Some may still be unaware that Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were sisters... and rude. The famous actresses never got along, never worked together, and did not hesitate to air their disagreements in public. Their enmity was no secret. She came a long time, from her most tender childhood, and became sharper with time, competing fiercely on and off the big screen. They hated each other to death.
Undoubtedly, their lousy brotherly relationship could well have shaped a script of those who take out the dirty laundry of anyone exposing them to the viewer avid for morbidity. It was even said that the text of What Happened to Baby Jane? a film starring the bitter enemies Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, was inspired by them.
Havilland was the eldest. Both were born in Tokyo, the city to which the sisters' parents of British origin moved. The father, Walter de Havilland, was a lawyer specializing in international patents, and the mother, Lilian Rush, was a frustrated actress. The marriage would end up divorcing and her mother rebuilt her life with her daughters in California. There she remarried a businessman named George Milan Fontaine, and she became obsessed with young women succeeding in the movies.
Olivia was pretty and diligent, Mama's right eye and Joan was a sickly creature that Lilian treated with disgust. It was her mother who fueled this unhealthy competition between them from the beginning. As girls, they already fought and had strong arguments. Sweet Olivia once broke her little sister's clavicle.
To differentiate herself from her artistically, Olivia took her father's last name and Joan's that of her stepfather. The eldest, with her good girl aspect, was the first to succeed alongside Errol Flynn, and with her naive Melania from Gone with the Wind (1939) she reached the peak of her popularity. But despite this resounding success, Alfred Hitchcock chose Joan, hitherto ignored by everyone, to star in Rebecca in 1940 and made her a superstar overnight.
Her sudden celebrity sparked Olivia's jealousy, and the following year her relationship took a turn for the worse when they were both nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. De Havilland was competing for If It Didn't Dawn and Joan for Suspicion. Finally, Fontaine came up with the statuette, the only one of his career, something he sat like a shot at the envious Olivia.
When de Havilland won her first Oscar in 1947 - her second would come for William Wyler's The Heiress, alongside Montgomery Clift - Joan rose from her chair to congratulate her, but her spiteful sister passed by, ignoring her. All a gesture of public humiliation. The rivalry also reached love ground when Howard Hugues left Olivia to flirt with Joan.
The illness of her mother in 1975 marked a brief truce in the strained sibling relationship. However, she passed away while Joan was on a theater tour and Olivia did not tell her the news until after her funeral. It was the final break between the sisters, who have stopped speaking since then. “She didn't come to the funeral because she would have something else to do. I did notify her, ”said the firstborn.
"I got married first, I won the Oscar before Olivia, and if I die before her, she'll probably be outraged because I've beaten her at that too," Joan said. She passed away on December 15, 2013, at the age of 96 without reconciling with her sister. De Havilland, who has lived in Paris since 1950 and is the last living legend of classic Hollywood, will turn 104 in July.
I married first, I won the Oscar before Olivia and, if I die before her, she will surely be outraged because I have beaten her in that too”
