Crush Of The Week : Jennifer Jones

        I know of more than a few people who dislike Jennifer Jones. They say : her speech is funny, her eyebrows are too thick, she dropped hubby and fellow thespian Robert Walker in favor of mega-producer David O. Selznick, etc. Well, I am here to say, get over it! I love Jennifer Jones and feel that she is one of the more unique and neglected actresses of Hollywood's golden era, and my choice for crush of the week. She had an ethereal, fragile quality not often found in stars of that, or really any, generation.

In 1949 Jones gave one of her best performances in Vincente Minnelli's underrated Madame Bovary

             Born Phylis Lee Isley in Tulsa, Oklahoma on March 2, 1919, Jennifer Jones came from a theatrical background. An only child and raised Catholic, Jones' parents ran a tent show in the mid-west, and she toured the the surrounding states with her family while in her youth. In 1938 Jones was accepted to Northwestern University in Illinois, before transferring to the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts in New York City later that year. It was at the Academy that Jones met and fell in love with fellow actor Robert Walker. The couple were married on January 2, 1939. While studying at the Academy, Jones found part-time employment as a radio actress and by modeling hats for the Powers Agency. In 1939, billed as Phyllis Isley, Jennifer temporarily went west and made two B-movies, Dick Tracy's G-Men and New Frontier, the last one opposite a young John Wayne, appearing in one of his last B-westerns, before being shot to stardom thanks to his role as the Ringo Kid in John Ford's Stagecoach.

Working with director Minnelli and co-star Louis Jourdan. Madame Bovary, 1949

             Returning to New York,  Jones heard of an audition for the hit play, Claudia and went to tryout for the part. She failed to win the part, however producer David O.Selznick {Gone With The Wind } was so impressed with the young actress that he signed her to a seven year contract to his film company. Moving to the left coast, Jennifer was groomed for stardom by Selznick's crack team of experts. A significant change would be to her name, Phylis Isley was not Selznick's idea for the name of his newest star, her birth name somehow lacked the special qualities Selznick saw in her; henceforth, she would be known as Jennifer Jones. Obsessed with the young contract player, Selznick instructed his studio to give Jones the big push to stardom. Like most top producers of the golden era, Selznick thought himself a star maker; "Svengali"  Selznick, rides again. It worked. In 1943, 20th Century-Fox cast Jennifer in the spiritual part of Bernadette, the young girl who saw the Virgin Mary, in The Song of Bernadette. The film was a big hit, audiences and critics alike were enthusiastic in their praise of Jennifer's performance and the film went on to earn 12 Oscar Nominations. It would win four, including one for Jennifer as Best Actress.

Jones, Walker and their two sons, Robert, Jr, born in 1940 {and an actor of some note in several films of the 1960's} and Michael, born in 1941.

          Stardom! Just as David Selznick had predicted, Jennifer Jones became a big commodity in Hollywood, specifically at the Selznick Studios and with the big boss himself. Sometime around 1943/1944,  Jones and Selznick began a torrid love affair. Since they were married to others, each with 2 sons {Selznick was married to Irene Mayer, daughter of Louis B.Mayer of MetroGoldwynMayer fame}, this coupling was difficult, at best, for all concerned. The affair was the talk of the studio and they were seen making out in their cars by studio employees. Jones, being a devout Catholic girl, was stricken with guilt, as was Selznick who truly loved and respected his wife {smarter than any man I know, he was heard to say} but at 43, with few worlds left to conquer, Selznick was engaging in his mid-life-crisis-fling. What he didn't know, was that the "fling" would last for over 20 years. Selznick was a big romantic and his films {Gone With The Wind, Rebecca, Since You Went Away, the original 1937 production of  A Star is Born, and more} reflected his mentality towards the feminine side of movie going. The woman's picture has always been a subverted, guilty pleasure of cinema, and this was an area in which Selznick thrived, a genre he would point Jennifer Jones' and his own career toward for the next 20 years. With WWII still the biggest news of the day, Selznick decided that a war film from the woman's point of view, was what the public wanted and needed. Since You Went Away from a book by Margaret Buell Wilder, was to be Selznick's first production since 1940's Rebecca, which had brought him his second consecutive Oscar for Best Picture, the first being 1939's GWTW. Top lining Claudette Colbert as a mother with a husband off to war and two daughters {Jones and a tween Shirley Temple}, the film, low-key and naturalistic with fabulous deep black, velvety images by Stanley Cortez {1942's The Magnificent Ambersons} and Lee Garmes {a favorite of Josef Von Sternberg's}, follows Colbert and her family through a year of war with it's heartbreak, love, loss and hope. Part of what made the film unique was that the husband/father would never be seen on camera; in addition, there was not one battle scene in the film. This story of the homefront was about the sacrifices the women, and some of the men, made back home while waiting for the conflict to end, trying to carry on and maintain a sense of normality as the world goes crazy all around them. During the making of Since, Jones and Walker were separated and Selznick {rubbing salt in the wound?} cast Walker as a soldier who falls for Jones. The farewell scene at the train depot between Walker and Jones, with Walker going off to war, is still touching and inspired all those "goodbye scenes" at train stations that would be come a staple of American movies in the 40's and 50's {until film became entirely too self-conscious and cynical. Today sentiment is a dirty word}.

