Jennifer Jones

(Note: Another article about the Walker marriage break-up. One error - the author says that Jennifer appeared in two westerns in 1939, when she actually made one - New Frontier.)

Jennifer is always two jumps ahead of the press agents...They bill her as a virgin - she turns up married, with two children. They build up her marriage to Hollywood's new dream man - she separates from him...And the only time she doesn't let them down is in her acting

With accumulating confusion I have followed the career of Jennifer Jones from the time the commentators on the Hollywood scene gushed that a shy, virginal, unknown, and inexperienced child, practically the counterpart of Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes, would be starred in Franz Werfel’s moving story, The Song of Bernadette. It was too good a coincidence to be true, and it wasn't’t. Month after month I have seen the press agents retreat from that position, surrendering fact after fact, until today it turns out that Jennifer Jones, while a mighty nice girl, is no more a Bernadette in real life than Helen Hayes was Queen Victoria.

One of the facts about Jennifer which is not debatable is that she gave a magnificent performance in her first big picture, The Song of Bernadette. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences judged it the best work by a motion picture actress in 1943, thus rating her above such experienced actresses as Ingrid Bergman in For Whom The Bell Tolls and Greer Garson in Mme. Curie.

Some folks in Hollywood sniffed at Jennifer’s victory in the Academy poll and called her “a one-picture accident” so she up and showed ‘em. Her newest picture is Since You Went Away, and in it she’s mighty good.

Jennifer is unhappily married to Robert Walker, the new Clark Gable, who was a riot in Bataan, who wowed 'em in See Here, Private Hargrove, who is going to be terrific in Thirty Seconds over Tokyo. A million girls in the United States would give a right arm if they could me married to Robert Walker. Which would all right with Jennifer, for she doesn't want him any more.

As you read this, Jennifer may be in Reno getting the divorce that she says is the only solution for her peace of mind. Or - she works so fast, so impulsively - she may be already divorced, even married to somebody else. Or (but this appears to be a bad bet) she may have patched things up with Robert.

Usually, in Hollywood, when an actress says she's going to get a divorce, the announcement causes less commotion among her friends and employers than if she decides to eat a large hunk of strawberry pie with whipped cream on top and risk adding a couple of pounds to her beautiful torso. But the family troubles of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Walker gave Hollywood its worst emotional shake-up since Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, then King and Queen of the Movies, decided to part.

Jennifer and Robert were the Prince and Princess, the two most promising youngsters in pictures, who rose together from hard times to fame. It was the Great Romance. They'd been married five years and were the fan magazines writer's dream.

When Jennifer quietly confessed that they had separated, Hollywood cried out in horrified protest. Twenty per cent of the groans was because Hollywood was disillusioned and heartbroken; 80 per cent was because the separation would be terrible publicity and probably would cause the producers of The Song of Bernadette to lose a lot of money. The announcement came shortly before the release of the picture.

Jennifer, as Bernadette, had been built up as a sweet, innocent child. The fact that she was married to Robert Walker couldn't be hidden from the press for long, but it was months before the reporters discovered that the Prince and Princess had two children, who, at the producer's orders, were concealed as carefully as though they were shameful and illegal, like black-market profits. Jennifer had been forbidden to go to night clubs, for fear that some item or photograph might be published that would indicate that she enjoyed the fleshpots. She was not allowed to wear nail polish, to have her eyebrows plucked, or to be photographed in bathing suits, shorts, or low-cut evening gowns.

Therefore, naturally, Hollywood experts on public opinion were terrified. They predicted that when folks, particularly the church people, learned that this character who played Bernadette was mostly synthetic and had separated from her husband and probably would divorce him, they'd boycott the picture and the producer would lose a million dollars.

Some of the most important men in motion pictures became self-appointed John J. Anthonys, joined the crowd that was meddling in Jennifer's business, and argued with Jennifer and Robert, in their separate domiciles, trying to get them under one roof again.

"At least darling," they begged, "don't fight with your husband until the picture is through playing the neighborhood theaters."

They were considerably handicapped in their efforts at reconciliation because they had no idea what had caused the separation.

"Tell us, honey," they crooned craftily, "exactly what is the trouble, anyway? What don't you like about Bob?"

Being a girl from Tulsa, Okla., who didn't consider that her contract put her private life under the control of her employer, and who had been taught that it was bad manners to discuss such things, Jennifer wouldn't talk. Nor would Robert offer any clue.

Nobody knows to this day whether Robert continually used Jennifer's tooth paste and didn't put the cap back on, whether he ate hamburgers-with-onion in bed, didn't like the way she crossed her knees in public, threatened to knock her beautiful block off because she didn't sew buttons on his shirts, or whether there's a domestic triangle hidden somewhere.

