jean simmons alert

[moira finnie]

There's now a slightly better print of The Blue Lagoon (1949) on youtube with Jean Simmons, Donald Houston, and Noel Purcell as a seaman who becomes their (fallen) guardian angel. It Despite the fact that the movie appears to be in dire need of restoration or at least a better print, the story still has the power to enchant, especially when Jean is on-screen.
[youtube][/youtube]

I finally saw all of Home Before Dark (1958) and will post more about this impressive performance asap.

[moira finnie]

Kingster, thanks for giving this a bump.

I am so delighted that Jean Simmons will be the centerpiece of June's programming on TCM. There are some tantalizing clips of the lady herself discussing her work (all too briefly) in NOW PLAYING: The Show found here and playing between movies throughout the month. I suppose that there is much more of the actress discussing her career tucked away in the TCM Archives.

I am looking forward to seeing The Way to the Stars again this coming week. I can't really explain why, but Douglass Montgomery always touches me in his small part as a bit of an outsider among the Brits. I guess it has something to do with his sensitive work in the grittier early version of Waterloo Bridge (1931) about another war with Mae Clarke in the Vivien Leigh part.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Dear Kingrat, thanks for the Jean Simmons alert bump. And Moira, thanks for the double-bump!
I love Jean Simmons

Seeing her in Spartacus with Kirk Douglas at the TCM Film Fest on the big screen, the way she was meant to be seen, was a wonderful moment for me. I went to the screening with some great new pals I had met from New Jersey, Milt and Sue and Mike and Fran. These sweet "kids" adopted me and had so much fun living vicariously through my silly exploits. I think they are going on the cruise.

(Second Digression Alert--the first one you have to figure out on your own!)

But back to Jean. Seeing her in all her glory was a revelation to me. I had never seen here before in a film in situ. Her skin just glowed with her presence, and the love scenes took me back to the summer of '71 in Saltillo when I'd met someone who....well, more later on that escapade.

It was like the first time I had ever seen that film. Goosey Bumps!

Kirk and Jean emoting so powerfully in every frame just made me intoxicated all over again with the power of film. And reminded me that I had been able to experience such heady emotion in my personal life.

If I'd had a wish, it would have been that Kirk talked more about Jean. He did mention somewhere in there about how lovely she was and how he had enjoyed working with her...


He was just as lively as he was on the Oscars...a born ham! And very funny and clever! He may have difficulty with his speech, but not his critical thinking skills or his delivery! Definitely a nonagenraian limelight lover!

[moira finnie]

You are so lucky to have seen Jean Simmons on the big screen in her prime, Christy. I saw her only once in a movie house in How To Make An American Quilt (1995). When she was on screen with talent like Anne Bancroft, Kate Nelligan, Alfre Woodard, Ellen Burstyn and Winona Ryder, it was the 65-year-old Simmons to whom my eye was drawn. She quietly created a still, pensive character who had a believable inner life, despite her high-powered company and her character's problems. It's not a great movie and it's a bit self-conscious about its good intentions sometimes, but some people may enjoy it. Here's a nice compilation from it:
[youtube][/youtube]

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Moira, thanks for that wonderful link.

Some of my favorite films are Young Bess, Spartacus,Until They Sail , The Actress, The Thornbirds, Footsteps in the Fog, Divorce American Style, Hamlet, The Big Country, and Elmer Gantry. I loved her pure silliness in The Grass is Greener. Can you think of one of her performances that is sillier than that?

[moira finnie]

Oh, gee, you picked some great movies, Christy. I don't think she was ever funnier than in The Grass Is Greener--though I thought that Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum looked pretty uncomfortable throughout that one. I wish that Jean Simmons had appeared in more comedies.
Simmons had an infectious laugh which she only too rarely was asked to display in films.

I have never warmed to The Big Country (though I admire it), but a couple of movies that I enjoyed because she was in them are the same as you, (Young Bess, The Actress, Until They Sail) as well as Great Expectations (she's a wonderful Estella), Adam and Evalyne, So Long at the Fair, Angel Face, Hilda Crane (guilty pleasure time!!), Home Before Dark (not a great movie, but she's great in it and should've won an Oscar) The Happy Ending, and a lovely little British film for television hardly anyone else has seen, called Daisies in December (1995).

I was impressed by her characterization of a woman unhappily married (unfortunately she played those all too well) to Laurence Harvey in Life At the Top . Her character wasn't very bright and was spoiled, but felt her confusion and frustration with her life. You could see why she made the dumb decisions in her life, and still liked her, which couldn't have been easy to convey.

