Jennifer Jones(Current Biography, 1944)
The best performance by a motion-picture actress in 1943, by vote of 10,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was given to a young mother playing her first important film role. Jennifer Jones, a tent-show girl from Oklahoma, won the Academy Award in competition with such experienced stars as Jean Arthur, Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine, and Ingrid Bergman.
The young actress who so successfully played the little saint in The Song of Bernadette (1943) started life as Phylis Isley in Tulsa, Oklahoma, March 2, 1919. Her parents, Phil R. and Flora Mae (Suber) Isley, were the owners, managers, and stars of the Isley Stock Company, a tent show which toured the rural districts of the Middle West. For ten cents admission - reserved seats twenty cents - the Isleys presented such tear-jerking dramas as The Old Homestead. Shows like theirs gave rise to the expression "Tomorrow night, East Lynne!" In their case it was not a joke, but an announcement of their next performance. However strenuous tent-show life may have been, the Isleys were financially comfortable. Their daughter was sent to the Edgemere Public School in Oklahoma City, where she was of course the leading actress in all class plays; summers were spent trouping with the show, in which her acting career began when she reached ten. The future star also sold candy, took tickets, and made herself generally useful.
After her graduation from elementary school the young actress was enrolled at Monte Cassino Junior College, a Benedictine Sisters school in Tulsa. There she continued to take the dramatic honors in student productions and to spend her summers touring in stock. In addition Miss Isley - not yet Miss Jones - appeared on Tulsa radio programs during the school year. Nevertheless, she felt that she was losing time from her career as an actress. (Tent show performers are not considered actors by the "legitimate" professionals.) According to several interviewers she wrote to Katharine Cornell, her current idol, for advice on the burning question: Should a young beginner get started as soon as possible in a good New York dramatic school, or should she go to college? To everyone's surprise, Miss Cornell answered promptly, advising "a cultural background."
After a summer in stock with the Mansfield Players, Phylis Isley entered Northwestern University, majoring in dramatics. She continued to take leads in summer stock; her favorite role was Moonyean in Smilin' Through. Phil Isley was reluctant to have his daughter study for the stage; if the girl wanted to act, he felt, why didn't she go to Hollywood and make money at it? He'd give her a letter of introduction - for the elder Isleys were by then motion-picture exhibitors with a chain of theatres in Texas. But the future Jennifer Jones finally persuaded her parents to send her to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York after one year at the University. This was at the beginning of 1938.
Among Miss Isley's classmates were Diana Barrymore and Robert Walker - the latter a lanky youth from Salt Lake City who had been the best actor at the San Diego Army and Navy Academy. He and Phylis became friends. When the two were cast as Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett in the Academy version of The Barretts of Wimpole Street "they played love scenes together from 2 to 4 p.m. and soon discovered they weren't play-acting." As Walker had no money, "they did their courting on Fifth Avenue busses, on the Staten Island ferry (a half hour ride for a nickel), and on long walks." Another summer of stock, and then Miss Isley went back to the Academy while Walker looked for work so that they could be married. After a few weeks, his young fiancee left school to join him in his search. The best the two could find were parts with Paul Gilmore's Cherry Lane troupe in Greenwich Village - fifty cents apiece per performance. Then came an offer from a Tulsa radio station: Would Miss Isley return to Oklahoma to take the feminine lead in a thirteen-week program, at $25 a week? Miss Isley would and did - and she knew just the man to play opposite her. Thirteen weeks later, on January 2, 1939, the anniversary of their meeting, she and Robert Walker were married.
On the suggestion of a prematurely enthusiastic talent scout the couple took a wedding trip to Hollywood, with great non-success. Young Mrs. Walker managed to get bit parts in two very unimportant Republic productions, New Frontier (1939) and Dick Tracy's G-Men (serial); young Mr. Walker achieved a two-line role in Warner Brothers' Winter Carnival (1939). The final blow was the failure of their test for Paramount, in which Phylis was required to play her husband's mother. After that they sold their sky-blue automobile (a gift from the Isleys) for tickets back to New York.
Things were very difficult for the young couple, especially after the birth of Robert, Jr., in 1940. Phylis Walker sewed and cleaned and cooked - not very well at first - in a cold-water flat near the Elevated. After a while she got work modeling hats through the Powers agency. (A number of her pictures appeared in Harper's Bazaar, which is, for a fashion model, the equivalent of an accolade.) But she soon had to give up modeling. Less than a year after Bobby came Micahel, and that made four Walkers to feed. Fortunately, Robert Walker got a chance to break into radio; and from there he went on to establish himself as an obscure but steady radio actor. By 1941 Walker was playing regularly in Myrt and Marge, and the family "had moved from two dingy roms on the fringe of Hell's Kitchen to six sunlit rooms in Garden City, Long Island."
After seeing Rose Franken's Claudia, Mrs. Walker presented herself at David O. Selznick's New York office to try out for the title role in his screen version. "They let me read the part," she says, "and I was very, very bad." Realizing this, the aspiring Claudia burst into tears. According to Selznick's official story, he happened to come in at that time, was impressed with the histrionic ability displayed, and had his secretary make an appointment with "This Miss Phylis Walker" for the following day. According to the lady herself, she thought the appointment just a device to stop her tears, and was at home shampooing her hair when the phone rang: Mr. Selznick was waiting to see her. Phylis hailed a cab and raced in from Long Island, frantically drying her hair all the way. The trip cost her $10 in cab fare, but it won her a contract.
