Who Was Isabel Jewell?

A few years before Michael Rowady passed away, he asked me to see what I could find about a Hollywood star named Isabel Jewell who once lived in Winchester.  I couldn’t find any­thing.  With old issues of the Winchester Sun now avail­able online, I thought I’d try again.  She turned up there under a dif­fer­ent name—Mrs. Lovell Underwood.  It turns out to be quite a sto­ry.  This one’s for you, Mike.

Isabel Jewell was a daugh­ter of Dr. Emory Lee and Livia Willoughby Jewell.  Livia hailed from Madison County.  Isabel was born in Shoshoni, Wyoming, on July 19, 1907.  That year most of the town was destroyed by a major fire.  Today it is one of the small­est com­mu­ni­ties in Wyoming—population 471 in the 2020 cen­sus.  Dr. Jewell, a med­ical researcher, achieved some fame for iden­ti­fy­ing and iso­lat­ing the Rocky Mountain spot­ted fever virus.  His daugh­ter, it seems, just want­ed to get out of Shoshoni.

In the fall of 1925 Isabel’s par­ents sent her to school at Hamilton College in Lexington.  Hamilton, then a promi­nent female col­lege on North Broadway, closed dur­ing the Great Depression.  Isabel excelled aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, par­tic­i­pat­ed in music depart­ment recitals and school plays, served on the staff of the school mag­a­zine, The Hamiltonian, and was an offi­cer in Chi Delta Phi, an hon­orary lit­er­ary sorority.

At some point she met the hand­some young Lovell T. Underwood, who was attend­ing the University of Kentucky.  Lovell had been a bas­ket­ball star at the old Lexington High School (now Henry Clay).  In 1922, after win­ning the state high school cham­pi­onship, the Blue Devils went to Chicago to com­pete with 25 oth­er teams in the nation­al scholas­tic bas­ket­ball tour­na­ment.  Lovell, nick­named “Cowboy,” helped Lexington win the nation­al cham­pi­onship and was named an All-American.

Lovell let­tered three years in bas­ket­ball at the University of Kentucky, grad­u­at­ing in 1926.  That August the Lexington Herald-Leader report­ed that Lovell was trav­el­ing to Wyoming to meet the par­ents of his fiancé, Isabel Jewell.  Three weeks lat­er the cou­ple were mar­ried in Shoshoni.  They made their home in Winchester, tak­ing rooms with Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Scrivener at 407 South Maple Street.  Lovell worked for an insur­ance com­pa­ny and Isabel taught Latin in the local school.

They were a pop­u­lar cou­ple in Winchester, men­tioned reg­u­lar­ly in the Sun’s soci­ety pages.  They attend­ed teas, din­ners and dances togeth­er.  Isabel played with two bridge clubs in town and usu­al­ly took top hon­ors.  Lovell played with a local bas­ket­ball team, the Winchester Kollegians.  His team­mate, Clark County’s Henry Besuden, had also played for UK.

In January 1927 the cou­ple moved to Lexington and took rooms at the Hagerman Apartments on West Second Street.  Lovell con­tin­ued play­ing and ref­er­ee­ing bas­ket­ball games, and Isabel began to appear in plays at UK’s Romany Theatre.  In April she trav­eled to Shoshoni for an extend­ed vis­it with her par­ents, an indi­ca­tion that the mar­riage was in trou­ble.  Their divorce record has not been locat­ed.  Her mar­riage to Lovell remained unknown in her lat­er pub­lic per­sona.  (Lovell went on to coach bas­ket­ball at Transylvania and Gonzaga University.)

In 1928 Isabel Jewell turned up with the National Players the­atre com­pa­ny in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Oklahoma City.  Her work earned rave reviews from the crit­ics, and her par­ents trav­eled to see her per­form.  The fol­low­ing year, the com­pa­ny went on the road and Isabel played in many U.S. cities and sev­er­al in Canada.  In 1930 she joined the New York Players and began to attract more lead­ing roles.  Then CBS signed her to per­form in radio plays that reached nation­al audi­ences.  Her big break came when she starred with Lee Tracy in “Blessed Event,” a hit on Broadway.  The com­e­dy was pat­terned after Walter Winchell, the famous gos­sip colum­nist of the era.  From there she went to Hollywood to reprise her role in “Blessed Event” for a movie with Warner Brothers.

Isabell stayed very busy in Hollywood, per­form­ing in 32 films from 1933 to 1936.  She signed with MGM, report­ed­ly earn­ing $3,000 a week, and act­ed in movies with Ronald Colman, Brian Donlevy, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, and Humphrey Bogart.  A diminu­tive (4’ 11”) blond and “the most gor­geous blue eyes you ever saw,” Isabel unfor­tu­nate­ly found her­self chron­i­cal­ly type­cast in sup­port­ing roles as gang­ster molls, tough-talk­ing “broads,” and pros­ti­tutes.  In her most famous movie, “Gone with the Wind (1939),” she played poor “white trash” Emma Slattery.

In 1960 Isabel was rec­og­nized for her work with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  In all, she act­ed in 70 motion pic­tures and lat­er had roles in a num­ber of tele­vi­sion shows, includ­ing Gunsmoke (1965).  She mar­ried twice more, divorc­ing both times.  She died on April 5, 1972, in Los Angeles from an over­dose of sleep­ing pills.  Her ash­es were scat­tered in the Pacific Ocean. 

With no head­stone to remem­ber her, a group of Wyoming actors pro­duced a full-length movie about Isabel.  The film, “Forgotten Ingénue,” pre­miered at the Realto Theater in Casper in 2021.