That Dream Girl Jennifer Jones
by Anita Colby
(Photoplay, Sept. 1946)
[Note: Anita Colby (Aug. 5, 1914– March 27, 1992) was the highest paid model in New York during the mid 1930s. In the 1940s, she was hired by David O. Selznick as Feminine Director of the Selznick Studios to teach young actresses poise, beauty and how to deal with publicity.]
Talking about Jennifer Jones is, for me, like talking about one’s own family. You know that you’re prejudiced and therefore you dare not enthuse too much. Yet to understand would not be fair, either. So I shall try to tell you about Jennifer as I see her – from the outside looking in. You are still familiar with her ability. You know that she won the Academy Award for “The Song of Bernadette” and has had the remarkable distinction of being nominated for an “Oscar” for every performance she’s given. Her fiery interpretation of the little half-breed, Pearl Chavez, in David O. Selznick’s forthcoming “Duel in the Sun” will speak for itself.
So I’ll confine myself to the Jennifer Jones behind the scenes. She’s really a dream girl, that Jones. Her zest is so refreshing that just being with her is like taking a cold shower in the summertime. The little things in life never escape Jennifer. They’re most important to her and through her own enthusiastic eyes they become important to you, too.
Friendship is a sacred trust with Jennifer. She’s one of the most loyal and devoted friends I’ve ever had. One who never disappoints you though you sometimes have to work overtime not to disappoint her. For Jennifer puts those whom she likes on pedestals. And perches can be uncomfortable in spite of the wide margin she leaves you for error.
I’ve never heard her make a derogatory remark about anyone. And I’ve heard her stoutly defending people she doesn’t even know against remarks others have made. Gossip is a dead language to her.
She has an insatiable curiosity about any subject she’s interested in and wants to learn everything about it. Furthermore, she is quite willing for you to learn everything about it too. “It’s more fun that way,” she says.
For instance, Jennifer was eager to improve her French. She talked about it for days. “All right,” I agreed, “I’ll go with you but I really don’t need them. I’ve had eight years of French. All I’ll need will be a refresher course.” She said casually that she’d had a “little” French in school.
Then when we got to the studio of George Jomier, our French instructor, for our first lesson, she was parlez-vousing all over the place, while I just sat there dazedly trying to catch a familiar word or so. My eight years of le francais were as nothing, while she chattered away as if she’d lived all her life on the Rue de la Paix. “Never mind,” she said, “you must need a refresher course.”
by Anita Colby
(Photoplay, Sept. 1946)
[Note: Anita Colby (Aug. 5, 1914– March 27, 1992) was the highest paid model in New York during the mid 1930s. In the 1940s, she was hired by David O. Selznick as Feminine Director of the Selznick Studios to teach young actresses poise, beauty and how to deal with publicity.]
Talking about Jennifer Jones is, for me, like talking about one’s own family. You know that you’re prejudiced and therefore you dare not enthuse too much. Yet to understand would not be fair, either. So I shall try to tell you about Jennifer as I see her – from the outside looking in. You are still familiar with her ability. You know that she won the Academy Award for “The Song of Bernadette” and has had the remarkable distinction of being nominated for an “Oscar” for every performance she’s given. Her fiery interpretation of the little half-breed, Pearl Chavez, in David O. Selznick’s forthcoming “Duel in the Sun” will speak for itself.
So I’ll confine myself to the Jennifer Jones behind the scenes. She’s really a dream girl, that Jones. Her zest is so refreshing that just being with her is like taking a cold shower in the summertime. The little things in life never escape Jennifer. They’re most important to her and through her own enthusiastic eyes they become important to you, too.
Friendship is a sacred trust with Jennifer. She’s one of the most loyal and devoted friends I’ve ever had. One who never disappoints you though you sometimes have to work overtime not to disappoint her. For Jennifer puts those whom she likes on pedestals. And perches can be uncomfortable in spite of the wide margin she leaves you for error.
I’ve never heard her make a derogatory remark about anyone. And I’ve heard her stoutly defending people she doesn’t even know against remarks others have made. Gossip is a dead language to her.
