No Bed of Roses, Signed by Joan Fontaine to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
[Signed Presentation to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. by Joan Fontaine] Fontaine, Joan. No Bed of Roses. First Edition. 1978. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition—the glue used to attach Fairbanks’s bookplate caused moderate damp-staining to that page. Book is warmly inscribed, “To Douglas Fairbanks Jr. or that was the name I dared call my first leading mean in ‘Gunga Din’’ with devotion—Joan.” Fairbank’s bookplate is attached to twice, to the front endpaper and to the page opposite the title page.
Joan Fontaine received praise for her supporting performance in George Cukor’s The Women, but it was the Alfred Hitchcock/David Selznick collaboration Rebecca that made her a sensation. Her mother, Lillian, didn’t exactly join the bandwagon, commenting to Hedda Hopper, “Joan has always seemed rather phony to me in real life, but she’s quite believable on the screen.” Of course, Lillian was already devoted to her first daughter to make it in Hollywood, Joan’s older sister, Olivia de Havilland. Lillian’s taking of sides only added fuel to the lifelong rivalry between the two sisters, which Fontaine discusses in detail in this book. Just as fascinating as their periodic exchanges of barbs, however, are the times Fontaine describes when the sisters momentarily got along, most typically when one of them experienced a crisis and the other dropped everything to lend support. Alas, what might have been. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., to whom this copy is inscribed, makes two brief but important appearances in the book. He played opposite Fontaine in Gunga Din, her first important film role. Several decades later, he was present when Fontaine in New York City when she learned that her Brentwood home had burned to the ground in the devasting 1961 Bel Air Fire.
“I have preferred to shun what is known as feminine wiles, the subterfuge of subtlety, reliance on tears and coquetry to shape my way. I am forthright, often blunt. I have learned to be a realist despite my romantic, emotional nature.”
--Joan Fontaine