Fragrance Belles-Lettres Magazine

    When I first saw the movie, Portrait of Jennie played by Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Jones and the superb actor, Joseph Cotten on TCM (Turner Movie Classics) several years ago, I could not stop thinking about it. How real the story became to me after thinking about it over and over again.

     This movie taken in 1934 features impoverished painter, Eben Adams, played by Cotten who struggled selling his paintings to various galleries. Adams meets a little girl named Jennie Appleton played by Jones in Central Park, New York. He noticed that she seemed a bit different than other children her age and her clothes were old-fashioned, however, Jennie was a warm and sparkling child who stole Adam's heart. He made sketches of Jennie from memory and took another chance at selling his painting at one particular art dealer, Miss Spinney who took a chance on Adams ability as a painter and sold some sketches of Jennie to her.

   Over time and several more encounters with Jennie, he noticed that she became older and she talked about the past as if it was current. Adams told no one about his experience with Jennie. He knew in his heart that she was not from the 1930's but from another time. No she is not a ghost but perhaps traveling thorough time for a valid reason.
   Jennie eventually grew into a beautiful young woman and Adams fell in love with her. Jennie inspired Adams to paint a portrait of her. It became a great work of art and the painting eventually landed in one of the most prominent and exclusive museums in the world.
   Grant it in a Portrait of Jennie, Eben Adams was going through a tough and terrible time in his life as a painter but Jennie Appleton was there for him and inspired him to not give up painting. She inspired him in a more spiritual way that no one else knew about and in the end the results landed the Portrait of Jennie in one of the finest museums in the world.
    Isabel Archer is also a heroine but she didn't have the moral support. She had to mentally prepare herself on how to deal with various issues and situations to overcome a tragic end.
    Isabel Archer, a women of her time and Jennie Appleton a women who came from beyond that died many years before her encounter with Eben Adams are two women who reached out to care and  to be loved. However in the case of Archer her husband did not reach back.