A few slow-on-the-pickup types expressed shock or surprise at yesterday’s Joan Fontaine riff, particularly about how I could never imagine her in a heterosexual context. I was merely saying that I never felt much in the way of animal passion, that’s all. If anything, I said, Fontaine always struck me as vaguely dykey in a kind of old-time closeted sense. I know she was straight — I was talking about what she radiated on-screen. A critic friend wrote a half-hour ago and called this impression “interesting.” He added that “aside from pointing out that [Fontaine] was married four times, I would just add that a witty gay gentleman friend of mine used to squire her around a lot — to the Oscars, etc. — and always said she had the foulest mouth in town and the dirtiest stories about everyone. Caustic, often very funny, sometimes catty to the point of unpleasantness. A female curmudgeon. And hated her sister to her dying day.”