Isabel Jewell

Isabel Jewell (July 19, 1907 – April 5, 1972) was an American actress born in Shoshoni, Wyoming, to Emory Lee Jewell, a prominent doctor and medical researcher, and Livia A. Willoughby Jewell. She received her education at St. Mary's Academy in Minnesota and Hamilton College in Kentucky before pursuing a career in performance.

Jewell built her early stage experience through years in theatre stock companies, including an 87-week engagement in Lincoln, Nebraska. She made her Broadway debut in Up Pops the Devil in 1930, and earned strong critical notices for her work in Blessed Event in 1932. Her Broadway career continued through 1942 and included an appearance in Johnny 2 X 4.

Her stage work in Blessed Event led directly to her film debut in the 1932 screen adaptation of the same production, with Warner Brothers having brought her to Hollywood. Throughout the early 1930s she accumulated supporting roles across a range of films, frequently cast as gangsters' companions in pictures such as Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and Marked Woman (1937). She drew particular attention for playing against type as a seamstress condemned to the guillotine alongside Ronald Colman in A Tale of Two Cities (1935), and later reunited with Colman in Lost Horizon, portraying Gloria, a terminally ill prostitute. Additional notable film credits from this period include Gone with the Wind (1939), in which she played Emmy Slattery, Northwest Passage (1940), and High Sierra (1941).

By the late 1940s, Jewell's screen roles had diminished in prominence, with some appearances going uncredited, including her work in The Snake Pit. She transitioned to radio drama during the 1950s, appearing in productions such as This Is Your FBI. In February 1965, she appeared in the Gunsmoke episode "Circus Trick," playing Madame Ahr, a member of a bank-robbing circus troupe. In 1972, she appeared opposite Edie Sedgwick in Ciao! Manhattan, and her final film credit was Sweet Kill (1973), a B movie starring Tab Hunter that marked the directorial debut of Curtis Hanson.

In her personal life, Jewell's first marriage, to Lovell "Cowboy" Underwood at age 19, was not publicly known during her lifetime. In 1936 she became engaged to actor Owen Crump, whom she married in 1939; the couple divorced in 1941. That same year she married actor Paul Marion, then serving as a private in the United States Army. They separated in 1943 and divorced on May 12, 1944. During the mid to late 1930s, Jewell was also frequently seen at nightclubs with actor William Hopper.

In 1960, Jewell received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to motion pictures, located at 1560 Vine Street. She died in Los Angeles on April 5, 1972, at the age of 64, from a barbiturate overdose. Her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.