American actress (1919?2009)
Jennifer Jones
(born
Phylis Lee Isley
; March 2, 1919 ? December 17, 2009), also known as
Jennifer Jones Simon
, was an American actress and mental-health advocate. Over the course of her career that spanned more than five decades, she was nominated for the
Oscar
five times, including one win for
Best Actress
, and a
Golden Globe Award
win for
Best Actress in a Drama
.
A native of
Tulsa, Oklahoma
, Jones worked as a model in her youth before transitioning to acting, appearing in two serial films in 1939. Her third role was a lead part as
Bernadette Soubirous
in
The Song of Bernadette
(1943), which earned her the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Actress. She went on to star in several films that garnered her significant critical acclaim and a further three Academy Award nominations in the mid-1940s, including
Since You Went Away
(1944),
Love Letters
(1945) and
Duel in the Sun
(1946).
In 1949, Jones married film producer
David O. Selznick
and appeared as the eponymous
Madame Bovary
in
Vincente Minnelli
's
1949 adaptation
. She appeared in several films throughout the 1950s, including
Ruby Gentry
(1952),
John Huston
's adventure comedy
Beat the Devil
(1953) and
Vittorio De Sica
's drama
Terminal Station
(1953). Jones earned her fifth Academy Award nomination for her performance as a Eurasian doctor in
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
(1955).
After Selznick's death in 1965, Jones married industrialist
Norton Simon
and entered semiretirement. She made her final film appearance in
The Towering Inferno
(1974).
Jones suffered from mental-health problems during her life. After her daughter took her own life in 1976, Jones became deeply involved in mental health education. In 1980, she founded the Jennifer Jones Simon Foundation for Mental Health and Education. Jones enjoyed a quiet retirement, living the last six years of her life in Malibu, California, where she died of natural causes in 2009 at the age of 90.
Biography
[
edit
]
1919?1939: Early life
[
edit
]
Jones was born
in
Tulsa, Oklahoma
, the daughter of Flora Mae (nee Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley.
Her father was originally from
Georgia
, and her mother was a native of
Sacramento, California
.
She was an only child, and she was raised Catholic. Her parents, both aspiring stage actors, toured the Midwest in a traveling
tent show
that they owned and operated. Jones accompanied them, performing on occasion as part of the Isley Stock Company.
In 1925, Jones enrolled at Edgemere Public School in
Oklahoma City
, then attended
Monte Cassino
, a Catholic girls school and junior college in Tulsa.
After graduating, she enrolled as a drama major at
Northwestern University
in Illinois, where she was a member of
Kappa Alpha Theta
sorority before transferring to the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts
in New York City in September 1937.
It was there that she met and fell in love with fellow acting student
Robert Walker
, a native of
Ogden, Utah
.
They married on January 2, 1939.
Jones and Walker returned to Tulsa for a 13-week radio program arranged by her father and then moved to Hollywood. She landed two small roles, first in the 1939
John Wayne
Western
New Frontier
, which she filmed in the summer of 1939 for
Republic Pictures
.
Her second project was the serial titled
Dick Tracy's G-Men
(1939), also for Republic.
In both films, she was credited as Phylis Isley.
After failing a screen test for
Paramount Pictures
, she became disenchanted with Hollywood and returned to New York City.
1940?1948: Career beginnings
[
edit
]
Shortly after Jones married Walker, she gave birth to two sons:
Robert Walker Jr.
(1940?2019), and Michael Walker (1941?2007). While Walker found steady work in radio programs, Jones worked part-time modeling hats for the
Powers Agency
, and posing for
Harper's Bazaar
while looking for acting jobs.
When she learned of auditions for the lead role in
Rose Franken
's hit play
Claudia
in the summer of 1941, she presented herself to
David O. Selznick
's New York office but fled in tears after what she thought was a bad reading.
However, Selznick had overheard her audition and was impressed enough to have his secretary call her back. Following an interview, she was signed to a seven-year contract.
She was carefully groomed for stardom and given a new name: Jennifer Jones. Director
Henry King
was impressed by her screen test as Bernadette Soubirous for
The Song of Bernadette
(1943), and she won the coveted role over hundreds of applicants.
In
1944
, on her 25th birthday, she won the
Academy Award for Best Actress
for her performance as Bernadette, her third screen role.
