Competition among siblings is to be expected, but as Charles Higham tells it in his nasty book "Sisters," actresses Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine are the stars of one of Hollywood's longest-running monster stories.
They are horrid, these two, and though we may remember the steely sweetness of Melanie in "Gone With the Wind" (de Havilland) or the vulnerability of Mrs. de Winter in "Rebecca" (Fontaine), a neighbor "speaks of Joan's tantrums and refusal to get out of bed for long periods at a time; her rudeness to everyone; and her irritating, allegedly imaginary headaches and fits of vomiting."
A star's display of temperament? Well, no, Joan was only 3. Olivia, a year older, is pictured as "refusing to even go near Joan's crib," a foretaste, writes Higham in his florid style, of the "deadly sibling rivalry that would seriously affect both girls' lives."
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The sisters' world, as Higham portrays it, is strife and ugliness: Olivia jumps on Joan and breaks her collarbone; the girls' real father, who lives in Japan, takes Joan to live with him and reputedly tries to lure her into an incestuous relationship; their mother encourages the rivalry by favoring Olivia over Joan.
Olivia is the first to become a star, Joan first to marry, and being first matters as the sisters hop and skip through careers and marriages, spitting at each other along the way.
Olivia's neatness and strictness with her children are perceived by Higham as signs of her tyrannical nature, just as Joan's independence reveals a cold and careless heart. And it may be that these women, caught in careers that made enormous demands upon their time and energy while bloating their egos, were as unpleasant as they are pictured. But this book, centered as it is on the family feud, is a mulch heap. The sisters, their parents, their husbands and children, famous directors, actors and actresses all come out of these pages spattered with dirt. Gone forever are the lovely freshness of Olivia de Havilland and the wit and spirit of Joan Fontaine. These "Sisters" are fiends.
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"Natalie" is about sisters, too, but it is a sad book written by a woman who loved and was in awe of her older sister. Lana Wood was born the year that Natalie Wood made "Miracle on 34th Street," and 8-year-old Natalie was already a star, the pivot around which the family whirled. Lana's babyhood was spent on movie sets, and she grew up learning how to keep out of the way. When thrown by Natalie's horse, she writes, "I was mortified by the thought that I had caused so much trouble, had disrupted our family life and, most important, Natalie's career. I had multiple skull fractures and they would require time -- and attention -- to heal. Up until the accident I had made my way through life by being as inconspicuous and silent as I could be; now I'd ruined everything."
Lana Wood looked enough like her famous sister to take on the role of Natalie as a child; she was talented enough eventually to have a minor career as an actress. But in Hollywood, her real role was the star's younger sister, and Natalie's generosity in sharing the glitter could not change that fact or dim her awareness of it.
Lana Wood wanted her sister's approval -- habit if nothing else -- and she liked the privileges that came to her through Natalie's fame.
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But she also wanted to be her own person and the one does not always earn the other. There were frequent estrangements between the two and although Lana invariably pleads a humble innocence as to the cause, usually she had offended her sister's sense of privacy or moral code. Lana Wood is still on the outs with her brother-in-law, Robert Wagner. She says she can't think why he doesn't like her. Certainly not because her husband had taken the photographs at the Wagners' very private wedding ceremony and then sold them to a fan magazine.
The book includes the obligatory list of famous lovers (Sean Connery, Warren Beatty, who had previously shared her sister's bed, Ryan O'Neal, who was "like having a glass of champagne without knowing too much about the various brands . . . special . . . but not a whole lot more.") The names seem to be there less to prove conquest than to satisfy some editor's demand that they would sell books.
Unlike Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, the Wood sisters come across as decent people in a nutty and demanding profession -- where the body is the tool of art and erosions of age a constant threat. "Even when she Natalie was getting up in the morning with virtually nothing to do . . . she would go to her dressing table after her bath, sit down, and put on her makeup. By her forties the only time I saw her not completely made-up was the day we drove together to the dermatologist to get our faces peeled. Even then, she wore eye liner and mascara, which she removed in the doctor's office . . . 'I'm fighting every damn one of them,' she said as the years began to accumulate."
They didn't accumulate long. She was 43 when she drowned. But while Natalie Wood undoubtedly would argue with her sister's version of their past (sisters, after all, so rarely agree), it is a tale told with love.
