Well, the wait is over. Every year I was sure the Academy would get their act together and award this underrated and under-appreciated actress who possessed the most beautiful speaking voice to ever grace a motion picture with a long overdue honorary Academy Award, and every year the Academy never failed to disappoint.
And now it’s too late.
Twice nominated for an Oscar, Jean Simmons brought an exquisite mix of regal bearing, accessible warmth, feminine strength and womanly eroticism to such timeless classics as “Black Narcissus,” “Hamlet,” “Great Expectations,” “Guys and Dolls,” “The Big Country,” “Elmer Gantry,” and “Spartacus.” There were also too many superb but lesser-known gems on her resume to count, but you can start with “Until They Sail” with Paul Newman and “Angel Face” with Robert Mitchum. To set your DVR using her name is to discover a treasure-trove.
So powerful and bewitching was her screen presence that we completely understood and believed that larger-than-life men — Brando, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster — would fall head-over-heels for her because we fell right along with them.
Exhibit A: Watch this scene from “Until They Sail,” as a cynical, hard-drinking Paul Newman and a wary, suspicious Simmons fall for each other — watch two actors add more subtext with the unspoken than any amount of exposition ever could. And then name a love scene filmed in the last ten years as rich. I don’t think you can.
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I fell in love with Jean Simmons while Spartacus did, during a beautifully choreographed sequence played in almost complete silence. Both are slaves. Simmons is a servant girl given to gladiators as a sexual reward and Kirk Douglas is a gladiator who chose his humanity over taking that reward. In the middle of a large outdoor dining area packed with hungry gladiators and overseers, director Stanley Kubrick creates a slow romantic dance of sorts as she and Douglas steal tender looks and erotic touches.
Unforgettable.
All the talent in the world can’t pull a scene like that off without the right actress, and Jean Simmons was always the right actress. Pure movie star — beauty, talent, and above all, class.
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