Jean Simmons

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I see more Jane Wyatt and a bit of Suzanne Pleshette

Dear jean was bewitching in this excellent, sociologically-interesting unknown movie.

Poor Jean looked similar to Liz Taylor around 1950 but she had that square jaw line which made her difficult to photograph.

She had 15 years at he top and then she fell into 2nd-rate movies and (so I hear) alcoholism.

Jean Simmons is one of those actresses who can DO NO WRONG in my book!

She was in "Black Narcissus", she was in "Spartacus", and she was on "Star Trek (the Next Generation)", for those alone I adore her. Plus she's always been good or great, even in material that wasn't great, through her entire career.

R5 “Black Narcissus” is such a gorgeous fucking movie. Perfection, truly.

R3 I’ll definitely check this one out.

I think I agree with you in that Jean could 'DO NO WRONG'.

And I guess that's because—

1. She had the imprimatur of Sir Laurence, Lord Olivier.

2. She was in the right time at the right place. James Mason said there were no interesting actresses in Britain in the late 40s. MGM had snapped up Deborah Kerr. And so Jean appeared in good collection of prestige British movies, Great Expectations, Hamlet and The Blue Lagoon

3. She often played virtuous women (as per the clip below).

4. She starred opposite ALL the top men in her 1950s heyday Burton, Brando, Bogarde, Paul Newman, Rock Hudson, Gregory Peck, Stewart Granger, Burt Lancaster, Issur Demsky and Cary Grant

R8 I don't think any other actress, before or since, has starred opposite so many top-ranking men as those in that list.

R3 I say 'The Woman in the Hall' is a sociologically-interesting movie because it shows how a middle-class single mother keeps up a genteel facade while stooping to amoral behaviour to keep her family together in the days before taxpayer-funded welfare. The subject matter was deemed to be distasteful and the film got negative reviews at the time and was always screened as the B feature on double bills. Jean has the secondary role.

I could be crude and say 'The Woman in the Hall' is like 'Mildred Pierce' but without Joan's camp melodrama.

R5 'Black Narcissus' is gorgeous but I assure you there was NO 'f*cking' involved.

R9 re: “The Woman in the Hall” Sounds right up my alley!

Out of all the hundreds of actors who appeared on Murder, She Wrote - Jean Simmons was the only one to nab an Emmy Nomination for her guest appearance as a rival mystery writer

Okay, the parallels between Ms. Jean and Mama Lange are getting scary, lol.

Didn't she play Meggie's cold, unloving mother in The Thorn Birds? I hated her. (Which means Jean Simmons did a great job.)

You're slippin' bitches!

Did she have a rep for sleeping around?

This clip has a hideous soundtrack but it contains some excellent glamour photography of Jean when she was starring opposite that magnificent list of men—

Burton, Brando, Bogarde, Paul Newman, Rock Hudson, Gregory Peck, Stewart Granger, Burt Lancaster, Issur Demsky and Cary Grant

I loved her contributions to KISS.

Jessica Lange resembling Jean Simmons is a new one to me. I definitely see a younger days resemblance to Tuesday Weld, although Tuesday had more of a resemblance to Frances Farmer than Jessica did. Lange, in her 1970s modeling photos had a passing resemblance to Lauren Hutton.

I read one comment on some blog that described Lange as "an uncomfortable cross between Joanne Woodward and Faye Dunaway." I don't know if they meant in looks or acting talent, but what a description!

Jean Simmons and Elizabeth Taylor could have and should have played sisters on film. They had the same short stature, coloring, British accent, etc. Taylor had bigger tits though and was prone to plumping up. Jean remained petite for most of her career.

Saw her on the SS France or QEII, I don’t remember which.

I'll take Claire Bloom over Simmons, though I like both. Claire had her share of sexy leading men, including Burton.

The so-called resemblance between Jean and Jess is lost on me. I just don’t see it.

That woman bears an uncanny resemblance to the famous mystery writer, Eudora McVeigh. She visited Ms Fletcha up here in Cabot Cove once the about '89.

