivia call her. 

                All that is required of her is to say, “Oui” and to pick up a phone.

Westerfield © 2009              

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