Meet Two Rising Stars(Ladies Home Journal, January 1944)
Even while they posed thus - happy, young (twenty-four), good looking, with two handsome sons and a million dollar future - Hollywood whispered rumors that the Bob Walkers were "going to bust up". They did - calling it an amicable separation which might lead to divorce.
(Note: I believe this is the first public reference to Jennifer and Robert's separation. Since the article was published in January 1944, it appears that knowledge of their marital woes was public before the Academy Awards in March, therefore refuting some other sources. The article offers some interesting details about their marriage and daily lives)
When the news buzzed around Hollywood that Jennifer Jones and Bob Walker had split up, parting in an "amicable separation", the film colony settled back with a contented sigh. Its worst fears had been realized! Didn't it just show that the "insiders" and I-told-you-so's had been right all along?
Jennifer and Bob - luck's newest darlings, unknown six months ago, now sky-high with the two fattest name parts of the year, title roles in "The Song of Bernadette" and "See Here, Private Hargrove", respectively - well, this pair was another one to prove the rule. And the rule in movieland is that it is hard for a successful young couple to keep their marriage on an even level.
Only a short time before, two JOURNAL editors had watched the lanky Bob Walker help his vivid young wife into their Buick convertible, with a B-card marker, then head off down the sun-white California street. A movie company executive looked after the disappearing pair prayerfully."And there," he said more to himself than to the listeners, "goes all of twenty million bucks!"
They didn't look like twenty million - rather like a young commuting couple from Scarsdale or Alexandria with a couple of youngsters, a mortgage about a third paid off and a membership in the more modest local country club. Nevertheless, twenty million is a shade under the valuation which their several employers put on Jennifer Jones and Bob Walker.
Big grin on Jennifer was strictly for the photographer. "Motorcycles scare me skinny," she confessed. This $400 secondhand model is Bob's great pride. Couple used to have fun together; recently have developed varying interests.
It has all happened in such an amazingly short time - most of it in less than a year. This fact, together with the good looks of this twenty-four year old couple, their background and personal attractiveness, makes the story of how they made their rocket trip to success, what has happened to them on the way up, and in consequence, a really significant facet of the picture of U.S. life in this year of 1944.
For instance, there was that party a few weeks ago, a big gathering with both Bob and Jennifer in the crowd. Just what Bob did, just what Jennifer said, wasn't recorded, but gossips columnists and their informers have a variety of versions. Anyhow, next morning it was being asserted in type for 132,000,000 Americans to read that the Walkers would soon be headed to Reno.
Jennifer immediately denied this but "confirmed" that Bob was no longer living with her and the children.
When the average young couple, married a few years, have a slight tiff - as who doesn't? - she sheds a few tears, he grabs his hat, slams a door and twenty-four hours later all is forgiven and forgotten!
But where was Jennifer Jones that morning when Hollywood and Broadway - and several million movie fans in between - were discussing this newest domestic tidbit over their coffee cups? She was on the Selznick lot, playing a love scene before the cameras. Yes, she was playing a love scene with an actor who happened to be named Bob Walker.
They played screen love scenes on lot, then went home to separate dwellings.
And that evening at 6:30, after the day's work, Jennifer was on her way home to the spacious white villa in Bel Air where her two sons - lusty, good natured Bobby, who is three and a half, and Michael, two - were waiting for good night kisses. Bob Walker, on the other hand, went to a hotel.
What caused the smashup? Who was to blame? Neither Jennifer nor Bob would give an answer. But - since this is a true story of Hollywood and not a motion picture - it is important to know that since then Jennifer Jones and Bob Walker have met daily at the studio and continued playing sweethearts before the camera.
Incredible? Heartless? Not at all; that's just the picture business.
The title of the movie Mr. and Mrs. Walker have been making happens to be "Since You Went Away". In this picture Jennifer has the part of Claudette Colbert's daughter and Bob is the shy, very-much-in-love young man who blushes at sight of her. Bob is supposed to be the grandson of a brusque old Army colonel (Monty Wooley) who rents a room in Claudette's home. It is the first time Jennifer and Bob walker have been cast in the same picture.
Of course, untangling their screen roles from their strictly personal and private lives has long been a problem for Hollywood's actors and actresses. And no wonder! For the Walkers, this state of affairs is no more topsy-turvy than the rest of the changes wrought in their daily living, surroundings, work, friends, recreation and financial standing by these few months of zooming screen success.
