Few have first set foot in Hollywood as auspiciously as our June TCM Star of the Month, the immensely talented, British-born Jean Simmons. At the age of 19, having just finished playing opposite Laurence Olivier in the 1948 film version of Hamlet in England, she arrived--basically unknown--in the California film capital and was given a very swank party in her honor at the Beverly Hills Hotel by Walter Wanger, a much-respected producer and four-term ex-president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It turned out to be one of the biggest, most photographed film industry events that year. All the big shots showed up to get a look at this bright and beautiful young girl Olivier had chosen to be his on-screen Ophelia, the juiciest of roles for any actress under 20. (Actually, numerous ladies in their 30s and beyond were also hoping Olivier might tap them to play it.)

As Hollywood inspected young Jean, she was getting a good gander at the Hollywood citizenry too, and charming everyone by collecting autographs of the stars who'd come to meet her, including Ingrid Bergman, Ronald Colman, movie star sisters Constance and Joan Bennett, Maria Montez and Jean-Pierre Aumont, and scores of others including a glowing (and also British-born) Elizabeth Taylor, who had turned 16 just a month before.

Soon after, the clock struck 12, Cinderella Simmons went home to England and continued to become an important name in British film circles in such varied fare as 1949's Adam and Evelyne and 1950's So Long at the Fair. Then came the dawn.

Simmons' next trip to California wasn't nearly so pleasant or gratifying; in fact, in 1951 she returned with teeth clinched. Howard Hughes had developed a serious crush on her and, much against her wishes, had bought her contract from Jean's British boss J. Arthur Rank. Thus the wealthy Hughes now "owned" Simmons and forced her to relocate to California. She was back in Hollywood but working for a boss she despised, cast in films she didn't like, uprooted from her home and (a major part of Hughes' plan) separated from the man she had just married, actor Stewart Granger.

But there was a happy ending (sort of). One of the RKO films, 1952's Angel Face, turned out to be a jewel, and Granger himself was signed by MGM, so he moved to California as well. Further, Simmons eventually got out of the clutches of Hughes (although it cost her some $200,000 and a lawsuit) and she began landing many of the showiest roles in some of the biggest films made during the next decade. The downside is that she never has received the acclaim and attention she deserved for that work, but this month on TCM we're going to do what we can to make up for some of that neglect.

But a warning: you will not be seeing or hearing the rock group KISS, or learn anything about family jewels, but you will be seeing some of the finest (and most unheralded) performances given by an actress in movies during the 1940s, '50s and beyond. Bottom line: we're very pleased to claim Jean Simmons as one of the jewels in the TCM family.

by Robert Osborne