Jean Simmons dies at 80

Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 11:50 pm

LONDON: Jean Simmons dies at 80 latest Breaking news updates, Jean Simmons, the ethereal British film star who played Ophelia to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, sang with Marlon Brando in “Guys and Dolls” and co-starred with Gregory Peck, Paul Newman and Kirk Douglas, died on Friday.
Jean Simmons dies at 80
She was 80 years old.

Simmons, who won an Emmy Award for her role in the 1980s miniseries “The Thorn Birds,” passed away 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 film 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, ’80s and ’90s.

Her other notable films included “Elmer Gantry” (with Burt Lancaster), “Until They Sail” (with Paul Newman), “The Big Country” (with Gregory Peck), “Spartacus,” (with Kirk Douglas), “This Earth Is Mine” (Rock Hudson), “All the Way Home” (Robert Preston), “Mister Buddwing” (James Garner) and “Rough Night in Jericho” (Dean Martin).

Simmons had left Britain for Hollywood in 1950, accompanied by her future husband Stewart Granger.

There, they were befriended by reclusive tycoon 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 womaniser, 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” (as young Queen Elizabeth I), “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 Marlon Brando’s Napoleon.

The pair teamed again in 1955 for “Guys and Dolls,” the Samuel Goldwyn-produced musical in which Simmons was Sarah Brown, a Salvation Army-style reformer conned into a weekend fling in Havana by gambler Sky Masterson.

By the 1970s, her career as a lead film actress had ended, but Simmons continued to work regularly on stage and in television.

In the 1980s and ’90s she appeared on such television shows as “Murder, She Wrote,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “Xena: Warrior Princess.”

She also appeared in numerous TV movies and miniseries, including a 1991 version of “Great Expectations,” in which she played Miss Havisham this time.

The careers of both Simmons and her husband Granger had flourished in the 1950s, he as a swashbuckler, she as the demure heroine. But long absences on film locations strained their relationship, and they divorced in 1960.

They had a daughter, Tracy.

Shortly after her divorce, Simmons married Richard Brooks, who had directed her in “Elmer Gantry” and would again in “The Happy Ending.”

Their marriage, which produced a daughter, Kate, ended in divorce in 1977.