Fontaine, Joan

Young years

Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland ( born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland ), was born in Tokyo on October 22, 1917, in the family of the British lawyer Walter Augustus de Havilland and his wife, theater actress Lillian Augusta Ruse, known by the pseudonym Lillian Fontaine. In addition to her, the family already had a daughter, her older sister Olivia de Havilland . Her father's cousin was the famous British aircraft designer Jeffrey de Havilland , an aviation pioneer, creator of the de Havilland Aircraft company .

De Havilland was a very painful child, suffered from frequent colds, and after suffering from measles and streptococcal infection, the girl developed anemia. After divorcing her husband in 1919, her mother, Lillian de Havilland, listening to the advice of doctors, moved with her daughters to the United States . There they settled in California , in the city of Saratoga, where de Havilland's health quickly recovered. The sisters studied at a college in Los Gatos, and then at a Catholic monastery for girls. Like her older sister, she began to take diction lessons. When she was fifteen, De Havilland returned to Japan , where she lived with her father for two years.

Beginning of an acting career

De Havilland's acting debut took place in 1935 on the stage in the production of “Name This Day.” Representatives of the film company “ RKO ” noticed her there, and soon the aspiring actress signed a contract with them. Since her sister Olivia began her acting career earlier, it was her family name that de Havilland got. In addition, their mother did not want Joan, like her sister, to become de Havilland, and forbade her to use this name. Therefore, Joan was forced to come up with the pseudonym Barfield, which she later replaced with her mother’s theatrical name, becoming Joan Fontaine. In the same year, she made her debut on the big screen in the film “Only Without Ladies,” starring Joan Crawford .

Two years later, she appeared in the title role in the film "Girl Suffering", where Fred Astaire first appeared on the screen in a new company, that is, without Ginger Rogers . As a result, the public did not like the film, and it failed at the box office ^[6] . After that, Joan Fontaine appeared in about a dozen films, but they all did not contribute anything to her beginning film career. In addition, in 1939 she married the British actor Brian Ahern , from the marriage with which, in the end, nothing good came out. In 1943, following her sister, Fontaine accepted American citizenship.

Success

A sharp turn in the fate of the actress was a meeting at a dinner party with the famous Hollywood producer David O. Selznik . At lunch, they discussed the script for the film Rebecca , based on the novel of the same name by Daphne Dumorier , and Selznik invited Fontaine to try one of the roles in this picture. As a result, Joan did not get a secondary role, but the main one - the second Mrs. de Winter. The film, which became the American debut of British director Alfred Hitchcock , received 11 Academy Award nominations , including for Best Actress for Joan Fontaine. Although the award went to the Ginger Rogers that year, still this role was a great success in Joan's career. The next year, Fontaine again starred in Hitchcock in the movie “Suspicion” with Cary Grant in the title role, and this time she was again awarded the Academy Award nomination and eventually became its owner.

In the 1940s, the actress was waiting for great success in the cinema, in particular thanks to roles in romantic melodramas such as “Above All” (1942), “ Jane Eyre ” (1943), “Ivy” (1947) and “ Letter to a Stranger ” ( 1948). After a divorce from Ahern in 1945, the actress was married three more times. From her second husband, producer and actor William Desir, in 1948 she gave birth to a daughter, Deborah, and also adopted the Puerto Rican Miriam, who later fled home.

In the 1950s, the film career of Joan Fontaine gradually declined, after which the actress gradually moved to television, and also resumed her career in the theater. Her most successful works in big cinema in those years were roles in the films “ Ivanhoe ” (1952), “ Bigamist ” (1953) and “ Beyond Reasonable Doubt ” (1956). In 1954, she received good reviews for her role in the Broadway production of Tea and Sympathy, where J. Fontaine played with Anthony Perkins . In the 1960s, she also had prominent roles in theatrical productions of "Private Lives", "Cactus Flower" and " Lion in Winter ".

Later years

The last time Joan Fontaine appeared on the big screen in 1966, playing the role of school teacher Gwen Mayfield in the British horror film "Witches." In subsequent years, the actress actively worked on television, where in 1980 she was nominated for a daily Emmy Award for her role in the soap opera Nadezhda Ryan. The last role of the actress was Queen Lyudmila in the children's television movie "Good King Wenceslas" in 1994. In 1978, Fontaine published her autobiography No Bed of Roses .

In recent years, Joan Fontaine has lived a quiet and solitary life in the small California town of Carmel-by-the-Sea , looking after her garden and two dogs. There, the actress died in a dream on December 15, 2013, at the 97th year of her life ^[8] . The next day, her sister Olivia de Havilland made a short statement regarding the death of Fontaine, in which she said that she was shocked and saddened by her death. ^[9]

For her contribution to US cinema, the actress was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame .

• Joan Fontaine. No Bed of Roses. Berkley Publishing Group, (1979) ISBN 0-425-05028-9
• Charles Higham. Sisters: The Story of Olivia De Haviland and Joan Fontaine. Coward McCann, May 1984, 257 pages.

• Joan Fontaine at TVGuide.com
• Photographs of Joan Fontaine
• Joan Fontaine at the CinéArtistes (Fr.)