She has an insatiable curiosity about any subject she’s interested in and wants to learn everything about it. Furthermore, she is quite willing for you to learn everything about it too. “It’s more fun that way,” she says.
For instance, Jennifer was eager to improve her French. She talked about it for days. “All right,” I agreed, “I’ll go with you but I really don’t need them. I’ve had eight years of French. All I’ll need will be a refresher course.” She said casually that she’d had a “little” French in school.
Then when we got to the studio of George Jomier, our French instructor, for our first lesson, she was parlez-vousing all over the place, while I just sat there dazedly trying to catch a familiar word or so. My eight years of le francais were as nothing, while she chattered away as if she’d lived all her life on the Rue de la Paix. “Never mind,” she said, “you must need a refresher course.”
Cosmetics is another subject that has challenged her interest. Though her complexion needs no improvement, she’s always experimenting with beauty preparations, as I was to find out when I loaned her my apartment while I was touring the state exploiting “Duel in the Sun”. I came home to beauty creams, colognes, perfumes, bath salts and a new kind of facial cornflakes, not to mention a huge shiny contraption which looked like a school playground slide, and which I still haven’t figured out how to use.
When I got back Jennifer was in Texas where her boys, Bobby and Michael, had gone for a visit with their grandmother. She phoned me. “I loved living in your apartment!”
“That’s fine,” I answered. “You must have packed in a hurry. Did you take anything with you? You left quite a few things.”
“I don’t want any of it. You can keep everything,” she laughed.
“They won’t do any good without the combination. What do you do with the cornflakes?”
“Put them on your face. They’re wonderful!”
“And the mechanical contraption overflowing the guest room…that looks slightly like a roller-coaster. What do you do with that?”
“Oh – that. I got it at the May Company,” she went on.
“But what is it?” I asked.
“It’s one of those exercise boards…only I don’t use it that way. I rest my head at the bottom and catch my feet up in the strap at the top. You know…the way we do with an ironing board…or something. Only this one is ready-made.”
She was referring to a beauty routine we’d tried out – the “model” stance; i.e. propping the ironing board up against the living-room divan and stretching out on it with your head on the rug, letting the blood rush to the foot of the ironing board… or something. Jennifer had improved on it while I was gone.
“It’s wonderful for your circulation!” she said, still selling me.
“You mean it takes the place of Lady Mendl’s theory of standing on your head?”
“Something like that,” she laughed. “Shall I send you a blueprint?”
“No thanks,” I said. “If there’s anything I don’t need it’s a map for standing on my head. I’ve been doing that for a long time now.”
Regardless of her own fame, she still has all the qualities of the girl next door. She genuinely likes people- all people – she would far rather talk about them than about herself… As Jay Carmody, dramatic critic for the Washington Star, discovered when we were in Washington, D.C. on a bond tour and he was interviewing Jennifer – he thought.
“I read your column this morning and I was very interested in your criticism of the picture,” she said. “Especially your analysis of the characterizations. You must have had some experience in the theater.”
He remarked that he’d “experienced” her last picture and thought she’d done a very analytical job.
“Have you made a study of psychology?” she went on. “That would be good for newspaper work, wouldn’t it?”
He said he guessed so. What about her next role? “I portray a half-breed Indian,” she said. “Do you know anything about them? Maybe you could help me on a few things. I think newspaper work must be very interesting,” she went on, genuinely impressed. “How long have you been doing it? Where are the presses?”
“Would you like to take a look around?” he said resignedly.
“Oh yes, could we?”
When we’d completed a Cook’s Tour of the establishment and were leaving, Jennifer thanked him for being so kind. “Thank you, Miss Jones,” he laughed, “for the best interview I’ve never had.”
Any trip with Jennifer turns out to be fun – no matter how hectic the travel conditions may be. And “hectic” is a gentle word for one return trip we made, after spending a few days in Palm Springs. We were coming back in my car and I was driving, a combination that has great suicidal possibilities. Mine is one of those photogenic jobs that often doesn’t run. Coming back to Hollywood that night it wasn’t running. Twelve times it broke down, with water bursting from the radiator and everything. We spent all of our money on it trying to get it fixed and after being pushed for some miles, finally coasted into the Los Angeles city limits just opposite the General Hospital.
