The Constant Nymph
Joan Fontaine got the lead role of Tessa by a lucky chance. One day, she was having lunch at Romanoff's in Hollywood, with her husband, actor Brian Aherne. The two had just flown in by airplane from their grape ranch in Indio, California, and Fontaine was in a leather flight suit with her hair done in pigtails. Director Edmund Goulding walked into the restaurant, and stopped by their table to say hello to his good friend Aherne. Goulding complained that he was having trouble casting a lead actress for his next movie, "The Constant Nymph." Although he had considered , she was wrong for the part. And, Goulding explained, "Jack Warner wants a star in the lead, but she has to be consumptive, flat-chested, anemic, and fourteen!" "How about me?" said Fontaine. "Who are you?" asked Goulding, not recognizing the freckled girl in pigtails sitting next to him. "Joan Fontaine," said the actress. Goulding looked startled. "You're perfect!" Fontaine was signed for the part the next day, and later called it "the happiest motion-picture assignment of my career.",Florence Creighton: You flung yourself at my husband in this house and you succeeded!
Tessa Sanger: I can't help it if I love Lewis! I did long before you came to Switzerland and it's not a happy thing. It's brought nothing but sadness into my life, and yet it's so overwhelming I wouldn't want it to be different.,Featured in Between Two Worlds: Erich Wolfgang Korngold (2005),Tomorrow
(uncredited)
Words by Margaret Kennedy
by Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Sung by Joan Fontaine (dubbed by Sally Sweetland) with chamber group,Joan Fontaine has became one of my very favorite actresses, just like her sister Olivia de Havilland, after seeing her in such Classics as "Rebecca", "Suspicion", "Jane Eyre" and that masterpiece, "Letter from an Unknown Woman". That mesmerizing constantly-frightened-insecure-frail look of hers has totally bewitched me; her classic features surrounded by an ethereal aura; her distinction and class, even in waif-like roles like the one she plays here and in "Letter…".

This film, just as "Letter from an Unknown Woman" is about Love, sometimes unrequited but always "intense". Young Tessa Sanger (Joan Fontaine) is deeply in love with much elder composer Lewis Dodd (Charles Boyer), who hasn't been able to succeed as musician. Tessa's father (another musician) played by Montagu Love, says that Lewis will have to love and suffer because of it, to attain an achievement as a composer.

The wondrous music by masterful German composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold is a marvel, pure poetry, which sets the perfect mood for this melancholic Love Story; it was really a privilege for Warner Brothers Pictures to have had the fortune of counting him as one of the members of its staff; Korngold's music is an awesome contribution to the Motion Pictures.

As I said before Joan Fontaine's perfect as the young Tessa. She was something like 26 years old when this movie was filmed and she portrays convincingly and believably the love-stricken teenager. Boyer is good as the intense composer and plays sensitively his scenes with Fontaine. Kudos too for Alexis Smith, who plays Florence, Tessa's elder cousin with great skill and sentiment.

Others in the magnificent cast are Charles Coburn as Tessa's lovable uncle, Brenda Marshall as Tessa's sister, Dame May Witty as a Dowager British Aristocrat, Peter Lorre as a friend of the Sanger family, Eduardo Ciannelli as Roberto, a faithful servant of the Sanger family, Jean Muir, etc.

Again, it's a shame that this wonderful, utterly moving film is out of circulation due to legal issues, if they didn't exist it should belong to TCM's Library (just like "Letty Lynton").,