Jennifer Jones - My Paradoxical Friend
by Elsa Maxwell
(Photoplay, April 1946)[Note: Elsa Maxwell (May 24, 1883 – November 1, 1963) was an American gossip columnist and author, songwriter, and professional hostess renowned for her parties for royalty and high society figures of her day.]
My paradoxical friend, Miss Jennifer Jones, has grown up. And I don't think somehow that she will be called a paradox any more...
I first realized that Jennifer had come into her maturity at the beautiful party David O. Selznick, her producer, gave for her not so very long ago. In manner, conversation and appearance, she was different/ a poised young woman, not a naive girl. She had knowledge of and interest in many things, and twinkling humor. She was soignee, carefully done, highly finished with her cloudy dark hair smooth and high, with the decolletage of her black lace gown in contrast to its long sleeves, with the absence of jewels dramatizing her eyes which match any jewels she could find.
Jennifer's maturity did not come overnight, of course. It only seemed to, the way springtime does. It has been contributed to, I believe, by her earnest endeavor to understand the varied characters she has played...the emotional Bernadette, the brave immature Jane Hilton in "Since You Went Away," the innocent Singleton in "Love Letter," the sultry passionate half breed Pearl in "Duel In The Sun." For Jennifer, born of theatre people, always, I think, has been an actress above all. Also, within the last two years Jennifer has had the reality of her divorce from Robert Walker to mature her. No one as intelligently aware as she would give up a marriage, especially a marriage which involved two children, until she had done a considerable amount of good hard thinking.
Mr. Selznick gave the party for Jennifer, with his delightful mother acting as hostess, in the house he has rented from Miram Hopkins, the house which once belonged to the late John Gilbert. It sits high up on one of Beverly's highest hills, this house, with windows far below obscured here and there by lower hills, a vast view which extends even to the sea.
There were, I should say, about one hundred guests; among them the Henry Fondas and Jimmy Stewart, who was their house guest, Anita Colby, the Reginald Gardners and Sir Charles Mendl with whom I arrived, Ingrid Bergman and her delightful husband, Doctor Peter Lindstrom, the Keenan Wynns, the Joe Cottens, the Charles Boyers and Jennifer, of course, who came with the Cottens, Jimmy Stewart and Anita Colby.
There were cocktails and canapes on the patio. Then, inside, the buffet supper table held cold turkey and ham, spaghetti with meat balls, chop suey - no California party being complete without at least one Chinese dish - salad, cakes, fruit, champagne, and coffee. We all served ourselves with a little of this and a little more of that and, will power and self-discipline vanishing, still more of that - and repaired to the small tables set up in the drawing room.
While we were having coffee, Abe Burrows, who sings the funniest songs I have ever heard to old familiar tunes, entertained us. He sang of Hollywood citizens, of the stars and the producers and the roles the stars have played and everyone howled with laughter. One of his songs, about Bernadette, delighted Mr. Selznick and Jennifer. It was good to see her turn to him, her quick alive expression broadening into a smile, for she smiles more than she laughs, her eyes twinkling.
There's no question Jennifer has been deeply impressed by David Selznick's spirit and integrity as a man and a producer. But whether the rumors that she will be the second Mrs. Selznick are correct I do not know. I do not inquire about the private lives of my friends. There were premature rumors certainly, for they began before Jennifer had received her final decree from Robert Walker, and before Irene Selznick had either sued for divorce or announced any intention of so doing.
I am devoted to both David, whose outstanding films like "Rebecca," "Gone With The Wind" and "Since You Went Away" have placed him in the front ranks of the younger producers and also to Irene, a charming woman and a devoted wife, who will do whatever she finally decides to do with dignity and poise. However, I am always of the opinion that two people when they cannot get along should be allowed, in our free America, to make their choice. Whatever happens, I wish joy and happiness to Jennifer and David and Irene in their various ways.
The dinner David gave to honor Jennifer, certainly, was the epitome of good taste and dignity, with Jennifer so generous in giving her dances to all those who sought them, that she danced only once with David.