We had exactly thirty-nine cents left and I used five of them to call a friend in Hollywood to come get us.
“Aren’t you hungry?” said Jennifer. “I am.”
Which was no particular surprise. Jones is always hungry. When she’s working at the studio you’ll find her eating an early morning snack of apples and bananas at 9:00 and snacking on hamburgers again at 11:00 a.m. We found a dingy hamburger bar near the hospital. A beaten-up structure… too far gone for DDT.
“We’d better watch what we order,” I reminded her. “We only have thirty-four cents left.”
We studied the menu carefully. There was only one item we could afford. We couldn’t even have the Hamburger Deluxe. “We’ll have to order the plain hamburgers. They’re ten cents cheaper.”
While we ate them we kept torturing ourselves remembering money we’d spend in the past. “Remember the time you spent so-and-so on a Hattie Carnegie gown?” one of us would say. This reminiscing went on back and forth for some twenty minutes. By now we were both digging away like crazy in our bags, looking for any stray pennies. Jennifer found three cents to go with the remaining four.
“We’ll leave a seven-cent tip,” she said.
“No indeed! We might have to make another phone call.”
When our rescue squad arrived, we hurried on late – in our sports dresses – to the Beverly Hills party we’d been rushing back to. “I just can’t wait to get back to get back to the studio and tell them how you take care of a Selznick star,” Jennifer laughed.
Knowing when she’s on a picture how hard she works you get a wonderful feeling standing by and watching the time and consideration she gives to all who work with her. When her stand-in was taken ill on the set during a scene in “Love Letters,” it was Jennifer who left the set to call the girl’s mother and assure her that her daughter would be all right. “Don’t worry about her,” she said, “I promise you that she’ll be made comfortable.”
On the “Duel in the Sun” location trip, Jennifer took an awful physical beating, as usual, stopping at nothing short of absolute realism for her role. They were filming the climax of the picture where she shoots it out with Gregory Peck. She was black and blue and all scratched up from crawling over the cactus and rocky crags in the desert with a rifle in hand. Her knees were constantly bleeding – her finger nails torn. All this added to the forty miles she had to drive back and forth daily to get out to the location site left her completely fatigued at night.
Yet when I became ill with virus pneumonia, it was Jennifer who assumed command. “I’ll get the best doctor there is,” she said. And she did – the foremost chest specialist in the country. She got up at 5:00 a.m. to visit me at the hospital before she went out to the set. With her came bottles of perfume, sachets and pretty bed jackets to cheer me up. After working that night, she’d be back again, picking up my nightgowns or lingerie and taking them home with her to be laundered.
Our trip down on the train to Tucson that time is another one I’ll never forget. As hectic as some of our other travel experiences. And as much fun. We had Jennifer’s two young sons, Bobby and Michael, along with us, and what with their excitement and anticipation at invading the land of real live Indians, all of us were up most of the night. Around 4:00 a.m. we dozed off only to be awakened a little later by the peculiar sensations of four strange little pair of eyes fastened on us. Bob and Mike, still unable to sleep, had gone out in to the train with their nurse and gathered some playmates in to see us.
“This is Mom,” said Bobby, pointing to his mother’s one eye above the cover. “And this is Miss Colby,” pointing to me.
The little visitors just stood there eyeing us gravely, until our sleepy acknowledgment of the introductions was made.
Though she seems more like their sister, Jennifer is a wonderful little mother to the boys. She enters into all of their games with them, and the three of them have hilarious fun. Calling her at home and hearing the noise in the background, I usually ask, “Who’s there?”
“Just us,” she laughs. “But when we three are together it does sound like a room full of people, doesn’t it?”
No day would seem quite right to me without talking to Jennifer. Fortunately, I seldom miss one. We hold fabulous phone conversations about a certain scene, something she’s planning for the boys, or just life in general.
During my trip around the country calling on newspapers for “Duel in the Sun,” we talked to each other as often as possible. One morning she called in New York. “It’s Bobby’s birthday,” she said. “I called because I wanted you to sing “Happy Birthday” to him.
