Olivia de Havilland finally breaks silence on feud with sister Joan Fontaine who she calls “Dragon Lady”

Well, I guess if you reach the age of 100, you figure what the heck!

I’ve been fascinated by the epic Olivia de Havilland-Joan Fontaine feud since I was a kid and checked out Fontaine’s memoir No Bed of Roses from the library (and NO ONE assumed I was gay!).

I sided with poor Joan because of the book in which Olivia came off very mean and seemed to be annoyed by Fontaine’s very presence on Earth – and especially by the fact that her younger sister became a movie star too and won an Oscar before Olivia did. And poor Joan didn’t even get to keep the family name when she became an actress – Fontaine is their stepfather’s last name.

But now Miss de Havilland gets the last word because her sister died three years ago at the age of 96.

She talked to the AP about the feud and said: “A feud implies continuing hostile conduct between two parties. I cannot think of a single instance wherein I initiated hostile behavior. But I can think of many occasions where my reaction to deliberately inconsiderate behavior was defensive.

She called the memories of her sister “multi-faceted, varying from endearing to alienating.”

“On my part, it was always loving, but sometimes estranged and, in the later years, severed,” she said, succinctly. “Dragon Lady, as I eventually decided to call her, was a brilliant, multi-talented person, but with an astigmatism in her perception of people and events which often caused her to react in an unfair and even injurious way.’

What would she say to her if her sister were alive to celebrate her 100th birthday today?

“If Dragon Lady were alive today (for my birthday), out of self-protection I would maintain my silence!”
Below is video of Miss Fontaine in 1979 speaking about the final falling out with her sister 4-5 years earlier: