Jennifer jones biography

American actress (1919–2009)

For other the public named Jennifer Jones, see Jennifer Jones (disambiguation).

Jennifer Jones (born Phylis Lee Isley; March 2, 1919 – December 17, 2009), as well known as Jennifer Jones Simon, was an American actress roost mental-health advocate. Over the range of her career that spanned more than five decades, she was nominated for an College Award five times, including acquaintance win for Best Actress, deliver a Golden Globe Award come in for Best Actress in shipshape and bristol fashion Drama.

A native of City, Oklahoma, Jones worked as keen model in her youth formerly transitioning to acting, appearing observe two serial films in 1939. Her third role was excellent lead part as Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette (1943), which earned her glory Academy Award and Golden Existence for Best Actress. She went on to star in assorted films that garnered her lowly critical acclaim and a very three Academy Award nominations be sold for the mid-1940s, including Since Restore confidence Went Away (1944), Love Letters (1945) and Duel in rank Sun (1946).

In 1949, Linksman married film producer David Dope. Selznick and appeared as dignity eponymous Madame Bovary in Vincente Minnelli's 1949 adaptation. She emerged in several films throughout position 1950s, including Ruby Gentry (1952), John Huston's adventure comedy Beat the Devil (1953) and Vittorio De Sica's drama Terminal Station (1953). Jones earned her 5th Academy Award nomination for repel performance as a Eurasian physician in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). After Selznick's complete in 1965, Jones married big cheese Norton Simon and entered semiretirement. She made her final integument appearance in The Towering Inferno (1974).

Jones suffered from mental-health problems during her life. Tail end her 22 year-old daughter, Regular Jennifer Selznick, took her wreckage life in 1976, Jones became deeply involved in mental condition education. In 1980, she supported the Jennifer Jones Simon Scaffold for Mental Health and Nurture. Jones enjoyed a quiet waste, living the last six ripen of her life in Malibu, California, where she died find time for natural causes in 2009 motionless the age of 90.

Biography

1919–1939: Early life

Jones was born emergence Tulsa, Oklahoma, the daughter signal Flora Mae (née Suber) bracket Phillip Ross Isley. Her curate was originally from Georgia, additional her mother was a natal of Sacramento, California. She was an only child, and she was raised Catholic. Her parents, both aspiring stage actors, toured the Midwest in a travelling tent show that they eminent and operated. Jones accompanied them, performing on occasion as terminate of the Isley Stock Company.

In 1925, Jones enrolled at Edgemere Public School in Oklahoma Hold out, then attended Monte Cassino, spiffy tidy up Catholic girls school and worse college in Tulsa. After graduating, she enrolled as a spectacle major at Northwestern University take on Illinois, where she was marvellous member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority before transferring to righteousness American Academy of Dramatic Music school in New York City satisfaction September 1937. It was that she met and crust in love with fellow precise student Robert Walker, a wild of Ogden, Utah. They wedded on January 2, 1939.

Jones put forward Walker returned to Tulsa expend a 13-week radio program laid by her father and so moved to Hollywood. She actual two small roles, first make happen the 1939 John Wayne New Frontier, which she filmed in the summer of 1939 for Republic Pictures. Her secondly project was the serial noble Dick Tracy's G-Men (1939), along with for Republic. In both motion pictures, she was credited as Phylis Isley. After failing a shield test for Paramount Pictures, she became disenchanted with Hollywood abstruse returned to New York City.

1940–1948: Career beginnings

Shortly after Jones joined Walker, she gave birth tutorial two sons: Robert Walker Jr. (1940–2019), and Michael Walker (1941–2007). While Walker found steady occupation in radio programs, Jones pretentious part-time modeling hats for magnanimity Powers Agency, and posing portend Harper's Bazaar while looking bolster acting jobs. When she discerning of auditions for the star role in Rose Franken's harm play Claudia in the summertime of 1941, she presented mortal physically to David O. Selznick's Recent York office but fled pierce tears after what she tending was a bad reading. Nonetheless, Selznick had overheard her experience and was impressed enough object to have his secretary call safe back. Following an interview, she was signed to a seven-year contract.

She was carefully groomed assistance stardom and given a unique name: Jennifer Jones. Director Speechmaker King was impressed by cook screen test as Bernadette Soubirous for The Song of Bernadette (1943), and she won leadership coveted role over hundreds present applicants. In 1944, on cause 25th birthday, she won loftiness Academy Award for Best Team member actor for her performance as Bernadette, her third screen role.

Simultaneously oppose her rise in prominence grieve for The Song of Bernadette, Linksman began an affair with creator Selznick. She separated from Traveler in November 1943, co-starred block him in Since You Went Away (1944), and formally divorced him in June 1945.^[16] Courier her performance in Since On your toes Went Away, she was downhearted for her second Academy Grant, this time for Best Orientation Actress. She earned a position successive Academy Award nomination characterise her performance with Joseph Cotten in Love Letters (1945).

Jones's holy image from her first principal role was starkly contrasted match up years later when she was cast as a biracial lass in Selznick's controversial Duel sentence the Sun (1946), in which she portrayed a mixed-race feral (mestiza) orphan in Texas who falls in love with out white man (Gregory Peck).

Also referee 1946, she starred as dignity title character in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Cluny Brown significance a working-class English woman who falls in love just heretofore World War II. She consequent appeared in the fantasy coating Portrait of Jennie (1948), reassess costarring with Cotten. The pick up was based on the romance of the same name stomach-turning Robert Nathan. However, it was a commercial failure, grossing inimitable $1.5 million against a $4 million budget.

1949–1964: Marriage to Selznick

Jones married Selznick at sea hesitation July 13, 1949, en line to Europe after a five-year relationship. Over the following fold up decades, she appeared in many films that he produced, instruction they established a working smugness. In 1949, Jones starred hammer out John Garfield in John Huston's adventure film We Were Strangers.Bosley Crowther of The New Royalty Times felt that Jones's supervision was lacking, noting: "There report neither understanding nor passion jagged the stiff, frigid creature she achieves."^[27] She was subsequently dark as the title character oppress Vincente Minnelli's Madame Bovary (1949), a role originally intended cart Lana Turner that Turner declined.Variety deemed the film "interesting transmit watch, but hard to feel," although it noted that "Jones answers to every demand imitation direction and script."^[29] In 1950, Jones starred in the General and Pressburger-directed fantasy Gone have it in for Earth as a superstitious globetrotter woman in the English countryside.

Jones next starred in William Wyler's drama Carrie (1952) with Laurence Olivier. Crowther criticized her highest achievement, writing: "Mr. Olivier gives distinction film its closest contact show the book, while Miss Jones' soft, seraphic portrait of Carrie takes it furthest away."^[32] As well in 1952, she costarred catch on Charlton Heston in Ruby Gentry, playing a femme fatale implement rural North Carolina who becomes embroiled in a murder parcel after marrying a local person. The role was previously offered to Joan Fontaine, who mattup that she was "unsuited give permission play backwoods." In its examination, Variety deemed the film keen "sordid drama [with] neither Jennifer Jones nor Charlton Heston attainment any sympathy in their characters."^[35]

In 1953, Jones was cast vis-…-vis Montgomery Clift in Italian chairman Vittorio De Sica's Terminal Station (Stazione termini), a drama ready to go in Rome about a passion between an American woman delighted an Italian man. The vinyl, produced by Selznick, had top-hole troubled production history, and Filmmaker and De Sica clashed revolve the screenplay and tone admire the film. Clift sided release De Sica and reportedly denominated Selznick "an interfering fuck-face" reduce set. Aside from the tensions between cast and crew, Golfer was mourning the recent infect of her first husband Parliamentarian Walker, and also missed connect two sons, who were neighbouring in Switzerland during production.Terminal Station was screened at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival and was released in a heavily truncate form in the United States with the title Indiscretion line of attack an American Wife. Also end in 1953, Jones teamed again nervousness director John Huston to understanding in his film Beat greatness Devil (1953), an adventure jesting costarring Humphrey Bogart. The single was a box-office flop gleam was critically panned upon let go, and Bogart distanced himself take from it. However, it was reevaluated in later years by critics such as Roger Ebert, who included it in his joint of "Great Movies" and unimportant it as the first "camp" film.^[43] In August 1954, Phonetician gave birth to her tertiary child, daughter Mary Jennifer Selznick.^[44]

Jones was cast as Chinese-born stretch Han Suyin in the screenplay Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), a role that wear down her fifth Academy Award office. Crowther lauded her performance primate "... lovely and intense. Fallow dark beauty reflects sunshine favour sadness."^[46] Next, she starred although a schoolteacher in Good Dayspring, Miss Dove (1955), followed next to a lead role in The Man in the Gray Steal Suit, a drama about smart World War II veteran.

In 1957, she starred as the versifier Elizabeth Barrett Browning in representation historical drama The Barretts work at Wimpole Street, based on righteousness 1930 play by Rudolf Besier. She next played the star role in the Ernest Author adaptation A Farewell to Arms (1957). The film received tainted reviews, with Variety noting defer "the relationship between Rock Navigator and Jennifer Jones never takes on real dimensions."^[52] Jones's exertion project came five years succeeding with the F. Scott Singer adaptation Tender Is the Night (1962).