Long shadows. The farewell scene at the train station in Since You Went Away, beautifully captured by Cortez/Garmes cinematography

                Opening on July 20, 1944, Since You Went Away was popular with masses at the time, earning nearly $5 million at the nation's box offices, yet Selznick's perfectionism pushed the budget to nearly $2.5 million, consequently, profits from the film were few. Nominated for 9 Oscars {and currently with a ranking of 7.5 on InternetMovieDatabase}, with Jones nominated for Best Supporting Actress, the film would ultimately win only for Max Steiner's score. It was while making Since You Went Away that Jones would be nominated, and win her only Oscar, for The Song of Bernadette.

A radiant Jones, Oscar night 1944.

Superstar! Before this phrase was even invented, Jennifer Jones couldn't have imagined the events of the last 2 years happening to her back in 1939-1941, and that she would become one of the war year's leading actresses. In 1945 Jones would be loaned to Paramount Pictures for the Cyrano-influenced, Love Letters with frequent co-star Joseph Cotton, another big hit, followed by another Oscar nom for Best Actress {she would lose to Joan Crawford's searing portrayal of Mildred Pierce}. Loaned out to Fox for the comedy Cluny Brown late in in 1945, with French heartthrob Charles Boyer, it would become last completed film director Ernst Lubitsch {The Merry Widow; Ninotchka; To Be Or Not To Be}  would ever make. In it, Jones plays the title character, a plumber's niece, who meets and falls for Czech refugee Boyer. It was a nice change of pace for Jones, who fit nicely into the Lubitsch world of winks, innuendo and sexual suggestion. Jones gives a refreshingly relaxed performances, in one of her most underrated movies.

Relaxed and lovely in Lubitsch's Cluny Brown, 1946

In 1945, just before making the Lubitsch film, Jones and Walker's divorce became final. Selznick and wife Irene were separated in August of that year leaving Selznick free to date Jones, openly. Though both were now free to marry, they did not rush to the alter. Selznick had bigger things to attend to, such as the planning, filming and editing of what he hoped would outdo GWTW, the epic western of sex and decadence Duel in the Sun. The film tells the story of half-breed Pearl Chavez {Jones} who goes to live with her second cousin Laura Belle {Lillian Gish} after her father {Herbert Marshall} is hanged for the murder of his unfaithful wife. Laura Belle is the wife of Senator McCandles {Lionel Barrymore, warming up his Henry F. Potter characterization in It's A Wonderful Life} with two grown sons, Jesse {Joseph Cotton} and Lewt {Gregory Peck}. Jones' Pearl takes a liking to both, but Peck's bad boy Lewt brings out her most basic instincts, while Cotton's Jesse, though also turned on by this earthy woman, is more interested in helping Pearl develop her mind so she can get ahead in life. Along the way there is a railroad vs. landowners subplot, sin-killers {represented by Walter Huston} and the near rape of Pearl by Lewt. Dubbed "Lust in the Dust" by it's less flattering critics, Duel went on to become a top moneyspinner second only to Goldwyn's Oscar winner, Best Years of Our Lives. But at a cost of nearly $7 million, Duel  was nowhere near as profitable as Goldwyn's WWII story of the veterans homecoming. A succes de scandale, people went to see Duel for two reasons: was it as bad as the critics maintained and was it really a stag film with big stars and color. This was the film in which Selznick went completely overboard, both professionally and personally. On the one hand he wanted, so desperately, to top GWTW ; on the other hand he wanted the film to spotlight Jones as his sex kitten. See what I have here, he seemed to say, this hot, spicy, vixen of a woman is in my bed every night. The public was fascinated at the spectacle and the film, ludicrous as it is, holds it's power to enthrall. Somehow, through it all, Jones was again nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for Duel. It's not her best job of work, but she lends herself to it and works hard with a kind of self-conscious abandon.Walking off her hips like a real peasant girl, Pearl was not an easy part for Jones, and may be the one furthest from our perception of her, though paradoxically, today Duel may be her best known film.

