you wish,’ she answered, indifferently. ‘But why is it so important? What’s so special about it?’ ‘I would guess,’ said our friend, ‘that Rosamond must have seen it at an impressionable age, and it marked her for life.’ To which I replied: ‘Not exactly. I was at an impressionable age, yes, but not when I saw it. I’m talking about the time I was in it.’
Two days after this conversation, he sent me a photograph – a lobby card from the film, which he had retrieved from his personal collection. This is the photograph I have in front of me now. I shall describe it to you in a moment. But first of all I shall have to give you some background.
It was in a letter, written in June 1949, that Beatrix told me the astonishing news: a film crew was coming to Much Wenlock. A real film crew, making a real feature film for the cinemas, with real British and American stars. Yes – American! Because the star of the film – and this was the really unbelievable thing, for me – was going to be Jennifer Jones, who only a couple of years earlier had reduced me to a state of slack-jawed astonishment with her performance in some Western (the title will come back to me shortly) in which she played opposite Gregory Peck and flaunted a brazen, swaggering sexual energy, the like of which I had never seen or imagined before. Ah, yes, I remember now – it was called Duel in the Sun, and I think my parents regretted taking me to see it from the moment the credits rolled. We saw it at the old Gaumont cinema in Birmingham, and I suppose I would have been about thirteen or fourteen years old. My first real crush, it would be true to say, was on Jennifer Jones. Gregory Peck left me completely cold. Afterwards I used some of my pocket money to buy a copy of Picturegoer magazine which contained an article about the film. It made great play of the fact that Miss Jones (or Mrs David O. Selznick, as she had become by then) had first won fame playing a nun or some such virginal role, and yet now here she was portraying a sleazy tramp of the Old West, and the headline on the article was ‘From Saint to Sinner in Under Two Years!’ Funny how some things stick in the memory. Alongside the article were some pictures of Jennifer Jones in her provocative lacy costumes, her dense black hair centre-parted, bee-stung lips frozen into a pout and vixen eyes always looking slightly aslant, away from the camera. Of course I cut the pictures out and slept with them tucked furtively under my pillow, but I never told anybody about my obsession – not even Beatrix, when I wrote her one of my weekly, gushing confessional letters. I felt somehow ashamed, embarrassed by the intensity of it. And at the back of my mind, I’m sure, was the guilty suspicion that it should have been Gregory Peck I was getting excited about.
Two years later – with the pictures still in my possession, crumpled and faded, although no longer kept under my pillow – Beatrix’s letter arrived, and I had to read it through many times before it made any sense to me. You have to consider my situation, Imogen: a lonely girl living in suburban Birmingham, with few close schoolfriends, practically an only child (for Sylvia, although still living with us, was now twenty-five years old and did not feel like a sister at all); it’s hard to conceive of anything more remote from the world that these pictures evoked. Sensuality; glamour; the unimaginable lives lived by those godlike figures thousands of miles away in Hollywood. The idea that this world might suddenly be within reach, its crazy, unpredictable orbit bringing it, unbelievably, to rest for a few weeks in Much Wenlock of all places, was more than my childish brain could take in at first. I remember running downstairs after I had read the letter for the third or fourth time and screaming something at my mother, some hysterical, babbling attempt at conveying Beatrix’s news, and being met with an incredulous dismissal: ‘Oh,
Two days after this conversation, he sent me a photograph – a lobby card from the film, which he had retrieved from his personal collection. This is the photograph I have in front of me now. I shall describe it to you in a moment. But first of all I shall have to give you some background.
It was in a letter, written in June 1949, that Beatrix told me the astonishing news: a film crew was coming to Much Wenlock. A real film crew, making a real feature film for the cinemas, with real British and American stars. Yes – American! Because the star of the film – and this was the really unbelievable thing, for me – was going to be Jennifer Jones, who only a couple of years earlier had reduced me to a state of slack-jawed astonishment with her performance in some Western (the title will come back to me shortly) in which she played opposite Gregory Peck and flaunted a brazen, swaggering sexual energy, the like of which I had never seen or imagined before. Ah, yes, I remember now – it was called Duel in the Sun, and I think my parents regretted taking me to see it from the moment the credits rolled. We saw it at the old Gaumont cinema in Birmingham, and I suppose I would have been about thirteen or fourteen years old. My first real crush, it would be true to say, was on Jennifer Jones. Gregory Peck left me completely cold. Afterwards I used some of my pocket money to buy a copy of Picturegoer magazine which contained an article about the film. It made great play of the fact that Miss Jones (or Mrs David O. Selznick, as she had become by then) had first won fame playing a nun or some such virginal role, and yet now here she was portraying a sleazy tramp of the Old West, and the headline on the article was ‘From Saint to Sinner in Under Two Years!’ Funny how some things stick in the memory. Alongside the article were some pictures of Jennifer Jones in her provocative lacy costumes, her dense black hair centre-parted, bee-stung lips frozen into a pout and vixen eyes always looking slightly aslant, away from the camera. Of course I cut the pictures out and slept with them tucked furtively under my pillow, but I never told anybody about my obsession – not even Beatrix, when I wrote her one of my weekly, gushing confessional letters. I felt somehow ashamed, embarrassed by the intensity of it. And at the back of my mind, I’m sure, was the guilty suspicion that it should have been Gregory Peck I was getting excited about.
Two years later – with the pictures still in my possession, crumpled and faded, although no longer kept under my pillow – Beatrix’s letter arrived, and I had to read it through many times before it made any sense to me. You have to consider my situation, Imogen: a lonely girl living in suburban Birmingham, with few close schoolfriends, practically an only child (for Sylvia, although still living with us, was now twenty-five years old and did not feel like a sister at all); it’s hard to conceive of anything more remote from the world that these pictures evoked. Sensuality; glamour; the unimaginable lives lived by those godlike figures thousands of miles away in Hollywood. The idea that this world might suddenly be within reach, its crazy, unpredictable orbit bringing it, unbelievably, to rest for a few weeks in Much Wenlock of all places, was more than my childish brain could take in at first. I remember running downstairs after I had read the letter for the third or fourth time and screaming something at my mother, some hysterical, babbling attempt at conveying Beatrix’s news, and being met with an incredulous dismissal: ‘Oh,
Similar Books
