Joan Fontaine

The Women (1939)

[8] Norma Shearer (The Divorcee) fronts an all-star, all-female cast in George Cukor’s adaptation of Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women. Shearer plays a happily married woman of privilege who learns through the gossipy grapevine that her husband is having an affair with another woman, played by Joan Crawford. Shearer struggles under the dueling influences of her mother (Lucile Watson) and her so-called ‘friends’, which include …

Ivanhoe (1952)

[5] The disgraced Ivanhoe returns from the Crusades to learn King Richard the Lionheart is imprisoned in Austria. He goes to the court of King John to plea for Richard’s ransom, but King John is pretty keen to keep the throne for himself. So Ivanhoe teams with Robin of Locksley to raise the ransom and restore Richard to the throne. As Ivanhoe, Robert Taylor leaves …

Rebecca (1940)

[10] Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film and only one to win a Best Picture Oscar is Rebecca, starring Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, and Judith Anderson. Based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier, the film follows a nervous woman (Fontaine) who catches the eye of a wealthy widower (Olivier). After they marry, she is taken to his ancestral mansion, Manderley, where the icy cold head …

Gunga Din (1939)

[10] Directed by George Stevens and inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem, Gunga Din is the story of three indomitable British soldiers who find themselves at the center of a battle against the bloodthirsty Thuggee cult. Captured and enslaved with an aspiring water boy (the title character), the men endanger their lives to thwart an ambush of the British army coming to rescue them. Gunga Din …