Joan Fontaine, the coolly beautiful 1940s actress who won an Academy Award for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion” and who became almost as well-known for her lifelong feud with her famous older sister, Olivia de Havilland, died Sunday. She was 96.
Fontaine died of natural causes at her home in Carmel, said her assistant, Susan Pfeiffer.
In addition to winning an Academy Award as best actress for “Suspicion,” Fontaine was also nominated as best actress for her role in Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940) and, three years later, for Edmund Goulding’s “The Constant Nymph.”
She appeared in a number of other notable films including Gunga Din, Jane Eyre, and Letter from an Unknown Woman. Only IMDB’s obit mentions her appearance in Damsel in Distress, a musical with Fred Astaire, notable for a P. G. Wodehouse screenplay, tunes by George Gershwin (the last such film during Gershwin’s lifetime), and George Burns and Gracie Allen.
She is survived by her sister, Olivia DeHavilland, a daughter, and a granddaughter. One by one these last few remnants of Hollywood’s Golden Age of glamor are passing from the scene.
