No Bed of Roses by Joan FontaineMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
So, I wanted to understand - how does a woman acknowledge sexual abuse from her stepfather, then take his last name a her stage name? What better way to untangle that, than from herself. Well, the name was first one that popped into her head when a fortune teller offer "think of a name ending in 'e'" when she went looking for sage advice. OK...
Drill-sergeant stepfather "Danny" Fontaine's abuse was only recalled years later in a rare period of speaking terms with sister Olivia de Havilland: "The washcloth would tarry too long in intimate places". OK...
Mother, to whom the book is dedicated, snaps "You're nothing but a whore" when Joan lets a young man take innocently her hand while in the audience during a Beethoven trio. She hovers like a ghost.
The set of Rebecca, crude Laurence Olivier, serial marriages to Brian Aherne, etc., but not even a dalliance with Howard Hughes who she got Olivia to walk away from. Dalliances with Conrad Nagel (who "surprised" her out of her virginity) and including Adlai Stevenson, Prince Aly Khan, and cartoonist Charles Addams. In the end, the longest chapter of greatest intimacy is the epilogue - right after mom's funeral - a poignant, sad letter to the departed "Mater".
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