Joan Fontaine

From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki

• born: 22/Oct/1917 (Tokyo, Japan)

[edit] Biography

Joan Fontaine is an Academy Award-winning Japanese-born British actress, who became an American citizen in April 1943.

[edit] Early life

She was born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in Tokyo, Japan, the younger daughter of Walter de Havilland, and the former Lilian Augusta Ruse, a British actress known by her stage name of Lilian Fontaine, who married in 1914. Fontaine's father, Walter, was a British patent attorney with a practice in Japan.

She is the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland, from whom she has been estranged for many years; both attended Los Gatos High School and the Notre Dame Convent Roman Catholic girls school in Belmont, California.

At the age of two, Joan's parents divorced. Joan was a sickly child and had developed anemia following a combined attack of the measles and a streptococcic infection. Upon the advice of a physician, Joan's mother moved her and her sister to the United States where they settled in the town of Saratoga, California.

Joan's health improved dramatically and she was soon taking diction lessons along with her sister. She was also an extremely bright child and scored 160 on an intelligence test when she was three. When she was fifteen, Joan returned to Japan and lived with her father for two years.

[edit] Stage Career

When she returned to the U.S., she followed Olivia's lead and began to appear on stage and in films, but was refused permission by their mother, who allegedly favored Olivia, to use the family name. So Joan was forced to invent a name (Joan Burfield, and later Joan Fontaine, utilizing her own mother's former stage name).

Joan made her stage debut in the West Coast production of "Call It A Day" in 1935 and was soon signed to an RKO contract.

[edit] Film Career

Her film debut was a small role in "No More Ladies" (1935). She was selected to appear in a major role alongside Fred Astaire in his first RKO film without Ginger Rogers: "A Damsel in Distress" (1937) but audiences were disappointed and the film flopped.

She continued appearing in small parts in about a dozen films but failed to make a strong impression and her contract was not renewed when it expired in 1939, the same year she married her first husband, the late British actor Brian Aherne.

Her luck changed one night at a dinner party when she found herself seated next to producer David O Selznick. She and Selznick 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.

The film marked the American debut of British director Alfred Hitchcock. In 1940, the film was released to glowing reviews and Joan was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

She didn't win that year (Ginger Rogers took home the award for Kitty Foyle) but Fontaine did win the following year for Best Actress in "Suspicion", which was also directed by Hitchcock.

[edit] Career Rise

She went on to continued success during the 1940s in which she excelled in romantic melodramas. Among her memorable films during this time was "The Constant Nymph" (1943), "Jane Eyre" (1944), "Ivy" (1947) and "Letter From An Unknown Woman" (1948). Her film successes slowed a bit during the 1950s and she also began appearing in television and on the stage. She won good reviews for her role on Broadway in 1954 as Laura in "Tea and Sympathy" opposite Anthony Perkins.

During the 1960s, she continued her stage appearances in several productions, among them "Private Lives", "Cactus Flower" and an Austrian production of "The Lion in Winter". Her last theatrical film was "The Witches" (1966), which she also co-produced. She made sporadic television appearances throughout the 1970s and 1980s and was nominated for an Emmy for the soap opera, "Ryan's Hope" in 1980.

She published her autobiography, "No Bed of Roses", in 1979.

She resides in Carmel, California in relative seclusion.

Joan Fontaine has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1645 Vine Street.

(Wikipedia)

[edit] Filmography

With Hitchcock...

• Rebecca (1940) - cast: The Second Mrs. de Winter
• Suspicion (1941) - cast: Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth
• The Alfred Hitchcock Hour - The Paragon (08/Feb/1963) - cast: Alice Pemberton

[edit] Documentaries

She has appeared in the following Hitchcockian documentaries...

• Omnibus - Hitchcock (1986)

[edit] Films with Alfred Hitchcock

[edit] Rebecca (1940)

This was Alfred Hitchcock's first film in America and was also Joan Fontaine's first film with Alfred Hitchcock. "Rebecca" was a box office success and it won Best Picture Oscar.

[edit] Suspicion (1941)

Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted Joan Fontaine for the leading female role in "Foreign Correspondent", but David O. Selznick refused to loan her out. So without informing Selznick, Hitchcock sent Fontaine a copy of the novel "Before the Fact" (the novel "Suspicion" is based on) She responded in longhand, on her personal notepaper:

Dear Hitch,

Am returning "Before the Fact" which I have read with avid interest and find
my life completely changed: I must do that picture. Oh please dear darling
Hitch - I am convinced it will be another 'Rebecca' and if anything, I find
my enthusiasm even greater for Mrs. Aysgarth than for Mrs. de Winter. I am
even willing to play the part for no salary, if necessary!

The letter to Hitchcock was later published in "Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood" by Leonard J Leff.

Fontaine won the Best Actress Oscar and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for her performance in "Suspicion".

Joan Fontaine's favorite directors are Alfred Hitchcock and George Cukor.

[edit] Articles

• see articles about Joan Fontaine

[edit] Links

• Internet Movie Database

[edit] Image Gallery

Images from the Hitchcock Gallery (click to view larger versions or search for all relevant images)...