About the Site

A Little History
One evening after I had worked a ten hour day developing software, I slumped onto my couch and turned on the television. The film Spartacus was showing on AMC (American Classic Movies). I had seen the film only once - when I was a young boy and my older brother gave me a pass to the theatre where he worked as an usher. I found myself once again caught up in the story of the slave rebellion and captivated by the beauty of Jean Simmons as Varinia. I became curious about Ms. Simmons career and I looked her up on the Internet. There was suprisingly little information available about her. I went looking for a biography on Jean Simmons and found nothing. I went searching through books and magazines looking for tidbits and stories -- I found very little available in the mainstream. Gradually, I became irritated with the injustice of it all. Here was one of the most talented and beautiful actresses in the history of film and there was virtually nothing out there. I decided to right the wrong in whatever way I could. I started to build a collection of material and as I had a background in building web sites, I decided that it should be presented on the Internet. During the research, I found the e-mail address of Mr. Ian Payne, who is an avid collector of memorabilia, autographs, and old magazines who lives in England, in fact very near to where Ms. Simmons was born. In addition, Mr. Payne had sent Ms. Simmons a set of articles and clippings and she had responded by calling him. He was lucky enough to have a 45 minute conversation with her. Mr. Payne was kind enough to send me copies of a great deal of material and contributed many valuable research tips. The items he provided proved invaluable to me in creating what I believe is the most complete biography about Jean Simmons available on the Web. Without his assistance and encouragement, this site would not exist. Many thanks, Ian!

A Little History

One evening after I had worked a ten hour day developing software, I slumped onto my couch and turned on the television. The film Spartacus was showing on AMC (American Classic Movies). I had seen the film only once - when I was a young boy and my older brother gave me a pass to the theatre where he worked as an usher. I found myself once again caught up in the story of the slave rebellion and captivated by the beauty of Jean Simmons as Varinia.

I became curious about Ms. Simmons career and I looked her up on the Internet. There was suprisingly little information available about her. I went looking for a biography on Jean Simmons and found nothing. I went searching through books and magazines looking for tidbits and stories -- I found very little available in the mainstream. Gradually, I became irritated with the injustice of it all. Here was one of the most talented and beautiful actresses in the history of film and there was virtually nothing out there. I decided to right the wrong in whatever way I could.

I started to build a collection of material and as I had a background in building web sites, I decided that it should be presented on the Internet. During the research, I found the e-mail address of Mr. Ian Payne, who is an avid collector of memorabilia, autographs, and old magazines who lives in England, in fact very near to where Ms. Simmons was born. In addition, Mr. Payne had sent Ms. Simmons a set of articles and clippings and she had responded by calling him. He was lucky enough to have a 45 minute conversation with her.

Mr. Payne was kind enough to send me copies of a great deal of material and contributed many valuable research tips. The items he provided proved invaluable to me in creating what I believe is the most complete biography about Jean Simmons available on the Web. Without his assistance and encouragement, this site would not exist. Many thanks, Ian!

The Tools
All of the pages used in this site were built with Allaire's Home Site 4.5. I found it to be an excellent HTML editor. I used Photoshop version 7 to edit the images and graphics used. At the risk of starting a religious war, this site is best viewed with Internet Explorer 5.5. While I tried as much as I considered reasonable to keep things 'browser neutral', things just seemed to work better with Internet Explorer. While everything works OK in Netscape, you won't see some of the nuances that I intended, nor will you see the font sizing and styles in the manner I intended. This may have something to do with the generally incomplete support of style sheets that Netscape offers.

About the Author
Beyond my obvious interest in classic film, I work developing and managing computer systems projects. I live in Denver, Colorado; my interests include music, motorcycling (I own a Triumph Speed Triple and a Triumph Sprint ST), mountain biking, and tournament poker.

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