Olivia de Havilland Or Joan Fontaine

Livvy. Doesn’t seem as prissy or stuck up. As far as talent goes it’s a tie. They’re both wonderful.

Livvy. She lived longer, and I like winners.

Buck would have designed this as a poll, OP.

Joan. Olivia was a frumpy, vindictive cunt. Joan’s only sin was being younger, taller, and more beautiful.

I would have chosen Livvy back in the day, but now I appreciate Joan more, she was the more beautiful of the two and a bit more honest about her bitchiness than Livvy. Still they both have given performances that I adore.

Olivia- easily

Me, of course, I was the star of “Gone With the Wind.”

I like them both but I think Livvie was slightly better as an actress

Joan specialized in playing naïve and brittle damsels in distress, so I was surprised to see interviews where she was just as flowery and fake as her sister, Dame Olivia. But where she completely lost me was one interview where the poor interviewer asked about her feud with her sister and certain incidences that transpired between them, and Joanie kept turning it around and saying things like, "Oh, that's your interpretation of how things happened!" or "Oh, that's your perception of our relationship," etc., and I thought, "Bitch, you wrote a whole book about how hateful your sister was, so why are you deflecting??" Fake dead bitch.

Fontaine. Truly a stunningly gorgeous woman. In my opinion the most beautiful of all the actresses of her time.

I think Olivia was the better actress, but Joan was the true beauty. Personality-wise, they both seemed pretty high maintenance.

Olivia

I preferred Joan Fontaine more and thought she was honest and genuine and even felt sorry for her because I thought she was treated unfairly and disliked by her mother, sister and some of her peers. Until I saw some interview of Joan where she insulted a fellow unknown guest and another interview with Tony Perkins where she embarrassed him during the interview.

Was the feud all for show?

Livvie was the biggest cunt who ever cunted. Team Joan all the way.

Team Olivia, both in talent& looks. She told an anecdote about this one time she prayed as a child, something like: I’m so sorry to have been blessed with the brains &beauty in this family, while my sister has none (or something like that)

Olivia's great. Watching her in Gone With the Wind I was really taken by her performance as Melanie. Kind, humane, fundamentally decent. Sort of blurred the acting with the person. But in a few tv appearances Olivia comes across as kind of phony. Brittle, flighty, unlikeable. Joan seems to have sense of humour about herself, she is good in interviews. Both women are very grand, why not, there're Hollywood royalty.

I enjoyed the story Joan gave about how Olivia came to be cast as Melanie in GWTW. According to Joan, she was asked to test for Melanie first. After the screentest, she was told she was far too beautiful and glamourous to play Melanie and she was asked if she could suggest anyone for the part who was plain and frumpy. Joan replied "My sister Olivia would be perfect".

Olivia was the better actress, but Joan had a more likable on and offscreen persona. Livvy seemed too reserved, too guarded.

Hey Livvie, girl. Just laying back on my couch polishing my Oscar.

-H.

Well, that isn't right. Here's Fay Bainter "presenting" the Oscar statuette to Miss McDaniel, yet the photo at R20 shows her with what she actually got--a fucking plaque.

Livvie

As a younger sibling who was mercilessly tormented by his older brother, team Joan.

R1 Livvy isn't stuck up? Have you forgotten this legendary DL thread where posters tore her to pieces for shitting over both Vivien and Hattie and proclaiming herself to be the true star of GWTW?

I love them both, but Livvy gets slightly more love from me simply for suing that fraud Murphy and his shit show.

They both gave off a phony vibe in interviews and stuff but for some reason I prefer Fontaine, not sure why. When she was good (which wasn't that often) she was very good, as an actress. DeHavilland had her big moments as an actress, she's great in GWTW, and Hold Back The Dawn. I don't like her in The Heiress any more. Maybe because TCM shows it a hundred times a year I begin to see how mannered she is in it, how much better Richardson and even Clift, who was not at his best, were, than she was.

Fontaine went her own way, was a pilot, fished, hunted, was a sportswomen, and did a lot of things like that. I know she had trouble with her kids and they preferred their aunt. But also I met her (Joan F.) once and that might be influencing me (she was tiny).

I like Olivia better because her lack of acting skills isn't as irritatingly stupid as her sister's.

Although the mincing, bulging of the eyes and weird soft body always brought Olivia down.

She should have played tennis with Katharine Hepburn.

The more I read about it, Joan was the shit stirrer in the two.

Arguably, Olivia had (slightly) greater range as an actress, and her landmark lawsuit makes her more historically important. But I prefer Joan. They were both vain and bitchy, but Joan was up-front about it, whereas Olivia was rather hypocritical about it all and often downright silly (such as her assertion that she was the star of GWTW).

Olivia is fantastic in films like GWTW and The Heiress, they're technically flawless performances, but Joan is simply incandescent in films like Rebecca, Suspicion, The Constant Nymph, and, especially, Letter from an Unknown Woman.

R28 I agree, That's what I realized recently.

Olivia is more famous.

I SHOULD'VE BEEN NOMINATED IN THE LEADING ACTRESS CATEGORY

Joan had a better speaking voice and she 'owned' acting grand.

The Audrey and Judy Landers of the 1940s.

At least I never had to slum it on a daytime soap.

R35 Fontaine did everything, she was on game show panels for years, I think she tried hosting a talk show. She made a lot of money. I think she was interested in her career partly as a way to live well and make good money. while Olivia was more interested in being a "great actress".

I always liked Joan better, but she sure managed to alienate her family members and a lot of ex-husbands.

According to her biography, Joan would tour the country, speaking to different clubs and groups. Then, Olivia went to work for the same company and all of Joan's work dried up. Rivals even in retirement.

Joan's adopted daughter just left and never contacted her again, and her own daughter didn't seem to like her particularly. Here's a couple of quotes from the daughter after Olivia died:

"When Olivia and her daughter Gisele, then a toddler, came to have tea with my mother in Los Angeles, my foster sister and I were told to put on our best dresses and best behavior. I remember how different she looked than my mother. How warm she was, what a strong inner life she had, how pretty my little French cousin was."

"Olivia and my mother were, indeed, competitive adversaries. A year and a half apart in age, competing for the same three parents’ attention, the same film roles, sometimes the same men. They were also very different. Joan was glib, Olivia was gracious.

In late 1973, the three of us visited Gams in Santa Barbara for a once-in-a-lifetime weekend together. I was late arriving because I had an acting job the first day. The next morning, the sisters and Gams posed for prearranged professional photos. During the process they bickered like two little girls in the back seat of a car. Joan pushed one of Olivia’s buttons and she left, never to speak to Joan again."

I'm sure that Olivia loved that Joan's daughter preferred her.

Joan said that she had mentally prepared her 88 year old mom for a peaceful death -- she had cancer -- and that Olivia -- who didn't live in this country (Joan and the mom, Lillian, did) came in at the last minute and convinced the mother to have an operation. The mother died from the operation. This is the point when Joan and Olivia split for good.

I’m not too shocked that Joan’s relationship with her daughters went south like that. I think that being bullied affected her dealings with them. My brother was bullied by our parents and neighborhood toughs...it made me passive (to a point) but made him hostile and aggressive. He treated his children horribly. As a result of this, their relationship with him is strained at best. They don’t talk to me anymore either, but their father is more important to them than I am.