Oscar Profile #210: Joan Fontaine

Born October 22, 1917 to British parents in Tokyo, Japan, Joan de Bouvier de Havilland, better known as Joan Fontaine, was the younger sister of Olivia de Havilland by fifteen months.

A sickly child, Joan moved to California with her mother and sister after her parents’ separation in 1919 while still a baby. She returned to Japan at 16 in 1933 to complete her education. Following her elder sister into acting, her mother, whom Joan always believed favored Olivia, insisted she change her name and not tread on the name of her sister who was already making a name for herself. She was first Joan St. John, then Joan Burfield before settling on her stepfather’s name of Fontaine. She made her film debut as Burfield in a small role in 1935’s No More Ladies. The film opened on June 14, 1935 exactly one day before de Havilland’s first film, Alibi Ike, but unlike de Havilland who had three more 1935 films in the can, Fontaine had to wait a year and a half for her next role, another minor part.

Fontaine always credited Katharine Hepburn, the star of 1937’s Quality Street in which she had a small part with bringing her to the attention of RKO executives who began to build her career. Her first starring role of note was in 1937’s A Damsel in Distress opposite Fred Astaire for which she was ridiculed for her amateurish dancing. It was back to supporting roles in such films as Gunga Din and The Women in 1939, the year she married actor Brian Aherne. Major stardom came quickly after that, however, when she won the coveted role of the second Mrs. de Winter in David O. Selznick’s 1940 film of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, the first Hollywood film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Fontaine was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for Rebecca, which won for Best Picture. She was again nominated for her follow-up role as another mousey wife in Hitchcock’s 1941 film, Suspicion. This time she won over her sister Olivia who had been nominated for Hold Back the Dawn causing the first public display of the animosity between the now famous sisters when she rebuffed de Havilland’s congratualtions.

The actress’s own personal favorite film was 1943’s The Constant Nymph for which she received her third Oscar nomination, losing to her friend Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette. The following year’s Jane Eyre and Frenchman’s Creek were also successes. She divorced Aherne in 1945 and married second husband, producer William Dozier in 1946.

Fontaine’s most critically acclaimed role was in 1948’s Letter from an Unknown Woman, but she also received excellent notices for 1950’s September Affair; 1952’s Ivanhoe and 1953’s The Bigamist before making an acclaimed Broadway debut as Deborah Kerr’s replacement in Tea and Sympathy in 1954. She had divorced Dozier in 1951 and married writer-producer Collier Young in 1952. Young’s previous marriage had been to Ida Lupino who directed and co-starred in The Bigamist which he had written.

Augmenting her career with TV appearances from the 1950s on, Fontaine’s subsequent screen career yielded few hits. Among her best remembered films from 1957 to 1966 were Island in the Sun, Until They Sail, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Tender Is the Night and her last, The Witches. Divorced from Collier in 1961, she married her last husband, sports writer Alfred Wright, Jr. in 1964. The marriage ended in 1969. She made her last TV appearance in 1994, retiring to Carmel by the Sea at the age of 77. She died on December 15, 2013 at the age of 96, predeceasing Olivia de Havilland who lives on at 98.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

REBECCA (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Fontaine won the role of the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca over numerous candidates including Anne Baxter and Vivien Leigh. Fontaine always claimed that Olivier was cool to her during filming because he had wanted his soon to be wife Leigh in the role. Olivier claimed he was just being in character. Whatever the case, it added a level of authenticity to her portrayal of Olivier’s mousey second wife.

Fontaine received her first Oscar nomination for her performance, losing to the actress she temporarily replaced in Fred Astaire’s affections in 1937’s A Damsel in Distress, Ginger Rogers, who won forKitty Foyle.

SUSPICION (1941), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Another Hitchcock, another mousey wife, this time to Cary Grant who like Olivier, she found self-absorbed. When Grant was asked what it was like working with Fontaine he avoided the question by saying something about you could tell the actresses he got along with by the fact that he made more than one film with them. That would include the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Irene Dunne, Deborah Kerr, Myrna Loy and Sophia Loren, but not Fontaine.

Fontaine received her second nomination for her performance and her first and only win. She won over her sister, Olivia de Havilland. When de Havilland went to congratulate her she brushed her off giving the public its first inkling of the animosity between the sisters that reached a crescendo five years later when de Havilland rebuffed Fontaine as she attempted to congratulate her on her 1946 win for To Each His Own. The sisters barely spoke after that, and stopped speaking altogether after the death of their mother in 1975.

THE CONTSTANT NYMPH (1943), directed by Edmund Goulding

Fontaine told the story that she got her favorite role by happenstance. She had returned from a flight with husband Brian Aherne in his private plane, windblown with no makeup on and her hair in pigtails. Because of the hour, the two decided to stop for a quick bite to eat near the airport before driving home. Director Goulding, who knew Aherne but not Fontaine, came to the restaurant and stopped at the Ahernes’ table to speak briefly to Brian who introduced Fontaine as his wife without providing her name. Goulding complained about not being able to find an actress capable of playing the tricky title role in The Constant Nymph. Fontaine piped in with “I can play that”, to which Goulding asked “who are you?” Once he realized who she was, he asked her to come to Warner Bros. the next day for a meeting and was immediately hired for the role opposite Charles Boyer.

Fontaine liked Boyer who she recalled as an actor who was more concerned about the other actor’s performance than his own like Olivier and Grant.

LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948), directed by Max Ophuls

Beautifully filmed in a Universal back-lot Vienna, Ophuls’ lushly romantic tragedy was the German born director’s best Hollywood film featuring career high performances from both Fontaine and Louis Jourdan as the shallow pianist she has loved in vain for decades.

The film revolves around a letter received by Jourdan as he is about to flee a dual with the outraged husband of a woman he can’t remember. In the letter he learns that the woman and her husband have raised a child he never knew he had.

Fontaine was sadly not nominated for an Oscar for this. Her sister Olivia was a nominee that year for one of her own career high performances in The Snake Pit but lost to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda.

ISLAND IN THE SUN (1957), directed by Robert Rossen

The same year as Fox had a major success with the cleaned up screen version of the sensationalist Peyton Place they missed the boat with the film version of Alec Waugh’s equally sensationalistic Island in the Sun which focused on incest, murder and racism on a fictitious British isle in the Caribbean, all of which were downplayed in the film.

Much was made at the time about the groundbreaking depiction of inter-racial romance between Dorothy Dandridge and John Justin and Fontaine and Harry Belafonte. Unfortunately Hollywood prudery of the time would not allow either couple to kiss. They merely hug. Dandridge, Belafonte and John Williams as a police inspector come off best. An uncomfortable looking Fontaine and an over-the-top James Mason have done much better work elsewhere.