Portrait of a Stage-Struck Lady
by Milton Bracker
(New York Times, December 19, 1954)
At the end of Chapter II of "The Portrait of a Lady," Henry James had a vastly marriageable British peer remark of a young American called Isabel Archer, "You wished a while ago to see my idea of an interesting woman. There it is!"
There is no doubt that Jennifer Jones, per se, fulfills that attribute of the character of Miss Archer. But besides being interesting, Miss Jones is on the verge of opening as Isabel in an adaptation of the novel at the ANTA Theatre in New York City on Tuesday. Because she felt that many other aspects of the role were eluding her, Miss Jones herself urged the extension of the Boston tryout of twelve performances. From Boylston Street the show went south, for fifteen performances in Washington and fourteen here. Constant rewriting, intensive rehearsal and - for Miss Jones - nightly dreams about the play, have continued.
In Baltimore, Miss Jones saw no reason to qualify the primary impression she had afforded during an earlier interview in Boston. In her dressing room that time, her legs tucked up under a red skirt and her hands restless - now above her head, now in her lap or fretting each other and a wooden pencil - she seemed vividly and tensely aware that her Broadway debut posed problems apart from and beyond those she has solved, often with distinction, in Hollywood.
Yet Miss Jones was and is uneasy lest that suggest that the wife of David O. Selznick regarded the legitimate theatre as a more worthwhile medium than the studios in which she did "The Song of Bernadette" et al. From the beginning, the important thing to her, she insisted, was being an actress. She acknowledged having passed through, while a student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, a fairly characteristic phase.
Childhood
"Naturally, I had the American Academy scorn of the movies," she put it, "and in my case it was doubled because my father was an exhibitor and you know how you always want not to do what your parents do." She was born Phylis Isley in Tulsa, Okal., March 2, 1919 and her father, Phil, still runs a chain of movie houses in Texas. "Since I was 8 years old," she went on, "I always wanted to be an actress - in the theatre - and then I sort of got waylaid; it just happened that the first job that was offered to me was in Hollywood - and I didn't have character enough to say I didn't want to do it."
But if fate had worked otherwise, "If someone had given me a walk-on in a legitimate theatre instead, I'd have been right there," she added. In an afterthought, she smiled, "And I might still have been doing walk-on's."
Here, she reiterated the theme that acting in itself is more important to the actor than the medium - or the results. Concentration is just as great in the studio as on the stage, she said; in Hollywood you pick up an emotional scene out of context, "you have to really be with it, or it doesn't come off." As far as the imminent transition in her case, she hedged: "Let's say I'm making a great effort. Getting to Broadway is a great thing - I guess."
The "I guess" hung in the air like a shadow over the glitter of the West Forties. Miss Jones underlined the qualification:
"Truthfully, I feel myself a part of Hollywood to a degree I never expected to feel. And I'm a little bored with Hollywood actors criticizing Hollywood. It's quite a remarkable medium, and I want no mistake made about it. I have no snobbery about it - and maybe it's even the other way around."
But at the same time:
"I had always thought in terms of the theatre. I'd done the rounds in New York and nothing very exciting had happened. But I always had my eye on New York - it was my first goal. Now I realize that this is it."
And throughout both interviews, there was this strong, apparently sincere, and even painful alternation of loyalties. Miss Jones, the actress, is happy and proud about coming to Broadway. But Miss Jones, the star, and wife of a film producer, is no less so about being a "part of Hollywood." At moments, the latter reaction seemed dominant. It was almost as if she were making an effort to appear like the proto-type of an actor nearing a Broadway debut - while in reality, she was wholly absorbed by the practical challenges of the job.
In her early career, she didn't even "come close" to Broadway. Her stage experience stemmed largely from her more or less historic meeting with Mr. Selznick in New York in 1941. She had gone to read for his assistant. She read badly. But the producer, passing casually through the office, was so moved by the way she took her "failure" that he asked her to return. Her subsequent stock company role in "Hello Out There" in Santa Barbara, was merely preliminary to Mr. Selznick's unveiling of a new movie queen in "The Song of Bernadette." On her twenty-fifth birthday, in 1944, Miss JOnes was biting her lip and managing, "I am thrilled and I am grateful," as she accepted the year's Oscar for the best film performance by a woman. It was the first time a newcomer had won the industry's top honor.
Down the following decade, the question of Broadway was bound to recur. Miss Jones never quite put the issue aside but never faced it squarely. She had read "The Portrait of a Lady" many years ago. When she received William Archibald's barely retitled dramatization (no"The"), she read it twice. She was uncertain of her reaction, "even though it was the kind of thing I wanted to do."
"I have no judgment about scripts," she said, "as most actors haven't."
In mid-summer, director Jose Quintero came out and talked to her about it. "He gave me his ideas," she recounted, "and my imagination became stimulated, but I was not at all sure that the play was what it might be. But David thought it had great style and great possibilities - he's fascinated with the period, anyway. We were both terribly impressed with Jose and then I said, "I'll give you my decision tomorrow." I slept on it, and in the morning I decided, "Yes, this is it - it's now or never."
