The British actress Jean Simmons has died at the age of 80. It tends to be a cliché, of course, but Jean Simmons’ career on stage and on the screen large and small literally lasted decades, with her last role in last year’s Shadows in the Sun.
Enumerating Jean Simmons’ various roles would be beyond the scope of this piece, but there are a few memories to be shared.
Jean Simmons’ first big break was in a film version of Hamlet produced in 1946, directed by and starring in the title role Laurence Olivier. This version of Hamlet remains definitive, perhaps rivaled only by the longer version produced by Kenneth Branagh decades later.
Being an actress in the 1950s meant being in more than a few historical costume dramas.
Jean Simmons appeared in the title role as Young Bess, a somewhat romantic melodrama about the early life of Queen Elizabeth 1, co-starring her then husband Stewart Granger as Thomas Seymour, the Tudor era Admiral who had been chosen as Elizabeth’s guardian. In the movie a romance was also supposed between the teenaged Princess and the much older man. The historical truth, that could never have been shown in a film in the 1950s, was much stranger, sadder, and more than a little sicker.
Jean Simmons appeared in the role of a Roman Patrician woman named Diana in the film version of The Robe, opposite Richard Burton as a Roman soldier who supervised the execution of Jesus Christ and won his robe gambling, only to be tormented by strange fits afterwards. The Robe was one of those classic Hollywood epics of the 1950s which, along with Quo Vadis, celebrated the early Christian Church in ancient Rome. Jean Simmons’ classic scene was telling off the Emperor Caligula, played with a cackling, insane zest by Jay Robinson.
Jean Simmons’ most famous role, though, was when she put on the stola again as Varinia, the slave woman who becomes the lover of Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas in the film of the same name. Jean Simmons played Varinia with a combination of strength and vulnerability that was quite captivating. Spartacus also starred Jean Simmons’ old co-star from Hamlet Laurence Olivier as Cassius, the Roman politician and general who finally defeats Spartacus in battle.
One interesting note about Spartacus is that Jean Simmons’ best scene was left on the cutting room floor for decades as it was felt to be too intense for audiences in 1960. Restored in the modern version of Spartacus, it occurs toward the end when Varinia shows Spartacus, hanging from a cross, their infant son and tells him that they are now free. Then Varinia begs Spartacus, who is in agony, to die.
In later life, Jean Simmons appeared in a great deal of guest roles in television. One memorable turn was in the role of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in an attempt to revive the iconic occult soap opera Dark Shadows starring Ben Cross as the doomed vampire Barnabas Collins. Jean Simmons even appeared as a Star Fleet Admiral in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Jean Simmons would have been 81 on January 31st.
Source: Jean Simmons, IMDB
