Jennifer Jones certainly did not get type cast in her screen roles.As a complete contrast to her normal saintly image (Duel in the Sun excepted) she plays Ruby Gentry,a Sth.Carolina girl from the wrong side of the tracks who gets emotionally involved with Boake Tackman (Chalton Heston) her sometime aristocratic boyfriend who is promised (more as a property contract) to Tracy who comes from another good Sth.Carolina family.Ruby has a religous zealot brother who constantly harps on about "doom and gloom" if his sister carry's on her liaison with Boake.When Ruby realises she will not become Mrs Tackman she agrees to marry Jim Gentry -a working class local boy made good, played by Karl Malden, (funny how he always looks the same age in all his films no matter when they were filmed!).After a boating accident Jim dies and Ruby "cops the lot" arousing suspicion in the local town folk who knew Jim Gentry.There is nothing more scary than a woman scorned and when Boke rejects Ruby's last offer of money for marriage, she goes ballistic and purposely ruins his carefully cultivated fields he has reclaimed at great expense from nature but I will not divulge the ending.The poor old doctor does not press his suite enough but Ruby does not fancy him anyway. An interesting new role for JJ who certainly looks "the biz" in her tight fitting jeans!
Review of Ruby Gentry
