Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Sunday, October 08, 2006







Monday Glamour Starter --- Jennifer Jones --- Part One


Permit me, if you will, to recast the story of The Devil and Daniel Webster with Phylis Isley, Robert Walker, and David O. Selznick. Phylis is the young actress burning with ambition to become a great star. So far, she’s managed some stage parts and a brief contract with Republic Pictures, but Phylis will not be satisfied playing support to Ralph Byrd in Dick Tracy’s G-Men, so her Tulsa exhibitor father uses his influence, and that of his theatre chain, in persuading Herb Yates to release her from "B" studio bondage. Robert Walker is the boyish thesp who met Phylis as both struggled in New York --- but wait, Phylis never had to struggle, at least not in the sense most actors do --- well-to-do parents bankroll performing ventures and set her up nicely in Gotham. Bob and Phylis (now married) eventually settle in Hollywood, but so far it’s Bob getting the plums, via $400 a week on radio. Enter the estimable Mr. Scratch --- in the person of David O. Selznick --- bearing contracts, fur jackets, and promises of glittering success for a newly christened Jennifer Jones. His Faustian bargain --- allow me to guide your destiny and I shall make of you the most cherished and sought-after name in motion pictures. And so Phylis submits herself to Selznick handling, and basks in a waiting public’s adulation. She has to sacrifice Robert Walker, but what is that against an Academy Award? Golden coin rains down upon her, but Mephistopheles Selznick exacts a price beyond even the forfeit of a husband. He will exert such obsessive control as to take away much of the joy her stardom might otherwise confer, and collaborations like Portrait Of Jennie, Terminal Station, and A Farewell To Arms add up to a price paid in damnation for the unholy compact these two have sealed.




















As most will gather from that dose of overheated prose, my view of Jennifer Jones’ fame and fortune is more than tempered by apprehension as to how she came by it. Talent was never at issue. I consider her one of the best actresses of the era, even as it seemed she got no fun out of it. Interviews were ordeals, awards anathema. Candids reveal a glum resignation. Now I ask Greenbriar readers who have previously won Oscars (and don’t be modest, we know you’re out there) --- is stardom worth all this? Maybe in the short term, but Jennifer surely carried guilt over Robert Walker like Pilgrim’s Progress. Of course, every cloud has a silver lining. If Bob hadn’t suffered so in his private life, we’d not have his Bruno Anthony in Strangers On A Train. No account of Jennifer Jones is complete without a consideration of Bob. His was the great post-war epic of self-destruction and fall from grace. There were two sons, one of them a dead ringer for Dad. Writers approached Jennifer Jones about books they were writing. Would she co-operate? No dice. We’d see Jennifer mulling over the career with Robert Osborne on TCM about the same day Deanna Durbin
checks in for an hour with Larry King, which is to say, none of us are going to live that long.






Selznick was not a sort of producer to inspect the latest Three Mesquiteer westerns, so how could he know his new protégé had gotten her start, not with him, but in the company of Ray Corrigan, Raymond Hatton, and a pre-major stardom John Wayne (in Republic's New Frontier). This was a shameful past Jennifer concealed for months, though Selznick met her eventual and tearful confession with equanimity. He was by now committed both professionally and personally to her nascent career. Established majors abetted in the creation of Jennifer Jones. Fox gave her the coveted lead in The Song Of Bernadette, an assignment every woman, outside of Maria Ouspenskaya, desperately wanted. Bernadette fairly reeked of prestige. Jones had volunteered as a nurse’s aide prior to its release. Fame put the brakes on that. Robert Walker was getting a big push at Metro around the same time. His Boy-Next-Door Goes To War was reassurance to mothers nationwide --- if this timid on-screen recruit could survive the fight, their own sons might as well --- and the gals, particularly teenage ones, went gaga for his non-threatening persona. Bob’s 4-F classification kept him out of real-life uniforms, this not altogether an advantage, for he now co-starred with a distracted wife in Since You Went Away, three-hours of home front drama written and intensely supervised by the man who had every intention of taking her away from him.







Since You Went Away was to be the home front Gone With the Wind. Jennifer Jones would be one of two teenage daughters (the other Shirley Temple) representing a Saturday Evening Post concept of the American family. Publicity groupings of she and Temple with Claudette Colbert
might have been captioned What We’re Fighting For, so idealized was this portrait of what Selznick referred to as the Unconquerable Fortress, home. The producer’s behind-the-scenes conduct with regards family values, not only the Walker’s but his own, was grotesque parody of what he depicted onscreen, emotional fall-out felt by its participants for years to come. Walker had to play Selznick-constructed love scenes with his wife as the usurper of her affections stood on-set and watched. Surviving cast members would recall the almost unbearable tension five decades later. By the time Since You Went Away wrapped, and it seemed at times it never would, Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker were separated, him laden with a torch and a bottle. He’d carry both for the rest of his short life. Selznick was a reluctant evictee from the home he’d shared with wife Irene Mayer Selznick, daughter of Louis B. Watching Since You Went Away can unsettle when you’ve just come off reading biographies of these folks. What a raw deal Walker got.


Part Two of Jennifer Jones is HERE.

Photo Captions

Robert Walker
Jennifer Jones
Phylis Isley with Ralph Byrd in Dick Tracy's G-Men
Jennifer Jones gets some more stage experience after her move to California
Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker
Poster Art of Jennifer as Bernadette by Norman Rockwell
Portrait of Jennifer as Bernadette
Robert Walker and Jennifer with David O. Selznick
Lobby Card --- Since You Went Away
Jennifer reads the novel of SYWA

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

john:
it's not enough that i awake each monday in "wild anticipation" of what the glamour starter will be, it's not thrilling enough that i woke today to find it was one of my all-time favorites jennifer jones, & a two-parter at that, but then you had to go & in the midst of a thoroughly brilliant piece of writing, include what is perhaps one of your greatest sentences ever: "we'll see jennifer mulling over the career with robert osborne on tcm about the same day deanna durbin checks in for an hour with larry king, which is to say, none of us are going to live that long."; i roared--i believe the phrase "the career" & more specifically the word "the" instead of "her" conveys with all-too appropriate world-weariness & resignation the fact that we will miss that opportunity; you are wonderful!

4:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Robert did get "hosed" in this situation, but instead of finding another love and rising above the grief went into the spiral of self-destruction....hey, if I would have taken to the bottle every time a woman screwed me over, I'd have been dead 20 years ago!

5:04 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024