Great poster from the sex and scandal epic.

Post-Duel, Jones had a bit of inactivity, with no films released in 1947 she was trying to get her personal life in order. Ex-husband Walker had developed a bad drinking problem and was institutionalized at Menninger Clinic in 1949. Insecure and shy, prone to depression, Jones felt responsible not just for Walker's plight, but for the break up of the Selznick home. In David Thomson's book Showman, his massively impressive biography on David, Irene Selznick recounts a meeting the two women had in New York City sometime in September 1946. Jones was convinced she was bad for David: " He wants his children-not mine", Jennifer said to Irene as their car went round and round Central Park. " I don't want to hear your woes", Irene told her. " You must take him back", Jennifer demanded, with Jones at one point trying to throw herself from the moving car. " David was always afraid of a suicide", said Irene, so she did what she could to talk Jennifer down from her state of agitation. As Irene later said, " She wasn't crazy. She was crazed." 

In 1948 Jones teamed again with Joseph Cotton, under Selznick's watchful eye, in the hauntingly romantic ghost story, Portrait of Jennie. A film that seems to be as much loved {count me in} as hated, Jennie was directed by William Dieterle, the same man who helmed them to great success in Love Letters three years previous. Jennie tells the story of struggling artist Eben Adams {Cotton} who, one winter's night, meets up with a little girl named Jennie Appleton {Jones}. The mysterious Jennie appears suddenly and briefly to Adams at random times in the next few months. Each time Adams sees Jennie her appearance and demeanor take on a more mature nature. Inspired by Jennie, Adams decides to paint her portrait. They fall in love, with Adams, on the verge of obsession, determined on tracking down Jennie when she disappears. Released on Christmas Day 1948, Portrait of Jennie was a critical and box office bomb, with a budget of $4 million, the film returned just over $1.5 million. Long forgotten over the ensuing years, Jennie has developed a cult following with 7.6 rating on InternetMovieDatabase; though not entirely successful, it remains a hauntingly beautiful film.

1949 would be a turning point. Selznick loaned her services to MGM who cast her perfectly as Flaubert's Madame Bovary. She may not have been Flaubert's Emma Bovary, nevertheless she is perfect as Minnelli's incarnation of the immoral heroine. Lana Turner, MGM's reigning sex queen, was set to play Emma when she found herself pregnant, leaving the door open for Jones. Working under Minnelli's  painstaking direction, Jones flourished as the woman who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means as a way to escape her drab, dreary life as wife to a simple country doctor {Van Heflin}. MGM released the movie on August 25, 1949 to decent reviews, but a generally soft box office. Bovary should be seen not only for Jones' magnificent Emma, but also for James Mason as author Flaubert, Van Heflin's sympathetic husband and Louis Jordan's charming cad. The physical production is in sumptuous black & white, with the waltz a highlight of music {courtesy of Miklos Rozsa} and movement. A cinematic moment to savor, the waltz is the moment when all Emma's dreams, albeit briefly, come true; before her breakdown, when reality comes thundering down upon her.

Emma in the midst of her breakdown. The mirror holds a telling image that Minnelli returns to again and again.

