If things had gone a bit differently, she might well have been as huge a superstar as such contemporaries as Audrey Hepburn or Natalie Wood — she certainly had the talent and screen presence to do so. However, as I’m reminded by her New York Times obituary, an ugly situation involving a sexual proposition the married actress got from Howard Hughes may have prevented Jean Simmons from reaching the super-stardom she deserved as much as anyone. The vindictive aviation and filmmaking magnate may have deliberately put her in films he thought were inferior and refused to allow his film studio to lend her out for the lead in “Roman Holiday,” the role that deservedly made Audrey Hepburn a more or less instant star.

Nevertheless, Ms. Simmons, who sadly passed on yesterday at age 80 from lung cancer, outlasted her Hughes contract and gave witty and altogether enchanting performances in numerous and diverse films, ranging from break-out teenage performances as the young Estella in David Lean’s still-definitive 1946 version of “Great Expectations” (she’d eventually play Mrs. Havisham in a TV production) and as Ophelia in Laurence Olivier’s 1948 “Hamlet.” As a puckishly beautiful adult actress who pretty much owned the word “luminous,” she had no problem quietly stealing scenes on an epic scale from the likes of Kirk Douglas in “Spartacus,” Burt Lancaster in “Elmer Gantry,” Gregory Peck in William Wyler’s underrated “The Big Country,” and, most famously these days, Marlon Brando in her only musical appearance, “Guys and Dolls.” Brando was easy to outshine musically though she was also easily his acting equal or superior, but here she shows she would have had to chops to almost hold her own musically with with costar Frank Sinatra, if only the script had called for it. What she lacks in polish, she more than makes up for in sheer commitment.

An admitted survivor of alcoholism, Simmons was a class act on every level who famously complimented Hepburn on her great “Roman Holiday” performance, as painful as it must have been to watch and even though it’s not clear that she wouldn’t have been just as good in the role. She kept working through most of her life — her last significant role was her voice work in the English-language version of “Howl’s Moving Castle” — and her loss to the world of entertainment is not a small one. She was often low-key, but she was never dull.

There’s more from David Hudson, Edward Copeland, Jose at the Film Experience, and Glenn Kenny. The L.A. Times also has an excellent and very detailed obituary.

23 years after his death, Dalton Trumbo (“Johnny Got His Gun”) remains among the best-known screenwriters of all time. Ironically, that’s largely because much of his best work was done in secret. Jailed in 1950 and then blacklisted for his refusal to discuss his constitutionally protected membership in the Communist Party, Trumbo survived by writing prodigiously, using pseudonyms and “fronts” until 1960, when director Otto Preminger and actor-producer Kirk Douglas openly placed his name in the credits for “Exodus” and “Spartacus” and sounded the first death knell of the Hollywood blacklist.

Drawn partly from a play by the writer’s son, Christopher Trumbo, and featured on PBS’s “American Masters,” this documentary combines interviews with Trumbo’s family and friends, including stars Kirk Douglas and Dustin Hoffman, and dramatic interpretations of his writing by a long list of acting heavyweights such as Joan Allen, Michael Douglas, Liam Neeson, and Donald Sutherland. On the down side, director Peter Askin plays up Trumbo’s heroism while playing down his political extremism and indulges in some pretentious and annoying cinematic tics, including shooting the actors looking on pensively while their occasionally overdone readings play on the soundtrack. Still, when Askin captures the writer’s unsentimental and often humorous essence — as in Nathan Lane’s wry reading of an ingenious letter to the teenage Christopher Trumbo on the joys of masturbation and Paul Giamatti’s testy renditions of Trumbo’s broadsides at his local phone company — this is a highly engaging summary of the life and work of a singular figure in mid-century movie history.

Click to buy “Trumbo”

Executive producer Rob Tapert describes it as “our reinterpretation of the famous Stanley Kubrick movie,” calling it “a hard-core, testosterone-driven action drama unlike anything on television right now” and “a totally R-rated, hard, hard show that still has all the things that you need in storylines but that delivers the action component that theatrical audiences expect from their entertainment.” Sounds great…but it would sound a lot more impressive if they actually had anything at all to show us or, indeed, had even cast Spartacus yet.

Well, it’s over six months later, and the premiere is “Spartacus” is still another six months away, but at least we’re finally making some headway. Hell, just hiring some actors would’ve been forward motion from where we were last time, but we actually got to see a clip from the show…and, better yet, it was a kick-ass, completely unedited version that had never been screened for anyone else. So suck it, Comic-Con!

First and foremost, Spartacus will be played by Andy Whitfield, an actor who’s virtually unknown outside of his native Australia (and, to look at his paltry list of credits, possibly isn’t even known very well when he’s at home), with Lucy Lawless and John Hannah playing the owners of a gladiator camp, and Peter Mensah serving as Doctore, a trainer of gladiators.

As you may already know, “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” is going to have a very unique look for television, though it’s similar in appearance and tone, not to mention subject matter, to a certain numerically-named film, a fact which executive producer Rob Tapert tackled headlong.

“Yes, ‘300’ had a particular look and style,” Tapert admitted. “Zack Snyder brought that hyper-realistic style to a period piece, you know. Certainly, ‘Sin City’ prior to that had been all digital backgrounds, and there’s other shows currently on television that have digital background, from ‘Blue’s Clues’ all the way through to ‘Sanctuary.’ So what ‘300’ did so well was make a great deal of money so everyone said, ‘Hey, the audience will accept that,’ and equally the drama played. So it was very easy to point to something and say, well, it worked in that style. Plus, having a digital environment and not having to have ultra-realistic backdrops and an arena like in ‘300,’ or in, like, ‘Gladiator,’ it allowed us to actually bring this to the screen. There was no way to do it without having the artifice, so to speak.”