Simultaneous to her rise to prominence for
The Song of Bernadette
, Jones began an affair with producer
Selznick
. She separated from Walker in November 1943, co-starred with him in
Since You Went Away
(1944), and formally divorced him in June 1945.
[16]
For her performance in
Since You Went Away
, she was nominated for her second Academy Award, this time for Best Supporting Actress.
She earned a third successive Academy Award nomination for her performance with
Joseph Cotten
in
Love Letters
(1945).
Jones's saintly image from her first starring role was starkly contrasted three years later when she was cast as a biracial woman in
Selznick
's controversial
Duel in the Sun
(1946), in which she portrayed a mixed-race indigenous (
mestiza
) orphan in Texas who falls in love with a white man (
Gregory Peck
).
Also in 1946, she starred as the title character in
Ernst Lubitsch
's romantic comedy
Cluny Brown
as a working-class English woman who falls in love just before World War II.
She next appeared in the fantasy film
Portrait of Jennie
(1948), again costarring with Cotten. The film was based on the
novella of the same name
by
Robert Nathan
.
However, it was a commercial failure, grossing only $1.5 million against a $4 million budget.
1949?1964: Marriage to Selznick
[
edit
]
Jones married
Selznick
at sea on July 13, 1949, en route to Europe after a five-year relationship.
Over the following two decades, she appeared in numerous films that he produced, and they established a working relationship.
In 1949, Jones starred opposite
John Garfield
in
John Huston
's adventure film
We Were Strangers
.
Bosley Crowther
of
The New York Times
felt that Jones's performance was lacking, noting: "There is neither understanding nor passion in the stiff, frigid creature she achieves."
[27]
She was subsequently cast as the title character of
Vincente Minnelli
's
Madame Bovary
(1949), a role originally intended for
Lana Turner
that Turner declined.
Variety
deemed the film "interesting to watch, but hard to feel," although it noted that "Jones answers to every demand of direction and script."
[29]
In 1950, Jones starred in the
Powell and Pressburger
-directed fantasy
Gone to Earth
as a superstitious gypsy woman in the English countryside.
Jones next starred in
William Wyler
's drama
Carrie
(1952) with
Laurence Olivier
.
Crowther criticized her performance, writing: "Mr. Olivier gives the film its closest contact with the book, while Miss Jones' soft, seraphic portrait of Carrie takes it furthest away."
[32]
Also in 1952, she costarred with
Charlton Heston
in
Ruby Gentry
, playing a
femme fatale
in rural North Carolina who becomes embroiled in a murder conspiracy after marrying a local man.
The role was previously offered to
Joan Fontaine
, who felt that she was "unsuited to play backwoods."
In its review,
Variety
deemed the film a "sordid drama [with] neither Jennifer Jones nor Charlton Heston gaining any sympathy in their characters."
[35]
In 1953, Jones was cast opposite
Montgomery Clift
in Italian director
Vittorio De Sica
's
Terminal Station
(
Stazione termini
), a drama set in Rome about a romance between an American woman and an Italian man.
The film, produced by Selznick, had a troubled production history, and
Selznick
and De Sica clashed over the screenplay and tone of the film.
Clift sided with De Sica and reportedly called Selznick "an interfering fuck-face" on set.
Aside from the tensions between cast and crew, Jones was mourning the recent death of her first husband Robert Walker, and also missed her two sons, who were staying in Switzerland during production.
Terminal Station
was screened at the
1953 Cannes Film Festival
and was released in a heavily truncated form in the United States with the title
Indiscretion of an American Wife
.
Also in 1953, Jones teamed again with director John Huston to star in his film
Beat the Devil
(1953), an adventure comedy costarring
Humphrey Bogart
.
The film was a box-office flop and was critically panned upon release, and Bogart distanced himself from it.
However, it was reevaluated in later years by critics such as
Roger Ebert
, who included it in his list of "Great Movies" and cited it as the first "
camp
" film.
[43]
In August 1954, Jones gave birth to her third child, daughter Mary Jennifer Selznick.
[44]
Jones was cast as Chinese-born doctor
Han Suyin
in the drama
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
(1955), a role that brought her fifth Academy Award nomination.
Crowther lauded her performance as "... lovely and intense. Her dark beauty reflects sunshine and sadness."
