Stewart Granger & Jean Simmons

When Stewart Granger first met Jean Simmons, she was a child of fourteen, as innocent and pretty as a flower; she had been given a tiny part in film Caesar and Cleopatra. Simmons had developed a crush on Stewart Granger, and they later became sweethearts, though Granger was 16 years older.

Granger was a tall, handsome, with an engaging smile and a good speaking voice, he could have hung about the studios waiting until some director recognized his potentialities.Granger, who at that time had no interest in Jean except a fatherly one, viewed the fabulous Gabriel Pascal with horror and suspicion when he saw the elderly director parading this sweet, laughing little girl as his protegee, and leading her about the set on a camel! He hated to think the child’s head might be turned, her future affected, by Pascal’s attentions. And he showed it. But a crisis was avoided when the camel bit Pascal!.

In 1949 he conceived the idea for an updating of the Daddy Longlegs story as a vehicle for himself and Simmons. The result, Adam and Evelyne (1949), was a charming and popular romantic comedy, but the couple followed this with an ill-advised stage production of Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness. Granger later stated that he thought they would be applauded for choosing such a challenging project rather than a safe commercial venture, but the brooding, morbid piece (Simmons played a mentally retarded peasant) was disliked by audiences.

In 1950, Jean Simmons marries Stewart Granger, and join him to Hollywood.She’s been spotted already by Howard Hughes, a notorious lothario. His company, RKO, buys her contract and he lays siege to her romantically and professionally. In his autobiography, Sparks Fly Upward, Stewart Granger describes a phone conversation in which Hughes propositioned Jean. On hearing Hughes say, “When are you going to get away from that goddamned husband of yours? I want to talk to you alone, honey,” he grabbed the phone and shouted, “Mr Howard Bloody Hughes, you’ll be sorry if you don’t leave my wife alone!” For over a year, she doesn’t work – she gets off lightly compared with Jane Greer, who just a few years earlier suffered a similar but more protracted fate at Hughes’ hands.

The couple owned a house overlooking the San Fernando Valley and regular visitors to their Sunday brunches included Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding (who had been an extra with Granger), Richard and Sybil Burton, and Spencer Tracy after whom they named their only daughter.

In 1960 Simmons and Granger were divorced, Granger describing her as "'like a child breaking away from an over-protective parent", and she married Brooks, with whom she had a daughter, Kate (after Katharine Hepburn).

Some movies they made together: Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) , Adam and Evelyne (1949) , Footsteps in The Fog (1955)