We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
She draws illustrations on her scripts to help her remember the lines
JOAN FONTAINE became a movie star because of a casual conversation with David Selznick at a party.
She had read “Rebecca” and suggested it to him as a picture possibility. “I agree with you,” said Selznick. “I bought it today.” She then told him that Margaret Sullavan was the actress for the picture. “I think you can do it,” said Selznick.
This was the picture that made her. Before that she had had a hard struggle to get started in pictiires. Now she has an “Oscar” for the best performance at home on her mantelpiece between a silver cup and stuffed fish.
Her rival, when she won the “Oscar,” was OUvia de Havilland. These sisters have been rivals many times and, although they may fight with each other, no outsider can say anything against one to the other.
Her favorite director is Alfred Hitchcock and if any director tries to explain to her how another actress would play a scene, she tells that director just how Alfred Hitchcock woiild direct it.
Her real name is Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, and when she decided on a theatrical career, Olivia suggested that she use their stepfather’s name, Fontaine.
Later, she got her initial opportunity in the local stage presentation of “Call It A Day.” When Warners bought the play for pictures, they gave the role she played to Olivia.
She was born in Tokyo on October 22, 1917. She has a good colloquial knowledge of the Japanese language
and a fine understanding of the Japanese ideology, which is now valuable.
She is five feet four inches tall, weighs 108 pounds, has ash blonde hair and can look very piquant.
When she was after the leading role in “The Constant N5mtiph,” she met Director Edmimd Goulding in the Brown Derby and asked for the part. Goulding said, “We need a girl who dresses plainly, has a simple hair-do, freckles, no make-up, and . . .” Then he stopped and said, “What am I talking about? You’re the girl.”
She uses her art studies as an aid in learning her lines. She learns long speeches by drawing illustrations in the margins of the script pages and remembers the lines through the visual images she created to go with them. She has definite ideas on how she should play a part and speaks up on the set.
While making “Jane Eyre” she would come on the set fully prepared. She would play a scene with Orson Welles and then hurry to her portable dressing room where she would play gin rummy or read a book. She knew how she was going to play the character and she wasn’t going to let anyone influence her.
Yet there are occasions when she will endeavor to be very friendly on a set. This led to the publicized feud between her and Arturo de Cordova during the filming of “Frenchman’s Creek.” It started when she was making what she fondly imagined was a joke.
40