Selznick, who had already added Dorothy McGuire to his crew of actresses under contract, had no intention of letting the Claudia role go to anyone else; but he saw Phylis Walker as a possibility for Nora in the movie version of The Keys of the Kingdom (which had been published in 1941). Two weeks after this interview the producer signed her to a long-term contract, and soon summoned his new discovery to Santa Barbara, California, to play in William Saroyan's Hello Out There. The play was given as curtain-raiser to a Shaw production; but "to the surprise of everyone except Saroyan, the one-acter grabbed off all the good notices." After this Selznick set Mrs. Walker back to New York to study under Sanford Meisner of the Group Theater.
In February 1942 Selznick introduced Jennifer Jones, nee Phylis Isley, to "a press that warmed up to her right off the bat." As one of its members wrote: "It wasn't just that she was so pretty, nor just the young excitement of an about-to-be-star. It was also that crisp, ups-a-daisy name, Jennifer Jones. When someone asked how she came by it, 'My mother must have been reading an old English novel,' said Jennifer with an entre nous grin. 'But I suppose they'll change it once I get to Hollywood.'" Reporters ferreted out, however, the fact that "Mr. Selznick's earnest aides have spent the last several months thinking up that unbeatable name." The official story now is that Selznick bestowed the name on his discovery because he had always wanted a daughter named Jennifer.
Somehow The Keys of the Kingdom, which was to have been "Selznick's Gone With the Wind of 1942," turned out to be simply gone with the wind. After this introduction to the world Jennifer Jones spent almost a year in New York, learning how to talk, to walk, to act - and waiting for a wire from Hollywood. Finally, in December 1942 Twentieth Century-Fox announced that their search for an unknown to play the difficult and important role of Ste. Bernadette Soubirious in the film version of Franz Werfel's The Song of Bernadette (published in 1942) was at an end. The role was to go to Jennifer Jones. Saroyan, by then in the Army, is said to have written to her: "After you become a big star because of Bernadette, you may want to play the lead again in a Saroyan play. Let me know when that is, and I will write a play for you. If I can find time between drills."
Just ten days after Miss Jones horrified the Selznick publicity organization by arriving with two energetic youngsters, her husband obtained a screen test from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which led to his being cast as Sailor Purckett in Bataan. A pleasant story of lightning struck twice in the Walker family. While Mrs. Walker worked on the exacting role of Bernadette (its 329 pages were called "enough to floor Helen Hayes"), Robert Walker drew critical praise for Bataan (1943) and was given the third lead in Madame Curie (1943), starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. This was followed by the title role in See Here, Private Hargrove (1944). The Walkers combined incomes came to $600 a week.
Inasmuch as Bernadette is a fifteen-year-old saint, the Selznick and Fox publicity offices tried to protect their star from association in the minds of her future audiences with anything so earthly as being a wife and mother. This plan was slightly hampered, as in the case of Ingrid Bergman, by Mrs. Walker's pride in her family. When her husband also made a name for himself the clause in Jennifer Jone's contract forbidding her to be photographed with her husband and children quietly died. The tall young blonde with the engaging grin, his dark, vivid wife, and their two handsome towheads formed too perfect a family group to be hidden from photographers; the couple's unprecedented double rocket-rise was far too newsworthy to be ignored. So the publicity was switched, and the model-couple, ideal family angle was played up for all it was worth. Then it backfired: the Walker household broke up. In spite of pressure from Selznick, Twentieth Century-Fox, and MGM, Jennifer Jones confirmed reports of "a friendly separation" in November 1943. (The day after her receipt of the Academy Award, while studio officials tore their hair and millions of sentimentalists sighed in disappointment, Miss Jones announced her intention of proceeding with a divorce action.) Meanwhile the ingenue, having finished work on The Song of Bernadette, went into Since You Went Away, in which she played the romantic lead opposite Robert Walker.
When Bernadette was released the critics approved Selznick's choice for the role. Variety called Jennifer Jone's portrayal of the title role "an inspirationally sensitive and arresting performance that sets her solid as a screen personality. Wistful naive, and at times angelic, Miss Jones takes command early." Other reviewers agreed that the film's success was due largely to "the simplicity and beauty of Miss Jones in the role. Her large, sad eyes and soft face, her wistful mouth and luminous smile are a thoroughly appealing exterior for the innocence which shines from within. And her manner, both dignified and humble, modest yet self-confident, is a wonderful contrast to the shadings of lay and clerical personalities which confront her on all sides." On Jennifer Jones's twenty-fifth birthday the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented her with the "Oscar" for the best performance of the year. (Altogether, The Song of Bernadette won five Academy awards for excellence.) Even before that, Twentieth Century-Fox, which had bought from Selznick a six-year option on her services in one picture a year, announced that Jennifer Jones would in the future receive star billing.
In the middle of 1944 Miss Jones appeared in the Selznick production Since You Went Away, a story of life on the home front in 1943. In the role of a girl who had felt the impact of the War, she was "surpassingly sweet as a well-bred American daughter in the first bloom of womanhood and love," in the opinion of Bosley Crowther of the New York Times. Selznick chose the role especially for Miss Jones, apprehensive lest her audience come to visualize her as "a sort of Bernadette in real life, an eminently worthy character, but lacking in variety."
Selznick's new star is tall - 5' 7" - and has a long stride, a boyish figure, and a young, non-glamour girl face. She has the brunet complexion that goes with her dark brown eyes and her dark hair which she wears in a mop of curls. The star prefers simple, tailored clothes, mainly suits and slacks, no hats, and low heels - low for Hollywood, at least. An expert swimmer and a good tennis player, she sleeps nine or ten hours each night, drinks a quart of milk a day, and never smokes. "The Jones girl" walks three miles a day, even in the rain, and does faithful calisthenics to stay slim, but she never bothers with a diet. She is devoting much of her spare time to the war effort, launching Red Cross Nurses Aid Drives; participating in bond drives; and visiting with wounded servicemen in hospitals.
