Jean Merilyn Simmons (31 January 1929 – 22 January 2010) was a British actress and singer.[1][2] One ofJ. Arthur Rank's "well-spoken young starlets", she appeared predominantly in films, beginning withthose made in Britain during and after the Second World War, followed mainly byHollywood films from 1950 onwards.[3]
Simmons was born on 31 January 1929, inIslington, London,[4] toCharles Simmons, a physical education teacher,[5] and his wife, Winifred Ada (née Loveland). Jean was the youngest of four children, with siblings Lorna, Harold, and Edna. She began acting at the age of 14.[6]
Simmons was cast as the young Estella inDavid Lean's version ofGreat Expectations (1946). The film was the third-most-popular at the British box office in 1947, Simmons received excellent reviews,[10] and achieved stardom in the UK.
The experience of working onGreat Expectations caused her to pursue an acting career more seriously:
I thought acting was just a lark, meeting all those exciting movie stars, and getting £5 a day which was lovely because we needed the money. But I figured I'd just go off and get married and have children like my mother. It was working with David Lean that convinced me to go on.[11]
Simmons was top-billed for the first time in the dramaUncle Silas (1947). She followed it withThe Woman in the Hall (1947). Neither was particularly successful, but Simmons was then in a huge international hit, playingOphelia inLaurence Olivier'sHamlet (1948), for which she received her first Oscar nomination. Olivier offered her the chance to work and study at theOld Vic, advising her to play anything they offered her to get experience, but she was under contract to the J. Arthur Rank Organisation, which vetoed the idea.[13]
Simmons starred with Stewart Granger in the comedyAdam and Evelyne (1949). It was her first adult role, and Granger and she became romantically involved; they soon married.[16]
Granger became a Hollywood star inKing Solomon's Mines (1950) and was signed to a contract by MGM, so Simmons moved to Los Angeles with him. In 1951, Rank sold her contract toHoward Hughes, who then ownedRKO Pictures.[18][19]
Hughes was eager to start a sexual relationship with Simmons, but Granger put a stop to his advances by angrily telling Hughes over the phone: "Mr. Howard bloody Hughes, you'll be sorry if you don't leave my wife alone."[20]
Her first Hollywood film wasAndrocles and the Lion (1952), produced by Pascal and co-starring Victor Mature. It was followed byAngel Face (1953), directed byOtto Preminger withRobert Mitchum.David Thomson wrote that "if she had made only one film –Angel Face – she might now be spoken of with the awe given toLouise Brooks."[21] Smarting over his rebuff from Granger, Hughes instructed Preminger to treat Simmons as roughly as possible, leading the director to demand that costar Mitchum repeatedly slap the actress harder and harder, until Mitchum turned and punched Preminger, asking if that was how he wanted it.[22] He also made her appear inShe Couldn't Say No (1954), a comedy with Mitchum.
A court case freed Simmons from the contract with Hughes in 1952.[21] They settled out of court; part of the arrangement was that Simmons would do one more film for no additional money.[23] Simmons also agreed to make three more movies under the auspices of RKO, but not actually at that studio—she would be lent out. She would make an additional picture for 20th Century Fox while RKO got the services of Victor Mature for one film.[24]
Simmons and Granger returned to England to make the thrillerFootsteps in the Fog (1955). Then,Joseph Mankiewicz cast her oppositeMarlon Brando in the screen adaptation ofGuys and Dolls (1955), where she did her own singing in a role turned down byGrace Kelly; it was a big hit.[25]
By the 1970s, Simmons turned her focus to stage and television acting. She toured the United States inStephen Sondheim'sA Little Night Music, then took the show to London, thus originating the role of Desirée Armfeldt in theWest End. Performing in the show for three years, she said she never tired of Sondheim's music; "No matter how tired or 'off' you felt, the music would just pick you up."[27]
She portrayed Fiona "Fee" Cleary, the Cleary family matriarch, in the miniseriesThe Thorn Birds (1983); she won anEmmy Award for her role. She appeared inNorth and South (1985–86), again playing the role of the family matriarch as Clarissa Main, and starred inThe Dawning (1988) withAnthony Hopkins andHugh Grant. In 1989, Simmons appeared as murder mystery author Eudora McVeigh Shipton, a self-proclaimed rival to Jessica Fletcher, in the two-partMurder, She Wrote episode "Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall" withAngela Lansbury.
Simmons was married and divorced twice. At 21, she marriedStewart Granger in Tucson, Arizona, on 20 December 1950.[28] She and Granger became US citizens in 1956;[29] in the same year, their daughter Tracy Granger was born. They divorced in 1960.[30]
On 1 November 1960, Simmons married directorRichard Brooks;[31] their daughter, Kate Brooks, was born a year later. Simmons and Brooks divorced in 1980.[32] Although both men were significantly older than Simmons, she denied that she was looking for a father figure. Her father had died when she was just 16, but she said:
They were really nothing like my father at all. My father was a gentle, softly spoken man. My husbands were both much noisier and much more opinionated ... it's really nothing to do with age ... it's to do with what's there – the twinkle and sense of humour.[11]
In a 1984 interview, given in Copenhagen at the time she was shooting the filmGoing Undercover (1988,[33][34] a.k.a.Yellow Pages; completed 1985)[35] she elaborated slightly on her marriages, stating,
It may be simplistic, but you could sum up my two marriages by saying that, when I wanted to be a wife, Jimmy [Stewart Granger] would say: "I just want you to be pretty." And when I wanted to cook, Richard would say: "Forget the cooking. You've been trained to act – so act!" Most people thought I was quite helpless – a clinger and a butterfly – during my first marriage. It was Richard Brooks who saw what was wrong and tried to make me stand on my own two feet. I'd whine: 'I'm afraid.' And he'd say: 'Never be afraid to fail. Every time you get up in the morning, you are ahead.'
Simmons had two daughters, Tracy Granger and Kate Brooks, one by each marriage. Tracy's name reflects her friendship withSpencer Tracy;[36] Tracy became a film editor, and Kate a TV production assistant and producer.
In 2003, she became the patron of the British drugs and human rights charityRelease. In 2005, she signed a petition to British Prime MinisterTony Blair asking him not to upgradecannabis from a class C drug to class B.[38]
Simmons, aged 80, died from lung cancer at her home in Santa Monica on 22 January 2010. She was interred inHighgate Cemetery, north London.[39][40][41]
For a number of years, British film exhibitors voted Simmons among the top ten British stars at the box office via an annual poll in theMotion Picture Herald.
^"...and from London".The Mail. Vol. 35, no. 1, 806. Adelaide. 4 January 1947. p. 9 (Sunday Magazine). Retrieved10 October 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
^Picture Show and TV Mirror, 2 July 1960, p. 7. Simmons said in an interview that Tracy was named after Spencer Tracy, but adds, "Jimmy [Granger] says he got the name from the role Katharine Hepburn played [Tracy Lord] inThe Philadelphia Story."
^abBrown, David (2001)."James Kenelm Clarke". In Allon, Yoram; Cullen, Del; Patterson, Hannah (eds.).Contemporary British and Irish Film Directors. Wallflower Press. p. 60, viii.ISBN9781903364215.