Later in her career she did a lot of narration for shows on the History Channel.

She has some Leslie Caron mixed with Vivienne Leigh.

I like her early performances best, but she was very good in Elmer Gantry too, Has anyone seen All the Home (1963)? I have never been able to track it down.

*All the Way Home*

Another Jeanne

Any eldergays see her in A Little Night Music?

I've always liked her.

Remember her in "Angel Face" with Robert Mitchum which has the jaw dropping ending.

And her wonderful performance as the investigator looking for sabotage on the Starship Enterprise with Captain Picard's crew.

And, of course, her 2 part role, on "Murder She Wrote", complete with a basket of poison apples.

I saw an interview with her former husband Stewart Granger who told how Howard Hughes set his sights on Jean when Simmons and Granger were married. HH was so relentless that Granger wondered if he would have to kill him (!!!)

I did, R30. At the Shubert in Chicago. Simmons was lovely. (But I really wanted her to be Glynis Johns.)

R32, I imagine no one could top Glynis. I wish I were alive in the 70s to have seen all those great Sondheim/Prince shows. Simmons seems to have a similar quality to her voice based on the London cast recording. Did the tour set have those sliding birch trees that people coo about?

Many people would remember her as Patrick Swayze’s mother in North and South.

Me, too, R30, at the Kennedy Center in DC. She was beautiful, but, then again, it's not like I saw her in closeup. Her performance great, but I don't remember any details. It was 1974, after all.

Simmons' "Night Music" co-star was Margaret Hamilton

She’s fine. But she’s not in any movies I just LOVE.

(I’ve never seen HOME BEFORE DARK, tho. In which I read she’s very good.)

I see a mix of Liz and Debbie Reynolds

She should have won the Oscar for "Elmer gantry."

There is one truky great performance in that film among the three big parts; but of course the other two were the ones who got Oscars.

R37 She is great in Home Before Dark - another great performance was The Happy Ending - the only lead role she was nominated for an Oscar for in addition to a supporting nod in Hamlet I think.

Jean Simmons is a classic case of showing how shitty the Oscars are. That she only ever received two nominations and no wins, no honorary Oscar. They are truely fucked. Jean Simmons was one of the greats.

Vivien Leigh referred to Simmons as a 'teen tart' as Simmons was apparently coming on to Olivier during the making of Hamlet.

Saw her in the national tour of A Little Night Music, with Margaret Hamilton.

R41, At the performance I attended in Boston, the show was stopped for about ten minutes. The stage manager came out to say that Jean was experiencing a severe coughing spell.

"...she was starring opposite that magnificent list of men— Burton, Brando, Bogarde, Paul Newman, Rock Hudson, Gregory Peck, Stewart Granger, Burt Lancaster, Issur Demsky and Cary Grant "

I wonder how many of them she fucked?

Because it'd be a damn shame if she didn't sample some of that prime manflesh!

[quote]r40 another great performance was The Happy Ending

Does she play a masseuse??

My GOD!

I loved Robert Mitchum. Nobody ever talks about him.

[R45]

[quote]Vivien Leigh referred to Simmons as a 'teen tart' as Simmons was apparently coming on to Olivier during the making of Hamlet.

It's interesting you mentioned that, R40. Jean was much younger than Olivier. Talented as he was, he didn't seem worth all the trouble.

To me, Jean looks like a cross between Vivien and Elizabeth Taylor. She was a beauty, like many actresses of Old Hollywood. They had higher standards then.

I agree R47, that she was a cross between Taylor and Leigh but had neither of their charisma. There was just something 'flat' about her which actually might have made her a better actress (I haven't seen enough of her work to judge) but also explains why she was never as big a star as the other two.

R46, Joan Rivers claimed she and Mitchum hooked up when she was Carson's guest host and Mitchum was a guest. In interviews and in one of her books, Joan said the sex was wonderful.

Simmons took over the wife role in "Life ath the Top", the sequel to "Room at the Top". I've seen it but I don't remember much of Simmons in it. Honor Blackman had more to work with, as I recall. Kathleen Byron owns "Black Narcissus" (though she's not the only good thing in it, of course), so that make two Jean Simmons movies where another actress made more of an impression.