While Jennifer danced with Joe Cotten, Ingrid Bergman danced with Reginald Gardiner. Both couples danced such an excellent rumba that it became a competition. It was evident, incidentally, from the friendly way in which Jennifer and Ingrid vied with each other that they were on the most friendly terms. We talked of awarding an imaginary Gold Medal to the winner but never could make a choice - both were so charming.
Watching Jennifer moving among her friends, gay and interested, watching her still and listening or talking earnestly, I was reminded, over and over, of her new maturity. And in contrast, I remembered her as she was one day, a few years ago, when she came running up my walk, very young, brown and simply dressed in a brown and green cotton frock; breathlessly apologetic for being late.
She talked and talked that day, but always all her talk was of her work. Of the parts she would like to play; Juliet, Joan of Arc, except that Ingrid Bergman really was the only actress she could see in the part, and Electra, should she ever be clever enough to atempt Greek tragedy...of the actresses she admired, Katharine Cornell, Katharine Hepburn, Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Margaret Sullavan, Vivien Leigh, Judith Anderson, Gertrude Lawrence, Dorothy McGuire...Of acting, always of acting...
"I've wanted to be an actress ever since I can remember," she told me at that time. "I have studied dramatics always. First at school and then at the American Academy in New York."
"To be honest," she confessed, "I wasn't a great student. Probably because first, last an always I thought of acting and acting only. So much so I wrote Katharine Cornell, my idol, and asked if it wouldn't be better for a girl as obsessed as I to come to New York and concentrate upon dramatics rather than to go on with my studies. It was only because she wrote back advising me to continue my education that I entered Northwestern University. But I stayed only a year; then left for New York and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. My mind was there - so I thought I might better be too."
"But now...now I begin to realize how much I have to learn... how much I will get from books, from music..."
When I first knew Jennifer I found it difficult to think of her as a mother, even though I knew she was devoted to her children and had Bob Walker's word she was a "wonderful mother." I could see her only as an eager novitiate, standing, with wide-eyed humility, at the altar of Thespis.
Today it is different. Today Jennifer talks of all things...among them, with the greatest interest, her sons Robert Jr., six and Michael, five.
"I want the boys to develop by themselves," she says, "be what they want to be, not be influenced by the fact that their father is a star and their mother also. I want them to discover the beauty in life - and in living - that makes life a good thing."
She is, of course, on the friendliest terms with Robert Walker. It has been said this is because she wants the children to be on intimate terms with their father. It's much more than that, I'm sure. Jennifer and Bob are essentially good friends with the greatest respect for each other's talents. I have seen them together at parties and the friendship they manifest is not a thing of convenience. It is warm and spontaneous and real. It was when Jennifer played Elizabeth Barrett and bob played Robert Browning in an American Academy production of "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" that they fell in love, you'll remember. And it was when Jennifer was playing the saintly Bernadette that their marriage came to an end.
Speaking of Jennifer's different roles as I have been, I want to pause here to make this prediction...that Jennifer's portrayal of the half-cast Pearl in "Duel In The Sun" - as well as this production itself - will prove to be a very great contribution to motion pictures.
"What are you going to do next?" I asked the new, grown-up Jennifer as we sat together the night of the Selznick dinner.
"I don't know Elsa," she said, "but I hope it will be something as different from anything I've done yet as - well as "Alice in Wonderland." I'd like it to be a comedy, I think..."
"But right now - "Duel In The Sun" was such a terrific job and we worked on it so long, almost a year, I can't think of anything I'd rather do than get in a donkey cart and go off somewhere and hibernate. For weeks and weeks. Lie in the sun, rest, walk along country lanes, climb mountains that don't take themselves too seriously, read..."
In other words, right now Jennifer is, above all, a young woman enjoying the good life she has found together with her maturity.
She'll always be a great actress, of course, and, with painstaking magic, imbue her characters with warm human dimensions. But I'll be surprised if she ever again is an actress above all. Or if, now that she has found herself, she ever again suggests a paradox.
So I say hail and farewell to my paradoxical friend Jennifer Jones, who in a simple, completely unspectacular way has grown up to be a charmingly definite young woman.
And of this I'm certain. Wherever Jennifer goes personally, whatever she does professionally - I paraphrase the nursery rhyme from which it is said she took her now famous name - "We'll go to see Miss Jenny O. Jones, Miss Jenny O Jones..."
