The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (387 page)

Jean Simmons
(1929–2010), b. London
English actresses have often complained of inadequate opportunity in their own industry. Jean Simmons struck out for America in that spirit, and surely had the makings of a vivacious, flirty comedienne.

She was educated at the Aida Foster School and went into British films in her teens:
Give Us the Moon
(44, Val Guest);
Kiss the Bride Goodbye
(44, Paul L. Stein);
Meet Sexton Blake
(44, John Harlow);
Mr. Emmanuel
(44, Harold French);
Caesar and Cleopatra
(45, Gabriel Pascal);
The Way to the Stars
(45, Anthony Asquith); as Estella in
Great Expectations
(46, David Lean);
Hungry Hill
(46, Brian Desmond Hurst); as a Gauguin dancing girl in
Black Narcissus
(47, Michael Powell);
Uncle Silas
(47, Charles Frank);
The Woman in the Hall
(47, Jack Lee); as a blonde Ophelia in
Hamlet
(48, Laurence Olivier).

It was to follow her husband-to-be, Stewart Granger, and to escape the creeping gentility of
The Blue Lagoon
(48, Frank Launder);
Adam and Evelyne
(49, French), with Granger;
Trio
(50, French);
Cage of Gold
(50, Basil Dearden);
The Clouded Yellow
(50, Ralph Thomas); and
So Long at the Fair
(50, Terence Fisher and Anthony Darnborough) that she left for America in 1950. Her first two years there were spent under contract to Howard Hughes; it was an indecisive period, shadowed by his desire to control her, terminated in 1952, but responsible for the “Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” an episode from
Face to Face
(52, Bretaigne Windust),
Affair with a Stranger
(53, Roy Rowland),
She Couldn’t Say No
(54, Lloyd Bacon), and far more important, her wide-eyed murderess in
Angel Face
(52), one of Otto Preminger’s most refined studies of obsession and possibly a sign of Hughes’s admiration for his unhappy actress.

Englishness then put her in dull costume films: very effective in
Young Bess
(53, George Sidney); but only a stooge in
Androcles and the Lion
(52, Chester Erskine);
The Robe
(53, Henry Koster); and
The Egyptian
(54, Michael Curtiz). She was much better as the young hopeful in
The Actress
(53, George Cukor); appeared to enjoy herself opposite Brando in
Desirée
(54, Koster); as Sister Sarah, singing like a sweet bell in
Guys and Dolls
(55, Joseph L. Mankiewicz); and in
A Bullet Is Waiting
(54, John Farrow) as a tomboy. But plain films set in:
Footsteps in the Fog
(55, Arthur Lubin), made back in England with Granger; earnestly notorious as
Hilda Crane
(56, Philip Dunne);
This Could Be the Night
(57, Robert Wise);
Until They Sail
(57, Wise);
The Big Country
(58, William Wyler);
This Earth Is Mine
(59, Henry King); especially
Spartacus
(60, Stanley Kubrick), in which she could not quite suppress the giggles. But she was remarkably good as the disturbed wife in
Home Before Dark
(58, Mervyn Le Roy) and, married now to Richard Brooks, she played the Aimee Semple McPherson evangelist in his
Elmer Gantry
(60), a large and worthwhile part, if one that neglected her sense of mischief; seen briefly, in fur coat and underwear, in
The Grass Is Greener
(60, Stanley Donen). She has worked sparingly since then, and with discouraging results:
All the Way Home
(63, Alex Segal); as Mrs. Lampton in
Life at the Top
(65, Ted Kotcheff);
Mister Buddwing
(65, Delbert Mann);
Divorce American Style
(67, Bud Yorkin);
Rough Night in Jericho
(67, Arnold Laven);
The Happy Ending
(69, Brooks); the deplorable
Say Hello to Yesterday
(71, Alvin Rakoff). She played in
Mr. Sycamore
(74, Pancho Kohner);
Dominique
(78, Michael Anderson);
Beggarman, Thief
(79, Lawrence Doheny);
Golden Gate
(81, Paul Wendkos);
Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls
(81, Walter Grauman);
A Small Killing
(81, Steven Hilliard Stern);
Midas Valley
(85, Gus Trikonis);
Going Undercover
(88, James Kenelm Clarke);
The Dawning
(88, Robert Knights);
Inherit the Wind
(88, David Greene); and, for British TV, she played Miss Havisham in
Great Expectations
(89, Kevin Connor).

