Find of 42'
by Helen Walker
(Unidentified fan magazine, 1942
(NOTE: An early fan magazine article with many inaccuracies - the name thing with her father is pure hokum. She was initially announced for the role in The Keys of the Kingdom but those plans changed. When Jones returned to Oklahoma from New York, she appeared in a radio program and not in a tent show.)
Her name is Jennifer Jones. Her father, who was a showman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, decided that this Jones would be different. So he tagged her with the name of his pet calf. Now when people meet her they say "Uh - Jennifer - is that the name? Jennifer Jones? Odd..."
But Jennifer Jones whimsical name will be as well-known as Florida oranges because you will be seeing her as Nora in David O. Selznick's production of The Keys of the Kingdom, a star-making role if ever one fell to a newcomer.
So meet this Miss Jones.
She has a face something like Maureen O'Sullivan's - you know, starry-eyed, elfin and gentle - and the figure of a long-legged seraph. The Keys of the Kingdom is her first picture and she's still so dazed at the way she nabbed a plum role in a plum film that her wide, gray eyes still look bewildered.
Last winter, Jennifer was one of the army of unknown young hopefuls making the round of Broadway casting offices. She could have stayed in Tulsa for all the good it was doing her. Shy and inexperienced, an apple-cheeked youngster just out of dramatic school, she wasn't given a tumble. So she sat patiently in the outer office, brought a bag of peanuts for lunch, and kept her ears open. One day, she heard that Selznick was planning to make a movie version of the stage play Claudia. Jennifer gulped, took her courage in her hands and went to the New York Selznick office to try for the role. Claudia was a naive little nincompoop, right up her alley, thought our Jen.
She was given a reading and in the middle of it who should walk in but Mr. Selznick himself. At sight of the Great Man, panic and fright seized our shy heroine, her lips began to tremble and she blew up.
"I was through,' she describes dramatically. "I just threw down the script, looked at Mr. S dumbly and knew my goose was cooked. Her looked at me sadly and said, "You know that wasn't very good." I agreed, then went home and cried myself to sleep.
"The next morning though, Mr. Selznick called and said he understood how nervous i had been and would give me another chance. I was to take a test for Claudia that afternoon. But I did no better. I stammered and made a mess of it."
Mr. Selznick thought so too when he saw the test. He looked at it gloomily. "She's not Claudia," he muttered. Then, in the unexpected ways of Hollywood producers, he shouted, "But she is Nora! Sign her up!"
A studio attache phoned the breathless news to Jennifer. "Now I'll tell one," bawled Jennifer, hanging up. It took a personal visit to convince the lady that April Fool's Day was two months off.
Up until then, Jennifer's only experience had been in "tent shows". Her father, Phil Jones, was a tent show operator and she'd been acting in them since she was ten. "A tent show is a sort of showboat on land," explains Jennifer vaguely.
Jennifer started performing before parlor audiences when she was six, lisping kiddie poems in deadpan. "You can't," she says, "recite without getting an urge to act, so I started to pester Dad."
Finally he admitted defeat and mumbled okay, okay.
"But," he added quickly, "as long as you want to act, try for pictures, not the stage. There's more money in movies."
"Dad was a very practical man," says Jennifer.
After trouping up and down the West in the colorful travelling tent shows, Jennifer's mother, appalled at her daughter's one-sided training, sent her to New York's dignified American Academy of Dramatic Arts, over the protests of Mr. Jones who howled that it was sissy. There, incidentally, Jennifer was a classmate of Diana Barrymore. Agents and managers looked into the sweetly hopeful face of Miss Jennifer Jones and made funny noises in their throats. Discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm, Jenny scrammed West again and joined up with a tent show to keep her hand in the emoting business.
"I played a murderess who goes mad in one thing," she recalls. "I screamed all over the stage and went berserk magnificently. I knew then that I was stuck. That was for me, that acting stuff. That was life. I trailed back to New York again and tried to get on speaking acquaintance with the stage."
She never dented the sensibilities of play producers, and when was handed a movie contract and the second feminine lead to Ingrid Bergman in The Keys to the Kingdom, she hadn't appeared even once in a Broadway show. Which is known as neatly overshooting the mark!"
No regulation glamour girl is Jennifer Jones. Her heart belongs to a young radio actor to whom she is happily married. She is, moreover, the proud mother of two adorable toddlers - the oldest is two.
This knowledge - which hasn't been aired by the press agent as yet - will do much to dampen the ardor of young Hollywood swains who have already cast interested eyes in her direction.
But it will take much more than that to dampen the ardor of movie-goers after they catch their first glimpse of Miss Jones in her first film!
