Joan Fontaine Dies; Olivia Wins
Joan Fontaine, who won an Oscar for “Suspicion” and who famously won an Oscar in 1942 over her decades-long bitter rival — her older sister Olivia de Havilland — has died. Fontaine was 96. My friend Dee Sushi and I used to surmise that the only thing keeping them each alive in their 90s was the fierce desire to outlast the other. Livvy has won, and is now free to expire in the luxurious Paris apartment where she has lived for lo these many years. (In the past week, Eleanor Parker, Joan Fontaine, and Peter O’Toole have expired: as always, holiday pressure seems especially hard on the elderly.) By the way, Dee Sushi’s favorite detail from Joan’s Wikipedia’s page is that her mother decided to end the marriage to the girls’ father after discovering that her husband, who had relocated the family from England to Japan, used the sexual services of geisha girls.