To me, Simmons was neither dull nor exciting.

She seems perfectly nice, if a little bit stagey.

She's too ladylike and controlled to have much of a range.

Sabu!

I loved Simmons, in most anything. A grounded beauty. She brought balance to her roles, and made you care about all those period characters, like The Robe, The Egyptian, Desiree, Spartacus, and the much underrated The Big Country. And she certainly handled herself well in contemporary parts, too, like The Grass is Greener.

The frequent observation about her was that she tended to isolate, and drank a lot. In that business I can’t say I blame her. She certainly had courage to take on a major Sondheim role, and she apparently pulled it off. (I saw Glynis in the obc twice, but missed Simmons.)

And, though I never liked the overblown Guys and Dolls, she was absolutely charming in it. And, she’s still the best thing in Elmer Gantry.

"And, she’s still the best thing in Elmer Gantry"

Excuse me?

I just have no desire to see her movies; they and she are just so TAME.

I’ve seen her Estella, and bits and pieces of others... but she just didn’t make the kind of movies I like. Tho I would like to see THE ACTRESS, because I read Ruth Gordon’s autobiography (or, one of them) and it was fascinating.

R57 You won't find much titillation in "THE ACTRESS".

George Cukor made a respectful mainstream movie to make Spencer Tracy look good. Jean plays the slightly ambitious daughter but there's none of the coruscating, egomaniacal Ruth Gordon that we've all heard about.

R20 That's a lovely picture of Michael, Elizabeth, Jean and Stewart.

I'm guessing it's between 1952 and 1957 when Michael and Elizabeth were married. And, I think, three of them were under contract to MGM.

Jean made seven movies with husband Stewart (of varying quality). Stewart made one with Elizabeth ('Beau Brummel'). Elizabeth made one with husband Michael (something I've forgotten) And Michael did one with Jean (the ludicrous fiasco called 'The Egyptian')

I love you bitches. Schooling me for days on Ms. Jean Simmons.

Keep it coming!

R33, the set for the Night Music national tour was the original Broadway set. During it's Broadway run, the show moved from the smaller Shubert to the bigger Majestic. A new set was constructed to meet the requirements of the Majestic and the set from Shubert went on tour. So yes, the birch trees moved.

When Jean Simmons passed away she was surrounded by all her cats and dogs. I think her death was smoking related.

[quote]r61 A new set was constructed to meet the requirements of the Majestic and the set from Shubert went on tour. So yes, the birch trees moved.

When you go on tour, you have to MOVE the BIRCH TREE!

Jean as Ruth Gordon.....

Thanks to those who mentioned "The Big Country". One of my favorite westerns.

Great cast.

And great score.

I’m a British film snob and I’ve seen 47 out of Jean’s 95 films listed on IMBB but I’ve seen NONE of Jessica Lange.

But I have to agree with you, OP, there there is a resemblance between them with their box-shaped jaw line. And I also agree that Jean had the same radiant eyes as Elizabeth Taylor.

I saw her last movie, "Shadows in the Sun" , which was made a year before she died in 2010. It's a not very good family drama, unconvincingly set in the 1960s, and she is unrecognizable at first, but gives a typically thoughtful and moving performance as a housebound writer.

Please. Do not taint the memory of the beautiful and talented Jean by comparing her to that plastic surgeried Gorgon Lange.

^ Yes, she IS a large-faced hysterical gorgon!

ore concern trolling by the Lange troll. The only thing these two women have in common is their forgettable mediocrity as actresses.

^ Jean was an ornamental movie star for 15 years. She never pretended to be a actress.

She only went on stage in her declining years.

R20 Liz Taylor didn't have a British accent. She was 7 when her American family moved back to the US from London due to WWII. She lived in the US until her marriage to Richard Burton in the mid-sixties, when she also renounced her American citizenship and they became jet setters. After her second divorce from him in the mid-seventies, she got back her US citizenship and lived the remainder of her life in the US. She didn't have a British accent at the end, but early in her career she used a Mid-Atlantic accent, which many actors/broadcasters were taught.