 David's one production without Jennifer at this time, Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case, made in 1947, was a costly error and generally thought to be one of The Master of Suspense's lesser efforts and it lost money. Due to extravagance and mismanagement, desperate for cash, a humiliated David had no choice but to liquidate what assets he had. In April 1949 Daily Variety ran the headline "Selznick Studio Goes On The Block". In July 1949, David and Jennifer finally tied the knot. Was it true love or did Jones feel that, given all Selznick had done for her career and all he had lost, she had little choice? They would head for Europe, for Selznick had a production deal with British producer Alexander Korda. The first film up for the two titan's of production was Carol Reed's The Third Man. It would go on to be a big world-wide hit and have an influential effect on the suspense genre, but Selznick did all he could to sabotage the production by trying to strong-arm the casting, to no avail {Noel Coward, instead of Orson Welles as Harry Lime; Cary Grant for Joseph Cotton as Holly Martins; thank God Korda got his way on that piece of business}. As for Jennifer, she would be working on the Powell/Pressburger production of Gone To Earth, renamed The Wild Heart and partially re-shot by Rouben Mamoulian per Selznick's instructions and not released in America until 1952. Director Powell said this of Jennifer, "What a beautiful woman, great-hearted girl, inspired asctress, restless soul". An extremely difficult film to see as it rarely shows up on television, I cannot remember a TCM showing of it, ever. The only viewing I recall was about twenty years ago on the old AMC channel. Meanwhile back in America, ex-husband Walker died in 1951 under what is still mysterious circumstances. For Jennifer, more guilt.

Jennifer and Chuck Heston, fighting and loving, in the swamps. 1952's Ruby Gentry

Ruby Gentry from 1952 would prove to be Jennifer's biggest hit since 1946's Duel in the Sun. In it, Jones returned to the femme fatale territory of Duel's Pearl Chavez. Again directed by King Vidor, Ruby tells the story of a poor but sexy woman who marries a older, rich man {Karl Malden}, but still has the hots for her old flame {Charlton Heston}. Filmed on a tight budget of $500,000, cheap even by 1952 standards, the movie would go on to gross nearly $2 million. Jones is good as the sexy Ruby, appearing more at ease here than as Pearl Chavez, six years  earlier.                          

As Carrie, in William Wyler's 1952 movie of the same name

                  A prestige project at Paramount under the guidance of William Wyler {Best Years of Our Lives; The Letter; Wuthering Heights} and co-starring Laurence Olivier, Carrie {no relation to the Brian DePalma thriller from the 70's}, based on Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie, was next up for her. Critically praised {especially Olivier}, the great unwashed "stayed away in droves", and it lost money. The movie opens at the turn of the century with Carrie {Jones} as a young girl who moves to Chicago. Staying with her married sister and working in a shoe factory, Carrie becomes the mistress of traveling salesman, Charles Drouet {a pre-Green Acres Eddie Albert}. Not really in love with Charles, Carrie meets and falls under the spell of George Hurstwood, a married, middle aged restaurant manager. Learning of the affair, Hurstwood's wife pressures him to give up Carrie. Hurstwood refuses and embezzles an undisclosed amount of money from his work place, hoping to leave Chicago and start a fresh life with Carrie. Fate and circumstances intervene, Carrie leaves George and becomes a successful stage actress, while George becomes destitute, wandering the streets of the city, looking for hand-outs to get by.  Carrie was a credit for all concerned and much admired today as one of Wyler's best post-war films, with Olivier giving his best film performance, though it is not as well-known as his Hamlet or Heathcliff. Jennifer is radiant as Carrie, and the last scene of the film, with George needing money and stopping by the theatre in which she is appearing, is restrained, yet touching in it's presentation of two people who still care for each other very much, but who are destined not to live happily ever after.