Devoted father, Bob, in agreeing to "friendly separation" from wife, finds it hard not to see small sons, Bobby and Michael, frequently. Like most fathers, he enjoys lusty romps as much as they do. He was an "able diaper slinger" back in the days when the Walkers lived in a cold water flat on New York's Twelfth Street, near Ninth Avenue, with two babies, a puppy and a parrot. Jen modeled hats, he played parts in radio "soap operas". Hollywood has brought them success - and little else.
A few years ago Mr. and Mrs. Walker lived in a cold-water flat on the verge of New York's Hell's Kitchen, and wondered if they would ever get anywhere on stage, screen or radio. Time and again Mrs. Walker fixed dinner against Bob's weary return from looking for breaks and, after contemplating the results, both headed silently for stew, coffee and rolls at the quick-and-dirty on the corner. Even that was luxury.
Today the pair's combined incomes are close to $600 a week and, if they continue to go over well, will unquestionably go up. The elegant and expensive white villa which is their Hollywood address is along, long way from Hell's Kitchen. The Walkers knew they were in the big money for sure when they signed the lease last spring. The house costs a good $225 a month, and at least another $200 is necessary for servants.
Bob's first break - a radio bit that led to steady work - netted exactly $20. In those days of working hard to wedge out a toe's space on the upward ladder, there is no doubt that Jennifer and Bob were happy, hard working, completely devoted.
Jennifer's name was Phylis, until a few months ago, but Bob usually calls her "honey" or "darling". When the studios rechristened her, he took to calling her "Jen" until it almost seemed natural. Jennifer says, "It surprises me nowadays when someone calls me "Mrs. Walker" or "Phylis". I feel like "Miss Jones".
They were such kids when they met for the first time at the New York Academy for Dramatic Arts. Phylis had just arrived from her native Oklahoma but she was no stranger to theater. Until he recently retired to manage movie theaters, Phil R. Isley was a well known tent showman. In her late teens Phylis had plenty of rugged trouping with tent outfits, doing Toby shows and Smilin' Through up and down the Texas panhandle.
Bob's route to Manhattan was different. This ex-footer whose skinniness (130 pounds now) was for a time a handicap in getting screen parts did most of his growing up in Salt Lake City, where he was born. As a youngster he was sent to San Diego Army and Navy Academy and learned spit and polish thoroughly. There, too, he caught the eye of the dramatic coach, who encouraged and started him stageward. He managed the jump to New York, enrolling in dramatic school, thanks to a sympathetic brother back in Salt Lake City, who supplied $10 a week. Bob made out through the good luck of finding a Yonkers home for indigent and worthy young men willing to do their own scrubbing and bedmaking as part pay for their board.
Home life of the screen stars. Can it be real, or must it always be "Hollywood"? Here Bob was "Cueing" Jen in times for their current movie "Since You Went Away". Walkers, up at 6:30 a.m. to reach studio, returning at 6:30 p.m. for 12 hour day, put in long hours memorizing lines. Fragile looking Jen must get 10 hours sleep to look her best before camera. bob, trying to gain weight, was losing instead on tough grind of all work, no play - partial explanation, perhaps, of breakup.
The girl from Oklahoma and the boy from Utah palled up in looking for professional experience. They played together at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Both were ambitious, hard working, believed in each other.
Some of their classmates at the dramatic academy say Bob seemed "high hat" in those days. Maybe so. Maybe, even then, he had instinctive confidence, that he was going to get to the top and couldn't help showing it. Jen felt it, too, and took and of course her admiration built him up. They used to talk about stardom for her a la Katharine Cornell, with Bob her director a la McClintic.
Phylis went home to Oklahoma in the summer for radio drama work on a local station. Wen she was hired as leading lady of a radio stock company, she wired Bob to come on as leading man ($25 a week for each). They were married January 2, 1939, at a small church wedding in Tulsa, and the Isleys gave them a car as a wedding present.
There is room now for two cars in the Bel Air garage, a Mercury sedan as well as the Buick. Before their separation, both Jennifer and Bob said driving had become a source of friction between them. "Good-humored friction," they called it. He thought Jennifer took corners too fast. She said he came up too fast behind the car ahead. One reason Bob bought his motorcycle ($400 secondhand) was that they disagreed about the cars. Bob said Jennifer was not economical with gas. When he went to the studio on the motorcycle, she drove the Mercury.
