Olivia de Havilland died last month at age 104 and at that timer, much was written again about her rivalry and feud with her sister Joan Fontaine.
While the two women did not speak during the last 40 years of Fontaine’s life (she died in 2013 at age 96), de Havilland never lost tough with Fontaine’s daughter, Deborah Dozier Potter.
Potter has written a lovely remembrance of her Oscar-winning aunt in the Santa Fe New Mexican but does not seem to have much h good to say about her own Oscar-winning mother.
Here are some excerpts:
To the film world, she was Olivia de Havilland, the last great star of cinema’s golden era. She died in Paris on July 26 at the age of 104. To me, she was Aunt Olivia, my mother’s sister.
Extending to William the Conqueror, the de Havilland lineage was extremely important to her, more than it was to my mother, Joan Fontaine, another film industry legend. Olivia and Joan were born in Tokyo to Walter de Havilland, a very strict attorney, and his wife Lillian, a former opera singer and amateur theater director.
As a little girl, I found it fascinating that my mother had a real sister. I had a stepsister and a foster sister, but an actual blood sister was hard to imagine. 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.
I could not have thought this was the start of 64-year friendship.
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.
At Gams’ funeral they avoided one another.
But Aunt Olivia remained close to me. She phoned me from Paris several times while she was nursing her son Benjamin, who tragically died in 1991 from the effects of Hodgkin’s disease. I flew to Paris for his funeral, where I spent several days with her, Gisele and our Canadian second cousins. Even during those painful three days, Olivia was loving, gracious and filled with humor. My husband Earl and I made a point of visiting her in Paris during any year she wasn’t working in the U.S.
Starting when she was in her 80s, she and I ended each visit with an extremely long, tight hug while saying, “À la prochaine,” which means, “see you … next time.”
Joan died in late 2013. Olivia’s reaction when I called her was: “What shall we say when the press starts phoning?” We both settled on saying we were “shocked and saddened.” Last year, Earl and I visited her, surrounded by Gisele, her husband and several 24-hour assistants. She didn’t see or hear well, but tried artfully to keep our conversations stimulating, in almost interview style. She asked us questions about the 90 or so countries we’ve visited. “Which of the countries did you find to be the most … colorful?”
This year, the pandemic aborted my planned trip to see her in early March. Gisele and her husband live in Malibu, with a second home near me in Santa Fe. But they have spent most of this year by her mother’s side. Our mothers weren’t close, but Gisele and I are like close sisters. As soon as her mother died, she phoned me for loving comfort.
The great star died in her sleep, peacefully, beautifully and filled with grace. And so, my dear Aunt Olivia, thank you for loving me and for being such a mentor to me. I say to you one more time, À la prochaine.
But Rosie has great enthusiasm whenever she sings and is a Broadway veteran who has appeared as Rizzo in the mid-90s revival of Grease and was in Seussical and the 2004 revival of Fiddler on the Roof. She’s also reportedly going to return to Broadway post-pandemic to play Fanny Brice’s mother in Funny Girl.
She’s also hosted The Tony Awards several times and featured many Broadway stars on her old daytime show.
Here is Rosie performing with some of the biggest Broadway legends of all-time: Liza Minnelli, Patti LuPone, Jennifer Holliday and Betty Buckley.
The host of the weeknight show Cuomo Prime Time, Chris battled the coronavirus this year and remained Lon the air throughout. He is the brother of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo.
Before coming to CNN, he had previously been the ABC News chief law and justice correspondent and the co-anchor for ABC’s 20/20, and before his current show, he was one of two co-anchors of the weekday edition of New Day, a three-hour morning news show, until May 2018.
Olivia Newton-John has a special message on the 40th anniversary of Xanadu, the movie musical that spawned her mega-hit songs Xanadu, Magic and Suddenly.
It was her first film after Grease and while it was considered a big flop at the time, it has lived on as a cult fave and later became a hit Broadway musical.
In this video, Olivia sends her best to co-star Michael Beck, songwriters John Farrar and Jeff Lynne, choreographer Kenny Ortega and the fabulous dancers in the film including Sandahl Bergman and Teri Beckerman.
She also thanks ex-husband Matt Lattanzi who she met on the film and later married. They eventually divorced but share a daughter named Chloe.
Kudos to Thomas Roberts and the latest episode of his terrific weekly show Gay Good News.
His guests this week are two people whose stories have really inspired.
I’ll never forget meeting Jane Clementi at The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles’ Voice Awards several years ago and being so moved by her. Her son, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide after his Rutgers University roommate cyber bullied him in a well-publicized case. He was just 18.
Jane and her family launched the Tyler Clementi Foundation which works to end online and offline bullying in schools, workplaces, and faith communities. They have an upcoming online fundraiser that reunites several of the cast members of Queer as Folk. Roberts will host.
You can see in this interviewed why I was so touched by Jane and how she has come out of such a tragedy such a strong person who is making a difference in her son’s name.
Retired British footballer Thomas Beattie has been getting a great deal of attention since coming out publicly in June.
“I really wanted to set myself free,” he tells Roberts in their interview. “I feel quite liberated. I didn’t realize how far the message would spread, how many people would resonate with it.”
Beattie is candid about how far his sport has to go for players to feel comfortable enough to come out during their careers. His 10-year career was shortened by an injury and he was already retired when he came out.
“Now I consider myself more of an advocate and I want to be that – the way I live, work, conduct myself,” he says. “I’ve become quite passionate about being more proactive. If you have a platform … there’s things that can be done and I feel empowered to do that.”
Today’s Morning Man Rafael Amaya, a Mexican model, singer, and actor who is best known for his character Aurelio Casillas in the Telemundo series El Señor de los Cielos.
The 43 year old has been nominated for multiple TVyNovelas, Premios People en Espanol, and Premios Tu Mundo Awards and won several of them for his work in the series El Senor de los Cielos, Las Dos Caras de Ana, Salome, and La Reina del Sur.
In 2016 he also had a guest role (and cameo appearance) in the American series Queen of the South which was an adaptation of the telenovela La Reina del Sur.
When you come from a big family like I do, there can be all kinds of good times and bad times.
But no matter what was happening, one thing we all could agree upon and settle down for was watching episodes of I Love Lucy.
It’s been that way all my life and it is still that way.
Today marks the 107th anniversary of the birth of series star Lucille Ball, the comedic genius who inhabited Lucy Ricardo, the greatest character in the history of television in my opinion.
Miss Ball got to share her immense talents with the world and even though she died in 1989, we are still enjoying her as much as we ever did.
I also find the first three seasons of her follow-up series, The Lucy Show, quite enjoyable because she was teamed again with the great Vivian Vance. Yesterday, a channel called Decades TV ran a marathon of some of those shows and I watched at least five episodes of Lucy and Viv’s antics. Loved every minute of it!
This gorgeous guy with sexy lips is retired Dutch soccer pro Robin van Persie and today is his 37th birthday.
Regarded as one of the best strikers of his generation, he is the all-time top scorer for the Netherlands national team.
Hze played for Turkish Süper Lig club Fenerbahçe until last year and had also played for Manchester United from 2012-15. He was named captain of the Dutch national team in 2013. He previously played for Arsenal from 2004 to 2012.
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Olivia de Havilland died last month at age 104 and at that timer, much was written again about her rivalry and feud with her sister Joan Fontaine.
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.
Okay, so Rosie O’Donnell is no Barbra Streisand.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo turns 50 today!
When you come from a big family like I do, there can be all kinds of good times and bad times. 
This gorgeous guy with sexy lips is retired Dutch soccer pro Robin van Persie and today is his 37th birthday.
