Girl of the Day - Joan Fontaine

It was Joan Fontaine's birthday over the weekend.   Her best work was arguably her earliest work as the heroines in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca and Suspicion, for which she was nominated twice in 1941 and 1942 for the Academy Award for Best Actress, winning for Suspicion.   Fontaine, of course, was the actress Olivia de Havilland's sister, and, sadly, the two were estranged throughout their adult lives.   Here's the trailer for Suspicion, which is a great, great movie, and probably Cary Grant's best dramatic role:




Fontaine is also the only classic Hollywood actress memorialized in a Bruce Springsteen lyric, from his first album:

Hey bus driver, keep the change
Bless your children, give them names
Don't trust men who walk with canes
Drink this and you'll grow wings on your feet
Broadway Mary, Joan Fontaine
Advertiser on a downtown train
Christmas crier bustin' cane
He's in love again

Early Bruce was a little too much like Bob Dylan for my taste, and probably for his too.   He quickly moved from random imagery cobbled together to story-telling in his later albums.