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March 3, 2016
There's No People Like Show People....
Stephen Sondheim remembers seeing her in Ravello during the shooting of John Huston’s madcap movie Beat the Devil. ‘I recall her sitting at an umbrella table in the square,’ Sondheim says, ‘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.’ At home, she never appeared before 6 p.m. This was the only time of day she ever saw her daughter, the child of her marriage to Selznick. This was a world in which parents who spent their afternoons in psychoanalysis spent their evenings berating their children. Selznick was addicted to Benzedrine; Jones tried to drown herself; one of her sons shot himself; and her daughter, Mary Jennifer, jumped off a building at the age of 22. ‘She was a very pretty girl but not movie star pretty,’ her brother says. ‘I think there was some disappointment with it. She magnified it to the point where she got very self-destructive. She couldn’t handle being young and almost beautiful.’ - - · LRB
Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 3, 2016 8:15 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
That's a shitty picture of her and Beat the Devil sucked great blue whales grandfather, cept where the car went over.
I always thought she was fine as bone china.
The author thrives on gossip. Deserves a punch in the face.
Posted by: ghostsniper ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://americandigest.org/sidelines/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 3, 2016 1:14 PM
'Beat the Devil' is a great offbeat comedy; it was Nabokov's favorite film. I like it, too. (I also loved 'Mortdecai', which flopped last year. If you like understated British comedies, see it.)
Jones was a pretty good actress but, alas, she was not beautiful on camera. Some non-photogenic women are incredible-looking in person. I always wondered about Jones and wondered how she ever made it so far. She seemed to be mentally frail.
Posted by: ahem at March 3, 2016 2:24 PM