COURIER-EXPRESS WEEK OF DEC. 21 to DEC. 27 1980
Jean Simmons joins prime-time soaper
By JERRY BUCK LOS ANGELES (AP)
After 37 years as an actress, Jean Simmons has agreed to star in her first television series. Miss Simmons, star of more than a score of movies here and in her native England, and a nominee for an Academy Award for her performance in The Happy Ending, finally said yes to “Golden Gate.” A two-hour pilot movie has just been completed and will be broadcast early next year by ABC.
MISS SIMMONS stars as the matron of an aristocratic San Francisco publishing family in this proposed primetime soap opera in the mold of “Dallas.” The pilot show tells the story of the Kingsleys, played by Richard Kiley and Miss Simmons, owners of the fictional San Francisco Bulletin, and their two children, Perry King and Mary Crosby, who was Kristin, the woman who shot J.R. on “Dallas.” Miss Simmons said she and executive producer Lin Bolen had a certain unnamed grande dame of publishing in mind as the model for Jane Spencer Kingsley.
“I’VE NEVER DONE a series before so I don’t know what to expect,” Miss Simmons said in an interview in her Santa Monica home. “I would hope that my character would sort of pop in and out.” She said she’s never purposely avoided a TV series. “I’ve never really thought about it. But as I get on in life I find the less I want to work. I’d like to do a lot of traveling.” Her role in the film frequently calls for her to be an intermediary between her husband and son, who are at sword’s point.
“THERE’S A RIFT in the family,” she said, “mainly because of the son’s love for his mother and the way the father treats her.“We did a lot of kidding on the set about how we could get Richard to sing. (Kiley was Broadway’s “Man of La Mancha.”) He only sings in the shower in the movie, and when I don’t hear him I discover that he’s had a stroke.” Miss Simmons formerly was married to writer-director Richard Brooks, and has two daughters, Tracy and Kate, named after Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. She starred with Tracy in The Actress.
“I WAS BORN within the sound of the Bow Bells in London,” she said. “That makes me a real Cockney. I grew up with a Cockney accent. When the Rank Organization put me under contract I had to talk like a lady. We had to take elocution lessons. “Michael Caine broke the rules in Alfie. He was a hero with a Cockney accent. Things became much better after that.”
HER FIRST MOVIE was Give Us the Moon, and her first American movie was Androcles and the Lion, for Howard Hughes. “Howard Hughes bought my contract,” she said. “I woke up one morning and found myself working for Hughes. I’d met him earlier and found him to be very nice.” She said she considers Elmer Gantry to be her favorite movie, but she said she also particularly likes The Actress. While filming Gantry, she and Brooks fell in love and marfried.- they are now divorced.
ANOTHER MAJOR MOVIE was Spartacus, during which she said she learned the art of patience from Sir Laurence Olivier. “I worked in that film with Peter Ustinov,” she said “He was difficult to work with — because he was so brilliant and so funny. He always had some witticism and before each scene I’d have to dig my nails into my hands to keep from laughing.” Simmons’ television projects include the mini-series “Beggarman, Thief” and “The Dane Curse.”
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Paul Raven ·
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