Jennifer Jones

David O. Selznick has dipped into his coffers and pulled out $3,500,000. This is what he expects to spend on his newest super colossal, 'Duel In The Sun.' Imagine being able to show $3,500,000! But if you had such valuable talent as Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Shirley Temple, Gregory Peck, Joe Cotton and Jennifer Jones picking cotton for you you'd be able to stack up a lot of that green stuff, too. I don't know how we got into the Old South, certainly not over a mint julep, but since we are there I might as well mention that Old Massa David says that 'Duel In The Sun' will do historically for the Southwest what 'Gone With The Wind' did for the South.

I read Niven Busch's 'Duel In The Sun' in book form and I didn't find much history in it! But a heck of a lot of s-e-x. Of course, it may be that I skipped the history. In a hot Westernized 'Frankie and Johnny' I should bog down with history!

Niven Busch, so I was told, wrote 'Duel In The Sun' and sold it to RKO with an eye to having his wife, Teresa Wright, play the part of the half-breed Indial gal Pearl. Lewt Canles, one of the characters, describes Pearl thusly in Mr. Selznick's script, 'Same old she-cat...with the silky hair...all fire and ice...muscles an' softness.' And to Miss Pearl he says, 'Jest when I figger I'm gettin' along fine, I start thinkin' about you. And nothin' else is any good. It's got to be you an' right now...if it's thirty miles or a hundred.' History, my eye.

Anyway, Teresa Wright decided to have a baby. So then RKO remembering Tondeleyo I suppose, I don't see any other connection, said 'Hedy Lamarr.' Well, Hedy decided to have a baby. Then Mr. Selznick stepped in, got Pearl for Jennifer Jones. Jennifer isn't going to have a baby. She's probably going to have another Academy Award. Everything's going to be just fine.

Mr. Selznick does things up right handsome, as you well know, and whereas any other studio would be content with one star Mr. S. has to have a whole batch of them. Already Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Joe Cotton, Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish are acting away over on stage four, and with two months of production to go who knows but what Garbo, Gable and Lassie may join the cast! To get that actual feel of the West (the action takes place in the frontier Texas of the 1880s) the company went on location for three weeks some forty-five miles out of Tucson, Arizona. It snowed, real snow, not Hollywood cornflakes, and Texas said it served 'em right for not coming to Texas for the actual feel. But if Georgia didn't mind the Battle of Atlanta being fought on Selznick's back lot, I don't see why Texas should get sore. Anyway, the company came back to Hollywood and built a desert over on one of the stages that would fool a coyote.

When I arrived on the set I almost fainted from shock. I heard Father Chisholm's beautiful voice say, 'If you ain't a bob-tailed tree-cat...vexin' and pokin' up a fella when we were havin' fun!' And to whom do you think he was saying those rude words? To Bernadette, of all people! Well, it really gave me quite a start there for a moment. And then I realized that Selznick stars never get typed. A saint in one picture, and a sinner in the next. Gregory Peck, who was Father Chisholm, the saintliest man in China, is now Lewt McCanles, as bad an hombre as ever killed a man in the Texas Panhandle. Keeps an actor on his toes, it does.

As Pearl Chavez, the hot-blooded half-breed who came to live with the rich McCanleses as a poor relation, Jennifer wore a form-fitting brown dress and a beautiful cafe au lait makeup. For the first time on the screen she is aiding and abetting her own thick eyelashes with some false ones, on account of Pearl had slumbrous, drooping eyelids that brought out the devil in men. For Earl Wilson's information that's the only thing false she's wearing. At least, I think so. She was barefooted, and unlike most movie stars didn't look self-conscious with her shoes off. 'Her feet are very flexible,' some one from the publicity department told me. 'She has to be barefooted through most of the picture. So for several weeks before the picture started she sat in the bathtub and turned the faucets on and off with her toes. Wonderful excercise for limbering up feet. And look at her hands.' I obligingly looked at Jennifer's hands -- very nice hands, too. 'As a primitive little half-breed her hands have to be very flexible, too. For weeks she practiced opening doorknobs backwards.'

Over cold cuts, mine, and scrambled eggs, hers, in the studio commissary I questioned Jennifer about Pearl. She didn't have much time she said because she had to have her hair done. Jennifer takes her acting very seriously. When she's working she keeps all keyed up, rarely takes time off to relax. She hasn't the warm graciousness of an Ingrid Bergman, the gay friendliness of a Betty Hutton, or the intelligent cordiality of a Bette Davis. She is tense. And detached. You have a feeling that she is thinking of the way she played that last scene, which she is.

I asked her how it felt to play a bad girl after the saintly Bernadette and the nice young wife in 'Since You Went Away.' Jennifer sprinkled salt on her eggs, and said, 'Pearl isn't a bad girl really. She's an exciting girl. She didn't do anything wrong. She's just in love with the wrong man. You have great sympathy for her. I like the part better than anything I have ever played. It's so colorful and exciting.'

With tempus fugiting I decided not to get in any arguments over Pearl's morals, and I quickly tossed another dopey question at her. Yes, she said, when she plays a part she tries to think as that character would think. She had to be pure in mind for Bernadette. Naturally, her attitude of mind had to be changed somewhat for Pearl. 'I like to play different kinds of parts,' she added, and when I said she was lucky not to be typed after the superb job she did in Bernadette she hastily assured me that, 'Mr. Selznick gives his people opportunities to do every sort of thing.'

She spent, she said, several months getting in form for Pearl. (Not in form, literally, that she had already.) For four months before the picture started she took a dancing lesson a day in order to limber up. Present indications are that she will do two dances in 'Duel In The Sun.' One of them, I gathered from the publicity department, not from Jennifer, is decidedly unconventional and loaded with sex allure.

She had never ridden a horse before so a month before the picture started she rode every day. Pearl being half-Indian rode bareback with the greatest of ease. 'I still don't ride very well,' Jennifer said. 'Gregory Peck does the wonderful riding in the picture.'

'I had to learn to handle a rifle, too,' Jennifer continued, warming up for the first time. 'I've always been frightened to death of guns or firearms of any kind. Last summer, after burglers had broken into my home one afternoon, I bought a revolver. Sure enough, the next night I heard peculiar sounds downstairs in the butler's pantry, so I reached for the gun. But my hand was shaking so I couldn't even take it out of the holster. I just pulled the covers over my head and hoped it was mice and not burlgers. But after my gun fight with Gregory, which we shot on location, I feel as familiar with a rifle as I do with a cup and saucer.'

Jennifer glanced at the clock, hastily swallowed her last bite, told me a polite goodbye, and fled.

Well, if my interview had been longer, my story would have been longer.