Jean simmons biography stewart granger photos

British actress (1929–2010)

Not to be mixed up with Gene Simmons or Jen Simmons.

Jean Merilyn SimmonsOBE (31 January 1929 – 22 January 2010) was unadulterated British actress and singer.^[1][2] One method J. Arthur Rank's "well-spoken young starlets," she appeared predominantly in films, duplicate with those made in Britain by and after the Second World Conflict, followed mainly by Hollywood films non-native 1950 onwards.^[3]

Simmons was nominated for distinction Academy Award for Best Supporting Entertainer for Hamlet (1948), and won systematic Golden Globe Award for Best Sportsman for Guys and Dolls (1955). Protected other film appearances include Great Expectations (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Vulgar Lagoon (1949), So Long at representation Fair (1950), Angel Face (1953), Young Bess (1953), The Robe (1953), The Big Country (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), Spartacus (1960), and the 1969 peel The Happy Ending, for which she was nominated for the Academy Purse for Best Actress. She also won an Emmy Award for the miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983).

Biography

Early life

Simmons was born on 31 January 1929, in Islington, London,^[4] to Charles Simmons, a bronze medalist in gymnastics unbendable the 1912 Summer Olympics, and government wife, Winifred Ada (née Loveland). Trousers was the youngest of four posterity, with siblings Lorna, Harold, and Edna. She began acting at the place of 14.^[5]

During the Second World Contention, the Simmons family was evacuated design Winscombe, Somerset.^[6] Her father, a corporeal education teacher,^[7] taught briefly at Sidcot School, and sometime during this spell, Simmons followed her eldest sister corrupt the village stage and sang public songs such as "Daddy Wouldn't Purchase Me a Bow Wow". At that point, her ambition was to suspect an acrobatic dancer.^[8]

Early films

On her go back to London, Simmons enrolled at dignity Aida Foster School of Dance. She was spotted by director Val Caller, who cast her in the Margaret Lockwood-starring vehicle Give Us the Moon (1944) in a large role though Lockwood's sister.^[9] Small roles in diverse other films followed, including Mr. Emmanuel (1944), Kiss the Bride Goodbye (1945), Meet Sexton Blake (1945), and illustriousness popular The Way to the Stars (1945), as well as the wee Sports Day (1945).

Simmons had unblended small part as a harpist block the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), produced by Gabriel Pascal, starring Vivien Leigh, and co-starring Simmons's future keep in reserve Stewart Granger. Pascal saw potential be glad about Simmons, and in 1945 he fullstrength her to a seven-year contract touch upon the J. Arthur Rank Organisation.^{[citation needed]}

Great Expectations and stardom

Simmons became a heavenly body in Britain when she was signature as the young Estella in King Lean's version of Great Expectations (1946). The movie was the third-most-popular lp at the British box office rafter 1947, and Simmons received excellent reviews.^[10]

The experience of working on Great Expectations caused her to pursue proposal acting career more seriously:

I thought faking was just a lark, meeting yell those exciting movie stars, and extraction £5 a day which was discern because we needed the money. However I figured I'd just go highlight and get married and have domestic like my mother. It was functional with David Lean that convinced evade to go on.^[11]

Simmons had support roles in Hungry Hill (1947) with Margaret Lockwood and the Powell-Pressburger film Black Narcissus (1947), playing an Indian lady in the latter alongside Sabu.^[12][6]

Simmons was top-billed for the first time uphold the drama Uncle Silas (1947). She followed it with The Woman epoxy resin the Hall (1947). Neither was largely successful, but Simmons was then explain a huge international hit, playing Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), courier which she received her first Award nomination. Olivier offered her the aloofness to work and study at decency Old Vic, advising her to marker anything they offered her to catch on experience, but she was under commercial to the J. Arthur Rank Constitution, which vetoed the idea.^[13]

Simmons had grandeur lead in Frank Launder's The Resultant Lagoon (1949), based on the 1908 novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole and co-produced with Launder's partner Poet Gilliat,^[14] a project originally announced uncontaminated Lockwood a decade earlier. It was a considerable financial success.^[15]

Stewart Granger

Simmons asterisked with Stewart Granger in the facetiousness Adam and Evelyne (1949). It was her first adult role, and Husbandman and she became romantically involved; they soon married.^[16]

Simmons made two films stray were popular at the local take up again office: So Long at the Fair (1950) with Dirk Bogarde and Trio (1950), where she was one insensible several stars. She was then keep in check Cage of Gold (1950) with King Farrar and Ralph Thomas' The Unclear Yellow (1950) with Trevor Howard. Tackle 1950, Simmons was voted the fourth-most popular star in Britain.^[17]

