It was a celebrity fight that began at birth and ended only with death.
Two-time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland, who died Saturday at the age of 104, has had a long feud with her sister, actress Joan Fontaine (who died in 2013).
Here is a timeline of the points:
– The sisters were born 15 months apart (De Havilland major) and their rivalry became apparent even in childhood, when they shared a room. According to PEOPLE, de Havilland would scare Fontaine “with dramatic readings of the Bible crucifixion scene,” while Fontaine would return to De Havilland “imitating both one word and the two he said.” In his 1978 memoir, No Bed of Roses, Fontaine referred to more physical confrontations, describing “the animosity we felt for each other when we were children, hair pulled, wild struggles, the moment Olivia fractured her collarbone…” Described in more detail across Country Living, the collarbone incident occurred when “Joan in the water and tried to pull Olivia by the ankle, but the older and more powerful sister struggled, resulting in Joan’s broken collarbone at the edge of the pool.”
A profile in LIFE magazine warned that her hostility was even worse than that: “At 9, Joan would kill her sister. She thought it all carefully: she let Olivia beat her once, then once, in silence. But after the third shot, he hooked Olivia between the eyes. “Clearly, he didn’t.
De Havilland first became a career actress, being chosen for a big-screen adaptation of a midsummer night’s dream when she was 18. According to Country Living, Fontaine insisted that her older sister help her become an actress. De Havilland agreed to help if Joan replaced her backburden to avoid confusion in the industry, so Joan took the back of her father-in-law, Fontaine. According to Biography, after the change of call, de Havilland said: “Joan Fontaine. I don’t know who he is.”
– Producer David O. Selznick wanted to play De Havilland in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film Rebecca, but she still had a contract with Warner Bros. Selznick allegedly asked De Havilland, “Would you dare take me to your sister?” De Havilland told Vanity Fair, “I lost a brilliant role, but it’s okay.” Fontaine received the role and was nominated for an Oscar, the first for either sister.
– In 19four2, the sisters were nominated for an Oscar in the same category. Fontaine won for Suspect, while De Havilland was nominated for Hold Back the Dawn. Fontaine and de Havilland were sitting at the same table during the ceremony, and Fontaine later wrote about the moment: “I felt Olivia was going to jump on the table and grab me by the hair. I felt four years old, facing my sister. For God’s sake, he had provoked his wrath again! “Later, De Havilland married the novelist Marcus Goodrich and, his sister reportedly whistled, “All I know about him is that he had four wives and wrote a book. Too bad it’s not the other way.”
– In 1947, de Havilland won his first Oscar for Each His Account. According to USA Today, Fontaine tried to congratulate De Havilland “and rejected it.
– It is a significant fact: when her mother diagnosed her with terminal cancer in 1975, De Havilland would have gone to her side and with her until her death some time later. Fontaine was traveling with a play at the time and claimed that no one had called her to let her know that her mother wanted to see her and that she didn’t even invite her to the memorial service. Apparently, Fontaine anyway and the sisters didn’t communicate with each other. “You can divorce your sister and your husbands,” Fontaine told PEOPLE. “I don’t see it at all and I don’t intend to.
Fontaine died in 2013 at the age of 96. Years earlier, I had predicted to PEOPLE that I would die first: “Olivia said that I was the first at all: first I was married, first I got an Oscar, a child first. If I die [first], she’ll be furious, because again, I’ll be the first! “
– Three years after the death of his sister, De Havilland told USA Today that he still called Fontaine, “The Dragon Lady”, but denied that there was a dispute in herself. “One” fight “involves the continuation of a hostile habit between two parties,” de Havilland said. “I can’t think of a single case where I started the hostile habit. But I can think of many parties where my reaction to the intentionally reckless habit was defensive … Dragon Lady, since I still made the decision to call her, she was a brilliant person, with multiple talents, but with an astigmatism in her belief in other people and parties that led her to react in an unfair and even harmful way.”
While you can’t think that either side won a fight (and did Array ever win a fight?), De Havilland had the last and final say.
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