Sworn Sisters: Why Two Stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, feuded

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were sisters and both became prominent actresses in Hollywood's Golden Age. However, it was simply impossible to suspect them of related feelings. Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine not only competed, but openly feuded and were quite capable of publicly accusing each other of all sins. What caused such irreconcilable contradictions and how did they share fame, men and even children?

Two sisters

They were born a little more than a year apart, Olivia, the eldest, and Joan, the youngest. Their mother, Lillian Ruse, was an actress studying acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, and their father, Walter de Havilland, was a patent attorney. After moving to Japan, he taught English at Hokkaido University and later became a professor of law at Waseda University.

Girls from childhood were very different. Olivia was distinguished by a meek disposition, was beautiful and docile. Joan, in turn, grew up as a very sickly and capricious child, she constantly caught cold and, as it seemed to little Olivia, deliberately took the attention of her parents from her.

In 1919, the girls' mother persuaded her husband to return to the UK in the hope that climate change would have a beneficial effect on the health of her daughters. However, on the way aboard the SS Siberia Maru, Olivia fell ill with tonsillitis and Joan with pneumonia. The family settled in San Francisco, and Lillian soon decided to stay in California. Walter de Havilland returned to Japan, and Lillian soon divorced after learning of her husband's infidelity.

Each of the sisters felt special, which could later affect their relationship. And the choice of one profession only exacerbated this state of affairs.

Joan will later describe her childhood in her memoirs, and Olivia in her memoirs will become not a kind older sister, but almost an evil stepmother. And Joan Fontaine will accuse her mother of greater love for her eldest daughter and a noticeable coolness for her younger daughter, although at one time it was because of Joan Lillian that she decided to move.

Later, Joan will go to her father in Japan, but after returning to America, she will receive a crushing blow to her pride: her older sister Olivia will not only become an actress during this time, but will also achieve success. After the release of the film "The Odyssey of Captain Blood" she became famous and became one of the most sought-after actresses.

Two actresses

Joan had a hard time again: she felt like a servant, forced to look after her mother and successful sister. Olivia soon starred as Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind and became so popular that … Joan immediately decided to become an actress too. True, the anticipation of her own success was overshadowed by the words of the mother, who very sharply informed the youngest daughter that there could not be two de Havilland actresses in Hollywood. And she took her stepfather's last name, becoming Joan Fontaine.

From the very moment Joan became an actress, the rivalry between the sisters intensified. After filming the younger sister in Hitchcock's film Rebecca, it became clear that Joan was in no way inferior to her eldest in the profession. They had completely different roles, but attempts to prove to each other who is better and more popular made both of them be very skeptical about the work of their rival. The rivalry heightened when they were simultaneously nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1941.

Olivia de Havilland for Hold the Dawn, starring Emmy Brown, and Joan Fontaine, Suspicion, in which she portrays Lina Eisgarth. They sat at one table and tensely waited for whose name would be announced. That evening Joan was triumphant: it was her victory over her sister. Later, Olivia will receive two Oscars, but still the first laurels were Joan.

Two women

Even before receiving the award, the younger sister defeated the older one in her personal career. Admittedly, Joan was not devious. When Olivia refused to become the mistress of the millionaire Howard Hughes, he tried to make the obstinate beauty jealous by proposing to her sister. But Joan did not deceive about him and refused Hughes. True, she still showed the millionaire's note to her sister.

But Joan wanted by all means to be the first to marry and did so in 1939, however, her marriage to Brian Ahern could not be called happy, and after 6 years they broke up. In 1946, their family had two weddings at once: Olivia became the wife of Marcus Goodrich, writer and journalist, Joan has taken an oath of allegiance to producer William Dozier. At the same time, Olivia and her husband were clearly unlucky, by the time of his marriage to the actress, he managed to be married four times, but in the professional field he did not achieve anything. He tried himself in various fields, but was always unsuccessful. And he even wrote a book, which also did not have much success.

Joan couldn’t resist a bit of a jab at her sister and said with sarcastic regret: “It's a pity that Olivia’s husband had so many wives and only one book!”. After this attack, Olivia stopped all communication with her sister. When Joan Fontaine presented the first Oscar to her sister, Olivia, having received the coveted statuette, defiantly refused to embrace. After that, the sisters did not communicate for five years.

Two mothers

Each of them has managed to become a mother over the years. Joan gave birth to a daughter, Deborah, in 1948, and in 1951 became a foster mother for Martita, a girl from Peru, promising the parents of a four-year-old to bring her daughter after her 16th birthday so that she could see her father and mother. When the girl turned 16, Joan bought tickets to and from Peru for Martita, but she categorically refused the trip, just running away from home. In January 1951, Joan divorced her husband, but for a long time their litigation for custody of Deborah continued. Joan married twice more, in 1952 to the writer Collier Hudson Young and in 1964 to Alfred Wright, editor of Sports Illustrated, with whom she parted in 1969.

Olivia in 1949 gave birth to a son, Benjamin, but her marriage was dissolved when the baby was not even four years old. In 1955, she remarried the editor-in-chief of Paris Match, Pierre Galante, with whom she had a daughter, Giselle. With her last husband, Olivia was able to maintain a good relationship after the divorce and even looked after him when her ex-husband was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her son Benjamin died at 42 from Hodgkin's lymphoma.

It would seem that the years and experiences experienced should have softened the hearts of the sisters, but they continued to compete. Joan, who did not have a relationship with either her own daughter or her adoptive, was desperately jealous of both of her older sister, because both girls loved to visit Olivia.

After the death of Olivia and Joan's mother in 1978, the latter accused her sister of not telling her the tragic news, thereby depriving her of the opportunity to say goodbye to her mother. This put the final point in the relationship between two relatives, they never spoke again. Only in 1978 did Joan mention in an interview: if she suddenly dies first, then Olivia will be simply furious.

Joan was able to get ahead of her sister here too. She passed away in 2013, and Olivia continues to live, remaining the last living actress to star in the age of classic Hollywood.

Show business and the fashion world have their own unspoken rules, and the competition is so high that it looks more like outright enmity. It is known that two dark-skinned models Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell do not get along with each other. In some photographs, where two dark-skinned beauties pose together, they can be mistaken for close friends, but they have never been friends, and the origins of their dislike lie in the distant 1990s.