Joan Fontaine is barely remembered except by old film buffs these days, but she was in her time a towering star. For one brief moment, she was perhaps the biggest star in Hollywood.
Ms. Fontaine started her film career in the mid-1930s. She rose through the ranks quickly, and soon was costarring in classics like 1939’s Gunga Din and The Women. This promptly lead to her string of star roles in other classics; 1940’s production of Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 1943’s Jane Eyre, opposite Orson Welles.
Her biggest hit, though, was 1941’s Suspicion, also by Hitchcock, with Ms. Fontaine as a woman who comes to fear her husband (Cary Grant) is trying to murder her. The film was meant to have a much more mordant climax, but the studio wouldn’t allow it. Ms. Fontaine won the Best Actress Oscar for the role (making her the only actor to win an Oscar for a Hitchcock film), beating her own sister, Olivia de Havilland. This event started a lifelong feud between them. Despite this, the two hold the record as the only siblings to have both won lead acting Oscars.
Ms. Fontaine remained a star in the 1940s in romantic vehicles like The Constant Nymph and Letter From an Unknown Woman. Predictably, though, her star faded as she aged. She continued to work, doing smaller film roles and TV stuff, but seemed content with a fairly light workload.
Ms. Fontaine was 91 at the time of her death.
