HAPPY JENNIFER JONES CENTENNIAL!
Paolo wasn't kidding when he said that the Centennial of Jennifer Jones (that's today!) would be a challenge. Though we usually have some buy-in for centennials literally no one else on Team TFE volunteered for this one so it'll be short. But I'll do one or two pictures. i'm annoyed that I can't do Duel in the Sun (1946), which I've never seen, but I can't find it to stream. Actually easy availability is how I came up with your choices. So vote and tell me which of these films you most want to discuss:
But before we get there, and overview of her career.
And the eternal question: How long can any given star can stay at 'the top' from Old Hollywood to the right now...
Jennifer Jones had a meteoric rise in Hollywood and stayed on the A list for about 12 years (in JJ's case that's roughly from The Song of Bernadette, for which she won Best Actress, through her last Oscar nomination in 'yellowface' in the Eurasian romantic drama Love is a Many-Splendored Thing).
Despite radical changes in Hollywood over the past 75 years, has the expiration date on superstardom changed all that much? One might argue no. This is highly subjective of course depending on how you view 'time at the top' but the biggest stars seem to get about 10 years, give or take a few years depending on their luck, their choices, and their ages when they break through to worldwide fandom. Though sometimes after a comeback they reign again. (Consider some example from Jones's era to the now: Taylor: 50-67; Wood: 55-65; Andrews: 64-70; Dunaway: 67-81; Fonda: 68-81; Keaton: 74-87; Spacek: 76-86; Field: 77-89; Meryl: 78-90/06-14; Hawn: 80-92; Kathleen 84-91; Michelle: 87-00; Sarandon: 88-96; Jodie: 88-97; Julia: 89-01; Sandra: 94-02; Michelle: 87-00; Sarandon: 88-96; Jodie: 88-97; Stone: 92-96; Bassett: 93-98; Bullock: 94-02/09-13; Kidman: 95-05; Berry: 98-04; Angelina: 99-09; Reese: 01-10; Hathaway: 04-12; Lawrence: 10-???). The lucky or committed ones get long careers thereafter though they are never quite again THE stars of the day if you know what I mean -- except in highly unusual circumstances. You could argue that it's better never to be right at the top and just fly perpetually under that peak as one of the stars of an era but not perhaps a definitive one. One could argue that Cate Blanchett and Saoirse Ronan are two examples of the kind of stars who might never peak because are they ever really the stars of a moment? They can just go on being well-received with lots of mini-peaks! But again, this is highly highly subjective. It's just a meaty discussion topic for we, the actressexuals.
A quick run through of Jennifer Jones career if you're unfamiliar...
Dick Tracy's G-Men. Jennifer Jones went by "Phyllis Isley" (her real name) then
1919 - Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on this very day 100 years ago.
1939-1942 Marries fellow actor Robert Walker (who plays her doomed soldier lover in Since You Went Away and had his most enduring role right before his death in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train) and debuts in pictures as "Phyllis Isley". Meets David O. Selznick to audition for Gone With the Wind (loses the part of course - we all know who played Scarlett). She has two children with Walker, one of whom becomes an actor Robert Walker Jr
A Best Actress winner by the age of 25 for "Song of Bernadette"
1943 The Song of Bernadette makes her a superstar and functions also as a film debut, if you will, since she wasn't really noticed before it and also working under a different name. Now she is JENNIFER JONES, an instant star.
1944-1946 The Academy becomes obsessed (as they sometimes do - hi, Amy Adams) and gives her three more consecutive Oscar nominations (Since You Went Away, Love Letters, and Duel in the Sun). She divorces Walker having begun an affair with movie mogul David O. Selznick
1947-1954 Jones marries Selznick while churning out more pictures, most notably Madame Bovary, Ruby Gentry, Beat the Devil, and Indiscretions of an American Housewife.
1955 It's arguably the end of her reign as an A lister with one last hit, the interracial romance Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) in which she played a half-Asian woman (white stars playing other ethnicites being the norm back in Old Hollywood... and Jones was nominated both times she did this - see also: Duel in the Sun).
From left to right: Song of Bernadette, Duel in the Sun, Carrie, Beat the Devil, Indiscretions, Love is..., Cult of the Damned, and The Towering Inferno
1956-1965 Works intermittently but without as much success until her husband Selznick's death after which she basically retires.
1966-1974 She makes only three more pictures: The Idol, Cult of the Damned (also known as "Angel Angel Down We Go") and The Towering Inferno, the all-star disaster picture that gives her one final hurrah with a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress at 55 years of age but the Academy, long since over their crush, passes her by.
2009 Dies at age 90, after 35 years outside the spotlight, which is surely one of the reasons she's less well known today than other stars of her stature from Old Hollywood.