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Vale: Joan Fontaine

Hollywood screen actress Joan Fontaine, best known for her Hitchcock film roles, has died aged 96.

2013-12-17_0353Hollywood screen actress Joan Fontaine, best known for her Hitchcock film roles in Rebecca and Suspicion, has died aged 96.

She died on Sunday of natural causes at her home.

Fontaine remains the only actress to win a Best Actress Oscar for a Hitchcock film, for her role in Suspicion, as a newlywed who comes to distrust her new husband (Cary Grant). In doing so, she defeated her sister, Olivia de Havilland, nominated for Hold Back the Dawn.

But she is also remembered for her long-standing feud with de Havilland, who is still alive at 97 and lives in France.

Other film credits include The Constant Nymph, Jane Eyre, September Affair, Ivanhoe, Island in the Sun, Frenchman’s Creek, The Affairs of Susan, From This Day Forward and Ivy.

But she also had many television credits including Good King Wenceslas, Dark Mansions, Hotel, The Love Boat, Crossings, Bare Essence, Aloha Paradise, Ryan’s Hope, The Users, Cannon, The Bing Crosby Show, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Wagon Train, Checkmate, Star Stage and The Ford Television Theatre.

Source: Vanity Fair

3 Responses

  1. I love these old movie stars, they don’t make them like this any more, Joan and her sister Olivia de Havilland were classics and her death should have received more attention and respect.

  2. I’m glad you paid tribute to Joan Fontaine,David.She was one of the great stars of old Hollywood,yet her death has been almost completely ignored by the Australian media until now.

  3. She was the epitome of an English rose.

    Interesting that none of the news shows ran anything about her, next to Peter O’Toole. If she had died in the 1970s or 19080s, this would have been a leading story, but she outlived much of her fan base. There weren’t many bigger stars in Hollywood during the early to mid 1940s, but of course, that was 70 years ago.

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