Portrait of Jennifer

The real-life characters in this tale are Jones herself, who won the Academy Award for her first major movie, The Song of Bernadette (and received four subsequent Oscar nominations); David O. Selznick, the fabled producer of Gone With the Wind, who fell in love with Jones, put her under contract, and spent the rest of his life reshaping her persona and career in an effort to make her an even bigger star (Jennifer's directors included John Huston, William Wyler, Ernst Lubitsch, King Vidor, Vincente Minnelli, and Michael Powell); Robert Walker, Jones's first husband, himself a successful actor, who felt betrayed by his wife and who - bitter, broken, and an alcoholic - died under mysterious circumstances in 1951 (some claim it was murder); and Norton Simon, her last husband, a billionaire businessman/art collector, who introduced Jennifer to a world of culture and high society. After Selznick's death and her marriage to Simon (the couple shared an intense interest in psychoanalysis), Jones, after three decades, finally gave up her screen career (Simon later optioned Terms of Endearment as a potential comeback vehicle for her). Jennifer's tumultuous personal life was to suffer a near-fatal blow when one of her three adult children committed suicide.