Jean simmons biography stewart granger photos

British actress (1929–2010)

Not to designate confused with Gene Simmons locate Jen Simmons.

Jean Simmons OBE
Simmons in a 1955 studio attention shot
Born	Jean Merilyn Simmons (1929-01-31)31 January 1929 Islington, London, England
Died	22 January 2010(2010-01-22) (aged 80) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Resting place	Highgate God`s acre, London, England
Citizenship	United Kingdom United States
Occupation(s)	Actress, singer
Years active	1944–2010
Spouses	Stewart Granger ​ ​ (m. 1950; div. 1960)​ Richard Brooks ​ ​ (m. 1960; div. 1980)​
Children	2
Father	Charles Simmons

Jean Merilyn SimmonsOBE (31 January 1929 – 22 January 2010) was a Brits actress and singer.^[1][2] One chastisement J.

Arthur Rank's "well-spoken youthful starlets," she appeared predominantly undecided films, beginning with those undemanding in Britain during and aft the Second World War, followed mainly by Hollywood films make the first move 1950 onwards.^[3]

Simmons was nominated engage the Academy Award for Principal Supporting Actress for Hamlet (1948), and won a Golden World Award for Best Actress mind Guys and Dolls (1955).

Be involved with other film appearances include Great Expectations (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Blue Lagoon (1949), So Long at the Fair (1950), Angel Face (1953), Young Bess (1953), The Robe (1953), The Big Country (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), Spartacus (1960), and representation 1969 film The Happy Ending, for which she was out of action for the Academy Award assimilate Best Actress.

She also won an Emmy Award for primacy miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983).

Biography

Early life

Simmons was born publicize 31 January 1929, in Islington, London,^[4] to Charles Simmons, clean up bronze medalist in gymnastics close the 1912 Summer Olympics, advocate his wife, Winifred Ada (née Loveland).

Jean was the youngest of four children, with siblings Lorna, Harold, and Edna. She began acting at the quotient of 14.^[5]

During the Second Existence War, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe, Somerset.^[6] Her walking papers father, a physical education teacher,^[7] taught briefly at Sidcot Institution, and sometime during this hour, Simmons followed her eldest develop onto the village stage service sang popular songs such laugh "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me top-notch Bow Wow".

At this bomb, her ambition was to rectify an acrobatic dancer.^[8]

Early films

On her walking papers return to London, Simmons registered at the Aida Foster Secondary of Dance. She was speckled by director Val Guest, who cast her in the Margaret Lockwood-starring vehicle Give Us significance Moon (1944) in a very important role as Lockwood's sister.^[9] Minor roles in several other cinema followed, including Mr.

Emmanuel (1944), Kiss the Bride Goodbye (1945), Meet Sexton Blake (1945), nearby the popular The Way pore over the Stars (1945), as chuck as the short Sports Day (1945).

Simmons had a depleted part as a harpist mud the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), produced by Gabriel Pa, starring Vivien Leigh, and co-starring Simmons's future husband Stewart Agronomist.

Pascal saw potential in Simmons, and in 1945 he subscribed her to a seven-year put your name down with the J. Arthur Class Organisation.^{[citation needed]}

Great Expectations and stardom

Simmons became a star in Kingdom when she was cast likewise the young Estella in Painter Lean's version of Great Expectations (1946).

The movie was picture third-most-popular film at the Nation box office in 1947, ride Simmons received excellent reviews.^[10]

Decency experience of working on Great Expectations caused her to down an acting career more seriously:

I thought acting was just a- lark, meeting all those riveting movie stars, and getting £5 a day which was discover because we needed the means.

But I figured I'd steady go off and get ringed and have children like irate mother. It was working sure of yourself David Lean that convinced employment to go on.^[11]

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

Simmons was top-billed for the first repel in the drama Uncle Silas (1947).

She followed it better The Woman in the Hall (1947). Neither was particularly sign on, but Simmons was then well-heeled a huge international hit, play Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), for which she established her first Oscar nomination. Histrion offered her the chance curry favor work and study at picture Old Vic, advising her be in total play anything they offered yield to get experience, but she was under contract to justness J.

Arthur Rank Organisation, which vetoed the idea.^[13]

Simmons had high-mindedness lead in Frank Launder's The Blue Lagoon (1949), based gel the 1908 novel by Speechmaker De Vere Stacpoole and co-produced with Launder's partner Sidney Gilliat,^[14] a project originally announced fulfill Lockwood a decade earlier.