[46]
Next, she starred as a schoolteacher in
Good Morning, Miss Dove
(1955),
followed by a lead role in
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
, a drama about a World War II veteran.
In 1957, she starred as the poet
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
in the historical drama
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
, based on the 1930
play
by
Rudolf Besier
.
She next played the lead role in the
Ernest Hemingway
adaptation
A Farewell to Arms
(1957).
The film received mixed reviews,
with
Variety
noting that "the relationship between Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones never takes on real dimensions."
[52]
Jones's next project came five years later with the
F. Scott Fitzgerald
adaptation
Tender Is the Night
(1962).
1965?2009: Later life and activities
[
edit
]
Selznick
died at age 63 on June 22, 1965, and after his death, Jones semiretired from acting. Her first role in four years was a lead part in the British drama
The Idol
(1966) as the mother of an adult son in
Swinging Sixties
London who has an affair with his best friend.
In 1966, Jones made a rare theatrical appearance in the revival of Clifford Odets'
The Country Girl
, costarring
Rip Torn
, at New York's City Center. On November 9, 1967, the same day on which her close friend
Charles Bickford
died of a blood infection, Jones attempted suicide. Informing her physician of her intention to jump from a cliff overlooking Malibu Beach, she swallowed barbiturates before walking to the base of the cliff, where she was found unconscious amidst the rocky surf.
According to biographer Paul Green, it was news of Bickford's death that triggered Jones's suicide attempt.
She was hospitalized in a coma from the incident.
[56]
[57]
She returned to film with
Angel, Angel, Down We Go
in 1969, about a teenage girl who uses her association with a
rock
band to manipulate her family.
On May 29, 1971, Jones married her third husband
Norton Simon
, a multimillionaire industrialist, art collector and philanthropist from Portland, Oregon.
The wedding took place aboard a tugboat five miles off the English coast and was conducted by
Unitarian
"minister" Eirion Phillips.
Years before, Simon had attempted to buy the portrait of Jones that was used in the film
Portrait of Jennie
. Simon later met Jones at a party hosted by fellow industrialist and art collector
Walter Annenberg
.
[59]
Jones' last film appearance came in the disaster film
The Towering Inferno
(1974).
Her performance as a doomed guest in the building earned her a
Golden Globe
nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
[61]
Early scenes in the film showed paintings lent to the production by the art gallery of Jones' husband Simon.
On May 11, 1976, Jones' 21-year-old daughter Mary, a student at
Occidental College
, committed suicide by jumping from the roof of a 22-floor apartment hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
[63]
This led to Jones' interest in mental health issues. In 1979, with husband Simon (whose son Robert died by suicide in 1969
), she founded the Jennifer Jones Simon Foundation for Mental Health and Education, which she ran until 2003.
One of Jones's primary goals with the foundation was to destigmatize mental illness.
[66]
In 1980, Jones said: "I cringe when I admit I've been suicidal, had mental problems, but why should I? I hope we can reeducate the world to see there's no more need for stigma in mental illness than there is for cancer." She also divulged that she had been a psychotherapy patient since age 24.
[66]
Jones spent the remainder of her life outside of the public eye. Four years before the death of her husband Simon in June 1993, he resigned as president of
Norton Simon Museum
in
Pasadena, California
, and Jones was appointed chairman of the board of trustees, president and executive officer. In 1996, she began working with architect
Frank Gehry
and landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power to renovate the museum and gardens. She remained active as the director of the museum until 2003, when she was awarded emerita status.
[
citation needed
]
Personal life
[
edit
]
Jones was a registered
Republican
who supported
Dwight Eisenhower
's campaign in the
1952 presidential election
.
[67]
Jones suffered from shyness for much of her life and avoided discussing her past and personal life with journalists. She was also averse to discussing critical analysis of her work.
Public discussion of her working relationship with Selznick often overshadowed her career. Biographer Paul Green contends that, while Selznick helped facilitate her career and sought roles for her, "Jones excelled because she not only possessed outstanding beauty but she also possessed genuine talent."
Death
[
edit
]
Jones enjoyed a quiet retirement, living with her eldest child, son
Robert Walker Jr.
, and his family in Malibu for the last six years of her life. Jones's younger son, actor Michael Ross Walker, died from cardiac arrest on December 23, 2007, at age 66, while Robert Jr. died on December 5, 2019, at age 79.
