Jennifer Jones: Oscar glory but no Hollywood ending
By Susan Braudy
Published: December 21, 2009 in Vanity Fair
On March 2, 1944, Jennifer Jones was shaking like a leaf in her somber, loose-fitting black suit as she strolled with the perfumed crowd into Grauman’s Chinese Theater, on Hollywood Boulevard. Hers was a rather nun-like ensemble considering that she was about to embark upon the most glamorous night of her young life: it was the evening of the 16th annual Academy Awards ceremony, and she was nominated for best actress for her portrayal of an adolescent French saint in The Song of Bernadette. It was her 25th birthday, and she had a giddy feeling that she might win.
The wars raging in Europe and the Pacific partly explained her virginal appearance—everyone except Hedda Hopper dressed down that night—but Jones’s outfit also had something to do with her married boss and lover, David O. Selznick, the iconic producer of Gone with the Wind, who had overseen every detail of her hair, makeup, and clothing down to the red polish on her toenails. Despite those attentions, according to his son Daniel, Selznick had ignored her tearful pleas and decided to attend the gala with Ingrid Bergman, the favorite to win the best-actress statuette for the Selznick’s production, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Selznick arranged for his young mistress to be escorted by Henry Willson, one of his lieutenants, who was later responsible for both inventing Rock Hudson and concealing his homosexuality through an in name-only marriage. Willson was rumored to be gay, too, which was just how Selznick wanted it. As Daniel says now, “My father wasn’t going to let Jennifer loose with a straight man.”
Jones faced stiff competition from two other leading ladies of Hollywood’s golden age—and former Selznick mistresses—Jean Arthur and Joan Fontaine. But when Greer Garson opened the envelope, it was Jennifer Jones’s name she called. With her beautiful pink cheeks blushing and her red toenails peeking out from her open-toed shoes, Jones accepted her award and burst into tears, laying her head on the shoulder of host Jack Benny. When she saw Bergman backstage, she whispered in her ear, “I apologize, Ingrid. You should have won.” To which Bergman responded, “No, Jennifer. Your Bernadette was better than my Maria.”
Once the awards ceremony drew to a close, Selznick grabbed Jennifer’s hand and escorted her to the after-party, where—at last—she sat by his side. A photograph taken that night shows Selznick, from behind his trademark thick rimless glasses, staring with awe at the childlike 25-year-old mother of two from Oklahoma, his newest star. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNIFER, sang Variety’s front-page headline the next day. That same morning Jones impulsively filed for divorce from her then-husband, actor Robert Walker. She and Selznick married in 1949.
For the ambitious young star, it seemed as if her life would be a fairy tale, though it turned out to be anything but that. Her grab for the brass ring underwrote her big career, but wreaked havoc on her personal life.
Jones, who died of natural causes last week at her home in Malibu, at age 90, would earn an Academy Award nomination in each of the three years after her victory—for Since You Went Away in 1945, Love Letters in 1946, and Duel in the Sun in 1947—all films in which Selznick personally cast her. But her life would not be without profound setbacks, both personal—including the deaths of all three of her husbands and two of her children, including the suicide of her daughter—and professional: her career was eventually scuttled by Selznick’s attempt to push her into pictures as his fortune sank. (Even though the couple remained married until his death, in 1965, Selznick spent the end of his life in New York tending to his family by a previous marriage.)
Jones spent her final years in Malibu with her last living child, Robert Walker Jr., and his family, in a sanctuary where few people, other than Daniel Selznick, Lauren Bacall and Sally Kellerman, were admitted. After her film career came to an end with The Towering Inferno, Jones, who had survived an earlier suicide attempt, embarked on a life of charity and redemption, perhaps in order to make up for the personal cost of her own success as Selznick’s muse. Her therapist and best friend, the late Milton Wexler said, “Helping others helped Jennifer heal herself.”
After her third husband, tycoon and art collector Norton Simon died, in June 1993, Jennifer took three years to pull herself together and then stunned the art world by announcing her plans to overhaul the forbidding Norton Simon Museum, housing one of the world’s finest private art collections. Jennifer told the L.A. Times, “Norton left us a great jewel, but the setting can be improved.” Jones hired Frank Gehry, her friend from Dr. Wexler’s group therapy sessions, to highlight the hundreds of priceless paintings and Eastern deities, and she helped design the extraordinary garden landscapes, modeled after the curving lines of Monet’s Giverny, with artist-horticulturist Nancy Goslee Power.
As a final flourish, she punctuated her garden with a large bronze sculpture of a sitting cheetah by Gwen Murrill. Nestled within the museum’s walls is Renoir’s Woman in Black, which once hung in the bathroom of the Tower Drive mansion she shared with David Selznick. Her friend, producer Nancy Hardin, remembers that frequent houseguest Cary Grant served as butler and valet-parking attendant at the museum’s gala reopening.
Though she took tea regularly at the Hotel Bel-Air until a few years ago, Jennifer rarely left her Malibu home. She didn’t attend Lincoln Center’s spring 2008 retrospective honoring her films (“Why would they bother to do that for a simple person like me?” she asked a non-plussed Daniel Selznick), but did appear in public two summers ago at Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica home to celebrate the 100th birthday of Milton Wexler, their late psychoanalyst, along with Carrie Fisher and Carol Burnett. In her wheelchair, and accompanied by her hairdresser, Jennifer looked fragile but was nonetheless dressed for the occasion in an evening gown. Daniel Selznick was not surprised. “My father trained her very well. She was a movie star in Hollywood’s golden age when glamour was mystery and illusion. She would never dare present herself in public without looking like a movie star.”
