The co-star Cary Grant couldn’t stand: “Bitchy behaviour”
As one of Old Hollywood’s most popular leading men, Cary Grant found himself partnered up with many of the industry’s most iconic women, but that didn’t mean he got on with all of them.
His rise to fame came with various collaborations with Mae West, a legend of the screen whom he found to be “disconcerting”. Rather, he preferred working with the likes of Katharine Hepburn, his co-star in several classic screwball comedies, like Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story, as well as Ingrid Bergman, calling her “a fascinating, full-blooded yet temperate woman”.
The pair first collaborated on Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, which was Grant’s second collaboration with Hitchcock. His first, however, saw him share the screen with a star he’d, like West, struggle to get along with.
Suspicion, released in 1941, saw Grant appear slightly against type, his usual comedic charms considerably more sinister this time around, and alongside him was Joan Fontaine as his wife, becoming increasingly paranoid that her husband is going to kill her.
Grant embodies the playboy character well, winning Fontaine’s Lina over despite the fact that they’re really not at all well-matched. She is nervous and reserved, her parents believe that she’ll never find anyone, and she can often be seen with her glasses on, reading a book. But when Grant’s Johnnie enters her life, she soon finds herself married to a liar – one who appears to have only married her for her family’s money.
It’s a great film, although the ending has long divided audiences, with Hitchcock forced into rounding off the story with a happy ending that seems to negate all of the tension and suspense that has built up over the past hour and a half. So, (spoilers ahead) Lina’s suspicions that Johnnie is trying to kill her are squashed when he reveals that he has actually been planning to kill himself. Johnnie isn’t a potential wife murderer after all, he’s just a bad husband.
Yet, Grant once had something rather scathing to say about Fontaine. He claimed that her “bitchy behaviour made it perfectly understandable that her husband could murder her”. When you consider that Grant was known for his charm, it’s quite shocking to read such a quote, but it seems like there was some bitterness going on between the two regarding Hitchcock’s supposed favouring of Fontaine over Grant on set.
He didn’t need to be too worried, though, because Hitch would go on to collaborate with him numerous times from that point on, while Suspicion marked Fontaine’s second and last movie with the revered director. No one will know just why Grant had such disdain for Fontaine, but she was a notoriously complex figure, her lifelong feud with her sister, actor Olivia de Havilland, informing much of her career. She was also estranged from her two daughters, so there’s no doubt that Fontaine was a challenging character.
Sometimes, though, you just don’t get on with a co-star, and there’s not much you can do about it. This tension only helped to serve their warring characters, though, so I guess her bitchiness was for the best.
