Jennifer Jones

(Note: This is a very perceptive article with some interesting quotes from Jennifer. You will see that she was interested in Indian mysticism very early in her life. It is also amusing to read her reaction to the Black Dahlia murder!)

This year, for the first time, big-time gamblers east and west made book on the Oscar Derby. Olivia de Havilland moved into top place when prices were first quoted in Hollywood. She was 3 to 1. Then David O. Selznick put on his arc-lighted, illuminated-balloon press preview of 'Duel in the Sun' at the Egyptian Theater and, lo and behold, the next odds sheet showed that a new and sharp young filly named Jennifer Jones had moved up into first position at the prohibitive price of 6 to 5.

A couple of nights later Selznick dropped over to my table at the Chantecleer restaurant on the Strip where he and Jennifer had been dining with Anita Colby, Skitch Henderson, and the Louis Jourdans.

'That hot copy of yours is getting hotter by the minute,' I said to him. 'I mean Jennifer. Not only does she sizzle the screen in your picture but she is a feedbox tip to take down her second award. I want to interview her.'

The minute Jennifer walked into the private dining room at the Selznick studio for afternoon tea and talk, I got the same kind of hunch that must have stirred up the odds-layers. Around the Selznick stable they call her Jonesy.

But she might have been mistaken for a young society debutante just turned loose on Park Avenue from Miss Spencer's school and a postgraduate training at Mme. Balsan's in Paris. Her costume was one of simple elegance, that "Mainbocher look" that comes from running around with Anita Colby. I had to do a double take before I could realize that this was the bedraggled girl whom I had seen playing the half breed siren, Pearl Chavez, in 'Duel'.

'You look so different,' I said. 'I mean from the last time I saw you.'

'Let's see, just when was that?' Jennifer inquired.

'Why, you were shooting it out with Gregory Peck, remember, up there among those Arizona rocks.'

'Well, I've been on a buying spree in New York,' she confided. 'I went back there as soon as we finished the picture to get the desert out of my system. It was weeks before I got my nails to look like anything human. The desert is a fierce place.'

My interview with Jennifer really turned out to be an experience. In the middle of our talk the phone rang and it was the captain from the Los Angeles homicide squad. I had rushed out to Selznick's from working all night and all day on our recent murder horror, the torture killing of pretty Elizabeth Short, the girl they called the "Black Dahlia." I heard the new developments in the case, hurriedly phoned them to New York, and returned to Jennifer, who sat fascinated.

'Think of such a fiend running loose,' she cried in horror.

'You certainly did a thoroughly realistic job on Pearl Chavez,' I reminded her. 'Tell me just how you did it.'

For the first time in her career, Jennifer then led me behind the scenes, so to speak, so that I could view at first hand the mental workings of the star who is hailed as one of the great all-time talents developed in Hollywood.

'I sort of hypnotize myself,' she explained. 'I find myself really living the roles I play. I've read about the East Indian fakirs and mystics who are able to throw themselves into a trance, and I think that my own mental state is something like a trance when I'm acting. If anything else, any outside thought or impulse, disturbs the spell by intruding into my consciousness, I have to break off and start all over again.'

I was reminded of something King Vidor told me of his experience with Jennifer while directing her in 'Duel in the Sun.'

'Every morning, while making 'Duel,' we would start the day by talking about the story and the characters and the action coming up. She would fix those luminous, intelligent eyes on my face. I could actually see her gradually becoming Pearl Chavez. Jennifer Jones would disappear as completely as if she had never existed.'

'Trying to maintain it through the lunch hour was too much. Conversation with me and others always snapped the string. And when we went back to work we'd have to do it all over again.'

I don't believe Robert Walker, to whom Jennifer was married, whom she loved wildly as a young girl, and who fathered her two sons, ever had a full awareness of her. Sometimes I wonder if her father, Phil Iseley, the bluff, hearty, outspoken Thespian who became a rich owner of film theaters, does not sometimes look at this amazing child of his in wonder.

