Jean Simmons, whose ethereal screen presence and starring roles with Hollywood’s top actors in such films as Spartacus and Elmer Gantry, made her a mid-century film icon, has died at age 80.
The actress, who sang with Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls and played Ophelia to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, died Friday at her home in Santa Monica, her agent Judy Page told the Los Angeles Times. She had lung cancer.
Already a stunning beauty at 14, Simmons made her movie debut in the 1944 British production Give Us the Moon. Several minor films followed before British director David Lean gave the London-born actress her breakthrough role of Estella, companion to the reclusive Miss Havisham in 1946’s Great Expectations. That was followed by the exotic Black Narcissus, and then Olivier’s Oscar-winning Hamlet in 1948, for which Simmons was nominated as best supporting actress.
She would be nominated for another Oscar, for best actress for 1969’s The Happy Ending, before moving largely to television roles in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
She won an Emmy Award for her role in the 1980s miniseries The Thorn Birds. Her other notable films included Until They Sail, The Big Country, This Earth Is Mine, All the Way Home, Mister Buddwing and Rough Night in Jericho.
Simmons had left Britain for Hollywood in 1950, accompanied by her future husband Stewart Granger. There, they were befriended by Howard Hughes, who flew them to Tucson, Arizona, for a surprise wedding.
“When I returned from the honeymoon,” Simmons told a reporter in 1964, “I learned that Hughes owned me — he had bought me from [British producer] J. Arthur Rank like a piece of meat.”
What followed was a string of films that she would later dismiss as terrible, although she took some solace in the fact Hughes, legendary in those days as a womanizer, never bothered her. Simmons finally ended up suing Hughes for the right to make more prestigious films at other studios, and the result was Young Bess, The Robe (the first movie filmed in CinemaScope), The Actress, The Egyptian and Desiree. In the latter film, in 1954, she played the title role opposite Brando’s Napoleon.
She loved the rehearsals for that Guys and Dolls, Simmons recalled in 1988, “especially the dancing routines with Marlon trying not to step on me and choreographer Michael Kidd looking very worried.”
By the 1970s, her career as a lead film actress had ended, but Simmons continued to work regularly on stage and in TV.
She and Granger divorced in 1960 and shortly afterwards, Simmons married film director Richard Brooks.
GLORY FACADE: Residents are fighting the church’s plan to build a large flight of steps and a square that would entail destroying up to two blocks of homes Barcelona’s eternally unfinished Basilica de la Sagrada Familia has grown to become the world’s tallest church, but a conflict with residents threatens to delay the finish date for the monument designed more than 140 years ago. Swathed in scaffolding on a platform 54m above the ground, an enormous stone slab is being prepared to complete the cross of the central Jesus Christ tower. A huge yellow crane is to bring it up to the summit, which will stand at 172.5m and has snatched the record as the world’s tallest church from Germany’s Ulm Minster. The basilica’s peak will deliberately fall short of the
FRAYED: Strains between the US-European ties have ruptured allies’ trust in Washington, but with time, that could be rebuilt, the Michigan governor said China is providing crucial support for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and could end the war with a phone call, US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said. “China could call [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow and cut off his dual-purpose technologies that they’re selling,” Whitaker said during a Friday panel at the Munich Security Conference. “China could stop buying Russian oil and gas.” “You know, this war is being completely enabled by China,” the US envoy added. Beijing and Moscow have forged an even tighter partnership since the start of the war, and Russia relies on China for critical parts
Two sitting Philippine senators have been identified as “coperpetrators” in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), documents released by prosecutors showed. Philippine senators Ronald Dela Rosa and Christopher Go are among eight current and former officials named in a document dated Feb. 13 and posted to the court’s Web site. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders as part of his “war on drugs.” “Duterte and his coperpetrators shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals in the Philippines
In a softly lit Shanghai bar, graduate student Helen Zhao stretched out both wrists to have her pulse taken — the first step to ordering the house special, a bespoke “health” cocktail based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). “TCM bars” have popped up in several cities across China, epitomizing what the country’s stressed-out, time-poor youth refer to as “punk wellness,” or “wrecking yourself while saving yourself.” At Shanghai’s Niang Qing, a TCM doctor in a white coat diagnoses customers’ physical conditions based on the pulse readings, before a mixologist crafts custom drinks incorporating the herbs and roots prescribed for their ailments.
RSS