Isabel Jewell

Isabel Jewell (July 19, 1907 – April 5, 1972) was an American actress, who rose to prominence in the 1930s and early 1940s. Some of her more famous films were Ceiling Zero, Marked Woman, A Tale of Two Cities, Lost Horizon, and Gone with the Wind.

Born in Shoshoni, Wyoming on July 19, 1907, Jewell was the daughter of Emory Lee Jewell and Livia A. Willoughby Jewell. Her father was "a prominent...doctor and medical researcher." She was educated at St. Mary's Academy in Minnesota and at Hamilton College in Kentucky.

After years in theatre stock companies, including an 87-week stint in Lincoln, Nebraska, she got a part on Broadway in Up Pops the Devil (1930). She received glowing critical reviews for Blessed Event (1932) as well.

Jewell's film debut came in Blessed Event (1932) and was followed by supporting roles in other pre-Code classics like Jean Harlow's Bombshell (1933) and Design for Living (1933) from Ernst Lubitsch. She had been brought to Hollywood by Warner Brothers for the film version of Up Pops the Devil (1931). Jewell gained other supporting roles, appearing in a variety of films in the early 1930s. She played stereotypical gangsters' women in such films as Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and Marked Woman (1937). She was well-received playing against type as the seamstress sentenced to death on the guillotine with Sydney Carton (Ronald Colman) in A Tale of Two Cities (1935). She later co-starred with Colman in Lost Horizon as Gloria, the terminally-ill prostitute. Her most significant role was Sally Bates in She Had to Choose. Other films included Gone with the Wind (1939) (in the role of "that white trash, Emmy Slattery"), Northwest Passage (1940), High Sierra (1941), and in two psychological horror films from producer Val Lewton, The Leopard Man (1943) and The Seventh Victim (1943).

Jewel had a memorable supporting role as Laury Palmer in the film noir Born to Kill (1947), but by the end of the 1940s, her roles had reduced in significance to the degree that her performances often were uncredited, e.g. The Snake Pit. She performed in radio dramas in the 1950s, including This Is Your FBI.

In the 1950s and 60s, Jewell took occasional roles on television. In February 1965, she played Madame Ahr, a member of a bank-robbing circus troupe, in an episode of Gunsmoke entitled "Circus Trick."

In 1972, Jewell appeared opposite Edie Sedgwick in the film Ciao! Manhattan. Her final film was the B movie Sweet Kill (1973) starring Tab Hunter, the directorial debut of Curtis Hanson.

Jewell's first marriage (which "was not generally known during Jewell's lifetime...[nor] mentioned in the press during her heyday in American films") occurred when she wed Lovell "Cowboy" Underwood when she was 19. In the mid to late 1930s, Jewell was seen at nightclubs with actor William Hopper. In 1936, she was engaged to actor Owen Crump, marrying in 1939 and divorcing in 1941.^{[unreliable source?]} In 1941, Jewell married actor Paul Marion, who was then a private in the United States Army. They separated in 1943, and were divorced on May 12, 1944.