Only death could end actress sisters’ feud

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PARIS -- Joan Fontaine's 1942 Oscar was so much more than a trophy. Competing head-to-head with her older, more famous sister -- Gone With the Wind star Olivia de Havilland -- it finally was proof the 24-year-old rising actress had exacted the ultimate revenge on her sibling in a fierce rivalry that dated back to childhood.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/12/2013 (4669 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PARIS — Joan Fontaine’s 1942 Oscar was so much more than a trophy. Competing head-to-head with her older, more famous sister — Gone With the Wind star Olivia de Havilland — it finally was proof the 24-year-old rising actress had exacted the ultimate revenge on her sibling in a fierce rivalry that dated back to childhood.

Fontaine, who won her Academy Award for Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion, died Sunday at 96.

For years, she was a struggling B-movie star watching the success of her older sister, who played Melanie Hamilton in an Oscar-nominated performance in Gone with the Wind. But an Oscar eluded de Havilland until 1947, when she won for To Each His Own.

CP
Joan Fontaine
CP Joan Fontaine

Fontaine said she tried to make amends by congratulating de Havilland as she walked offstage. De Havilland snubbed her while holding the trophy.

The sisters’ fame grew as they made history as the only siblings in Hollywood to win Oscars for a leading role. The two sniped at each other in public, competing bitterly for the same roles and reportedly even for the same men.

“My sister was born a lion and I a tiger, and in the laws of the jungle, they were never friends,” Fontaine told an interviewer.

The final straw came in 1975 when their mother died. Fontaine criticized de Havilland for not notifying her of the death, while de Havilland countered that Fontaine was too busy to attend the memorial. The two reportedly didn’t speak again.

Fontaine once said, “I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it.”

The Associated Press files
De Havilland
The Associated Press files De Havilland

But in a statement to The Associated Press on Monday, de Havilland, 97, who lives in Paris, proved her sister wrong, saying she was “shocked and saddened to learn” of her death.

— The Associated Press

History

Updated on Wednesday, December 18, 2013 9:04 AM CST: corrects names in cutlines

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