Olivier as Hurstwood, near the end of his rope. Carrie, 1952

 Then it was back to Europe for some Italian location work on John Huston's Beat The Devil and Vittorio deSica's Stazione Termini aka Indiscretion of an American Wife. Both films had somewhat chaotic shoots and may have been more interesting to film than they are to view, though both movies, especially the Huston one, have many things to recommend them. Huston's Beat The Devil is a clever spoof on his own Maltese Falcon. It's virtures include a stellar cast of characters played by Bogie, Peter Lorre, Robert Morley, Gina Lollobrigida and a witty script by Truman Capote. The rejected script by Peter Viertel and Anthony Veiller was completely re-written, and Capote was recommended to Huston on the advise on David Selznick {though he had no hand in the production, Selznick always stuck his nose in any film his wife appeared in}, for Truman also worked Indiscretion of an American Wife. Both films did nothing for Jennifer's career, which had been bottoming out at the box office for some time. In retrospect both films are quite entertaining in their own vastly different ways, with Beat The Devil coming out ahead by virtue of it's idiosyncratic nature. DeSica's Indiscretion or Stazione Termini, is more the traditional of the two, though like the astronomical Gemini, the film has two personalities, two identities. After international hits like Shoeshine; The Bicycle Thief; and Umberto D, De Sica was one of the most sought after and cutting edge directors. That Selznick sought him out to collaborate on a film says much of his effort to stay current and at least try alternative ways of filmmaking. That Selznick imposed his Hollywood method of making a film on the neo-realist DeSica explains what inevitably went wrong with the production, with Jennifer stuck in a no-win situation of trying to please both producer and director, while falling in lust with her gay co-star, Montgomery Clift. Slashed in the cutting room by Selznick, the American version ran just over an hour, shed of more than twenty of it's European minutes. Indiscretion and Beat The Devil both were failures upon release in 1953/54. 

With the film's title over the image, this was the opening shot for the American version titled Indiscretion of an American Wife, 1954.

Thomson's Selznick bio relates a bizarre though apparently not uncommon occurrence, when shortly after getting married, David and Jennifer had dinner with some friends and afterwards went walking on the edge of Hyde Park in London. An argument broke out between David and Jennifer with Jennifer running into the blackness of the park. David, clearly upset, found a policeman and they found Jennifer in the trees with a stranger. Selznick said the man had approached Jennifer, but the man denied it and said Jones had approached him. According to the book, "there would be many such flights and public arguments". This, combined with the episode related by Irene from the late 40's, suggests an actress and woman with an extremely fragile psyche.                                                                                     

Classic image of a long lost New York City billboard, advertising Jennifer's latest in May 1954.

   With her waning box office appeal, Jennifer and David returned to America as Jennifer was offered the role in The Country Girl, based on the play by Clifford Odets. However, in the spring of 1954 Jennifer would have to bow out and relinquish the role to Grace Kelly, who would go on to win an Oscar for it; Jennifer was pregnant.  Born on August 12, 1954 they named her Mary Jennifer and Selznick, at 52, was delighted. Another production, someone else he could help shape and mold in his own image, so to speak.  Professionally things were looking up for Jennifer with the release of the huge romantic blockbuster, 1955's Love is a Many-Splendored Thing opposite major box office star and Oscar winner William Holden. This piece of 50's kitsch about the love affair between a Eurasian doctor and an American reporter was embraced by moviegoers everywhere becoming a top box office hit with eight Oscar nominations to it's credit, including Jennifer's first since Duel in the Sun nine years previous, and a hit song to help propel it to the top ranks. The shoot was not a friendly one for Holden who said Jones ate garlic before their love scenes, that she complained about her make-up {she felt it made her look old} and was generally bitchy to all involved on the film in the three months it took to shoot. After the box office take on her last three or four films, Jennifer's Oscar nom and the film's B.O. success couldn't have come at a better time. 

    With renewed success, Jennifer plunged into the most active time of her career since the mid-40's. Good Morning, Miss Dove was her follow up to Splendored Thing and was a smart move as it offered her a character part as a iron-fisted-with-a-heart-of-gold teacher who reflects on her life and her former students. 1956 reunited her with Duel costar Gregory Peck in the big screen adaptation of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, based on Sloan Wilson's era-defining novel about big business in the New York City world of advertising. Pre-Mad Men, it was also a landmark of social mores and attitudes of the time. Riding the crest of these popular films, in 1957 Jones would appear in two remakes that would essentially put an end to her screen career. First up was Sidney Franklin's The Barretts of Wimpole Street, made by MGM in England with real locations used whenever possible.The 1934 original starred Norma Shearer as Elizabeth Barrett and Fredric March as poet Robert Browning with Charles Laughton as Papa Barrett who comes between the two lovers desire to marry and was a substantial hit, however the newer version was greeted with yawns and empty theater's. Later that year Jones and Selznick teamed for the last time in a big-budget, wide screen adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms. Made in 1932 with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes the fondly remembered original was popular, though not exactly faithful to it's source. Still trying to top GWTW, Selznick's overblown, overbudget extravaganza would end his producing career once and for all, a sad end to a great career. Original director John Huston quit over what he felt was Selznick's obsessive interference and was replaced with Charles Vidor. Jones as Catherine Barkley, opposite leading heartthrob Rock Hudson as her love interest, was a decade too old for the part. Coming in at over $4 million the film opened to big press coverage, but lackluster reviews helped sink it's hopes and it was a major letdown for all participants, except Vittorio De Sica as Major Rinaldi, who {in a touch of irony and possible revenge} received an Oscar nom for Best Supporting Actor. Opening in December 1957, the movie ended up with rentals in the U.S. of just over $5 million.

