Jones, Elinor 1930-

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JONES, Elinor 1930-

PERSONAL: Born February 28, 1930, in New York, NY; daughter of Hamilton (a businessman) and Caroline (a homemaker and political activist; maiden name, Norton) Wright; married Tom Jones (in theatre), June 1, 1963 (divorced, December, 1982). Education: Studied at Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena, CA, 1948, and Cleveland Playhouse, Cleveland, OH, 1949-50.

ADDRESSES: Home—7 West 96th St., New York, NY 10025. Agent—Peter Franklin, William Morris, 1350 Sixth Ave., New York, NY.

CAREER: Playwright, producer, and actor. Barter Theatre, Abingdon, VA, attendant, 1951-52; acted in television productions for Kraft Playhouse and Philco Playhouse, New York, NY; acted on Broadway in A Thurber Carnival, 1960; assistant to producers Herman Shumlin, Courtney Burr, and Lewis Allen, and to film director Peter Brooks on Lord of the Flies, 1962; coproducer (with Robert Benton) of short film A Texas Romance, 1909, 1964.

MEMBER: Circle Repertory Theatre, League of Professional Theater Women, Dramatists Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS: First Prize for short subject (with Peter Brooks), San Francisco Film Festival, 1964, for A Texas Romance, 1909.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

Colette, produced in New York, NY, 1970.

A Voice of My Own (produced in New York, NY, 1979), Dramatist Play Service (New York, NY), 1979.

What Would Jeanne Moreau Do?, Samuel French (New York, NY), 1982.

Three Short Plays (includes 6:15 on the 104, If You Were My Wife, I'd Shoot Myself, and Under Control), Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1989.

Out of Season, produced at Caldwell Theatre, Boca Raton, FL, 2002.

Also author of Box Office, produced in New York City.

OTHER

Coauthor of film screenplays Fancy Strut and Norfleet.

SIDELIGHTS: Elinor Jones' career in the dramatic arts has ranged from acting to producing to writing plays. Her husband of nearly twenty years, Tom Jones, is also a theatre person, best known for writing the book and lyrics for the long-running off-Broadway hit The Fantasticks. Jones' work in film production has included working as an assistant to director Peter Brook on the highly regarded Lord of the Flies and as a coproducer, with Robert Benton, for A Texas Romance, 1909, which won first prize at the San Francisco Film Festival for a short subject in 1964.

A number of Jones' plays have been produced and published, and her A Voice of My Own is frequently performed at colleges and universities. One of her major productions, Colette, was first produced in 1970 and starred Zoë Caldwell and Mildred Dunnock. The play is based on the collection of the French writer Colette's autobiographical writings titled This Earthly Paradise, edited and translated into English by Robert Phelps and published in 1966. Colette was born Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette in the French provinces in 1873. She married at age seventeen and moved to Paris with her first husband at the turn of the twentieth century. At that young age she began performing as a mime dancer and, according to a review of the play in Variety, "shocked contemporary audiences by actually being kissed onstage" by a woman. An intriguing and controversial figure throughout her life, Colette was also a prodigious producer of a great variety of writing, including novels, plays, memoirs, essays, and theater critiques.

Colette, is constructed in two acts, which are episodic rather than closely plotted; the Variety reviewer described them as a "series of low-keyed, loosely linked scenes" based on Colette's life. Many of the scenes include Sido, Colette's mother, a warm and creative spirit who was a dominant force throughout her daughter's life. M. Willy, Colette's first husband and the first promoter of her acting and writing, figures prominently as well. The first act is much longer than the second and more diverse; the shorter second act is presented in the form of an interview of the aged Colette by two journalists.

Reviews of the 1970 production of Colette were varied. Stanley Kauffman, writing in the New Republic, had reservations about Jones's script, stating that it "includes some things and leaves out others. Not much more can be said of it, except that only the homosexuality of others gets mention, not Colette's lesbian activities, which—as against the protean truth of her life—thins her out." The critic in Variety found some fault with the play's structure but also stated that "Colette does justice to both the subject's life and art." Haskel Frankel, reviewing Jones' play for the National Observer, felt that "its virtues far outweigh its hurts" and declared that the work offered "a chance to hear the written thoughts of a wise and witty woman." And Marilyn Stasio wrote in Cue that Jones' adaptation "overflows with the wondrously lyrical prose of the French novelist." Reviewer James Davis of the New York Daily News called Colette "a full, rich—and thoroughly enjoyable—dramatization of the life of Colette," adding that the play "makes for a charming and often beautiful evening.... [Y]ou will love all the characters, they are drawn and acted so well."