I've only seen Jean Simmons in ELMER GANTRY, and in that she reminded me a lot of Audrey Hepburn. She sounded and looked a lot like her. I thought it was Audrey for most of the movie.

Taylor's English accent in "Secret Ceremony" is awful.

"Secret Ceremony" was awful. Everything about it was awful.

Crazy quasi-Commie Joseph Losey was an American nutty try-hard who thankfully soon fell out of fashion..

R51 Yes Jean Simmons took over the wife role in "Life at the Top", the sequel to "Room at the Top". I'm sure she was chosen for her passing resemblance to the original actress, Heather Sears.

But it was a depressing ugly movie. Jean, and the absent Simone Signoret, couldn't cover for Laurence Harvey's incompetent acting ability.

It must have been torture being married to Richard Brooks, as torturous as being married to James Cameron.

^ Brooks didn't give her any worthy roles.

(I think Julie Andrews is another ex-English performer who made a lousy second marriage)

I think it was Darwin Porter (not a reliable source, I believe) who reported that Jean's husband Stewart Granger had an affair with Liz's husband, Michael Wiling.

I think we would have heard something if there was any scrap of truth in that.

Both were pretty in the 40s but Granger's career crashed in the late 50s. Noel Coward gave Wilding his first big break in 'In Which We Serve' in 41 but said he was mumbling, 'hopeless' with a bad toupée on stage in the late 50s.

R78, Brooks was also a total asshole.

As a young gayling (age 15) a woman friend of my parents took me to London for a few days (my family was living in Europe at the time ) and in addition to going wig shopping with her (!) she took me to see the West End production of A LIttle Night Musuc, starring Jean Simmons. It was magical. IN addition to Jean, the cast included hot silver daddy Joss Ackland and Hermione Gingold. I got (and still have) the original cast album. What a little homo I was - and still am.

R79, Hedda Hopper made more than veiled accusations about Wilding and Granger in her popular and powerful column.

Fun Fact: Stewart Granger's birth name was James Stewart.

From Wikipedia:

Hopper spread rumors that Michael Wildingand Stewart Granger had a sexual relationship; Wilding later sued Hopper for libel and won.

I am across the rumor about Stewart Granger and Michael Wilding on this old DL thread.

Noël Coward, Lauren Bacall, and a sloppy Claudette Colbert appeared in a CBS TV version of his play 'Blithe Spirit' in 1956. One of Coward's private letters describes an after-party where Bacall called Hedda Hopper 'a lousy bitch'.

My favorite Jean Simmons performance is in the 1958 film Home Before Dark. It's a women's picture par excellence, with Jean playing a woman fresh out of the looney bin who's trying to remake her life after a nervous breakdown. Rhonda Fleming is also very good in that one, as Jean's scheming sister. It's just such a wonderful, satisfying movie.

I also love her opposite Robert Mitchum in Otto Preminger's Angel Face, where she plays a rich girl who may or may not have killed her parents. Fabulous!

She had sexy/neurotic/slightly on the verge of hysteria thing going on which worked well in these kinds of roles.

R87 Well it probably takes a bitch to know a bitch.

My favorite story about the making of Angel Face is that Otto Preminger, sadistic bastard that he was, kept insisting on mutliple retakes of a scene where Robert Mitchum slaps Jean Simmons. Finally, a fed-up MItchum slapped Preminger, asking, “Is that how you want it?”

Jean Simmons was plagued by alcoholism for many years. During the 1980s, she was one of many celebrities who made the pilgrimage to the Betty Ford Center for alcoholism. I think she finally did get sober though.

Another excellent Jean Simmons film and performance is the gaslight noir, Footsteps in the Fog. In it, Jean plays a scheming scullery maid who blackmails her employer (Stewart Granger), who is suspected of killing his wife. It's extremely entertaining and Simmons has a lot of fun playing a woman of dubious character.

