12 Best Old School Hollywood Feuds

“Sisters, sisters, there never wear such devoted sisters” goes the old-timey Irving Berlin song, but such sisterly love wasn’t the case with the de Havilland sisters Olivia and Joan. Their sibling rivalry started pretty much as soon as younger sister Joan was born with Olivia reportedly not too thrilled at the prospect of another addition to the family and Joan believing their mother Lilian favoured her older sister.

Their Hollywood careers didn’t exactly help calm their competitiveness either. Olivia got into the industry first but Joan quickly followed suit, taking her stepfather’s surname allegedly at their mother’s insistence so there wouldn’t be too many de Havillands running around Hollywood.

They gunned for same parts, including the role of Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind which Olivia snagged, and went after the same men but their rivalry came to a head at the Academy Awards in 1942 where the sisters were both nominated for Best Actress – Olivia for Hold Back the Dawn and Joan for Suspicion.

Joan nabbed the Oscar, but Olivia soon surpassed her later winning two Best Actress Oscars the first of which came for her role in To Each His Own at the 1947 Academy Awards where she snubbed Joan’s attempts to congratulate her.

Despite the odd thaw in their frosty relationship and various reconciliations over the years, the final nail in the coffin came with their mother’s death in 1975 when Olivia reportedly neglected to invite Joan to the funeral. In the end though Olivia kind of won, outliving her sister who died in 2013.