de Winter’s Bones

Or

Damsel in Distress

Joan Fontaine finishes first again, dying at the age of 96. Denied the use of even her own last name by her mother, who favored first-born Olivia de Haviland, Fontaine nonetheless was a two-time Oscar nominee for 1940’s Rebecca and 1941’s Suspicion, for which she won, the only actor to win an Academy Award while being directed by Alfred Hitchcock. She racked up a third nomination for 1943’s The Constant Nymph. Her film career petered out in the 1950s, but she received a plethora of good notices for her stage work, and she even scored an Emmy nomination for her work on the soap opera Ryan’s Hope in 1980. Fontaine and de Haviland’s relationship was strained from childhood, with de Haviland tearing up clothes earmarked as hand-me-downs for Fontaine. When Fontaine won her Oscar in 1942, one of the losers was de Haviland, whose efforts to congratulate her sister at the awards ceremony were rebuffed. Several years later at another event, the positions and the snubbery were reversed. Fontaine claimed that the last straw came the sisters disagreed on de Haviland’s decision for their 88-year-old mother to undergo surgery to treat her advanced cancer. When their mother died, de Haviland did not bother to find out where her sister was, sending a telegraph that arrived at Fontaine’s next stop with a touring play some 2 weeks later. The two reportedly hadn’t spoken since 1975. 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."