Back in New York, Bob Walker got a chance to work in radio serials, making enough to pay rent on a flat on Twelfth Street near Ninth Avenue and the roaring elevated. Later they moved to a summer cottage at Long Beach, Long Island. It was a ramshackle place and, to help stretch finances, the Walkers moved in two months before the season started, thus saving rent.
Michael wails, Bobby protests and nurse deftly settles the "tricycle" problem. "She does all the disciplining," explains Jen, "since Bob is away and I am at the studio working all day six days a week." Luckily, kids have never been ill.
Jennifer, awaiting her first born, forgot about footlights, microphones, cameras - only temporarily, of course. When Bobby came he proved to be a good baby, healthy and easy to care for. His mother got some jobs modeling hats, occasionally worked as a photographer's model through the Powers agency. Of course, Jen did her own housekeeping too - with some help from Bob. She remembers he was "a whiz at changing diapers."
At the Bel Air place there is a gardner who clips shrubbery and trims lawns. There is a starched, efficient nurse to ride herd on Bobby and Michael. To plan meals, as well as cook them, there is a pleasant-faced expert.
Arrival of the second child interrupted Jennifer's modeling and posing for photographers, but both parents thoroughly enjoyed their beautiful sturdy boys. They had fun with them. Bobby and Michael both are the lucky possessors of their mother's outgoing charm and their father's openly terrierish face. The children have nice dispositions too. Besides the two babies, there were a puppy and a parrot to keep things lively.
In Hollywood it's been almost impossible for the Walkers to see much of their children. Up at 6:30, back for a late evening dinner, the fatiguing alternation of give-it-all-you've-got and wait-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop - that is the six days a week schedule of a star who is working, and Bob and Jennifer have both worked almost steadily since arriving in California. Jennifer says she would like to look after the babies herself between pictures, but you have to hang on to a nurse, once you have her, to make sure she'll be on hand when needed. And to keep in trim for star roles, Jennifer is supposed to sleep ten hours a night. She must study and memorize parts, and she is taking dancing and diction lessons. The Walkers did have a pet dog in the Bel Air house, but they had to give it away - with great sorrowing - because the current nurse didn't like it.
The abrupt change in the young Walkers' fortunes came last January when Jennifer was "discovered" by a theatrical agent and signed by Twentieth Century Fox to play the prize role of the year, the title part in "The Song of Bernadette". She set off for Hollywood. In an amazingly short time Bob was West Coast bound, picked from a job lot of screen tests to be the sailor in "Bataan". He has since worked in "Madame Curie" and the Hargrove lead. Meanwhile - and together for the first time before the camera - Mr. and Mrs. Walker began work in "Since You Went Away".
Compared with those days on Twelfth Street when the couple used to wonder if they would ever have more than a spare dime, the money has certainly been rolling in. Neither has to worry about finances now, though they never see their pay checks. Their financial agent, who does all that, is so close a part of their picture that Bobby and Michael named the family goldfish Charley in his honor. Charley - the businessman, not the fish, makes his living out of collecting, disbursing and investing for movie people on 3 percent commission. Checks which the Walkers write themselves must have his countersignature to be valid. He pays the bills, and each month doles out pocket money to each. Balances left over are carefully invested in life insurance and securities, including war bonds.
What with Charley's 3 per cent, the talent agent's 10 per cent, Uncle Sam's 20 per cent withholding tax and heavy supplementary income tax above all that, said savings balances hardly amount to 20 per cent of gross income. Just the same, annual savings of 20 per cent of the young Walker's pay ain't hay where the average American comes from. The kids have come a long way!
It all adds up to one of the swiftest success stories the screen colony has ever seen. For Jennifer and Bob Walker it certainly hasn't been easy; it's been hard, demanding, continuous work.
Perhaps both of them have been working a little too hard. Perhaps easing up a bit, as Jennifer's hopes to do after the shooting of her current film, will smooth out personal problems. Bob will be busy for some time on final scenes of "See Here, Private Hargrove".
The Walkers are big names now in a profession where working hours are spent before cameras, where rumor is a recognized marketable commodity, and a whisper at a private gathering resounds on transcontinental air waves within twenty-four hours. There are plenty of statistics to show the morality of movie stars' marriages.
Nevertheless, there's a chance that the temporary separation these two have agreed on will supply what is needed to clear the air and mend their domestic fences. Maybe a very good chance. For Jennifer and Bob Walker have weathered rough going before. They came up the hard way. A few days from now - January 2, 1944 - will see their fifth wedding anniversary.
