Today, The Grandma has been reading about Joan Fontaine, the English-Americanactress, who died on a day like today in 2013.
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (October 22, 1917-December 15, 2013), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was an English-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the Golden Age.
Fontaine appeared in more than 45 films in a career that spanned five decades.She was the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland. Their rivalry was well-documented in the media at the height of Fontaine's career.
She began her film career in 1935, signing a contract with RKO Pictures. Fontaine received her first major role in The Man Who Found Himself (1937) and in Gunga Din (1939).
Her career prospects improved greatly after her starring role in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), for which she received her first of three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. The following year, she won that award for her role in Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941). A third nomination came with The Constant Nymph (1943). She appeared mostly in drama films through the 1940s, including Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), which is now considered a classic.
In the next decade, after her role in Ivanhoe (1952), her film career began to decline and she moved into stage, radio and television roles. She appeared in fewer films in the 1960s, which included Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), and her final film role in The Witches (1966), also known as The Devil's Own.
She released an autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978, and continued to act until 1994. Having won an Academy Award for her role in Suspicion, Fontaine is the only actress to have won an Academy Award for acting in a Hitchcock film. She and her sister remain the only siblings to have won lead-acting Academy Awards.
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland was born on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo City, in the then Empire of Japan to English parents.
Fontaine made her stage debut in the West Coast production of Call It a Day (1935) and made her film debut in MGM's No More Ladies (1935) in which she was credited as Joan Burfield. She was leading lady to Bruce Bennett (billed as Herman Brix) in a low budget independent film, A Million to One (1937).
Fontaine's luck changed one night at a dinner party when she found herself seated next to producer David O. Selznick. Selznick and she began discussing the Daphne du Maurier novel Rebecca, and Selznick asked her to audition for the part of the unnamed heroine. She endured a grueling six-month series of film tests along with hundreds of other actresses before securing the part sometime before her 22nd birthday.
In August 1946 Fontaine set up her own company, Rampart Productions, with her then-husband William Dozier.
In the 1970s Fontaine appeared in stage shows and toured with a poetry reading.
She returned to Hollywood for the first time in 15 years in 1975 to appear in an episode of Cannon especially written for her. She was in The Users (1978) and was nominated for an Emmy Award for the soap opera Ryan's Hope in 1980.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Fontaine has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1645 Vine Street. She left her hand and foot prints in front of the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on 26 May 1942.
Fontaine and her elder sister, Olivia de Havilland, are the only siblings to have won lead acting Academy Awards. Olivia was the first to become an actress; when Fontaine tried to follow her lead, their mother, who favored Olivia, refused to let Joan use the family name.
Today, The Grandma has received sad news. Olivia de Havilland, the last star of Hollywood's Golden Age died yesterday at 104.
The Grandma loves classic cinema and Oliviade Havilland was one of the most acclaimed artists thanks to her great interpretations. Perhaps, the most part of fans are going to remember Olivia de Havilland because of her role in Gone with the Wind but for TheGrandma, Olivia de Havilland will be always one of the best Lady Marian, the famous character of Robin Hood.
The Grandma thinks that the best way to pay homage to Olivia de Havilland is talking about her life and her career.
Olivia Mary de Havilland (July 1, 1916-July 25, 2020) was a French-British-American actress. The major works of her cinematic career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films, and was one of the leading actresses of her time. She was also one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema, until her death in 2020. Her younger sister was actress Joan Fontaine.
De Havilland first came to prominence as a screen couple with Errol Flynn in adventure films such as Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of RobinHood (1938). One of her best-known roles is that of Melanie Hamilton in the classic film Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she received her first of five Oscar nominations, the only one for Best Supporting Actress.
De Havilland departed from ingénue roles in the 1940s and later received acclaim for her performances in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949), receiving nominations for Best Actress for each, winning for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She was also successful in work on stage and television.
De Havilland lived in
Paris since the 1950s, and received honors such as the National Medal of
the Arts, the Légion d'honneur, and the appointment to Dame Commander
of the Order of the British Empire.
In addition to her film career, de Havilland continued her work in the theater, appearing three times on Broadway, in Romeo and Juliet (1951), Candida (1952), and A Gift of Time (1962). She also worked in television, appearing in the successful miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations (1979), and Anastasia:The Mystery of Anna (1986), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Movie or Series.
During her film career, de Havilland also collected two New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the National Board of Review Award for Best Actress, and the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup. For her contributions to the motion picture industry, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Olivia Mary de Havilland
was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo. They moved into a large house in Tokyo, where
Lilian gave informal singing recitals. Olivia's younger sister Joan
(Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland) -later known as actress JoanFontaine-
was born fifteen months later, on October 22, 1917. Bothsisters became
citizens of the United Kingdom automatically by birthright.
Robin Hood (E. Flynn) & Gone with the Wind (V. Leigh)
Olivia was raised to appreciate the arts, beginning with ballet lessons at the age of four and piano lessons a year later.
She learned to read before she was six, and her mother, who occasionally taught drama, music, and elocution, had her reciting passages from Shakespeare to strengthen her diction.
In 1933, a teenage deHavilland made her debut in amateur theater in Alice in Wonderland, a production of the Saratoga Community Players based on the novel by Lewis Carroll. She also appeared in several school plays, including The Merchant of Venice and Hansel and Gretel.
