by Jean Stein
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STEPHEN SONDHEIM: I was traveling in Europe for the first time, and John Huston took pity on me and gave me the job of clapper boy on Beat the Devil. I was unpaid and thrilled with the experience, but I had to leave two weeks into the shooting when my money ran out. I knew Jennifer Jones not at all, but I do recall her sitting at an umbrella table in the square of Ravello, rehearsing a scene with Edward Underdown, who played her husband. Above the surface of the table she was bantering blithely with him, but below it she was tearing her napkin into shreds. This was not in the script.
LETTER FROM JENNIFER JONES TO DAVID SELZNICK, UNDATED:
Darling,
It was stupid of me to make that fuss on the telephone and I’m terribly ashamed and sorry especially after all you’ve been through. It must have been dreadfully unpleasant all that business and certainly this is a poor time for Mrs. Jones to begin making demands but when I didn’t hear from you I would only think you must have suddenly discovered your nurse was divine or a new secretary or maybe that fourth at Lenore’s for canasta. Anyway I was wild with jealousy when I wasn’t wild with rage at John of all of the stupidities of this silly way of making a picture. Your predictions have all come true—he just keeps ahead by minutes and in my case there is no question of performance—my job is solely to remember lines and positions rattle them off as quickly as possible never mind the meaning etc. etc. All the time I think it must be my fault, but really I know it isn’t. John has just decided to make it a three ring circus with an assortment of types behaving in what he hopes is an untypical way but what seems to me only a sordid and completely unrelated one to the other way. Certainly my character has no reality of any kind and whether she is comedy, tragedy, or something “bourgeois” I haven’t a notion. Anyway in the last scene, still unwritten, (as is tomorrow’s scene, of course) John said that “they” should feel sorry for her, this apropos of costume, but this is a confusing clue because unless I appear in rags and tatters there has been nothing in the script so far to indicate that she is anything but a silly idiot and how I am to attract audience sympathy of any sort is a source of great bewilderment to me. Surely they will feel as I do at this point, that she needs a great solid kick on the bottom. However lest I sound like another Norma Shearer I hasten to add my complaints are not because she is definitely an unsympathetic character but because at least to me she is completely un-understandable. I don’t know what or how to play and John has given for all practical purpose no help whatsoever. There was one horrible night, a nightmare of nightmares which shall remain in my memory the rest of my days. It was a scene at the dock before boarding the boat with Dannreuther. To be shot at night. I had received the scene the night before. Carefully studied it…in Positano where we had gone with the boys the day before. I arrived home in Ravello the afternoon before the night’s shooting to be greeted with an almost entirely new scene which I quickly learned—this was at three o’clock. At six o’clock we left for Salerno where the scene was to be done, as I stepped into the car another scene was handed to me, meaning changed—some lines from the first version, some from the second which I had just learned and then great long additional new ones. It was dark and I couldn’t study until we got to Salerno but I thought oh well, it’s a long scene, it was quite long, there will be several angles, it will be broken up and even with accent problems I shall be all right. But when we arrived John with his fetish for one angle, one take, etc. had arranged to do it all in one. For the first time in my life, David, I couldn’t remember the lines, I blew and blew and blew until 4:30 in the morning. About 2:00 I said, John, please let’s just let this be a rehearsal tonight or break it up, John. I can’t do it, I’m exhausted, the lines are all confused, I need time to study the scene properly, please don’t humiliate me anymore in front of the crew and other actors. Gina and Morley and Peter and all the others were kept there all night because they walked through the shot in the beginning with no lines and this was most distressing to me. His answer was, forget the strain you are under and act, remember you are paid to act. Said of course with a grim smile and what passes for Huston charm. At 4:30 completely paralyzed with shame and hating myself for being so stupid, I actually couldn’t remember the lines at all, one time one line would be right and another wrong and then another mixed up in a completely unreasonable way. Oh David it was all my bad dreams in one. Anyway he finally realized the senselessness of carrying on and we left for home. The next night of course I was all right and went right through it even though it had become a great stumbling block but Bogie made a couple of mistakes and because the end of the scene was not really good in that angle, John was forced or rather decided to break it up, which if he had done the evening before there would have been no problem. Anyway, I felt so badly, so ashamed and so much like an old actor who has as you say learned all the parts of which he is capable that I did a thing which you will probably hate me for and which in retrospect I rather regret except that at the time of my absolute dismay I couldn’t help it. I told Bogie that, and this was before the scene the second night when he was just barely nodding good evening to me, that he needn’t worry, I intended to pay for the last night’s work. Of course he said nonsense, don’t worry about it, but I said that was my intention and then when I told Jack Clayton the same thing, he said not to say it to anyone else as some of the Italian partners might take me up….Now I realize it was stupid but actually David I did cost them a whole night’s work and in a way if we didn’t need the money so badly I would like not to lose any salary for this silly picture. Because I know I have done a bad job even though I am not entirely to blame because circumstances have made it impossible, still as John says I do not understand the character and that is my fault. I would really feel much better about it if we didn’t have to accept their money. Perhaps you don’t understand this and perhaps I can explain it more clearly when I see you, the way I feel I mean. I am prepared for you to think I am the idiot child, but believe me David, whether all this is my fault or not, I am still not sure that I’m not the one to blame, at least I know I have mismanaged myself badly throughout the film, I allowed that stupid but not unkind or ungood Bogie, only rather cheap between you and me, to get under my skin and the foul mouthed Peter and the whole ratty group. Anyway scold me or if you think I am too silly and too stupid divorce me but don’t hate me David. I have mixed up everything badly and for the first time in my life am working in a company, almost all of whom think me a great bitch I am certain. But I don’t want to ruin your life and if you think I am awful too, please know that you are free absolutely and completely.