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by Milton Bracker
(New York Times, December 19, 1954)
At the end of Chapter II of "The Portrait of a Lady," Henry James had a vastly marriageable British peer remark of a young American called Isabel Archer, "You wished a while ago to see my idea of an interesting woman. There it is!"
There is no doubt that Jennifer Jones, per se, fulfills that attribute of the character of Miss Archer. But besides being interesting, Miss Jones is on the verge of opening as Isabel in an adaptation of the novel at the ANTA Theatre in New York City on Tuesday. Because she felt that many other aspects of the role were eluding her, Miss Jones herself urged the extension of the Boston tryout of twelve performances. From Boylston Street the show went south, for fifteen performances in Washington and fourteen here. Constant rewriting, intensive rehearsal and - for Miss Jones - nightly dreams about the play, have continued.
In Baltimore, Miss Jones saw no reason to qualify the primary impression she had afforded during an earlier interview in Boston. In her dressing room that time, her legs tucked up under a red skirt and her hands restless - now above her head, now in her lap or fretting each other and a wooden pencil - she seemed vividly and tensely aware that her Broadway debut posed problems apart from and beyond those she has solved, often with distinction, in Hollywood.
Yet Miss Jones was and is uneasy lest that suggest that the wife of David O. Selznick regarded the legitimate theatre as a more worthwhile medium than the studios in which she did "The Song of Bernadette" et al. From the beginning, the important thing to her, she insisted, was being an actress. She acknowledged having passed through, while a student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, a fairly characteristic phase.
Childhood
"Naturally, I had the American Academy scorn of the movies," she put it, "and in my case it was doubled because my father was an exhibitor and you know how you always want not to do what your parents do." She was born Phylis Isley in Tulsa, Okal., March 2, 1919 and her father, Phil, still runs a chain of movie houses in Texas. "Since I was 8 years old," she went on, "I always wanted to be an actress - in the theatre - and then I sort of got waylaid; it just happened that the first job that was offered to me was in Hollywood - and I didn't have character enough to say I didn't want to do it."
But if fate had worked otherwise, "If someone had given me a walk-on in a legitimate theatre instead, I'd have been right there," she added. In an afterthought, she smiled, "And I might still have been doing walk-on's."
Here, she reiterated the theme that acting in itself is more important to the actor than the medium - or the results. Concentration is just as great in the studio as on the stage, she said; in Hollywood you pick up an emotional scene out of context, "you have to really be with it, or it doesn't come off." As far as the imminent transition in her case, she hedged: "Let's say I'm making a great effort. Getting to Broadway is a great thing - I guess."
The "I guess" hung in the air like a shadow over the glitter of the West Forties. Miss Jones underlined the qualification:
"Truthfully, I feel myself a part of Hollywood to a degree I never expected to feel. And I'm a little bored with Hollywood actors criticizing Hollywood. It's quite a remarkable medium, and I want no mistake made about it. I have no snobbery about it - and maybe it's even the other way around."
But at the same time:
"I had always thought in terms of the theatre. I'd done the rounds in New York and nothing very exciting had happened. But I always had my eye on New York - it was my first goal. Now I realize that this is it."
And throughout both interviews, there was this strong, apparently sincere, and even painful alternation of loyalties. Miss Jones, the actress, is happy and proud about coming to Broadway. But Miss Jones, the star, and wife of a film producer, is no less so about being a "part of Hollywood." At moments, the latter reaction seemed dominant. It was almost as if she were making an effort to appear like the proto-type of an actor nearing a Broadway debut - while in reality, she was wholly absorbed by the practical challenges of the job.
In her early career, she didn't even "come close" to Broadway. Her stage experience stemmed largely from her more or less historic meeting with Mr. Selznick in New York in 1941. She had gone to read for his assistant. She read badly. But the producer, passing casually through the office, was so moved by the way she took her "failure" that he asked her to return. Her subsequent stock company role in "Hello Out There" in Santa Barbara, was merely preliminary to Mr. Selznick's unveiling of a new movie queen in "The Song of Bernadette." On her twenty-fifth birthday, in 1944, Miss JOnes was biting her lip and managing, "I am thrilled and I am grateful," as she accepted the year's Oscar for the best film performance by a woman. It was the first time a newcomer had won the industry's top honor.
Down the following decade, the question of Broadway was bound to recur. Miss Jones never quite put the issue aside but never faced it squarely. She had read "The Portrait of a Lady" many years ago. When she received William Archibald's barely retitled dramatization (no"The"), she read it twice. She was uncertain of her reaction, "even though it was the kind of thing I wanted to do."
"I have no judgment about scripts," she said, "as most actors haven't."
In mid-summer, director Jose Quintero came out and talked to her about it. "He gave me his ideas," she recounted, "and my imagination became stimulated, but I was not at all sure that the play was what it might be. But David thought it had great style and great possibilities - he's fascinated with the period, anyway. We were both terribly impressed with Jose and then I said, "I'll give you my decision tomorrow." I slept on it, and in the morning I decided, "Yes, this is it - it's now or never."
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