Jennifer Jones
Jennifer Jones, one of my all-time favorite performers, turned 90 yesterday, March 2.
The name doesn’t ring a sonorous bell? Well, it should.
Jennifer Jones, the sensitive, darkly beautiful actress who won an Academy Award (and the very first best actress Golden Globe) for the 1943 box-office sensation The Song of Bernadette.
Jennifer Jones, who starred in Since You Went Away (1944), Love Letters (1945), Duel in the Sun (1946), Portrait of Jennie (1948), Carrie (1952), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), A Farewell to Arms (1957), and Tender Is the Night (1961).
Jennifer Jones, the unlucky woman who falls off the elevator in The Towering Inferno (1974) and who happened to be Gone with the Wind producer David O. Selznick’s obsession (and later wife as well) for more than two decades.
Speaking of Selznick, I wonder if he had met Jones in, say, 1937, if he’d have cast her as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. I can’t picture Jones as the feisty Southern belle — whenever I think of Scarlett, I see Vivien Leigh — but then again, stranger choices were considered for the role, from Jean Arthur and Loretta Young to Katharine Hepburn and Tallulah Bankhead. So, really, why not Jennifer Jones?
Selznick seemed to think her capable of playing anything. Personally, I almost agree with him. And even when I don’t, I’m still glad she was (mis)cast in inadequate roles just because that gives me the chance to see more of her on screen, especially since Jones made so few films (24 in all) during her 35-year career.
Jennifer Jones’ story began when Phylis Flora Isley was born on March 2, 1919, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (I don’t know much about Jones’ background; because of her looks, I’ve always wondered if she was part Native American.) Her parents were theatrical performers who eventually allowed their daughter to move to New York City to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
There, Isley met Robert Walker (above, in Since You Went Away), whom she married in 1939. That same year, the couple tried Hollywood. A Paramount test led nowhere, but the aspiring actress managed to land a couple of important roles (as Phyllis Isley — note the two “l”s) in unimportant productions at the minor Republic studios: the oater New Frontier, opposite John Wayne, and the serial Dick Tracy’s G-Men, with Ralph Byrd.
Then it was back to New York, some modeling work, and a screen test for Claudia, which Selznick was planning on doing in the early 1940s. The producer (who was to remain married to MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer’s daughter Irene Mayer until early 1949) offered Isley a contract, changed her name to Jennifer Jones, and made sure that she got more training and that her husband wouldn’t interfere with her professional ascendancy. He then proceeded to obsessively micromanage her career.
In 1942, Selznick brought Jones back to Hollywood to have her star in 20th Century Fox’s The Song of Bernadette, in which she plays Bernadette Soubirous, the French peasant girl who angered the Catholic establishment by claiming to be able to see and chat with the Virgin Mary (actually a blasphemously pregnant Linda Darnell in disguise).
Jones was hailed as a brilliant new discovery (her 1939 film appearances were either conveniently forgotten or ignored), going on to win a best actress Oscar on her 25th birthday (above, with fellow Oscar nominee and Selznick contract player Ingrid Bergman and Selznick himself, looking quite infatuated). Jones’ Oscar win was fully deserved, I’d say. Though in her mid-20s, the young actress — with the assistance of director Henry King — is able to fully convey the 14-year-old Bernadette’s innocence and earnestness without seeming at all cutesy or saccharine. I don’t believe in saints, but if I did they’d look and act like Jones’ young (and beautified) peasant.
On the day after the Oscar ceremony, Jones sued Robert Walker for divorce. Oddly, she and her soon-to-be ex-husband were at the time working together — as romantic partners — in the Selznick production Since You Went Away, a sappy, overlong melodrama about The Women Left Behind that became one of the biggest commercial successes of the World War II period.
