TCM Schedule for Thursday, January 7 -- Memorial Tribute -- Jennifer Jones

[Staph]

Today's a tribute to the late, great Jennifer Jones. (I'm having communications problems, so I won't be able to include the usual details. Sorry!) Enjoy!


6:00am -- Finishing School (1934)
A boarding-school girl has to cope with family problems and puppy love.
Cast: Frances Dee, Billie Burke, Ginger Rogers, Bruce Cabot
Dir: Wanda Tuchock
BW-73 mins, TV-PG


7:15am -- Registered Nurse (1934)
After her husband goes mad, a nurse fights off the advances of two amorous doctors.
Cast: Bebe Daniels, Lyle Talbot, John Halliday, Irene Franklin
Dir: Robert Florey
BW-62 mins, TV-G


8:30am -- Two Alone (1934)
An orphan sent to work on a farm gets herself pregnant.
Cast: Jean Parker, Tom Brown, ZaSu Pitts, Arthur Byron
Dir: Elliott Nugent
BW-76 mins, TV-G


10:00am -- The Sisters (1938)
Three western girls make unhappy marriages at the turn of the century.
Cast: Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Anita Louise, Ian Hunter
Dir: Anatole Litvak
BW-99 mins, TV-PG


11:45am -- Mr. Soft Touch (1949)
After being betrayed, a gangster hangs out in a settlement house while seeking revenge.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, John Ireland, Beulah Bondi
Dir: Gordon Douglas
BW-93 mins, TV-G


1:30pm -- The Baron Of Arizona (1950)
A swindler forges documents to make himself the owner of an entire state.
Cast: Vincent Price, Ellen Drew, Vladimir Sokoloff, Beulah Bondi
Dir: Samuel Fuller
BW-97 mins, TV-PG


3:15pm -- Back From Eternity (1956)
When an airliner crashes in the jungle, the repaired plane can only hold five of the survivors.
Cast: Robert Ryan, Anita Ekberg, Rod Steiger, Phyllis Kirk
Dir: John Farrow
BW-97 mins, TV-PG


5:00pm -- The Unholy Wife (1957)
An ambitious beauty marries a vintner, then falls for one of his workers.
Cast: Diana Dors, Rod Steiger, Tom Tryon, Beulah Bondi
Dir: John Farrow
C-94 mins, TV-PG


6:45pm -- Indiscretion Of An American Wife (1954)
An American woman tries to break it off with her Italian lover.
Cast: Jennifer Jones, Montgomery Clift, Gino Cervi, Dick Beymer
Dir: Vittorio De Sica
BW-63 mins, TV-PG


What's On Tonight: TCM MEMORIAL TRIBUTE: JENNIFER JONES


8:00pm -- Duel In The Sun (1946)
A fiery half-breed comes between a rancher's good and evil sons.
Cast: Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Lionel Barrymore
Dir: King Vidor
C-144 mins, TV-14


10:30pm -- Beat The Devil (1954)
A group of con artists stake their claim on a bogus uranium mine.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley
Dir: John Huston
BW-90 mins, TV-PG


12:15am -- Madame Bovary (1949)
A romantic country girl sacrifices her marriage when she thinks she's found true love.
Cast: Jennifer Jones, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, Christopher Kent
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
BW-114 mins, TV-PG


2:15am -- Indiscretion Of An American Wife (1954)
An American woman tries to break it off with her Italian lover.
Cast: Jennifer Jones, Montgomery Clift, Gino Cervi, Dick Beymer
Dir: Vittorio De Sica
BW-63 mins, TV-PG


3:30am -- Brief Encounter (1945)
Two married strangers meet in a train station and fall in love.
Cast: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Cyril Raymond
Dir: David Lean
BW-86 mins, TV-PG

[Staph]

1. Jennifer Jones Profile

With her dark, oblique beauty and capacity for emotional fervor, Jennifer Jones became a leading star of the 1940s and '50s. An actress of determined versatility, she played everything from spiritual innocents to tempestuous vixens, quivering neurotics to assured professional women.

Born in Tulsa, Okla., in 1919, Jones was trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She married fellow actor Robert Walker in 1939, and the two headed for Hollywood. After minor film appearances under her real name, Phyllis Isley, Jones came under the powerful influence of producer David O. Selznick, who groomed her for stardom. She made an indelible impression with her impassioned performance in her first major movie role, that of Bernadette in The Song of Bernadette (1943), which brought her a Best Actress Oscar®.

Jones was again nominated for Oscars® for Since You Went Away (1944, in the supporting category); Duel in the Sun (1946), Selznick's grandiose Western, in which she broke away from her usual screen stereotype for the first time playing a fiery half-breed who shares a lustful affair with Gregory Peck; Portrait of Jennie (1948), a love story with supernatural overtones; and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), in which she gives a lovely, self-assured performance as Han Suyin, the Eurasian doctor who falls for an American (William Holden).

Jones, who divorced Walker in 1945 and married Selznick in 1949, continued to pick off plum roles in such films as Madame Bovary (1949), Carrie (1952), Ruby Gentry (1952), Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957), A Farewell to Arms (1957) and Tender Is the Night (1962). Perhaps her most offbeat effort was Beat the Devil (1953), a satirical adventure in which she dons a blonde wig to play a seemingly respectable Englishwoman with secrets up her sleeve. In this deadpan comedy, which went unappreciated in its day but later became a cult favorite, Jones held her own against leading man Humphrey Bogart and proved she could be a first rate farceur.

After Selznick's death in 1965, Jones' career became erratic, with leads in a couple of minor films and a supporting role in one last big-budget production, The Towering Inferno (1974), which brought her a Golden Globe nomination. She was remarried, to businessman-philanthropist Norton Simon, and again widowed. She has avoided the limelight except for her work with charity and the Norton Simon Museum, her late husband's art museum in Pasadena, Calif.

by Roger Fristoe

* Films in Bold Type air on 1/7