For her performance Jones received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination, but lost out to Ethel Barrymore for None But the Lonely Heart (1944). As for her career, Jones took on the supporting role of Jane Hilton, a headstrong teenage girl who grows up fast when her fiance is killed in action during WWII, in Since You Went Away (1944). They began an affair and eventually she left her husband and two sons for the producer, which ultimately led Walker to an untimely death, attributed to alcohol and drug abuse instigated due to their separation. Now, considered a 'true' star, Jones' career was marked out and moulded for her by Selznick, who would become the love of her life. For her moving portrayal of the sickly teenager who sees a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes and devotes her life to her by becoming a nun, Jones won the Academy Award for best actress in a leading role on 2 March 1944 (coincidentally her 25th birthday) beating out stiff competition such as Ingrid Bergman (who later became a close friend of hers), Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine and Jean Arthur. In short order, Phyllis was 'renamed' to the alliterative Jennifer Jones, and was cast over thousands of other hopefuls in the role of Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette (1943).

Although she didn't get that particular part (which was for the iconic character, Scarlett O'Hara, which would ultimately go to Vivien Leigh, in one of the most famous castings in Hollywood's history), Phyllis was given a contract with Selznick studios. Initially, Phyllis thought the audition went terribly and stormed out of the studios in tears, only to be chased by Selznick, who assured her she had been fine. Selznick, and after that, her career began to take shape. In a last-ditch attempt to pursue her dream, Phyllis traveled to Selznick studios for a reading which would ultimately change her life. Though their plans (initially) fell through, Phyllis began working as a model sporting mainly hats, gloves and jewelry, and also occasionally found some work on local radio stations, where she provided the voice for various characters in radio programmes, along with her husband. They soon married, and moved to Chicago in order to fulfill their dreams of becoming film stars. As a young aspiring actress, she met and fell for young, handsome, aspiring actor Robert Walker.

One of the world's most underrated Academy Award-winning actresses, Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley on 2 March 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Flora Mae (Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley, who ran a travelling stage show.

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