If you still want it you
have all my love,
Jennifer
Credit 4.2
Western Union telegrams from David Selznick to Jennifer Jones, 1953.
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DANIEL SELZNICK: Jennifer felt that her marriage to my father hadn’t, in some people’s eyes, been validated, especially by David’s mother, Florence Sachs Selznick, who was a tough, funny Jewish mother, maternal, quite loving, but very old-fashioned. She pressured David when he first separated from my mother, Irene, for Jennifer: “Are you considering marrying that shiksa? You’re not really going to marry her, are you?” She absolutely adored my mother, and I’m sure that she told him, “Go have your fling, but for Christ’s sakes, go back to your family.” Jennifer was aware that Mother Selznick, which was what everyone called her, disapproved of her. Jennifer was highly sensitive and took it very personally. So one of the reasons she was so keen to get pregnant was to give Mother Selznick a new grandchild, to take the pressure off. I think Jennifer got pregnant twice and had two miscarriages. When Mary Jennifer was born in 1954, I think David’s life became richer and sweeter. He watched her growing up with endless fascination and paternal love.
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DON BACHARDY: Christopher Isherwood and I first met Jennifer in January 1955. We lived over on Mesa Road in Santa Monica, and Truman was staying with David and Jennifer. He came over f
or a long, long lunch and afterward suggested that I drive him to David and Jennifer’s so that I could meet her. They were having work done to the Tower Grove house and were temporarily in Adrian and Janet Gaynor’s house in Bel Air. So we went over, but Jennifer was at Fox making Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing and wasn’t back yet. Truman said, “Well, we’ll wait for her.” So we did. Jennifer came home and wanted us to see her new baby, Mary Jennifer, in her crib.
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BROOKE HAYWARD: You can see how Mary Jennifer might have ended up being disturbed. By the time she was seven, it seemed that Jennifer had lost interest in her.
I’d known Jennifer and David forever. In 1961, within several weeks of my marrying Dennis Hopper, our house in L.A. burned down, and the Selznicks took us in. Jennifer never, ever appeared before six o’clock at night. Almost every night we’d have dinner together up in the main house: David, me, the two children, maybe Dennis, and Mary Jennifer. And every single night, at six o’clock sharp, in would come Jennifer in her jodhpurs and riding boots and with a whip, having just walked up and down the hill in front of the house. And this was the first time she would see her daughter all day. Jennifer would appear for about ten minutes, swishing the whip against her boots, and then she would go upstairs. She never left the house during the day. She had yoga lessons, she had massages, she had her hair done every day, she had clothes brought and taken away. She never left the house until she took that walk at five in the afternoon and came to the children’s table at six to see Mary Jennifer.
Credit 4.3
Mary Jennifer Selznick and Michael Walker.
For years after we lived with David and Jennifer, Dennis and I would be invited to every single event they had at their house on Tower Grove. Dennis was not liked by the older generation in the industry, like Kirk Douglas and so on, who all thought he was a piece of shit. But David didn’t. So we were invited to all their parties, which all of Hollywood attended. David and Jennifer had this bizarre but fabulous dining room and an enclosed porch that was sixty to seventy feet long and twenty to thirty feet wide. Three sides of the room were windows looking out on a beautiful vista, and underneath the windows were beautiful banquettes. The room held twenty or so small tables for no more than four people. On each table sat an absolutely gorgeous etched Italian wine dispenser, one half of which was for red wine and one half for white. The waiters filled and refilled them, and my jaw would drop. They were pouring the most expensive wine you could buy into them, and we were just guzzling it.
David would begin the evening by walking over to someone like me, for instance, and say, “All right, Brooke, you are the hostess of table number three, and here are the three guests that you have to take care of.” And he’d name the people. He would do this to five or so different women. So I and these other women would have to find the three other people in time for dinner, line them up, and say, “Okay, we’re table three.” Then we’d sit down and dinner would begin. Finally Jennifer would appear for the first time, at least two and a half hours after dinner had started, in the most gorgeous evening dress you’ve ever seen. She would walk the length of the room, go to every table, shake hands and kiss everybody, and then disappear. She would come back later in a second dress and then disappear again. She never sat down. We’d have coffee in the living room and she would appear in a third dress. She never wore fewer than three dresses in one evening. And every single year they gave a Fourth of July party, with races in the swimming pool. David would have a whistle around his neck to blow during races. I’ve never had such a good time.
