Oscar winning actress Jennifer Jones dies

   LOS ANGELES — legendary actress Jennifer Jones, famous for her portrayal of a young nun in “The Song of Bernadette,” and her signature jet black hair, died on Thursday. Dec 17. She was 90.The actress was nominated five times for the Academy Awards five times, winning in 1943 for “Bernadette.”   Jones was the widow of the wealthy entrepreneur Norton Simon  (known as Jennifer Jones Simon after marrying). She served as the chair of his Norton Simon museum’s board of directors after his death. She initiated the museum’s celebrated gallery renovation by architect Frank Gehry and spearheaded the development of its public programming and outreach initiatives. Jones died at her home in Malibu of natural causes, told museum spokeswoman Leslie Denk, to Brave New Hollywood. Among her most notable roles were the determined vixen against rebel cowboy Gregory Peck in “Duel in the Sun,” and the Eurasian doctor who falls for Korean War correspondent William Holden in “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” Jones was the widow of the wealthy entrepreneur Norton Simon  (becoming  Jennifer Jones Simon after marrying). She served as the chair of his Norton Simon museum’s board of directors after his death. She initiated the museum’s celebrated gallery renovation by architect Frank Gehry and spearheaded the development of its public programming and outreach initiatives. Jones died at her home in Malibu of natural causes, told museum spokeswoman Leslie Denk, to Brave New Hollywood.

Among her most notable roles were the determined vixen against rebel cowboy Gregory Peck in “Duel in the Sun,” and the Eurasian doctor who falls for Korean War correspondent William Holden in “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” Despite her strong screen persona, Jones was a shy in real life. She rarely gave interviews, explaining to a reporter in 1957: “Most interviewers probe and pry into your personal life, and I just don’t like it. I respect everyone’s right to privacy, and I feel mine should be respected, too.”  Born Phylis Isley on March 2, 1919, in Tulsa, Okla., to parents who operated a touring stock company that presented melodramas in tent theaters in the Southwest, young Phylis  began doing roles in their plays at the age of 6. After graduating from a Catholic high school, she toured with another stock company, and studied drama at Northwestern University for a year. She convinced her father to support her for a year at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. In New York, she met and then married fellow student actor Robert Walker in 1939 and they spent their honeymoon traveling to Hollywood. They could find only bit roles in small pictures, she in a western, “New Frontier,” and a serial, “Dick Tracy’s G-Men.” The pair retreated to New York before Jones was selected for the prize role in “The Song of Bernadette” about a French peasant girl who claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes in 1858.  Her performance and the Oscar for best actress helped make her one of Hollywood’s most popular leading ladies.  Among her other films were “Love Letters” (with Joseph Cotten), “We Were Strangers” (with John Garfield), “Madame Bovary” (with Louis Jourdan) and “A Farewell to Arms” (with Rock Hudson). She received a supporting actress Oscar nomination for “Since You Went Away,” and lead actress nominations for “Love Letters,” “Duel in the Sun” and “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” Her last film under her boss and later on husband David O. Selznick’s guidance came in 1962 with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night,” and was a box office failure. After Selznick’s death in 1965, she went to England to film “The Idol.” she made only two more film appearances, in 1969’s “Angel, Angel, Down We Go” and 1974’s “The Towering Inferno.”  On a typical Southern California day in 1967, a sheriff’s deputy found Jones in the surf at Malibu. She was not breathing but still had a heartbeat. The sheriff was able to revive her. She had earlier called her physician to say she was taking pills, and it appeared she had fallen from a cliff into the ocean. After retiring from acting after “The Towering Inferno,” Jones avoided the limelight as much as possible.  She is survived by her son, Robert, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. 

To visit the Norton Simon Museum: http://www.nortonsimon.org/