Uber-producer David O’ Selznick would bring director Alfred Hitchcock to America from England, team him up with one of the most popular novels of the day, Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 phenom, “Rebecca,” and win that year’s Academy Award for Best Picture (Selznick’s second in a row after a little programmer called “Gone With the Wind.”) Not a bad start.  Of course, it helps if you make an amazing motion picture in the process, which is exactly what “Rebecca” is.

Our heroine is never named other than with the pronoun “I,” and is portrayed by the then somewhat-unknown Joan Fontaine (sister of Olivia De Havilland), who offers up one of history’s most impressive “arrivals” as a full-blown movie star. Our heroine is an innocent who’s terribly vulnerable and a newlywed very much in love with her husband, Maxim (Laurence Olivier), a deeply troubled man still working through the death of his first wife.

Swept off her feet, this orphan who made un undignified living as a paid companion and doormat to an insufferable woman, is suddenly thrust into a world she never knew existed. Maxim is incredibly wealthy and sole-owner of Manderley, a breathtakingly gothic estate populated with servants and also the intimidating and suffocating shadow of Rebecca, Maxim’s dead wife.

It’s within this shadow that the new mistress of the house, already a fragile flower, wilts even further. Rebecca’s hold on the living is supernatural and the primary keeper of that flame is housekeeper Miss Mrs. Danvers (an unforgettable Judith Anderson), who wields the memory of her former mistress like a psychological club to break down her “replacement.” Miss Danvers is destined to succeed until a shipwreck uncovers truths that will either result in the destruction of all involved or their salvation.

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Joan Fontaine, Rebecca, 1940.

In 1939, Joan Fontaine, twenty-one years old, was slowly making her way up the Hollywood ladder. MGM signed Fontaine to play a small part in the high profile production The Women, directed by George Cukor, starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell and Paulette Goddard. For the young actress it was a plum assignment.

At the same time, Fontaine was subject to numerous tests for the star-making role of the second Mrs. De Winter for David O. Selznick’s Rebecca, first under the direction of John Cromwell and then Alfred Hitchcock. Screen tests are grueling and the emotional toll is devastating. During this period of her life Fontaine’s nerves were seriously frayed.

Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland lived in the same house in North Hollywood with their domineering mother Lilian, a failed actress. As always, Joan and Olivia were engaged in a low-intensity conflict, which continues tot his very day. And like so many Hollywood actresses, Fontaine’s father was long gone.

Fontaine freely admits that she had a thing for older men. Ambitious but deeply vulnerable the young woman was looking for security and a “protector.”

She already had a brief affair with her childhood idol, the handsome leading man Conrad Nagel. Her description of their first intimacy is less than passionate:

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I have always thought that men and women are different. 

No kidding, professor.

No, really, they are. I don’t mean in all the right places, of course, but somewhere else, with movies, in enjoying the things we see in the movies. 

I remember seeing Gunga Din (1939) for the first time and knowing from the opening shot that this was my kind of film. This was a guy film. Not a wishy-washy movie filled up with dance numbers and kissing scenes, but a guy flick. Great guy stuff was in this movie, and I was sold on it from the first pounding of that thunderous mighty gong. When Alfred Newman’s score turned from playful to ominous faster than you can say, ‘trouble in Tantrapur’, I knew I was in for a good one. This was the kind of movie you watched on a Saturday afternoon with your dad or with your pals. This was adventure!  (more…)