[moira finnie]

I just noticed that Uncle Silas aka The Inheritance (1947) is on overnight at 2:15am June 8th on TCM. This is a Gothic tale of sorts with an evil "uncle," played by Derrick de Marney (Young and Innocent, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Projected Man). He was in very heavy makeup, as you can see from the photo below as he spent the movie trying to get his mitts on the fortune of his ward, (Jean Simmons). It has some fine dark moments even though it is way over the top most of the time, especially when the great Greek character actress Katina Paxinou is on the scene (chewing the scenery into sawdust) as one of the girl's evil tormentors.

Reginald Tate and Jean Simmons with Katina Paxinou cackling away in Uncle Silas.


What an incredibly expressive face!


Derrick de Marney in 1947.


Derrick de Marney in 1947 as Uncle Silas.

Here's one of Simmons' earlier movies that I wish TCM could show. I remember seeing it once, but the details are pretty fuzzy. It's The Clouded Yellow (1950) with Simmons and Trevor Howard and it begins below. It's a very British, cozy mystery with a few noirish twists and Trevor and Jean make a very unlikely but good pair. [Don't kill me for this girly aside, but don't miss Jean's beautiful hair in this one.]

[youtube][/youtube]

[JackFavell]

HA! Katina doesn't even leave the sawdust!

[CineMaven]

JEAN SIMMONS TCM's Star of the Month. Aaaaaaaah.

What lovely sentiments from the fans here. May I add mine? I am a big Jean Simmons fan. I can't explain it rationally...but I find her beauty painful to look at. It's the darnedest unreal thing and I've only experienced with one other celebrity: Ingrid Bergman. But with Bergman, it's her vulnerability that I might be reacting to. SueSue I enjoyed the lovely way you wrote up your memory of a summer's past. I think she gives good reliable performances; she's not Actressy...allways real. Her voice is distinctive. Close your eyes; you can pick her out of a hundred actresses. Her voice brushes past my eardrums like velvet or suede. I was inside Graumann's Chinese watching "Spartacus" too at TCM's film festival. I wasn't going to stay for the whole movie. I didn't want to invest my time in the epic. I just wanted to stay to see Jean Simmons and then I was going to dash off to my next screening. (I had everything timed to a fraction of a nanosecond).

Well when she came on the screen, she took my breath away. There's a lushness about her that's...gee whiz. I couldn't get up from out of my seat after that. I'd never seen "Spartacus" on the big screen...and I was sitting in the third row. But that's okay...I was in for a penny, in for a pound. "The Robe" "Angel Face" "Young Bess" "Black Narcissus" (which is on now and with her in color...you can't beat that) "Hilda Crane" (which I saw eons ago) "Until They Sail" etc.etc.etc. I must admit, I don't care for her as a blonde so when I see that, I get discombobulated. The pix that Moira posted of her and her NOW PLAYING stint says it all. When I look at it, I say, "yup, that's Jean Simmons."

Thanx TCM!

[moira finnie]

A Bullet Is Waiting (1954). D: John Farrow. Don't miss this little-known four-actor film (five if you count the dog, who plays an important role). It's a cross between The Naked Spur and Farrow's earlier film Back from Eternity. Simmons has never looked sexier, with her short haircut and blue jeans. A plane crash strands lawman Stephen McNally and prisoner Rory Calhoun in a remote section of the Northern California coast, where they find Jean looking after the sheep farm while her father (Brian Aherne) is away for supplies. Simmons and Calhoun have excellent chemistry in this very well-directed film.

I don't want to oversell A Bullet Is Waiting (1954), but it was a pleasant surprise to me when I saw it a few months ago. Simmons is flinty, tough and heartbreakingly dear as a girl who has grown up in isolation, with almost all her ideas formed from her father (the mysteriously absent Brian Aherne, who seems to be on screen for five minutes, tops), the books, animals and nature around her. That doesn't mean she's dumb, but is actually anything but. Her sense of ethics is more developed than the lawman or the outlaw who break her solitude--though her vulnerability and unexpressed sexuality are present in every moment of her performance as well. Rory Calhoun never really impressed me as a great actor (he seemed to get parts that Mitchum rejected), but as a doomed man, he's excellent in this small scale movie, especially with Simmons, as you pointed out.

Maybe this is silly, but after seeing this it occurred to me what a good Joan of Arc Jean Simmons would have made.
Here's a sequence from the movie, which is available on DVD :
[youtube][/youtube]

[ChiO]

An alternative view: Having watched A BULLET IS WAITING a few months ago, I found the the weakest part to be...Jean Simmons. Never buy her performances, except for ANGEL FACE. A role as St. Joan I might buy...but the real post-1929 Jean as Joan (Seberg and d'Arc, respectively) is tough to follow.