Dave Selznick is the only man who understands Jennifer with an unerring instinct, I believe, because he himself, like her, has lived his life under the whiplash of a driving urge. This is a man whom I have known somewhat closely for nearly twenty years. I have watched him in his fevers of creation. He is not a man who is gaited to carry out the will of others but only to obey heedlessly the imperious urge within himself. Fully aware that he is a creator, he moves on to his destiny unsparing of himself or others, with the appearance of arrogance. But those who work with him know that it is a privilege.

David created the Jennifer Jones of today. He breathed life into her, fanned the flame of talent with which she was born into a mighty blaze, as surely as the sculptor Pygmalion breathed life into his creation, Galatea.

Shall we say that David Selznick loves Jennifer Jones? I do not know. But I do know that his feeling for her as an artist verges upon worship. So powerful is the personality of Selznick that he appears to take possession of the lives of his stars.

But Jennifer has an integrity of her own that instinctively resists the obliterating of her ego; for this ego is her own self that lies at the core of her being and endows it with vibrant vitality.

Very soon after those religious protests about 'Duel in the Sun' cam out, many Hollywood columnists, myself included, began to receive anonymous letters and telegrams viciously attacking Jennifer. A well known Hollywood figure was credited with uttering a devastating wisecrack about 'Duel'. Selznick was concerned, traced down the rumor, found it false. Soon a general impression got around that the press agent of a rival actress, also being considered for the Award, was responsible for the anti-Jennifer campaign.

'How did you feel that night in 1944 when they called you up and handed you the Oscar?' I asked her.

'I'll tell you truthfully,' she replied, 'I think I was just numb. It all happened to me so fast I couldn't digest it mentally. I'd been trying so long and with such poor luck to get started on a career, and then all of a sudden -- wham! I had success in my hands. I guess I felt like a starving person sitting down unexpectedly to a sumptuous banquet with no warning. The hungry person would gobble up the food but with no leisure or ability to savor it. That was me when I walked on that stage and accepted the little statue. It was weeks before the full significance of what had happened dawned upon me.'

'If I ever am able to win another Oscar, I'll be better prepared. I'll enjoy the anticipation. I'll come up to it slowly. Perhaps I'll even be able to make a speech.'

Hollywood buzzes from time to time with the story that Robert Walker never will marry again because he's still carrying the torch for Jennifer. I am not one to say that this could not be the case. Robert is a strange, moody boy. It's plain something disturbs him from time to time, otherwise how can one explain his apparent endeavors to escape from reality by disappearing to parts unknown? Perhaps Bob is trying to find himself.

Jennifer refuses pointblank to discuss the boy whom she married and divorced, although her conversation betrays that she retains a very keen and high respect for him both as man and as artist. I'm afraid I worked an old interviewer's trick on her to see if I couldn't get her off guard. I said something not quite complimentary about Bob. Instantly, she flew to his defense with fire in her eyes and wrath in her voice. 'Not one of those things has a grain of truth in it,' she asserted vehemently. 'Bob is a very honorable person and he has high ideals.'

The sons of Jennifer and Bob are Michael, now seven, and Bobby, six. They live with their mother, but Bob visits them often. There's a great mutual admiration society between Bob and his boys. They love him and think he's a great guy. 'And both of them look like him,' Jennifer added.

The future of Jennifer Jones can be summed up in a word, I think, and the word is -- career. Just as David Selznick has an irresistible urge to create and develop great stars and screen dramas, she is irresistibly driven by an inner necessity to go on and on scaling the heights as an actress. Wonderful achievements will yet stem from the fire and flint of Jones and Selznick. I said long ago, and in print, that the marks of true greatness in her chosen profession are unquestionably on her. The screen never has had a Bernhardt. Perhaps one is in the making now. If that glory does lie in Jennifer's
destiny, be assured of one thing -- Selznick will not be far away.

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