The woman editor of a magazine, who had ready for the presses in elaborate article about the ideal home life of the Prince and Princess, flew out from New York and desperately added her pleas to the boiling pot. "Look at all the good publicity you'll lose," she cried, waving the proofs.

But Jennifer, to Hollywood's amazement, couldn't understand why she should resume living with a man she didn't like any more, just so producers could make more money and so she could get a nice, but untrue, article in a magazine about her home life.

"If I give a good performance as Bernadette," she said firmly, "I don't think my private life will make any difference." And thereafter refused to see any more domestic relations counselors - not even Will H. Hays.

The jittery movie folk sat trembling in their offices, waiting for the devastating tornado of enraged public opinion to strike Jennifer and the picture dead. Gradually they began to realize that there wasn't even a big wind blowing. The tornado never came.

Jennifer knew more about the mental processes of Americans than did the producers. Her fan mail is still adoring, there have no protests from church people about the impending divorce, and The Song of Bernadette will make plenty of money. Folks don't stay away from great pictures, it seems, just because the star doesn't like her husband.

Jennifer lives in a white house on a hill outside Hollywood with her boys, who are 3 and 4 years old. She is cultured, well-read, tall, with a round, lovely, attractive face and a large smile. She's no glamour girl; she hasn't been touched by the Hollywood lah-de-dah. There must be a hundred thousand Miss Joneses scattered all over the country who are much like her, but probably not many have the grit and the stubborn determination that carried her through a long, bitter fight to achieve her ambition.

She has been fortunate in having as her best friend Ingrid Bergman, who's a sensible girl, too. When troubles come, instead of going to bed and crying herself to sleep, Jennifer goes out and plays three or four hard sets of tennis with Ingrid, and feels much better.

Jennifer was born Phylis Isley (Mr. Selznick changed her name for the movies) in Tulsa, Okla., and spent many years in tent shows. Tent shows tour the small towns in trucks and put on a play, and sometimes an ancient movie, for 10 and 20 cents. Their performers, who play the same towns year after year, give the folks such good plays as Smilin' Thru and The Family Upstairs, and their welcome to Sapulpa, Okla., equals that given to Katharine Cornell in New York.

It's a rugged life. Most of the off-stage hours are spent in shabby hotels. The actors usually are veterans, earning from $25 to $40 a week, and they know every trick of the theater, from the kind of timing that makes an audience weep or laugh to asides to the audience that will silence smart-aleck hecklers. There Jennifer got the boot training that toughened her for the ups and downs that were to come.

In September, 1937, when she was 18, she entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. There she met Robert Walker, a kid from Ogden, Utah, whose Aunt Tenny was paying his tuition. Aunt Tenny is one of New York's most successful department store magnates - Mrs. Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller's.

When she returned to New York for her second year at the Academy, after a hot summer under canvas, she began to write letters that convinced the Isley family that their daughter had lost her mind. She had started the course at the Academy and stopped. She was in love with Robert Walker. They had decided she didn't need any more training and both were tying to get stage jobs.

The Isleys hopped a train for New York and found their child working with Robert in the tiny Cherry Lane Theater, for nothing.

Jennifer confessed to me with a laugh that sounded a bit hollow. "Father took me aside and advised earnestly, 'Don't marry an actor, Phylis. I know actors. They're hard to raise.'"

The Isleys returned home without Jennifer, but a couple of months later Mr. Isley got her a job at $25 a week on a Tulsa Radio Station, and she came home to do a soap opera for 15 weeks - after an exchange of wires, regarding the terms under which she would come home, had provided a job there for Bob, too.

The Isleys liked Bob and consented to the wedding. after Mr. Isley, being a moving-picture man, persuaded them to forget New York and to tackle Hollywood-where-the-big-money-is. It was a church affair, held when the radio contract ended and the kids had saved $200. The bride and groom drove away, in a car that was a wedding present from the bride's father, to spend their honeymoon looking for work in Hollywood.

For six months they knocked on the doors of producers who today would be tickled to death to pay each of them $2,000 a week. Bob got a bit for a couple of days in one picture. Jennifer - the press agents, later, buttoned their lips whenever they thought of this - worked for two weeks at $75 a week in a Dick Tracy serial and three weeks in two Westerns: a picture with The Three Mesquiteers and in New Frontier, starring John Wayne. So The Song of Bernadette wasn't her first appearance on any screen, in spite of what the press agents told you.

"They wanted glamour girls," Jennifer says, "and I'm not one. I decided that if I ever was to get anywhere, it would be because of my acting."

Back they drove to New York, and times were tough for a while. They theater didn't want them. bob broke into radio, but earned little at first. They sold their car and lived in an $18-a-month furnished room. Bob got his morning and evening newspapers out of trash cans. Jennifer modeled for fashions - until the first baby was penciled in on the booking sheet. They had refused help from Jennifer's parents, but now Jennifer's mother sent her Henrietta, an old family servant, and Robert, Jr., arrived on April 14, 1940, and Michael came on March 17, 1941.

