AP Interview: De Havilland breaks silence on sibling feud

In a rare interview with The Associated Press, one of the last living remnants of Hollywood's Golden Age has disclosed her true feelings about her late sister Joan Fontaine, revealing that she calls her "Dragon Lady."

Posing on a chaise longue in a demure black dress in her Saint James Paris residence, the still-glamorous two-time Oscar winner quipped that only "the pearls are fake," before she agreed to answer more detailed questions via email — her preferred mode of communication because of her failing hearing and vision.

De Havilland said the "legend of a feud" with her sister was first created by an article entitled "Sister Act" in Life Magazine following the 1942 Oscars, where both sisters were nominated for an Academy Award.

De Havilland has mainly kept her silence on her version of events, but in the AP interview called the memories of her sister "multi-faceted, varying from endearing to alienating."

De Havilland has the City of Light to thank for happiness and calls Paris "a marvelous development in my life."

Since moving here in 1953, "at the insistence" of her late husband, Frenchman Pierre Galante, she found no reason to return to the U.S. She has remained active with the American community here, centered around Paris' American Cathedral, who she said is made up of "fascinating and worthwhile people."

By 1951, television had already made such inroads on the income garnered by motion picture companies that the Golden Era which had prevailed until then was beginning to disintegrate.

The steely actress famously gave her name to a landmark legal ruling — the de Havilland law — after she took Warner Brothers to court in 1943 over a contract dispute and won, forever loosening the studios' grip on their actors and actresses.