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DENNIS HOPPER: I have a very different take on David O. Selznick from the rest of the world. He was broke by then, which I didn’t know till later. So he had a lot of time and he would spend a lot of it with me. He was a big man who was very funny and very quiet and chose his words very well. And he was very, very amenable. He wasn’t an overpowering figure, you know, but somebody who really wanted to give advice and help me. Maybe he was always like that, maybe that’s just the way he was. But he was really wonderful to me. I didn’t know then what really hard times he was going through. Nobody would give him money anymore to make a movie, but you never saw that. And these were the first serious conversations I had with anybody in his kind of position. He would engage me in conversations: “So you want to make films? What kind of films?” Jennifer gave me a kind of legal pad for Christmas, and I’d write notes and notes. He gave me my first chance to direct. He gave me around five hundred dollars to do a little film of Mary Jennifer. We went down to the beach, as I remember, probably Malibu. It was about twenty minutes, maybe a half hour long, a film of Mary Jennifer at the beach, making a sand castle, playing in the water, somebody reading a story to Mary Jennifer. It was the first time I directed anything.
Credit 4.4
Mary Jennifer Selznick in a home video by Dennis Hopper.
David did everything in his movies. I think he even talked to the actors. At that time the producer was much stronger than a director because the producer directed the directors. The director just shot the movie, didn’t have anything to do with casting or with editing the movie. The producer had all the power. He’s got final cut. He’s gonna cast whomever he wants in the movie. He’s supplying the money. He’s the guy in charge. And the director is just for hire. Everybody’s for hire. And that’s why David usually had two or three directors. He’d just fire them and replace them with somebody else if he didn’t like what he was seeing. That’s it. He had all the power. Period. But it just takes a few mistakes and you’re out of this game. It’s a tough business.
From the time of The Song of Bernadette on, Jennifer was his property. That’s what she was. She was his property. And then at the end she really let him down because she couldn’t fulfill what he had in mind for her as an actress. She just wasn’t that good. But he had made her such a great star that it didn’t matter. That’s reality.
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LAUREN BACALL: I saw that Jennifer did not finally have the kind of marriage with David Selznick that she really expected. David did a lot for her, gave her parts that some directors did not want her for. She wasn’t a great actress. I remember there was a movie that David had bought for Jennifer, Carrie, based on the novel by Theodore Dreiser. I wanted a crack at that part, but I didn’t know how to get it, and Bogie was not the kind of man to suggest that they cast me when they hadn’t thought of it. I thought it was a part that I could really play well. I finally called the director, Willie Wyler, which of course was not a smart thing to do, and I said, “Willie, I don’t know if they’ve cast this or not, but I would really like very much to try for it.” And he said, “I would have loved to have had you in it, but it was decided at the beginning that it was for Jennifer.” David had arranged all of it, so there was nothing Willie could do about it. David was always giving Jennifer the plum parts. Nobody else was getting them. And that’s what she cared about more than anything. She wanted to be the one who was thought of the most, who was appreciated the most. Everything always had to reflect upon her—not her real life, but her. She had David doing everything to promote her, and she loved that. Unfortunately it didn’t last.
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BOB WALKER: There was a very shallow period in Mom’s life where she spent a lot of time turning films down. I really believe David was responsible for that. Because he was always waiting for that great vehicle for her to be reintroduced. Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, I think, was the last really big picture she did. She did a few things afterwards, but they were nothing noteworthy. I know projects came up all the time until people stopped asking, because David kept saying no. Nothing was ever good enough for her, I believe.
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LAUREN BACALL: We were all crazy about Jennifer, but we saw the flaws. We always thought she was a little nutty. She was this beautiful and terrific person. She and David would have these enormous Sunday brunches, and of course David did all of it. Jennifer was busy doing her makeup and combing her hair and c
hoosing her outfit. I will never forget we were sitting around the house that they had rented in Malibu, and she said, “Oh, let’s go for a swim!” She took a board, one of those little kickboards, and started running down to the water’s edge and into the water and laughing. She was kind of playing her part. She was always trying to be noticed, to have people really care about her and be there for her. She wanted to be number one, to always win the award, the kudos.
I don’t think I ever told her how to be a better wife or mother. She went through a period when she was in Switzerland, and with a shrink that she felt she needed, and this is all to do with her needs, her emotional needs, and it was quite obvious that she wasn’t there for her children for a while. It became more than that. Dr. Meier, the guy who was her analyst, also became her lover. When David’s mother died, she was in Switzerland and she did not come back. Knowing how close David was to his mother, you know, I felt that was a bad move. David really needed her and she wasn’t there. So the fact is, she wasn’t a wife. She had the role but refused to play the part.
LETTER FROM JENNIFER JONES TO DAVID SELZNICK, MARCH 1959:
Dearest,
All goes well with me. I am getting terrific food and training from Bircher-Benner and what with Meier, at the end of two months I should come home like a lioness fit for a lion.
I love you and miss you and my little darling so much that I can’t even talk about it and ironically the weather is great, but great now. Sunshine, full moon, the full treatment.
