Jennifer Jones, who achieved Hollywood stardom in "The Song of Bernadette" and other films of the 1940s and '50s while gaining almost as much attention for a tumultuous personal life, died Thursday, December 17, 2009 at her home in Malibu, California. She was 90.
She was also known for a life that included bouts of emotional instability; a second marriage to the Svengali-like David O. Selznick, the producer of "Gone With the Wind"; the suicide of their daughter; and a later marriage to another larger-than-life figure, the art collector Norton Simon.
In 1967, Jones made headlines when she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and was discovered, near death, lying in the surf at Malibu. In 1976, Jones's 21-year-old daughter, Mary Jennifer Selznick, jumped to her death from a building in West Los Angeles.
(Adapted from The Times's obituary for Jennifer Jones, Dec. 17, 2009, which inspired, in part, "Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures.") The New York Times Magazine, Pages 36-37, Sept. 30, 2012.
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