Howard Hughes subject Victor Mature

Granger became a Hollywood reception in King Solomon's Mines (1950) gleam was signed to a contract give up MGM, so Simmons moved to Los Angeles with him. In 1951, Space sold her contract to Howard Airman, who then owned RKO Pictures.^[18][19]

Hughes was eager to start a sexual affiliation with Simmons, but Granger put put in order stop to his advances by strictly telling Hughes over the phone: "Mr. Howard bloody Hughes, you'll be remorseful if you don't leave my spouse alone."^[20] To punish Simmons and Husbandman, Hughes refused to lend her allude to Paramount where director William Wyler desired to cast her in the ladylike lead for his film Roman Holiday; the role made a star raise Audrey Hepburn.^{[citation needed]}

Her first Hollywood skin was Androcles and the Lion (1952), produced by Pascal and co-starring Vanquisher Mature. It was followed by Angel Face (1953), directed by Otto Preminger with Robert Mitchum. David Thomson wrote that "she might now be voiceless of with the awe given pay homage to Louise Brooks" if Simmons only asterisked in that film.^[21] Smarting over ruler rebuff from Granger, Hughes instructed Preminger to treat Simmons as roughly though possible, leading the director to hope for that costar Mitchum repeatedly slap representation actress harder and harder, until Thespian turned and punched Preminger, asking allowing that was how he wanted it.^[22] He also made her appear slash She Couldn't Say No (1954), fine comedy with Mitchum.

A court overnight case freed Simmons from the contract colleague Hughes in 1952.^[21] They settled effect of court; part of the suite was that Simmons would do twin more film for no additional money.^[23] Simmons also agreed to make four more movies under the auspices comatose RKO, but not actually at rove studio—she would be lent out. She would make an additional picture watch over 20th Century Fox while RKO got the services of Victor Mature tail one film.^[24]

MGM cast her in say publicly lead of Young Bess (1953) performance a young Queen Elizabeth I accurate Granger. She went back to RKO to do the extra film covered by the settlement with Hughes, titled Affair with a Stranger (1953) with Mature; it flopped.^{[citation needed]}

20th Century Fox

Fox responsibility Simmons back for The Egyptian (1954), another epic, but it was crowd together especially popular.^{[citation needed]} She had decency lead in Columbia's A Bullet Quite good Waiting (1954). More widely seen was^{[citation needed]}Désirée (1954), where Simmons played Désirée Clary opposite Marlon Brando's Napoleon Bonaparte.

Simmons and Granger returned to England to make the thriller Footsteps joist the Fog (1955). Then, Joseph Mankiewicz cast her opposite Brando in honourableness screen adaptation of Guys and Dolls (1955), where she did her free singing in a role turned cut back by Grace Kelly; it was unornamented big hit.^[25]

Simmons played the title segregate in Hilda Crane (1956) at Cheater, a box-office disappointment.^{[citation needed]} So, likewise, were This Could Be the Night (1957) and Until They Sail (1957), both at MGM.

Simmons had uncomplicated big success, though, in The Rough Country(1958), directed by William Wyler. She starred in Home Before Dark (1958) at Warner Bros. and This Globe Is Mine (1959) with Rock Navigator at Universal. In the opinion conclusion film critic Philip French, Home Earlier Dark was "perhaps her finest act as a housewife driven into unmixed breakdown in Mervyn LeRoy's psychodrama."^[26]

Elmer Gantry and Richard Brooks

Simmons went into Elmer Gantry (1960), directed by Richard Brooks, who became her second husband. Perception was successful, as was Spartacus (1960), where she played Kirk Douglas's character's love interest. Simmons then did The Grass Is Greener (1960) with Histrion, Cary Grant, and Deborah Kerr.

She took some years off screen, redouble returned in All the Way Home (1963) with Robert Preston. She upfront Life at the Top (1965) rule Laurence Harvey, Mister Buddwing (1966) discharge James Garner, Divorce American Style (1967) with Dick Van Dyke, and Rough Night in Jericho (1967) with Martyr Peppard and Dean Martin.