According to Ronald Haver’s David O. Selznick’s Hollywood, the producer "was determined to demonstrate [Jones'] versatility by casting her as the ‘all-American girl next door,’ and his reworking of the script to enhance her role and the character’s development was one of the things he continually tinkered with throughout the preparation and shooting of the picture." Despite Selznick’s efforts, Jones felt herself badly miscast. "She was very unhappy in the part … about as unhappy as I’ve ever seen a girl be on the set" director John Cromwell later recalled. "… She thought she was much too old … much too big and gawky. … It made her feel awkward … she couldn’t reconcile herself to the part. … Most of it was her imagination …. there was no basis for it. … She didn’t say too much about it … there wasn’t too much she could say about it."
I’m not crazy about Jones’ performance as Claudette Colbert’s willful daughter, but she does have one great moment in Since You Went Away thanks in part to Cromwell’s sensitive direction and to Stanley Cortez’s superb black-and-white camerawork (which he called "psychological photography"): as her beloved Average Joe soldier boyfriend (Walker) is sent away, Jones’ character follows the slowly departing train, walking and then running on the shadowy platform. As the train fades in the distance, the camera focuses on Jones, left all alone. This heavily dramatic moment could easily have derailed into either coyness or campiness; instead, that farewell sequence remains one of the highlights of 1940s Hollywood filmmaking in no small measure because of Jones’ immensely touching work.
Whether Jones’ performance in the aforementioned scene was influenced by real-life events is impossible to say, but according to Ronald Haver she was "extremely uncomfortable" playing her scenes with Walker "and on two occasions her emotional upsets caused her to flee the set in tears. Selznick had to come to her dressing room and calm her down before she could continue."
Jones and Walker were officially divorced in 1945. Although he remained a likable leading man in several films, mostly at MGM, Walker was never to become a real star. In 1951, the year he delivered his most effective performance — as the gay psychopath in Alfred Hitchcock’s suspense drama Strangers on a Train — Walker, who had developed a serious drinking problem, died after ingesting prescription drugs mixed with alcohol. He was 32. At that time, Jones and Selznick had been married for two years.
Between 1943 and 1945, Jones went from saint to All-American girl to potential murderess. In Love Letters, an intricate tale of sex, lies, and correspondence, Jones plays a young woman with a faulty memory who has been accused of murdering her no-good husband. Directed by William Dieterle, adapted by Ayn Rand from Christopher Massie’s novel, and co-starring Joseph Cotten, Love Letters is one of the most effective psychological noirs of the 1940s in large part because of Jones’ excellent star turn as the troubled heroine with a fuzzy secret. Love Letters, in fact, should be better remembered — and not solely for Victor Young’s melodious score.
Clip by northbreed1
John Cromwell quote: Ronald Haver’s David O. Selznick’s Hollywood.
Jennifer Jones II: DUEL IN THE SUN
Jennifer Jones III: THE TOWERING INFERNO
THE SINGING REVOLUTION: Q&A with Filmmakers James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty
Oscar Correspondent Contest Winners 2009
Van Johnson Tribute at the Aero
LEADING COUPLES: Q&A with Author Frank Miller
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7 Responses to “Jennifer Jones”
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Jennifer Jones was a lovely actress.
Happy birthday!
Jennifer Jones was so good in the Song of Bernadette. I have been to Lourdes. The place looks better in the movie than in the reality.
Love Letters straight from your heart…
That song is never sung in the movie. Not that I can remember. And I’ve seen “Love Letters” about ten times.
“The Song of Bernadette” is a wonderful, wonderful film. Everything in it is spiritual. It’s not the kind of film you would have expected to be made in Hollywood, but it was.
Enjoyed film with Ms. Jones working with Lawrence Oliviet–all players were excellent of course but Jennifer seemed so wholesome,lovable and ABLE. TCM should show more of her films. Appreciatively, Dr Briant
Thank you for this wonderful and informative article…makes me want to watch all of her films again!
Glad you liked it…
And I hope you do (watch Jennifer Jones’ films all over again).