"Friends in Oklahoma," Jennifer smiles, "who were interested in my career, used to write me, 'What are you in now?' and for two years I'd answer, 'Mostly in the hospital, having babies.'"

In July, 1941, Bob was doing fine on the radio and she was ready to try show business again. She saw Claudia in the theater and, hearing that Mr. Selznick, who was to produce the picture, was in town, went to see him.

You have to hand it to Mr. Selznick as a talent scout. Jennifer was scared and gave bad sample readings. But he saw a spark, took a chance, and signed her up, and Jennifer went home in ecstasy. After years of hard work and bad luck, now she was a movie actress.

"I had pushed my way into pictures," Jennifer says, "and thought I'd have to keep on pushing all my life, but all of a sudden everything seemed to be taken out of my hands."

Mr. Selznick hadn't signed her for Claudia: he wanted her to play in Keys of the Kingdom, which he was to produce very soon. He sent her to Santa Barbara, Calif., for three weeks' rehearsal and a one-week performance in William Saroyan's Hello Out There, for practice, and she expected to settle down in Hollywood and get going in pictures.

But again came a shock. Before she knew it, she found herself back in New York studying again, on salary and at Mr. Selnzick's expense, with the best dramatic teachers in town. He had decided not to make Keys of the Kingdom.

Bob had made a moving-picture test, but it got him only, "Sorry, we can't use you now." He was working rather steadily in radio and was afraid that was going to be his life's work. They had good times in New York together, the babies were wonderful, but Jennifer began to wonder what this motion-picture contract was all about. Every time Mr. Selznick came to New York she'd ask him if he couldn't give her just a little part in a picture.

"Your time will come," he'd say. "Keep studying."

But, after all, she'd been studying, in one way or another, for about 10 years, and she felt she'd die if she didn't bust out and do something. At last, more than a year after Mr. Selznick had signed her, came marching orders. She was to go to Hollywood to make test for Bernadette, but first (this movie business is wonderful!) she was to go for two weeks to Elizabeth Arden's health and beauty farm in Maine, at Mr. Selznick's expense so she'd be feeling and looking fine.

Now the old genie was on the job. Jennifer had read The Song of Bernadette, had heard about the intensive search for an actress to play it, and wished and wished and wished that she could be chosen. At first she supposed that they would give the part to some Great Big Star. She wasn't that. Then out came the publicity that they were looking for a virginal, untried amateur who, off stage, was just like Bernadette. She didn't qualify there, either. So the news that she had a chance was a complete surprise - the biggest thing that had ever happened to her.

She wasn't the only lucky Walker. In a few weeks. both Jennifer and Bob, who had been swimming upstream for years, suddenly found they had reached their goal. Jennifer got the finest and fattest part of the year. Somebody in New York saw that old test of Bob's and, soon after Jennifer left with the children, shipped him to Hollywood to play in Bataan.

Bob had hit the jack pot. Now they were together in Hollywood and , as far as anybody could tell, the happiest and luckiest kids in the world.

The Song of Bernadette was finished in the summer of 1943 and Mr. Selznick had a great idea - to put the two ever-loving sensations of Hollywood into Since You Went Away to play the young sweethearts. It was to be a "Super-supercolossal special" and Claudette Colbert, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Monty Wooley, and Lionel Barrymore were the others in the cast.

It got under way auspiciously. Jennifer and Bob held hands and cooed, off-stage. Sentimental old actors wept with joy as they observed the rich young love to the Prince and Princess and noted how eager they were to get home to their babies at the end of the day's work.

Then, zowie! With the picture barely started, Jennifer made her famous announcement that Bob didn't live at her house any more.

Jennifer had made The Song of Bernadette for Twentieth-Century Fox, on a deal with Mr. Selznick. What would happen to that picture didn't concern him as much as what would happen to Since You Went Away. Maybe these two stars wouldn't finish the picture, now that they were having a family row, for the script called for a lot of passionate love scenes between Jennifer and Bob that had not yet been shot.

With his heart in his throat, Mr. Selznick sent for Jennifer and asked for particulars.

"Why, Mr. Selznick," Jennifer said, "it won't make any difference in our acting. Bob and I are troupers. Our personal affairs won't make any difference, truly."

And to the vast relief of Mr. Selznick, it was true talk. While the domestic relations counselors every evening were trying to repair the damage for the sake of The Song of Bernadette, Bob and Jennifer - as you will note when you see Since You Went Away - in working hours played every love scene, kissed every kiss with as much fervor as if they had met only week before and had fallen in love at first sight...

So that's the way they make the movies, make the movies, make the movies. That's they way the make the movies, out in Cal-i-forn-ya.

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