She was Just 19 in This Interview.

Jean Seberg.

On Jean Seberg (1938 - 1979)

While looking up material about Saint Joan, director Otto Preminger’s 1957 film based on the George Bernard Shaw play about Joan of Arc, I came across this 1958 television appearance of actress Jean Seberg on Mike Wallace’s show. Just two years before, Seberg was a then-unknown who was picked to play the title role out of tens of thousands of hopefuls.

What really struck me here (and compelled me to post about it) was the fact that Seberg was just 19 when this TV interview took place. She’d just finished working on Bonjour Tristesse (1958), her second film, also with Preminger.

Of course, it was a different time and culture and society then, but this short clip highlights how different young people were then, with Seberg as an example.

What’s changed since 1958? (A rhetorical question.)

Do listen to the interview, which runs to almost 30 minutes. See what you think.

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LISTEN TO: The Mike Wallace Interview: Jean Seberg

Original airdate: 1/4/58

I find that she comes off here as a self-possessed, intelligent and thoughtful young woman. She also handles the strangely harsh, third-degree that Mike Wallace puts her through with grace, dignity, and a charming smile. Not typical for an actress of that youth — especially today. (Heck, I wasn’t a quarter as articulate at that age.)

Jean’s life story was a sad one. She managed to weather the maltreatment by her Svengali, Otto Preminger, infamous for his brutishness towards non-star actors. He’d “discovered” Jean, a 17-year-old ingenue from Marshalltown, Iowa, during a widely publicized talent search for a “fresh face” to play Saint Joan. [I will be writing up that film in a future ‘stack.]

She would later devote many hours to studying languages (eventually becoming fluent in four) and honing her craft. After the critical and commercial failure of both Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse, she would eventually find appreciation and success in Europe with Breathless, directed by Jean-Luc Godard (whose working style contrasted happily with that of Preminger). Yet, her life would be changed irrevocably a decade later.

In a relatively recent documentary film about the actress (Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg), a distressing episode in her life is described. It was one brought about by malice on the part of some people:

Born to a pharmacist and a substitute schoolteacher in Marshalltown in 1938, Jean declared at 5 years old that she was going to be a movie star.

Her activist nature was evident at a young age. She led a campaign to be nice to animals in her hometown, and by 14 years old had become a member of the NAACP in nearby Des Moines.

"She had a deep compassion for people, people who were without," Tammy said. "She kind of took to the underdog."

"What rankled her the most was that someone might be treated differently for who they were, their color, their religion, whatever that might be," Kelly [Rundle, one of the filmmakers] added. "That got under her skin, and apparently got under her skin at a very early age."

A month before her 18th birthday, she was cast by director Otto Preminger, out of a reported field of 18,000 actresses, in the title role of "Saint Joan" in 1957.

Despite the film's disappointing box office, Seberg gained a contract with Columbia Pictures. Kelly Rundle said studio execs at one time were ready to mold her into a star the same way that had been done with Rita Hayworth a decade earlier, and Kim Novak five years before.

"By the time Jean was under contract with Columbia, they weren't really doing that much any more. She didn't get that star treatment the others did," he said.

But it was her role in French director Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" in 1960 that gave her acclaim, more in Europe than in the United States.

"That was the turning point of her career," Kelly Rundle said.

But Seberg also caught the attention of the FBI, particularly for her work with and donations to the Black Panthers, a militant civil-rights group. It was not unusual to support the group, the Rundles said, as Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor and Preminger also did so.

The young actress, however, was a relative newcomer without the public support that the others had.

Seberg's phones were tapped. A blind item planted in a Los Angeles gossip column, reprinted in Newsweek, claimed the actress was pregnant with a mixed-race baby by a "black militant," according to the documentary. The shock of reading it sent her into labor three months ahead of her due date, and the daughter, Nina, lived two days. The funeral for the child was in Marshalltown, with an open casket to show that the baby was white.

"It's weird how they used something that was a mistake in a way on their part to discredit her," Kelly said. "It really was just a matter of chance that Jean was the one that they got something on."

The baby's death was "when you see the downward spiral of Jean at that point," he said. "It was the placement of her in that light that scared a lot of people away."

SOURCE.

It might have been under a different director (its longest-serving, in fact), but the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with the help of mass media, even then had such power to ruin innocent lives with brazen lies and calumnious gossip.

It’s simply appalling, in any age. Of course, we know today how these agencies really work. Back then, most people still trusted them, however.

The FBI's smear campaign, Kelly Rundle said, "was successful to the point ... that on the day she was buried in Paris that the FBI released a statement that they had smeared her name and it was wrong, and they weren't in the business of doing that anymore to people."

SOURCE.

Hmm… is that true? That “they weren't in the business of doing that anymore to people”? Many would beg to disagree.

Following a checkered film career, her death in 1979 would be called a suicide by barbiturate overdose and alcohol. (Disturbingly, her lifeless body was found inside her car in Paris several days after she was said to have gone missing.)

It seems this barbiturates-and-alcohol mix became a common method of death as reported for a few celebrities back then, to wit: actress Marilyn Monroe [read this, for one] and journalist-radio and TV star, Dorothy Kilgallen. There seem to be credible grounds for questioning the official reports on the demise of these persons.

So much hope and potential for Jean Seberg at the start, yet, unhappily, never fully realized.

I wonder how many pray for Jean at all today, as her soul may not have found peace after death, either.

+ May God grant Jean’s soul eternal rest. May perpetual light shine upon her through the grace of God. Amen. +

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