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by Helen Walker
(Unidentified fan magazine, 1942
(NOTE: An early fan magazine article with many inaccuracies - the name thing with her father is pure hokum. She was initially announced for the role in The Keys of the Kingdom but those plans changed. When Jones returned to Oklahoma from New York, she appeared in a radio program and not in a tent show.)
Her name is Jennifer Jones. Her father, who was a showman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, decided that this Jones would be different. So he tagged her with the name of his pet calf. Now when people meet her they say "Uh - Jennifer - is that the name? Jennifer Jones? Odd..."
But Jennifer Jones whimsical name will be as well-known as Florida oranges because you will be seeing her as Nora in David O. Selznick's production of The Keys of the Kingdom, a star-making role if ever one fell to a newcomer.
So meet this Miss Jones.
She has a face something like Maureen O'Sullivan's - you know, starry-eyed, elfin and gentle - and the figure of a long-legged seraph. The Keys of the Kingdom is her first picture and she's still so dazed at the way she nabbed a plum role in a plum film that her wide, gray eyes still look bewildered.
Last winter, Jennifer was one of the army of unknown young hopefuls making the round of Broadway casting offices. She could have stayed in Tulsa for all the good it was doing her. Shy and inexperienced, an apple-cheeked youngster just out of dramatic school, she wasn't given a tumble. So she sat patiently in the outer office, brought a bag of peanuts for lunch, and kept her ears open. One day, she heard that Selznick was planning to make a movie version of the stage play Claudia. Jennifer gulped, took her courage in her hands and went to the New York Selznick office to try for the role. Claudia was a naive little nincompoop, right up her alley, thought our Jen.
She was given a reading and in the middle of it who should walk in but Mr. Selznick himself. At sight of the Great Man, panic and fright seized our shy heroine, her lips began to tremble and she blew up.
"I was through,' she describes dramatically. "I just threw down the script, looked at Mr. S dumbly and knew my goose was cooked. Her looked at me sadly and said, "You know that wasn't very good." I agreed, then went home and cried myself to sleep.
"The next morning though, Mr. Selznick called and said he understood how nervous i had been and would give me another chance. I was to take a test for Claudia that afternoon. But I did no better. I stammered and made a mess of it."
Mr. Selznick thought so too when he saw the test. He looked at it gloomily. "She's not Claudia," he muttered. Then, in the unexpected ways of Hollywood producers, he shouted, "But she is Nora! Sign her up!"
A studio attache phoned the breathless news to Jennifer. "Now I'll tell one," bawled Jennifer, hanging up. It took a personal visit to convince the lady that April Fool's Day was two months off.
Up until then, Jennifer's only experience had been in "tent shows". Her father, Phil Jones, was a tent show operator and she'd been acting in them since she was ten. "A tent show is a sort of showboat on land," explains Jennifer vaguely.
Jennifer started performing before parlor audiences when she was six, lisping kiddie poems in deadpan. "You can't," she says, "recite without getting an urge to act, so I started to pester Dad."
Finally he admitted defeat and mumbled okay, okay.
"But," he added quickly, "as long as you want to act, try for pictures, not the stage. There's more money in movies."
"Dad was a very practical man," says Jennifer.
After trouping up and down the West in the colorful travelling tent shows, Jennifer's mother, appalled at her daughter's one-sided training, sent her to New York's dignified American Academy of Dramatic Arts, over the protests of Mr. Jones who howled that it was sissy. There, incidentally, Jennifer was a classmate of Diana Barrymore. Agents and managers looked into the sweetly hopeful face of Miss Jennifer Jones and made funny noises in their throats. Discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm, Jenny scrammed West again and joined up with a tent show to keep her hand in the emoting business.
"I played a murderess who goes mad in one thing," she recalls. "I screamed all over the stage and went berserk magnificently. I knew then that I was stuck. That was for me, that acting stuff. That was life. I trailed back to New York again and tried to get on speaking acquaintance with the stage."
She never dented the sensibilities of play producers, and when was handed a movie contract and the second feminine lead to Ingrid Bergman in The Keys to the Kingdom, she hadn't appeared even once in a Broadway show. Which is known as neatly overshooting the mark!"
No regulation glamour girl is Jennifer Jones. Her heart belongs to a young radio actor to whom she is happily married. She is, moreover, the proud mother of two adorable toddlers - the oldest is two.
This knowledge - which hasn't been aired by the press agent as yet - will do much to dampen the ardor of young Hollywood swains who have already cast interested eyes in her direction.
But it will take much more than that to dampen the ardor of movie-goers after they catch their first glimpse of Miss Jones in her first film!
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