She has the look, the life and the Oscar, yet we hardly knew her

May 09, 2008 Few women who've forged a top-tier career in the motion picture business have led as unexplained, mysterious and fascinating a life as Academy Award winner Jennifer Jones, best known to many today for her work as a lusty screen sinner in the epic Western "Duel in the Sun," a radiant saint in her Oscar-winning "The Song of Bernadette" and as a hilariously exasperating liar in John Huston's black comedy "Beat the Devil." Besides being an extremely beautiful woman with at times an unusually high intensity lurking behind her eyes, she carved out her career in a way no other major Hollywood actress did during the so-called Golden Era -- the one exception being Garbo. On Friday, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will make up for that oversight with the launch at the Walter Reade Theater of a retrospective involving 14 of Jones' films, including the aforementioned "Duel," "Bernadette" and "Devil" along with other essentials "Madame Bovary," "Portrait of Jennie," "Ruby Gentry" and "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing."

Subscribe to the Hollywood Reporter and see the entertainment industry from its best angle: the inside looking out. Complete access to real-time news and exclusive analysis that goes behind the scenes from film to television, home video to digital media.

   Subscribe now.