[68]
Jones participated in Gregory Peck's
AFI Life Achievement Award
ceremony in 1989 and appeared at the 70th (1998) and 75th (2003) Academy Awards as part of the shows' tributes to past Oscar winners. In the last six years of her life, she granted no interviews and rarely appeared in public. She died of natural causes on December 17, 2009, at age 90.
[69]
She was cremated and her ashes were interred with her second husband in the Selznick private room at the
Forest Lawn Memorial Park
in Glendale, California.
Minor planet
6249 Jennifer
is named in her honor.
[70]
Filmography
[
edit
]
Awards and nominations
[
edit
]
Academy Awards
Golden Globe Awards
See also
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Watters, Sam (October 2, 2010).
"Lost L.A.: Time for tea ? and spin control: When Jennifer Jones' affair with David Selznick sank their marriages, the actress played tea party for a magazine spread"
.
Los Angeles Times
. Retrieved
March 28,
2014
.
- ^
Crowther, Bosley
(April 28, 1949).
"
'We Were Strangers,' Starring Jennifer Jones and Garfield, Is New Feature at Astor"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
"Madame Bovary"
.
Variety
. December 31, 1948.
Archived
from the original on November 22, 2018
. Retrieved
November 22,
2018
.
- ^
Crowther, Bosley
(July 17, 1952).
"THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; ' Carrie,' With Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones, Is New Feature at the Capitol"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
Variety
Staff (December 31, 1951).
"Ruby Gentry"
.
Variety
.
Archived
from the original on November 22, 2018
. Retrieved
November 22,
2018
.
- ^
Ebert, Roger
(November 26, 2000).
"Beat the Devil"
.
Chicago Sun-Times
.
Archived
from the original on April 28, 2013
. Retrieved
November 22,
2018
.
- ^
Morton, Hortense.
"Additional Re-release Planned by Selznick"
.
The San Francisco Examiner
. San Francisco, California. p. 82 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^
Crowther, Bosley
(August 19, 1955).
"Love' Is a Few Splendors Shy; Patrick's Adaptation of Suyin Novel Opens"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
Variety
Staff (December 31, 1956).
"A Farewell to Arms"
.
Variety
.
Archived
from the original on November 22, 2018
. Retrieved
November 22,
2018
.
- ^
Luther, Claudia (December 18, 2009).
"Jennifer Jones dies at 90; Oscar-winning actress"
.
Los Angeles Times
.
Archived
from the original on September 6, 2012
. Retrieved
December 17,
2009
.
- ^
Coppersmith, Scott (December 17, 2009).
"Oscar-Winning Actress Jennifer Jones Dies at 90"
.
KCOP-TV
. Los Angeles. Archived from
the original
on March 7, 2012.
- ^
Maltin, Leonard
.
"Biography for Jennifer Jones"
.
Turner Classic Movies
. Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide
. Retrieved
November 22,
2018
.
- ^
"
The Towering Inferno
"
.
Golden Globe Awards
. Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Archived
from the original on November 22, 2018
. Retrieved
November 22,
2018
.
- ^
Kirk, Christina (June 6, 1976).
"Tragic curse haunts film star Jennifer Jones"
.
San Antonio Express
. San Antonio, Texas – via Newspapers.com.
- ^
a
b
Battelle, Phyllis (June 26, 1980).
"Team For Mental Health"
.
Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
. Lancaster, Ohio. p. 4 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^
Motion Picture and Television Magazine
, November 1952, page 34, Ideal Publishers
- ^
Mike Barnes (December 6, 2019).
"Robert Walker Jr., 'Star Trek' Actor and Son of Hollywood Superstars, Dies at 79"
.
The Hollywood Reporter
.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2019
. Retrieved
December 5,
2023
.
- ^
Harmetz, Aljean (December 17, 2009).
"Jennifer Jones, Postwar Actress, Dies at 90"
.
The New York Times
. Archived from
the original
on October 19, 2018.
- ^
(6249) Jennifer In: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
. Springer. 2003.
doi
:
10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_5751
.
ISBN
978-3-540-29925-7
.
- ^
"New Frontier"
.
AFI Catalog of Feature Films
. American Film Institute
. Retrieved
2017-11-13
.
Sources
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Further reading
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]
External links
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1943?1975
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1976?2000
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2001?present
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