In recent years, she worked for TV:
Laker Girls
(90, Bruce Seth Green);
People Like Us
(90, William Hale);
Sensibility and Sense
(90, David Hugh Jones);
Dark Shadows
(91, Rob Bowman and Dan Curtis);
One More Mountain
(94, Dick Lowry);
How to Make an American Quilt
(95, Jocelyn Moorhouse);
Daisies in December
(95, Mark Haber);
Her Own Rules
(98, Bobby Roth).

Though very shy, and once an alcoholic, she made personal appearances in her last years—at Telluride and in Los Angeles—and she did a fine voice performance on
Howl’s Moving Castle
(04, Hayao Miyazaki) and in
Shadows in the Sun
(09).

Michel Simon
(François Simon) (1895–1975), b. Geneva, Switzerland
When people see
Boudu Sauvé des Eaux
(32, Jean Renoir) or
L’Atalante
(34, Jean Vigo) for the first time, they sometimes ask, “Was Michel Simon really like that?” It is a revealing question, that shows the trace of threatened bourgeois in all of us at Simon’s sprawling, unclean satyr, and points at the special mingling of self and character that is so necessary (and dangerous) in screen acting.

The answer to the question perhaps is, “No, yet that is as he wanted to be and was afraid of becoming.” Renoir has admitted that his own pursuit of improvisation with actors began with Simon, and these studies in unrestrained behavior influenced the most creative strain of French cinema—both actors and directors. Thus Belmondo’s excellent impersonation of Simon in
Pierrot le Fou
is not only a tribute to an actor, but an acknowledgment that Boudu’s aimless purity is one of the ideals that haunts Ferdinand/Pierrot/Belmondo.

Few actors have had so rich and lasting an impact as Simon sitting braced in doorways, swimming on a tabletop, spitting in books, cleaning his shoes with a bedspread, or taking to the Seine as naturally as a seal bored with land. It is said that
Boudu
is a minor Renoir film, and that may be so, but for Simon it was the part of a lifetime. His Jules in
L’Atalante
is a dark extension of Boudu, an ugly, secretive man who has been all over the world, keeps severed hands in a jar, and is tattooed like an aboriginal. Again, notably, he is a river creature, too rank, overwhelmingly private, and innately alien for polite society.

Simon was a boxer, a photographer, and an acrobat before he went into the theatre in Geneva in 1920. His film career had a Boudu-like wandering, as if he could not tolerate organization, or directors were cautious about such primal energy. He was still an actor who might carry away a film.
La Vocation d’André Carrel
(25, Jean Choux);
Feu Mathias Pascal
(25, Marcel L’Herbier); seen briefly in
La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc
(28, Carl Theodor Dreyer);
Tire-au-Flanc
(28, Renoir);
L’Enfant de l’Amour
(31, L’Herbier);
Jean de la Lune
(31, credited to Choux, but largely directed by Simon himself);
On Purge Bébé
(31, Renoir); as the deceived bourgeois who perhaps wanders away to be a tramp in
La Chienne
(31, Renoir);
De Haut en Bas
(33, G. W. Pabst);
Le Lac-aux-Dames
(34, Marc Allégret);
Le Bonheur
(34, L’Herbier);
Sous les Yeux d’Occident
(36, Allégret);
Faisons un Rêve
(36, Sacha Guitry);
Drôle de Drame
(37, Marcel Carné);
Les Disparus de Saint-Agil
(38, Christian-Jaque); as Michele Morgan’s odious guardian in
Quai des Brumes
(38, Carné);
La Belle Etoile
(38, Jacques de Baroncelli);
La Fin du Jour
(39, Julien Duvivier);
Fric-Frac
(39, Claude Autant-Lara);
La Comédie du Bonheur
(40, L’Herbier); as Scarpia in
La Tosca
(40, begun by Renoir, but directed by Karl Koch);
Au Bonheur des Dames
(43, André Cayatte);
Panique
(46, Duvivier); as the Devil in
La Beauté du Diable
(49, René Clair);
La Poison
(51, Guitry);
La Vie d’un Honnête Homme
(52, Guitry); as Shylock in
Il Mercante di Venezia
(52, Pierre Billon);
Saadia
(53, Albert Lewin);
Les Trois Font la Paire
(57, Clément Duhour);
Austerlitz
(60, Abel Gance and Roger Richebé);
Candide
(60, Norbert Carbonnaux);
Cyrano et d’Artagnan
(63, Gance);
The Train
(65, John Frankenheimer);
Le Vieil Homme et l’Enfant
(66, Claude Berri);
Contestazione Generale
(70, Luigi Zampa);
La Maison
(70, Gerard Brach); unerringly medieval in
Blanche
(71, Walerian Borowczyk);
La Più Bella Serata della Mia Vita
(72, Ettore Scola); and
L’Ibis Rouge
(75, Jean-Pierre Mocky).

