Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland
Take two competitive sisters and put them into the same profession. Now make the profession as competitive as acting. It's a recipe for disaster and Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine are to this day estranged.
The trouble between the two began at birth. Joan arrived about a year after Olivia and her older sister never forgave the intrusion. When the girls were school-aged, Olivia forbid Joan to speak to her in front of her friends. One afternoon in the garden of their home, Olivia jumped on Joan and broke her collarbone. Both girls had an early interest in acting, but as the oldest, Olivia got a head start in films, not to mention the family name. Joan took her stepfather's name and soon built up a successful career of her own.
The most famous conflict between the two began in 1941 when Joan and Olivia were both nominated for best actress Academy Awards for Hold Back the Dawn and Suspicion respectively. The sisters were sitting across the table from each other at the ceremony when Joan's name was called. Though Olivia was gracious about her sister's win, the fact that Joan had won first, and was at the time the youngest actress to do so, did create some tension.
Olivia won her first Academy Award in 1947 for To Each His Own. Joan was a presenter that night, and was backstage after her win, eager to congratulate her. Olivia snubbed her sister and the slight became the subject of a very famous photograph. Though the image suggested to many that she was annoyed about winning after her sister, the sisters had actually been involved in a personal quarrel about an entirely unrelated issue, and Joan had been rather harsh with her sister. A private rift had unfortunately become a very public misunderstanding.
The tension between the sisters endured, though both attended to each other in times of trouble. Joan gave Olivia financial assistance and advice when she ran into hard times. Olivia was at Joan's bedside when she contracted a blood virus later in life. There was love between the two, but the rivalry had existed for too long to be resolved.
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