Olivia de Havilland & Joan Fontaine

This is just a quick post, today. I will have my usual new "monthly" post, this Friday, so please check back at the end of the week for that. In the meantime, I thought I would share a few personal items from my collection.

With the passing of Hollywood legend, Olivia de Havilland, just last week, I was reminded that I had once written to the star. Beginning in high school, I became sort of an "autograph collector"....or at least, attempted to collect them when I had a chance. I even had an autograph book. Years later, I wrote to quite a few celebrities, and acquired a fairly large collection of signed photographs. Olivia de Havilland was one of the people whom I wrote to. She was living in France at that time, and I sent her the following two photos.

This first publicity photo (circa 1939), is from Gone With The Wind, a film for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, for best supporting actress. (She lost to Hattie McDaniels, for her supporting role in the same film.)

I believe this next photo is from the late forties, around the same time that she won an Academy Award for her leading role in, The Heiress.

After mailing these photos overseas, quite some time passed. Eventually they were returned, unsigned, along with the following letter:

As far as I know, she never did publish a complete autobiography about her life. She did write a book back in the sixties, about what it was like marrying a Frenchman, moving to France, and having to adapt to the French customs. Maybe she was still working on her complete autobiography, all these years later.

Now, I will give equal time to Miss de Havilland's sister, Joan Fontaine (Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland). They were just a little over a year apart in age, and Miss Fontaine went on to become just as big of a star, as her older sister. Joan Fontaine passed away in 2013, but about 10 years earlier, she had graciously autographed these photos for me.

In this first photo, she is posing with Cary Grant, in a publicity shot for the Alfred Hitchcock film, Suspicion. The film was released in 1941, and she won the Academy Award for her leading role, the following year.

One year earlier, Joan Fontaine had appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's first American film, Rebecca, and was nominated for an Academy Award in the title role. Here she is pictured with Dame Judith Anderson, who played Mrs. Danvers, the "obsessive" housekeeper.

I hope some of you enjoyed these photos. I have shared some Disney-related autographed photos in the past (Annette Funicello, Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, and Haley Mills), but it had been a while. I may post some more photos from my collection in the future, if anyone out there is interested.

And once again, please come back this Friday for my "regularly scheduled" monthly post. Thank you!