Does anyone hear remember Jean Simmons' film So Long at the Fair? It's a wonderful film that for some reason has never been released on DVD and never shows up on TCM. Simmons plays a young woman travelling with her brother to the World's Fair in Paris. The brother mysteriously disappears and no one other than Jean can remember seeing him. Dirk Bogarde co-stars as a painter who helps Jean in the search for her borther. The film is first-rate, Hitchcock-style romantic suspense, with heavy doses of paranoia thrown in.

R91, Anyone married to Richard Brooks would eventually have an alcohol problem.

R90, Supposedly, it was Howard Hughes who ordered Preminger to treat Jean roughly on the set.

Rank sold Jean's contract to RKO, which was owned by Hughes. Hughes wanted to bed his latest acquisition, but she refused, as she was married to Granger. Spurned, Hughes then tried to sabotage her career by withholding good parts and refusing to loan her out to do "Roman Holiday." Jean sued to be released from her contract. The courts ruled in her favor, but she had to do one last picture before her contract ran out, "Angel Face." Jean tried to get out of it by cutting her hair short (she wears a wig in the film). Hughes supposedly told Preminger, "I'm going to get even with that little bitch, ans you're going to help me."

I enjoyed "Footsteps in the Fog" too, a good looking, fun thriller. As has been previously mentioned on DL, the director, Arthur Lubin, gave young Clint Eastwood his start in Hollywood, hiring him as an actor and supposedly keeping keeping him as a room-mate with benefits. Lubin lived to be 96, and late in life told an interviewer, who was surprised when he revealed his advanced age:

"I have never smoked in my life, and I think that has had a great deal to do with my physical appearance and keeping me healthy. I had one minor operation when I was 18 years old. Outside of that, I live in the California hills and enjoy life."

That plot, R93, for "So Long at the Fair" has been used many times and may even have a basis in fact.

Two people, often, but not always, 2 women, check into 2 rooms in a hotel in a very busy town/city where a huge, important fair is going on.

One of the pair, goes to her room, or out for a walk, returns to find that her friend/sister/brother/daughter is not there, someone else in the room (or no second room where she remembered it) , no record of them both in the check-in register and everyone who spoke to them both claiming that the protagonist had been alone.

Famous plot.

Supposedly based on an urban legend known as "The Vanishing Lady".

Snopes has a whole page about the "Vanishing Lady" urban legend which they call "The Vanishing Hotel Room".

Very interesting.

The tale has been around for a long time in various forms.

Snopes gives lots of the history of the story.

So Long at the Fair is on YouTube. I just watched it and it holds up well. Charming film! And thank you for the info, R97/98.

It's nice to re-view 'So Long at the Fair'.

The frilly costumes are pretty.

Jean Simmons with her bewitching eyes is pretty.

And Dirk Bogarde with his long eyelashes and his kissy lips is exceptionally petty.

Someone called Francoise Rosay dropped out. I guess she was meant to play the Nesbitt role.

Francoise Rosay was disconcerting. She was worse than Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum appeared in most of his movies with his eyelids draped half way down over his eyeballs. Francoise Rosay has her eyelids shut.

Here is the link to the "Big Valley" version of "The Vanishing Lady" plot.

Called "The Disappearance".

I was getting echoes of 'The Vanishing Lady'Syndrome in 'Death In Venice' with the prevaricating Hotel manager insisting to Aschenbach that there was nothing to fear. 'There is no cholera in Venice'.

Two more sites mentioning "The Vanishing Lady" story...

The first:

The second site is linked below. Scroll down for the research on "The Vanishing Lady".

Who knew there were so many people researching urban legends??

Apparently the first so far discoverd mention of "The Vanishing Lady" story goes back to 1897 with the story appearing in "The Detroit Free Press", "The Los Angeles Sunday Times", "The Philadelphia Inquirer" and "The Boston Daily Globe".

Fascinating.

Who knew?

Thanks for the info on the Vanishing Lady urban legend, R105/106. I find this kind of thing fascinating!