Simmons upfront Heidi (1968) for TV, then Brooks wrote and directed The Happy Ending (1969) for her, and she standard her second Oscar nomination.^{[citation needed]}

1970s elitist 1980s

By the 1970s, Simmons turned counterpart focus to stage and television faking. She toured the United States domestic animals Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, then took the show to Writer, thus originating the role of Desirée Armfeldt in the West End. Effecting in the show for three period, she said she never tired tip Sondheim's music; "No matter how spent or 'off' you felt, the air would just pick you up."^[27]

She represent Fiona "Fee" Cleary, the Cleary descent matriarch, in the miniseries The Brier Birds (1983); she won an Award Award for her role. She exposed in North and South (1985–86), another time playing the role of the coat matriarch as Clarissa Main, and asterisked in The Dawning (1988) with Suffragist Hopkins and Hugh Grant. In 1989, Simmons appeared as murder mystery initiator Eudora McVeigh Shipton, a self-proclaimed competitor to Jessica Fletcher, in the bipartite Murder, She Wrote episode "Mirror, Reflection, On the Wall" with Angela Lansbury.

1990s and 2000s

In 1989, she asterisked in a remake of Great Expectations, this time playing the role last part Miss Havisham, Estella's adoptive mother. Extract 1991, she appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead" as a retired Starfleet admiral and hardened legal investigator who conducts a witch hunt; and as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard/Naomi Collins, in the transitory revival of the 1960s daytime set attendants Dark Shadows, in roles originally phony by Joan Bennett. From 1994 in the balance 1998, Simmons narrated the A&E pic television series Mysteries of the Bible. In 1995, she appeared in How to Make an American Quilt become conscious Winona Ryder, Maya Angelou, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, and Alfre Woodard. Amplify 2004, she voiced the lead cut up of Sophie in the English received idea of Howl's Moving Castle.^[12]

Personal life

Simmons was married and divorced twice. At 21, she married Stewart Granger in City, Arizona, on 20 December 1950.^[28] She and Granger became US citizens hinder 1956;^[29] in the same year, their daughter Tracy Granger was born. They divorced in 1960.^[30]

On 1 Nov 1960, Simmons married director Richard Brooks;^[31] their daughter, Kate Brooks, was in the blood a year later, in 1961. Simmons and Brooks divorced in 1980. Even though both men were significantly older ahead of Simmons, she denied that she was looking for a father figure. An alternative father had died when she was just 16, but she said:

They were really nothing like my dad at all. My father was shipshape and bristol fashion gentle, softly spoken man. My husbands were both much noisier and unnecessary more opinionated ... it's really nothing get do with age ... it's to requirement with what's there – the twinkle see sense of humour.^[11]

In a 1984 interview, given in Copenhagen at rank time she was shooting the pick up Going Undercover (1988,^[33][34] a.k.a. Yellow Pages; completed 1985)^[35] she elaborated slightly hostile her marriages, stating,

It may rectify simplistic, but you could sum compute my two marriages by saying stroll, when I wanted to be practised wife, Jimmy [Stewart Granger] would say: "I just want you to have on pretty." And when I wanted differentiate cook, Richard would say: "Forget illustriousness cooking. You've been trained to act – so act!" Most people thought Side-splitting was quite helpless – a clinger trip a butterfly – during my first add-on. It was Richard Brooks who old saying what was wrong and tried give explanation make me stand on my open two feet. I'd whine: 'I'm afraid.' And he'd say: 'Never be disturbed to fail. Every time you get paid up in the morning, you blow away ahead.'

Simmons had two daughters, Tracy Agriculturist (a film editor since 1990), status Kate Brooks (a TV production auxiliary and producer), one by each marriage – their names bearing witness to Simmons's friendship with Spencer Tracy^[36] and Katharine Hepburn. Simmons moved to the Feel one\'s way Coast of the US in goodness late 1970s, briefly owning a heartless in New Milford, Connecticut. She shared to California, settling in Santa Monica, California, where she lived until spread death.^{[citation needed]}

In the 2003 New Twelvemonth Honours, Simmons was appointed an Policeman of the Order of the Country Empire (OBE) for services to acting.^[37]

In 2003, she became the patron break into the British drugs and human affirm charity Release. In 2005, she sign-language a petition to British Prime Priest Tony Blair asking him not hype upgrade cannabis from a class Maxim drug to class B.^[38]

Death

Simmons died immigrant lung cancer at her home all the rage Santa Monica on 22 January 2010, nine days before her 81st blow-out. She is interred in Highgate Graveyard, north London.^[39][40][41]

Filmography

Box office ranking

For a calculate of years, British film exhibitors committed Simmons among the top ten Country stars at the box office next to an annual poll in the Motion Picture Herald.

Awards and nominations

References

Bibliography

External links