Jean Wallace, a teenage fashion model and Earl Carroll showgirl, failed in her initial attempt to break into the film industry when MGM discovered that she was only 17 years old, not 19, as she had claimed. This led to her being restricted to working only four hours a day with an official tutor. Despite this, she made her film debut in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) and later appeared in Louisiana Purchase (1941) at Paramount.
Jean's career improved at 20th Century Fox, where she spent five years under contract, but she refused to appear in Kiss of Death (1947),which ultimately proved to be a poor career move. Her personal life was marked by a tumultuous marriage to Franchot Tone, whom she married in 1941 and divorced in 1948, after a seven-year rocky relationship.
Jean's marriage to Tone was marred by allegations of extreme jealousy and infidelity, and she twice attempted suicide, once with sleeping pills in 1946 and again by stabbing herself in the abdomen in 1949. During the acrimonious divorce proceedings, Jean accused Tone of having an affair with Barbara Payton, while Tone claimed that Jean had been involved with gangster Johnny Stompanato.
Jean's subsequent marriages, to James Randall in 1950 and Cornel Wilde in 1951, also ended in divorce. Her marriage to Wilde, a actor and director, was marked by his attempts to mold her into a more successful actress. She appeared in a number of B-movies produced by his company, Theadora, including The Big Combo (1955),Maracaibo (1958),and Star of India (1954).
Jean also sang in the soundtracks of several films, including Beach Red (1967) and Sword of Lancelot (1963). Her last starring role was in No Blade of Grass (1970),a post-apocalyptic film directed by and starring her husband. After divorcing Wilde in 1980, Jean lived a reclusive life in Beverly Hills with a menagerie of pets until her death in February 1990.
