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But to most people she continued to look and act like a doll-faced, taffy-haired Wampus cutie, and those who thought about her at all thought of her as Olivia de Havilland's kid sister and the wife of Brian Aherne.
Last week Joan Fontaine became Joan Fontaine. U. S. cinemaddicts who saw Rebecca did not recognize Cinemactress Fontaine at first as gracious, wistful, haunting Mrs. de Winter. When they did, hats went way off to Director Hitchcock's Pygmalion stunt.
Aged 22, Joan's history has been almost as rambling as the tall tales Sister Olivia claims Joan likes to tell. She was born Joan de Havilland, in Tokyo, where father de Havilland was a patent attorney. But the de Havilland sisters went to school in California.
Back in Japan, Joan, age 16, acquired a permanent interest in Japanese art, started to paint pictures. Back in California, she found Sister Olivia already busy in Hollywood. Joan's ambition turned to pictures of another kind. George Cukor tested her for Melanie in Gone With the Wind. When she saw she would not get the part, Joan suggested Sister Olivia. Olivia got it. But George Cukor did not forget Joan Fontaine.
He cast her in The Women, where she made her first strike. Later Selznick tested her for Rebecca. Much to everybody's surprise, he gave her the handsome part.
Bigger moment in Joan's life was her marriage last year to Brian Aherne. The Ahernes are one of Hollywood's happiest married couples. Eschewing Hollywood hotspots, they prefer at homes with the quieter younger set. With Jane Bryan, Margaret Lindsay, Beverly Roberts, Lew Ayres, John Arledge and others, they play games, eat cheese and crackers, listen to Joan's puns, which come every few minutes. Typical pun was struck off while Katharine Cornell and Guthrie McClintic were discussing what fun Critic George Jean Nathan has tearing them apart. Quipped Joan: "South of the Nathan and Dixon line, eh?" Sometimes admiring Brian Aherne begs Joan to repeat a pun she has almost forgotten.
Last week Husband Aherne had graver matters on his mind. With her career in pictures assured by Rebecca, and Frank Lloyd waiting to star her in Columbia's The Tree of Liberty, Cinemactress Fontaine was gravely ill in a Los Angeles hospital.
Cause: a delicate abdominal operation.
Condition: serious.