Simone Simon
(1910–2005), b. Bethune, France
It was a small, pretty face, a little pinched round the nose and slanted in the eyes. Her first appearance in
La Bête Humaine
, in 1938, has her caressing a silken cat. But it was five years before the cinema realized that Simone Simon had a feline cast to her features. The connection was made with stunning effect in
Cat People
(43, Jacques Tourneur), Val Lewton’s first horror film, about a frigid girl who comes to believe that she descends from a race of Balkan cat-worshippers. The idea ripens on that pensive face, without violently dramatic eruptions of whiskers or teeth, but with every nuance of a personality being overpowered. Simon was restored to screen life in the sequel,
The Curse of the Cat People
(44, Robert Wise and Gunther von Fritsch), as the dead wife reinvented as a playmate for the little girl. It was part of Lewton’s plan and Tourneur’s skill that so beguiling a face should become menacing without any distortion except for the impinging background darkness. In the first film, especially, her unease with English supports the sense of occult, while her buttoned-up prettiness is a poignant sign of sexual inhibition.

Simon had been in French films since 1931, but without leaving a special imprint:
Le Chanteur Inconnu
(31);
Mam’zelle Nitouche
(31, Marc Allégret);
La Petite Chocolatière
(32, Allégret);
Le Roi des Palaces
(32, Carmine Gallone);
Un Fils d’Amérique
(32, Gallone);
Le Lac-aux-Dames
(34, Allégret); and
Les Beaux Jours
(35, Allégret). In 1936 she went to America, returning only for the restless wife in
La Bête Humaine
(38, Jean Renoir). Renoir offered her the part of Christine in
La Règle du Jeu
, but she asked for an American-scale salary and was abandoned.

As well as the two “cat” films, her American period includes
Girls’ Dormitory
(36, Irving Cummings);
Seventh Heaven
(37, Henry King);
Josette
(38, Allan Dwan);
All That Money Can Buy
(41, William Dieterle);
Tahiti Honey
(43, John Auer); excellent as the laundress in
Mademoiselle Fifi
(44, Wise); and
Johnny Doesn’t Live Here Any More
(44, Joe May). After the war, she returned to France and worked in Britain and Italy:
Pétrus
(46, Allégret);
Temptation Harbor
(47, Lance Comfort);
Donna Senza Norme
(49); as the chambermaid in
La Ronde
(50, Max Ophüls); as the girl in the “La Modèle” episode from
Le Plaisir
(52, Ophüls);
The Extra Day
(56, William Fairchild); and
La Femme en Bleu (72
, Michel Deville). After that she worked only in the theatre.

Don
(Donald)
Simpson
(1945–96), b. Seattle, Washington
Don Simpson behaved like someone who half hoped, half believed he was already in a movie, and one of his strategies with filmmakers was to seem more melodramatic, more dangerous and sensational than anything they could bring to him. So it’s worth noting that he often pushed himself in front of the camera, while in James Toback’s
The Big Bang
(89), he presents a good portrait of the black-garbed, happy, self-destructive adventurer.

The psychological case history that lay behind this, and hustled him to his early death (as a victim of drugs, booze, mounting crisis, and willful lack of control), is not settled in Charles Fleming’s book,
High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess
, because Fleming is too easily seduced by Simpson’s own glee. Does it matter whether or not there was something challenging, or interesting, in Simpson’s tortured progress?

He could be intensely cynical in his pronouncements—“We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. Our obligation is to make money.” Well, of course, he did that, but the antistatement just quoted is so deeply hewn in movie rock you can’t escape his desperate, adolescent dream of significance. He was a Sammy Glick who would have hired Budd Schulberg to write that book, and in his lurid, kid’s way he had a true sense of how a certain kind of movie was abomination in the eyes of academia—and perfect Don Simpson. He had had an intense religious upbringing—of a sort he scorned and rejected—but in truth he was a little like Norman Mailer’s Marion Faye, cut with … with, Norman, why not, a furious ball of energy waiting and hoping to explode, determined to take as many with him as possible. He deserved some big crash, but it was God’s gentle rebuke to off him quietly, while sitting on the toilet, reading about Oliver Stone.