On Friday, we lost Jean Simmons, one of the more gifted and beautiful of screen actresses.  She died at 80, just a week before her 81st birthday.  Simmons is one of those stars who, no matter how famous or popular she became, always seemed underappreciated.  She never won an Oscar, nominated for the award only twice, once at the very beginning of her movie career and once after her stardom was just about over.  Where was the Academy when Simmons was delivering some of the best work in Hollywood in the years between 1952 and 1960?  With her impressive body of work, she would have been an ideal choice for an honorary Oscar.  But Oscar isn’t known for his long-term memory. 

In her years in the British film industry, beginning as a teenager, Simmons made several notable films, including Great Expectations (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), and Hamlet (1948).  Though she made a lovely and fragile Ophelia opposite Laurence Olivier, and received her first Oscar nomination (as supporting actress) for this Best Picture winner, it was in the Dickens piece, David Lean’s masterful adaptation, where she shone brightest.  Her radiant, self-possessed Estella makes such a strong impression that the film never quite recovers once Valerie Hobson assumes the role in adulthood.  Another treasure of Simmons’ British period is the sleeper So Long at the Fair (1950), a terrific period thriller anchored by her relentless fortitude in solving the mystery of her brother’s disappearance.  With her raven hair and prominent eyes, Simmons often evoked Vivien Leigh, and she would have been eminently believable if she had ever been cast as Leigh’s kid sister.

In Hollywood, Simmons starred opposite Robert Mitchum in Angel Face (1952), a knockout film noir from director Otto Preminger, a film in which she staked her claim as one of the essential femmes fatale of the genre.  She is cool and complicated, emotionally disturbed in a frighteningly plausible way.  It was The Robe (1953), Fox’s CinemaScope sensation, that made her a box-office name.  Despite the film’s popularity, it is by no measure a good movie, though Simmons gives the film its only genuine emotion, in a role subservient to Richard Burton.  As Elizabeth I in Young Bess (1953), alongside real-life husband Stewart Granger, Simmons is a commanding presence, as well as a bewitching redhead.  In The Actress (1953), George Cukor’s film of Ruth Gordon’s early stagestruck days, Simmons is incandescent, consumed with her dream of going on the stage.  She also gets to act with the great Spencer Tracy, and their father-daughter bond is a joy to behold.

Her two films with Marlon Brando, Desiree (1954) and Guys and Dolls (1955), were both enormous financial successes, if not first-rate movies.  Desiree is nothing more than a soapy costume picture, even relegating Brando’s Napoleon to the sidelines, but Guys and Dolls, though nowhere near as good as it could have been, showcased Simmons as a fearless musical-comedy actress, charmingly delivering “If I Were a Bell” with an infectious glee.  The Big Country (1958), from director William Wyler, combined box-office muscle with all-around excellence, and Simmons, opposite Gregory Peck, continued to display effortless versatility.  After all, here was this English rose perfectly at ease in a mega-western, as if she truly belonged there.

But the peak performance from Jean Simmons came in Elmer Gantry (1960), from writer-director Richard Brooks, the man who became Simmons’ second husband.  This Sinclair Lewis tale of religion, sex, and hucksterism won considerable praise (and Oscars) for Burt Lancaster (deservedly) and Shirley Jones (undeservedly), but Simmons is its magic ingredient.  As a true-believing revival-meeting evangelist, she is full of surprises.  She is a natural preacher, all aglow and truly inspired, but never holier-than-thou.  Ambitious but worn out, strong but moody, she is also surprisingly sexual, not to mention honest and smart.  In short, she is a real person, a multi-dimensional and genuinely soulful creation.  Whereas Shirley Jones’ laughably bad performance as a hooker is faux-sexy, Simmons wipes her off the screen with a palpable eroticism.  The Academy’s failure to nominate Simmons for Elmer Gantry goes down as one of that organization’s supreme embarrassments, especially unforgivable in the year that Elizabeth Taylor was named Best Actress for Butterfield 8.

Simmons never again got an opportunity as good as Elmer Gantry.  The Grass Is Greener (1961) is a disappointingly slight and unmemorable comedy, but it is worth mentioning because in this film Simmons manages to steal the show from the likes of Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, and Robert Mitchum, with a witty high-style performance.  She got that second Oscar nomination for another film directed by husband Brooks, The Happy Ending (1969), a shallow drama unworthy of Simmons’ depths.

If she was somehow always in the shadow of other actresses, not just Vivien Leigh but also Deborah Kerr and Audrey Hepburn, may we now please give her her due.  If you aren’t already a Simmons admirer, then a triple bill of Angel Face, The Actress, and Elmer Gantry ought to do the trick.