De Havilland made her screen debut in Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was filmed at Warner Bros.
Although Warner Brothers studio had assumed that the many costumed films that studios like MGM had earlier produced would never succeed during the years of the Great Depression, they nonetheless took a chance by producing Captain Blood, also 1935.
De Havilland had her first top billing in Archie Mayo's comedy Call It a Day (1937), about a middle-class English family struggling with the romantic effects of spring fever during the course of a single day.
In September 1937, de Havilland was selected by Warner Bros. studio head Jack L. Warner to play Maid Marian opposite Errol Flynn in The Adventuresof Robin Hood (1938).
In a letter to a colleague dated November 18, 1938, film producer David O. Selznick wrote, I would give anything if we had Olivia de Havilland under contract to us so that we could cast her as Melanie. The film he was preparing to shoot was Gone with the Wind, and Jack L. Warner was unwilling to lend her out for the project.
De Havilland had read the novel, and unlike most other actresses, who wanted the Scarlett O'Hara role, she wanted to play Melanie Hamilton—a character whose quiet dignity and inner strength she understood and felt she could bring to life on the screen.
De Havilland appeared in Elliott Nugent's romantic comedy The Male Animal (1942) with Henry Fonda, about an idealistic professor fighting for academic freedom while trying to hold onto his job and his wife Ellen.
Olivia de Havilland and her sister, Joan Fontaine
Around the same time, she appeared in John Huston's drama In This OurLife, also 1942, with Bette Davis.
De Havilland became anaturalized citizen of the UnitedStates on November 28, 1941, ten days before the United States entered World War II militarily, alongside the Allied Forces.
De Havilland was praised for her performance as Virginia Cunningham in Anatole Litvak's drama The SnakePit (1948), one of the first films to attempt a realistic portrayal of mental illness and an important exposé of the harsh conditions in state mental hospitals, according to film critic Philip French.
De Havilland appeared in William Wyler's period drama The Heiress (1949), the fourth in a string of critically acclaimed performances.
De Havilland returned to the screen in Michael Curtiz's Western drama TheProud Rebel (1958), a film about a former Confederate soldier (Alan Ladd) whose wife was killed in the war and whose son lost the ability to speak after witnessing the tragedy.
As film roles became more difficult to find, a common problem shared by many Hollywood veterans from her era, de Havilland began working in televisiondramas, despite her dislike of the networks' practice of breaking up story lines with commercials.
In the 1980s, her television work included an Agatha Christie television film Murder Is Easy (1982), the television drama The Royal Romance of Charles andDiana (1982) in which she played the Queen Mother, and the 1986 ABC miniseries North and South, Book II.
Her performance in the television film Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986), as Dowager Empress Maria, earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film.
In 1988, de Havilland appeared in the HTV romantic television drama TheWoman He Loved; it was her final screen performance.
De Havilland died of natural causes in her sleep at her home in Paris, France, on July 25, 2020, at the age of 104.
Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland, born July 1, 1916 is an American actress. Her career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films, and was one of the leading movie stars during the golden age of Classical Hollywood. She is best known for her early screen performances in The Adventures of Robin Hood(1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939), and her later award-winning performances in To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949).
Born in Tokyo to British parents, de Havilland and her younger sister Joan moved to California in 1919. They were brought up by their mother Lilian, a former stage actress who taught them dramatic art, music, and elocution. De Havilland made her acting debut in amateur theatre in Alice in Wonderland. Later, she appeared in a local production of Shakespeare's AMidsummer Night's Dream.
Her career playing demure ingénues opposite popular leading men, including Errol Flynn, with whom she made nine films. They became one of Hollywood's most popular romantic on-screen pairings. She achieved her initial popularity in romantic comedy films, such as The Great Garrick (1937), and in Westerns, such as Dodge City (1939). Her natural beauty and refined acting style made her particularly effective in historical period dramas, such as Anthony Adverse (1936), and romantic dramas, such as Hold Back the Dawn (1941). In her later career, she was most successful in drama films, such as Light in the Piazza (1962), and unglamorous roles in psychological dramas including Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).
In addition to her film career, de Havilland continued her work in the theatre, appearing three times on Broadway, in Romeo and Juliet (1951), Candida (1952), and A Gift of Time (1962). She also worked in television, appearing in the successful miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations (1979), and television feature films, such as Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
During her film career, de Havilland won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the National Board of Review Award for Best Actress, and the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup. For her contributions to the motion picture industry, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. For her lifetime contribution to the arts, she received the National Medal of Arts and was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion.
De Havilland and Joan Fontaine are the only siblings to have won Academy Awards in a lead acting category. A lifelong rivalry between the two actresses resulted in an estrangement that lasted over three decades. She has lived in Paris since 1956, and celebrated her 100th birthday on July 1, 2016.
In June 2017, two weeks before her 101st birthday, de Havilland was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to drama. She is the oldest woman ever to receive the honour. In a statement, she called it the most gratifying of birthday presents.
I feel like a survivor from an age that people no longer understand.
I want to try to explain what the 1930s, the golden age of Hollywood, was truly like. People forget that America was such a different place then, not yet the dominant force in the world.
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