Michael kept getting on the wire instead. “Please Mike, just say ‘Hello’ and let Bobby talk,” insisted Jennifer. “It’s his birthday.”
“Hello Miss Colby,” came Bobby’s childish little voice across the miles. “I’m six years old!”
“That’s wonderful darling,” I said. Then went into my best sleepy soprano singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him.
I put the receiver up slowly. Suddenly I was a little homesick for all of them. The two baby dream boys and their Mom – the dream girl who’s known as Jones.
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When I got back Jennifer was in Texas where her boys, Bobby and Michael, had gone for a visit with their grandmother. She phoned me. “I loved living in your apartment!”
“That’s fine,” I answered. “You must have packed in a hurry. Did you take anything with you? You left quite a few things.”
“I don’t want any of it. You can keep everything,” she laughed.
“They won’t do any good without the combination. What do you do with the cornflakes?”
“Put them on your face. They’re wonderful!”
“And the mechanical contraption overflowing the guest room…that looks slightly like a roller-coaster. What do you do with that?”
“Oh – that. I got it at the May Company,” she went on.
“But what is it?” I asked.
“It’s one of those exercise boards…only I don’t use it that way. I rest my head at the bottom and catch my feet up in the strap at the top. You know…the way we do with an ironing board…or something. Only this one is ready-made.”
She was referring to a beauty routine we’d tried out – the “model” stance; i.e. propping the ironing board up against the living-room divan and stretching out on it with your head on the rug, letting the blood rush to the foot of the ironing board… or something. Jennifer had improved on it while I was gone.
“It’s wonderful for your circulation!” she said, still selling me.
“You mean it takes the place of Lady Mendl’s theory of standing on your head?”
“Something like that,” she laughed. “Shall I send you a blueprint?”
“No thanks,” I said. “If there’s anything I don’t need it’s a map for standing on my head. I’ve been doing that for a long time now.”
Regardless of her own fame, she still has all the qualities of the girl next door. She genuinely likes people- all people – she would far rather talk about them than about herself… As Jay Carmody, dramatic critic for the Washington Star, discovered when we were in Washington, D.C. on a bond tour and he was interviewing Jennifer – he thought.
“I read your column this morning and I was very interested in your criticism of the picture,” she said. “Especially your analysis of the characterizations. You must have had some experience in the theater.”
He remarked that he’d “experienced” her last picture and thought she’d done a very analytical job.
“Have you made a study of psychology?” she went on. “That would be good for newspaper work, wouldn’t it?”
He said he guessed so. What about her next role? “I portray a half-breed Indian,” she said. “Do you know anything about them? Maybe you could help me on a few things. I think newspaper work must be very interesting,” she went on, genuinely impressed. “How long have you been doing it? Where are the presses?”
“Would you like to take a look around?” he said resignedly.
“Oh yes, could we?”
When we’d completed a Cook’s Tour of the establishment and were leaving, Jennifer thanked him for being so kind. “Thank you, Miss Jones,” he laughed, “for the best interview I’ve never had.”
Any trip with Jennifer turns out to be fun – no matter how hectic the travel conditions may be. And “hectic” is a gentle word for one return trip we made, after spending a few days in Palm Springs. We were coming back in my car and I was driving, a combination that has great suicidal possibilities. Mine is one of those photogenic jobs that often doesn’t run. Coming back to Hollywood that night it wasn’t running. Twelve times it broke down, with water bursting from the radiator and everything. We spent all of our money on it trying to get it fixed and after being pushed for some miles, finally coasted into the Los Angeles city limits just opposite the General Hospital.
We had exactly thirty-nine cents left and I used five of them to call a friend in Hollywood to come get us.
“Aren’t you hungry?” said Jennifer. “I am.”
Which was no particular surprise. Jones is always hungry. When she’s working at the studio you’ll find her eating an early morning snack of apples and bananas at 9:00 and snacking on hamburgers again at 11:00 a.m. We found a dingy hamburger bar near the hospital. A beaten-up structure… too far gone for DDT.
