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In honor of Joan Fontaine's 99th birthday, which is tomorrow, this week on «Film Friday» I bring you what she described as her favourite of all of her films.   Directed by Edmund Goulding, The Constant Nymph (1943) begins when composer Lewis Dodd (Charles Boyer) travels to Switzerland after his latest symphony is badly received in London. He stays at the home of his old friend and fellow musician Albert Sanger (Montagu Love), causing great excitement among his four daughters: Kate (Jean Muir), Toni (Brenda Marshall), Tessa (Joan Fontaine) and Paula (Joyce Reynolds). Despite the fact that she is only a teenager, Tessa is in love with Lewis and dreams of helping him reach his full promise as a composer. Worrying about his sheltered daughters' future, the ailing Sanger instructs Lewis to contact his wealthy brother-in-law, Charles Creighton (Charles Coburn), when he dies. Charles Boyer, Alexis Smith, Peter Lorre and Joan Fontaine in The Constant Nymph . Upon Sanger's dea...

Original release poster Directed by Frank Capra, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) tells the story of Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant), a Broadway critic and "symbol of bachelorhood," author of several anti-marriage books , who ironically weds Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane) on Halloween . On their way to their honeymoon, they stop in Brooklyn, where they grew up next door to each other. While Elaine drops in on her father, Reverend Harper (Grant Mitchell), Mortimer visits the eccentric but lovable relatives who raised him and who still live in his old family home: his spinster aunts Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair), and his derranged brother Teddy (John Alexander), who believes h imself to be Theodore Roosevelt. As he s earch es for the notes for his most re cent book , Mortimer discovers a dead body hidden in the window seat and is s hocked to find that his aunts were responsible for the murder. Abby and Martha calmly explain that they have been k...