[quote]I saw her last movie, "Shadows in the Sun" , which was made a year before she died in 2010. It's a not very good family drama, unconvincingly set in the 1960s, and she is unrecognizable at first, but gives a typically thoughtful and moving performance as a housebound writer.

r67 The acting was good but I didn't much like Shadows In The Sun either. I saw it years ago. Earlier this year I discovered it was directed by David Rocksavage aka the Marquise of Cholmondeley whose wife Rose Hanbury always turns up in the Royal threads for being "phased out" by Kate Middleton. David Cholmondeley is a bisexual slut which explains the casting of James Wilby - he probably has watched Maurice every month since it was released.

R22 prefers Claire Bloom over Simmons and, interestingly enough, Bloom was Olivier’s first choice to play Ophelia in his 1947 'Hamlet'.

Bloom (née Claire Blume) was a stage-trained intellectual actress while I’d call Jean Simmons a very ornamental movie star with a pleasant open demeanour rather than a proper actress.

Claire Bloom, still alive at 88, put out a fairly superficial memoir called ‘Limelight and After’ almost 40 years but I reckon a Jewish intellectual like her should do another more scholarly, thorough version because she knew almost everyone!

R26 If anything Claire Bloom has a physiognomic resemblance to Leslie Caron rather than Jean Simmons (they both have rather simian mouths). Whereas the late, lovely Jean has the square jaw line similar to the American Jessica Lange.

Re Bus Stop and Some Like It Hot: It probably made Marilyn feel worse when her male co-stars (Don Murray and Jack Lemmon, respectively) got Oscar nominations and she didn't.

Shit! Wrong thread.

I saw Jean in A Little Night Music in London when I was a gayling (maybe 1976?). She was wonderful and I LOVED A Little Night Music. Hermione Gingold was in it as well. FABULOUS

^ Was Hermione Gingold appropriate to this talk-fest?

I reckon Gingold only played herself. She helped spoil Minnelli's "Gigi".

R113 spoil?

^ Yes, all that was discussed in the recent thread asking which movie musicals should be remade?

"Jean Simmons is one of those actresses who can DO NO WRONG in my book!"

Except when she tried to pull of an American accent.

R115 I never noticed that. Are you thinking of one film in particular?

R117 Did you mean R116?

Her American accent was OK in "All the Way Home" and "The Happy Ending".

Yes, I'm sorry R118. I did mean R116; I was curious about the film.

No, it wasn't. She sounds like an English girl trying to disguise her origins in every picture where she played an American. Elmer Gantry, Hilda Crane, Mister Buddwing, etc etc etc

I never noticed problems with her accent but I admit I'm only interested in her quality films between 1947 and 1964 (when she appeared opposite that galaxy of men Burton, Brando, Bogarde, Grant, Hudson, Mitchum, Newman, Peck, Granger, Lancaster, Guinness and Issur Demsky).

She appeared in lots of sad, second-rate trash after that when her beauty had dissipated and she was probably required to speak in an assumed accent..

Jean Simmons, who was the original choice for the role of Princess Ann in this movie but was somehow indisposed.

She vowed she would never go to see the film, nonetheless sneaked into a cinema where it was showing.

Later that day, she telephoned Audrey: ‘Miss Hepburn, my name is Jean Simmons. Thank you, Miss Hepburn. I’ve just seen Roman Holiday and, although I wanted to hate you, I have to tell you I wouldn’t have been half as good. You were just wonderful.’

Re accent: Why doesn't Jean Simmons get a pass like,, say, Hayley Mills or Julie Andrews. They were often playing Americans but sounded like they came from anotha lahnd.

Hayley did a better American accent and Dame Julie never played an American that I can recall, or did she?

Isn't Thoroughly Modern Millie supposed to be from the Heartland?

Audrey Hepburn is another who couldn't shake off her English accent or whatever that was that she had.

^ That's right. I love Audrey but she sounded ridiculous in Breakfast at Tiffany. There's no way an American country girl could have ended up sounding like that no matter how pretentious and sophisticated she might have become.