“We’d better watch what we order,” I reminded her. “We only have thirty-four cents left.”
We studied the menu carefully. There was only one item we could afford. We couldn’t even have the Hamburger Deluxe. “We’ll have to order the plain hamburgers. They’re ten cents cheaper.”
While we ate them we kept torturing ourselves remembering money we’d spend in the past. “Remember the time you spent so-and-so on a Hattie Carnegie gown?” one of us would say. This reminiscing went on back and forth for some twenty minutes. By now we were both digging away like crazy in our bags, looking for any stray pennies. Jennifer found three cents to go with the remaining four.
“We’ll leave a seven-cent tip,” she said.
“No indeed! We might have to make another phone call.”
When our rescue squad arrived, we hurried on late – in our sports dresses – to the Beverly Hills party we’d been rushing back to. “I just can’t wait to get back to get back to the studio and tell them how you take care of a Selznick star,” Jennifer laughed.
Knowing when she’s on a picture how hard she works you get a wonderful feeling standing by and watching the time and consideration she gives to all who work with her. When her stand-in was taken ill on the set during a scene in “Love Letters,” it was Jennifer who left the set to call the girl’s mother and assure her that her daughter would be all right. “Don’t worry about her,” she said, “I promise you that she’ll be made comfortable.”
On the “Duel in the Sun” location trip, Jennifer took an awful physical beating, as usual, stopping at nothing short of absolute realism for her role. They were filming the climax of the picture where she shoots it out with Gregory Peck. She was black and blue and all scratched up from crawling over the cactus and rocky crags in the desert with a rifle in hand. Her knees were constantly bleeding – her finger nails torn. All this added to the forty miles she had to drive back and forth daily to get out to the location site left her completely fatigued at night.
Yet when I became ill with virus pneumonia, it was Jennifer who assumed command. “I’ll get the best doctor there is,” she said. And she did – the foremost chest specialist in the country. She got up at 5:00 a.m. to visit me at the hospital before she went out to the set. With her came bottles of perfume, sachets and pretty bed jackets to cheer me up. After working that night, she’d be back again, picking up my nightgowns or lingerie and taking them home with her to be laundered.
Our trip down on the train to Tucson that time is another one I’ll never forget. As hectic as some of our other travel experiences. And as much fun. We had Jennifer’s two young sons, Bobby and Michael, along with us, and what with their excitement and anticipation at invading the land of real live Indians, all of us were up most of the night. Around 4:00 a.m. we dozed off only to be awakened a little later by the peculiar sensations of four strange little pair of eyes fastened on us. Bob and Mike, still unable to sleep, had gone out in to the train with their nurse and gathered some playmates in to see us.
“This is Mom,” said Bobby, pointing to his mother’s one eye above the cover. “And this is Miss Colby,” pointing to me.
The little visitors just stood there eyeing us gravely, until our sleepy acknowledgment of the introductions was made.
Though she seems more like their sister, Jennifer is a wonderful little mother to the boys. She enters into all of their games with them, and the three of them have hilarious fun. Calling her at home and hearing the noise in the background, I usually ask, “Who’s there?”
“Just us,” she laughs. “But when we three are together it does sound like a room full of people, doesn’t it?”
No day would seem quite right to me without talking to Jennifer. Fortunately, I seldom miss one. We hold fabulous phone conversations about a certain scene, something she’s planning for the boys, or just life in general.
During my trip around the country calling on newspapers for “Duel in the Sun,” we talked to each other as often as possible. One morning she called in New York. “It’s Bobby’s birthday,” she said. “I called because I wanted you to sing “Happy Birthday” to him.
Michael kept getting on the wire instead. “Please Mike, just say ‘Hello’ and let Bobby talk,” insisted Jennifer. “It’s his birthday.”
“Hello Miss Colby,” came Bobby’s childish little voice across the miles. “I’m six years old!”
“That’s wonderful darling,” I said. Then went into my best sleepy soprano singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him.
I put the receiver up slowly. Suddenly I was a little homesick for all of them. The two baby dream boys and their Mom – the dream girl who’s known as Jones.
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