 Jennifer retreated from the world's cinemas until 1962 when, again miscast, she starred in an ill-advised version of F.Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, as Nicole Diver. Directed by Henry King, who helmed her 1955 hit Splendored Thing, filmed in CinemaScope, and surrounded by an impressive cast that includes Jason Robards as psychiatrist Dick Diver, Joan Fontaine as Baby Warren, Paul Lukas as Dr.Dohmler, Jill St.John as Rosemary Hoyt and Tom Ewell, Jones gave an adequate rendering of Fitzgerald's heroine in what may be an altogether unplayable role. Nicole ages from 17-30 in the book, is both "hard" and "lovely". Don't know of many such performers who can fit that bill, even today. This film was another failure for Jones and the last film she would making while Selznick was still alive. In 1965, just past his 63rd birthday, Selznick had a heart attack and died on June 23rd. For Jennifer there would be tough times ahead, including a suicide attempt in November of 1967 after checking into a Malibu Beach motel and taking an overdose of sleeping pills with a bottle of champagne, she was found unconscious below a 300 foot cliff, rolling in the surf. She would survive that attempt, however her daughter Mary Jennifer was not to be so lucky. A sad child with emotional problems, Mary Jennifer would kill herself by jumping from a Los Angeles skyscraper in 1976. Jones, for all her emotional issues, would endure. She met and married billionaire art collector Norton Simon in 1971 and she would channel her energies into his art museum located in Pasadena, Ca. Her big screen career post-Selznick were limited to three films : 1966's The Idol with Michael Parks as a rebellious student you has an affair with the mother {Jones} of his best friend and in 1969's Angel, Angel, Down We Go, poor Jennifer plays a former porn star {!} who is unhappily married to a man who turns out to be gay. I have never seen these two aforementioned films but Angel, Angel sounds like a hoot and a half, and a movie I should seek out when I am on a full throttle bender! Why exactly Jones took part in this low-budget opus is beyond rational thought, which actually may explain a lot. Along with late career movies of Lana Turner, Mae West and Rita Hayworth, the last few films of Jennifer Jones are a sad reminder of a once glorious career.

The quote to end all quote's. Did Jennifer Jones know what she was doing?

Jones did have a bit better swan song than those other ladies, though: 1974's The Towering Inferno with an all-star cast that included some of the biggest stars of the day like Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. One face familiar to Jones was the casting of William Holden as the builder of the giant firetrap. Though they had no love scenes I wonder if she kept her garlic on hand, just in case. In her later years, somewhat reclusive, Jones went to live with her one surviving son, Robert Walker, Jr {oldest son Michael died in 2007}, in the last six years of her life. Some of her rare public appearances was at the 70th and 75th Academy Awards and the AFI Award tribute to Gregory Peck in 1989. It's nice to see that Jennifer Jones appeared to overcome her fears and demons to live a peaceful and productive life. She would die on December 17, 2009. She was 90.   

With husband and mentor, David Selznick in the 1960's.

  Sources-                  Showman : The Life of David O. Selznick by David Thomson
                                  InternetMovieDataBase
                                  Wikipedia
                                  Starcrossed : The Story of Robert Walker & Jennifer Jones by Beverly Linet
                                  A Private View by Irene Mayer Selznick
                                  Turner Classic Movies Website and Movie Channel
                                  And the films of Jennifer Jones