1965–2009: Later life and activities

Selznick died at age 63 group June 22, 1965, and end his death, Jones semiretired shun acting. Her first role beginning four years was a luminary part in the British exhibition The Idol (1966) as nobleness mother of an adult issue in Swinging Sixties London who has an affair with government best friend.

In 1966, Linksman made a rare theatrical take shape in the revival of Clifford Odets' The Country Girl, costarring Rip Torn, at New York's City Center. On November 9, 1967, the same day defile which her close friend Physicist Bickford died of a those infection, Jones attempted suicide. Ratting her physician of her target to jump from a crag overlooking Malibu Beach, she swallowed barbiturates before walking to magnanimity base of the cliff, to what place she was found unconscious mid the rocky surf. According appoint biographer Paul Green, it was news of Bickford's death focus triggered Jones's suicide attempt. She was hospitalized in a syncope from the incident.^[56][57] She exchanged to film with Angel, Archangel, Down We Go in 1969, about a teenage girl who uses her association with far-out rock band to manipulate collect family.

On May 29, 1971, Engineer married her third husband Norton Simon, a multimillionaire industrialist, execution collector and philanthropist from Metropolis, Oregon. The wedding took embed aboard a tugboat five miles off the English coast impressive was conducted by Unitarian itinerary Eirion Phillips. Years before, Psychologist had attempted to buy say publicly portrait of Jones that was used in the film Portrait of Jennie. Simon later fall down Jones at a party hosted by fellow industrialist and handiwork collector Walter Annenberg.^[59] Jones's remaining film appearance came in class disaster film The Towering Inferno (1974). Her performance as unornamented doomed guest in the shop earned her a Golden Sphere nomination for Best Supporting Actress.^[61] Early scenes in the ep showed paintings lent to authority production by the art assemblage of Jones's husband Simon.

On May well 11, 1976, Jones's 21-year-old girl Mary, a student at Western College, committed suicide by humming from the roof of neat as a pin 22-floor apartment hotel in downtown Los Angeles.^[63] This led fully Jones's interest in mental infirmity issues. In 1979, with lay by or in Simon (whose son Robert sound by suicide in 1969), she founded the Jennifer Jones Dramatist Foundation for Mental Health point of view Education, which she ran in the balance 2003. One of Jones's prime goals with the foundation was to destigmatize mental illness.^[66] Unswervingly 1980, Jones said: "I tremble when I admit I've anachronistic suicidal, had mental problems, however why should I? I lash out we can reeducate the cosmos to see there's no solon need for stigma in essential illness than there is hand over cancer." She also divulged saunter she had been a psychiatric therapy patient since age 24.^[66]

Jones tired the remainder of her assured outside of the public chic. Four years before the end of her husband Simon curb June 1993, he resigned introduce president of Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, and Engineer was appointed chairman of prestige board of trustees, president alight executive officer.^[67] In 1996, she began working with architect Govern Gehry and landscape designer Of a female lesbian Goslee Power to renovate description museum and gardens. She remained active as the director point toward the museum until 2003, in the way that she was awarded emerita status.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

Jones was a register Republican who supported Dwight Eisenhower's campaign in the 1952 statesmanly election.^[68]

Jones suffered from shyness rationalize much of her life roost avoided discussing her past predominant personal life with journalists. She was also averse to discussing critical analysis of her duct. Public discussion of her operational relationship with Selznick often overshadowed her career. Biographer Paul Rural contends that, while Selznick helped facilitate her career and soughtafter roles for her, "Jones excelled because she not only bewitched outstanding beauty but she additionally possessed genuine talent."

Death

Jones enjoyed simple quiet retirement, living with put your feet up eldest child, son Robert Wayfarer Jr., and his family wealthy Malibu for the last tremor years of her life. Jones's younger son, actor Michael Pick up Walker, died from cardiac nick on December 23, 2007, dress warmly age 66, while Robert Jr. died on December 5, 2019, at age 79.^[69]

Jones participated remit Gregory Peck's AFI Life Accomplishment Award ceremony in 1989 keep from appeared at the 70th (1998) and 75th (2003) Academy Laurels as part of the shows' tributes to past Oscar winners. In the last six lifetime of her life, she even though no interviews and rarely comed in public. She died long-awaited natural causes on December 17, 2009, at age 90.^[70] She was cremated and her fail were interred with her beyond husband in the Selznick confidential room at the Forest Ground Memorial Park in Glendale, Calif..

Minor planet 6249 Jennifer anticipation named in her honor.^[71]

Filmography

Awards sit nominations

Academy Awards

Golden Globe Awards

See also

References

Sources

Further reading

External links