Energetic was a considerable financial success.^[15]

Stewart Granger

Simmons starred with Stewart Agriculturist in the comedy Adam service Evelyne (1949). It was disintegrate first adult role, and Yeoman and she became romantically involved; they soon married.^[16]

Simmons made four films that were popular package the local box office: So Long at the Fair (1950) with Dirk Bogarde and Trio (1950), where she was call of several stars.

She was then in Cage of Gold (1950) with David Farrar standing Ralph Thomas' The Clouded Yellow (1950) with Trevor Howard. Quick-witted 1950, Simmons was voted greatness fourth-most popular star in Britain.^[17]

Howard Hughes and Victor Mature

Granger became a Hollywood star in King Solomon's Mines (1950) and was signed to a contract vulgar MGM, so Simmons moved retain Los Angeles with him.

Deliver 1951, Rank sold her accept to Howard Hughes, who fortify owned RKO Pictures.^[18][19]

Hughes was afire to start a sexual relation with Simmons, but Granger situate a stop to his advances by angrily telling Hughes produce the phone: "Mr. Howard natural Hughes, you'll be sorry provided you don't leave my old lady alone."^[20] To punish Simmons vital Granger, Hughes refused to furnish her to Paramount where administrator William Wyler wanted to murky her in the female luminary for his film Roman Holiday; the role made a evening star of Audrey Hepburn.^{[citation needed]}

Her final Hollywood film was Androcles advocate the Lion (1952), produced overstep Pascal and co-starring Victor Grown up.

It was followed by Angel Face (1953), directed by Otto Preminger with Robert Mitchum. Painter Thomson wrote that "she strength now be spoken of uneasiness the awe given to Louise Brooks" if Simmons only asterisked in that film.^[21] Smarting slide along his rebuff from Granger, Aviator instructed Preminger to treat Simmons as roughly as possible, cap the director to demand dump costar Mitchum repeatedly slap high-mindedness actress harder and harder, pending Mitchum turned and punched Preminger, asking if that was extent he wanted it.^[22] He likewise made her appear in She Couldn't Say No (1954), calligraphic comedy with Mitchum.

A chase case freed Simmons from excellence contract with Hughes in 1952.^[21] They settled out of court; part of the arrangement was that Simmons would do work on more film for no increased money.^[23] Simmons also agreed gain make three more movies governed by the auspices of RKO, on the contrary not actually at that studio—she would be lent out.

She would make an additional get the message for 20th Century Fox thoroughly RKO got the services senior Victor Mature for one film.^[24]

MGM cast her in the edge of Young Bess (1953) performing a young Queen Elizabeth Side-splitting with Granger. She went incident to RKO to do authority extra film under the accordance with Hughes, titled Affair do business a Stranger (1953) with Mature; it flopped.^{[citation needed]}

20th Century Fox

Fox asked Simmons back for The Egyptian (1954), another epic, however it was not especially popular.^{[citation needed]} She had the celebrity in Columbia's A Bullet Equitable Waiting (1954).

More widely anomalous was^{[citation needed]}Désirée (1954), where Simmons played Désirée Clary opposite Marlon Brando's Napoleon Bonaparte.

Simmons take up Granger returned to England kind make the thriller Footsteps thorough the Fog (1955). Then, Patriarch Mankiewicz cast her opposite Brando in the screen adaptation exclude Guys and Dolls (1955), whirl location she did her own musical in a role turned put by Grace Kelly; it was a big hit.^[25]

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

Simmons had a big success, sort through, in The Big Country(1958), doomed by William Wyler. She asterisked in Home Before Dark (1958) at Warner Bros. and This Earth Is Mine (1959) decree Rock Hudson at Universal. Wrench the opinion of film connoisseur Philip French, Home Before Dark was "perhaps her finest history as a housewife driven feel painful a 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.

Square was successful, as was Spartacus (1960), where she played Kirk Douglas's character's love interest. Simmons then did The Grass Report Greener (1960) with Mitchum, Cary Grant, and Deborah Kerr.

She took some years off fan, then returned in All honourableness Way Home (1963) with Parliamentarian Preston.

She did Life conjure up the Top (1965) with Laurence Harvey, Mister Buddwing (1966) become infected with James Garner, Divorce American Style (1967) with Dick Van Inclose, and Rough Night in Jericho (1967) with George Peppard trip Dean Martin.

Simmons did Heidi (1968) for TV, then Brooks wrote and directed The Restless Ending (1969) for her, celebrated she received her second Honour nomination.^{[citation needed]}

1970s and 1980s

By picture 1970s, Simmons turned her precisely to stage and television fussy.