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By Susan Braudy
Published: December 21, 2009 in Vanity Fair
On March 2, 1944, Jennifer Jones was shaking like a leaf in her somber, loose-fitting black suit as she strolled with the perfumed crowd into Grauman’s Chinese Theater, on Hollywood Boulevard. Hers was a rather nun-like ensemble considering that she was about to embark upon the most glamorous night of her young life: it was the evening of the 16th annual Academy Awards ceremony, and she was nominated for best actress for her portrayal of an adolescent French saint in The Song of Bernadette. It was her 25th birthday, and she had a giddy feeling that she might win.
The wars raging in Europe and the Pacific partly explained her virginal appearance—everyone except Hedda Hopper dressed down that night—but Jones’s outfit also had something to do with her married boss and lover, David O. Selznick, the iconic producer of Gone with the Wind, who had overseen every detail of her hair, makeup, and clothing down to the red polish on her toenails. Despite those attentions, according to his son Daniel, Selznick had ignored her tearful pleas and decided to attend the gala with Ingrid Bergman, the favorite to win the best-actress statuette for the Selznick’s production, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Selznick arranged for his young mistress to be escorted by Henry Willson, one of his lieutenants, who was later responsible for both inventing Rock Hudson and concealing his homosexuality through an in name-only marriage. Willson was rumored to be gay, too, which was just how Selznick wanted it. As Daniel says now, “My father wasn’t going to let Jennifer loose with a straight man.”
Jones faced stiff competition from two other leading ladies of Hollywood’s golden age—and former Selznick mistresses—Jean Arthur and Joan Fontaine. But when Greer Garson opened the envelope, it was Jennifer Jones’s name she called. With her beautiful pink cheeks blushing and her red toenails peeking out from her open-toed shoes, Jones accepted her award and burst into tears, laying her head on the shoulder of host Jack Benny. When she saw Bergman backstage, she whispered in her ear, “I apologize, Ingrid. You should have won.” To which Bergman responded, “No, Jennifer. Your Bernadette was better than my Maria.”
Once the awards ceremony drew to a close, Selznick grabbed Jennifer’s hand and escorted her to the after-party, where—at last—she sat by his side. A photograph taken that night shows Selznick, from behind his trademark thick rimless glasses, staring with awe at the childlike 25-year-old mother of two from Oklahoma, his newest star. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNIFER, sang Variety’s front-page headline the next day. That same morning Jones impulsively filed for divorce from her then-husband, actor Robert Walker. She and Selznick married in 1949.
For the ambitious young star, it seemed as if her life would be a fairy tale, though it turned out to be anything but that. Her grab for the brass ring underwrote her big career, but wreaked havoc on her personal life.
Jones, who died of natural causes last week at her home in Malibu, at age 90, would earn an Academy Award nomination in each of the three years after her victory—for Since You Went Away in 1945, Love Letters in 1946, and Duel in the Sun in 1947—all films in which Selznick personally cast her. But her life would not be without profound setbacks, both personal—including the deaths of all three of her husbands and two of her children, including the suicide of her daughter—and professional: her career was eventually scuttled by Selznick’s attempt to push her into pictures as his fortune sank. (Even though the couple remained married until his death, in 1965, Selznick spent the end of his life in New York tending to his family by a previous marriage.)
Jones spent her final years in Malibu with her last living child, Robert Walker Jr., and his family, in a sanctuary where few people, other than Daniel Selznick, Lauren Bacall and Sally Kellerman, were admitted. After her film career came to an end with The Towering Inferno, Jones, who had survived an earlier suicide attempt, embarked on a life of charity and redemption, perhaps in order to make up for the personal cost of her own success as Selznick’s muse. Her therapist and best friend, the late Milton Wexler said, “Helping others helped Jennifer heal herself.”
After her third husband, tycoon and art collector Norton Simon died, in June 1993, Jennifer took three years to pull herself together and then stunned the art world by announcing her plans to overhaul the forbidding Norton Simon Museum, housing one of the world’s finest private art collections. Jennifer told the L.A. Times, “Norton left us a great jewel, but the setting can be improved.” Jones hired Frank Gehry, her friend from Dr. Wexler’s group therapy sessions, to highlight the hundreds of priceless paintings and Eastern deities, and she helped design the extraordinary garden landscapes, modeled after the curving lines of Monet’s Giverny, with artist-horticulturist Nancy Goslee Power.
As a final flourish, she punctuated her garden with a large bronze sculpture of a sitting cheetah by Gwen Murrill. Nestled within the museum’s walls is Renoir’s Woman in Black, which once hung in the bathroom of the Tower Drive mansion she shared with David Selznick. Her friend, producer Nancy Hardin, remembers that frequent houseguest Cary Grant served as butler and valet-parking attendant at the museum’s gala reopening.
Though she took tea regularly at the Hotel Bel-Air until a few years ago, Jennifer rarely left her Malibu home. She didn’t attend Lincoln Center’s spring 2008 retrospective honoring her films (“Why would they bother to do that for a simple person like me?” she asked a non-plussed Daniel Selznick), but did appear in public two summers ago at Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica home to celebrate the 100th birthday of Milton Wexler, their late psychoanalyst, along with Carrie Fisher and Carol Burnett. In her wheelchair, and accompanied by her hairdresser, Jennifer looked fragile but was nonetheless dressed for the occasion in an evening gown. Daniel Selznick was not surprised. “My father trained her very well. She was a movie star in Hollywood’s golden age when glamour was mystery and illusion. She would never dare present herself in public without looking like a movie star.”
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