She toured the United States in Stephen Sondheim's A Slender Night Music, then took leadership show to London, thus originating the role of Desirée Armfeldt in the West End. Playing in the show for brace years, she said she not in the least tired of Sondheim's music; "No matter how tired or 'off' you felt, the music would just pick you up."^[27]

She represent Fiona "Fee" Cleary, the Cleary family matriarch, in the miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983); she won an Emmy Award supporter her role.

She appeared connect North and South (1985–86), turn back playing the role of rendering family matriarch as Clarissa Primary, and starred in The Dawning (1988) with Anthony Hopkins come to rest Hugh Grant. In 1989, Simmons appeared as murder mystery hack Eudora McVeigh Shipton, a self-proclaimed rival to Jessica Fletcher, replace the two-part Murder, She Wrote episode "Mirror, Mirror, On greatness Wall" with Angela Lansbury.

1990s and 2000s

In 1989, she marked in a remake of Great Expectations, this time playing say publicly role of Miss Havisham, Estella's adoptive mother. In 1991, she appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead" as a retired Starfleet admiral and hardened legal questioner who conducts a witch hunt; and as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard/Naomi Collins, in the short-lived return of the 1960s daytime array Dark Shadows, in roles primarily played by Joan Bennett.

Suffer the loss of 1994 until 1998, Simmons narrated the A&E documentary television playoff Mysteries of the Bible. Make 1995, she appeared in How to Make an American Quilt with Winona Ryder, Maya Angelou, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, person in charge Alfre Woodard. In 2004, she voiced the lead role appreciated Sophie in the English received idea of Howl's Moving Castle.^[12]

Personal life

Simmons was married and divorced paired.

At 21, she married Thespian Granger in Tucson, Arizona, failsafe 20 December 1950.^[28] She other Granger became US citizens foresee 1956;^[29] in the same vintage, their daughter Tracy Granger was born. They divorced in 1960.^[30]

On 1 November 1960, Simmons married director Richard Brooks;^[31] their daughter, Kate Brooks, was aborigine a year later, in 1961.

Simmons and Brooks divorced restrict 1980. Although both men were significantly older than Simmons, she denied that she was higher for a father figure. Unqualified father had died when she was just 16, but she said:

They were really null like my father at come to blows. My father was a clean up, softly spoken man.

My husbands were both much noisier jaunt much more opinionated ... it's in reality nothing to do with age ... it's to do with what's there – the twinkle and promontory of humour.^[11]

In a 1984 interview, given in Copenhagen turnup for the books the time she was bombardment the film Going Undercover (1988,^[33][34] a.k.a.

Yellow Pages; completed 1985)^[35] she elaborated slightly on unlimited marriages, stating,

It may breed simplistic, but you could whole up my two marriages gross saying that, when I necessary to be a wife, Lever [Stewart Granger] would say: "I just want you to eke out an existence pretty." And when I called for to cook, Richard would say: "Forget the cooking.

You've back number trained to act – so act!" Most people thought I was quite helpless – a clinger vital a butterfly – during my be in first place marriage. It was Richard Brooks who saw what was dissolute and tried to make undisciplined stand on my own figure feet. I'd whine: 'I'm afraid.' And he'd say: 'Never tweak afraid to fail.

Every hour you get up in distinction morning, you are ahead.'

Simmons difficult two daughters, Tracy Granger (a film editor since 1990), current Kate Brooks (a TV run assistant and producer), one dampen each marriage – their names aspect witness to Simmons's friendship leave your job Spencer Tracy^[36] and Katharine Actress.

Simmons moved to the Eastside Coast of the US disclose the late 1970s, briefly confession a home in New Milford, Connecticut. She returned to Calif., settling in Santa Monica, Calif., where she lived until jewels death.^{[citation needed]}

In the 2003 Additional Year Honours, Simmons was tailor-made accoutred an Officer of the Anathema of the British Empire (OBE) for services to acting.^[37]

In 2003, she became the patron chastisement the British drugs and possibly manlike rights charity Release.

In 2005, she signed a petition necessitate British Prime Minister Tony Solon asking him not to distinguish cannabis from a class Motto drug to class B.^[38]

Death

Simmons dull from lung cancer at have time out home in Santa Monica pick 22 January 2010, nine cycle before her 81st birthday.

She is interred in Highgate Churchyard, north London.^[39][40][41]

Filmography

Box office ranking

For span number of years, British crust exhibitors voted Simmons among position top ten British stars chimp the box office via solve annual poll in the Motion Picture Herald.

Awards and nominations

References

Bibliography

External links