As Tapert noted last year, this is a reinterpretation of the classic story presented within the 1960 Kubrick film, but there is most definitely a tribute to the man who played that version of Spartacus. At least, I think it’s a tribute.

At first, Tapert was hesitant to speak of it at all, but he finally relented and explained, “There’s a great deal of nudity, both male and female, and some guys are not as well-endowed as other guys, so we had to create the Kirk Douglas, as it was aptly named, so that certain actors would have a prosthetic that they could wear and feel comfortable. Someone lovingly called it the Kirk Douglas,
and the name stuck.”

“That was Erin Cummings, who plays Spartacus’s wife, Sura,” said Ms. Lawless. “She thought she should have the right to name it. That thing gets shared around, though. At the moment it’s pinned to the wall next to all the merkins* in the makeup truck.”

Say, Lucy, about this nudity thing: is that going to include you getting naked?

“I’m afraid so,” she sighed. “Sometimes.”

It hasn’t happened yet, though, and she admits, “I’m kind of praying that day never comes. It’s really stressful. I don’t like it.”

But enough about nudity. (Well, at least for a moment, anyway.) Given their obvious similarities, people have been wondering how “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” will compare to HBO’s “Rome,” specifically if there’ll be room for any drama amongst the action.

“There’s a lot of morality in it and a lot of struggle,” said producer Steven S. DeKnight. “It was a very, very harsh, violent time. Pre-Empire, still, gearing towards the last days of the republic, and every day was a struggle. We don’t get into so much classic Judeo-Christian religion. We do delve more into the religions at the time with the gods, and one of the fascinating things that I found out about with the gods…? It wasn’t worship like we consider worship at all. Most times how they worship is that they would pray for good fortune. It was really, you know, ‘What can you give us? And if you’re not giving me what I need, I must have done something wrong to offend you, so let’s do some sacrifices and clear that up.’ But it wasn’t praying for salvation like we think of it today at all.”

Lawless clarified the vision of the show further, and if I’m to be honest, her statements will probably tempt you more than DeKnight’s.

“There’s a lot of sex and violence in this,” she said. “They don’t run along the same morals as we have. What strikes me, having worked in this and dragging slaves around and behaving a sort of way towards them, is that it’s just a singular lack of empathy. Human beings are just chattel and all about stages, and if you’re at a lower stage, forget about it, I can kill you tomorrow and buy another two of you with my spare change. So it’s really amazing, the high stakes for every slave, every gladiator and even high status people. It’s shocking.”

What’s arguably even more shocking is the trailer to the show, which is filled with more than enough blood, sex, and action to get your pulse racing, and a level of violence that’s liable to leave the more squeamish viewers in a puddle on the floor.

“You know, the initial rollout is to get something out there,” said Tapert, “and Bill Hamm, to his credit convinced his bosses. What you would first say is that it’s a kind of an action show is nowhere on premium cable. Certainly, there are shows that have violence flare up, but what you would consider an action show is still not there. We know, as everybody here knows, that action is just a component that is a tool that allows you to have a resolution happen differently. You still have to have great drama, and so that’s really what’s hiding behind the initial push out there: ‘Hey, this is a show that has action, has blood, has sex, has all of those components that you don’t get on network television shown in a balletic and different way.’ But all of that is just the initial wave, behind which really good drama is awaiting.”

“Spartacus: Blood and Sand” premieres on Starz on January 22, 2010. Mark your calendars now.

* Merkin (mûr’kĭn), n. A pubic wig for women.

Executive producer Rob Tapert describes it as “our reinterpretation of the famous Stanley Kubrick movie,” calling it “a hard-core, testosterone-driven action drama unlike anything on television right now” and “a totally R-rated, hard, hard show that still has all the things that you need in storylines but that delivers the action component that theatrical audiences expect from their entertainment.” Sounds great…but it would sound a lot more impressive if they actually had anything at all to show us or, indeed, had even cast Spartacus yet.

“Goddammit, I said I’M Spartacus!”

Granted, it’s promising that the show is being produced by Tapert and his longtime associate, Sam Raimi, and to have Steven S. DeKnight as head writer and show-runner is certainly good news for those who’ve followed his work on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” and “Smallville.” (He’s also a major player in Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse.”) But you’d be a fool to be but so optimistic when you’ve not seen a single frame of the series, and the fact that it’s going to be extremely CGI-heavy makes me a little nervous, but here are a few quotes from the creative team to help get your hopes up.

SEX AND VIOLENCE:

“It was a brutal, brutal time in history where the Roman society was taught not to shy away from blood and violence. It was part of being a man. You had to prove yourself with the military basically to climb up the political class system, and these gladiator fights could be incredibly brutal. I mean, it was guys going at each other with swords and tridents and various weapons. So we are not shying away from that element. We are embracing the brutality of the fights. The sexuality of the times…it was a very different kind of sexual feeling, particularly with the slave class, where it was completely acceptable to have sex with your slaves, even inside of a marriage. Usually it was fine for a man to have sex with female slaves and sometimes the male slaves. It was a little bit trickier for the woman, but we don’t want to shy away from either the violence or the sexuality of the period. We’re trying not to put it on screen just because we can. We want it to come from the story that if this story leads us to an extremely violent incident, we want to be able to show it and the same thing sexually.” (Steven S. DeKnight)

STAND-ALONE EPISODES VS. STORY ARCS:

“Each season will have its arc. Within that, within the arc, episodes will have a beginning, middle and end, not necessarily your complete move away from the main story and have it a completely self-contained story, but there will be beginnings, middles, and ends of each episode under the umbrella of a bigger arc.” (Steven S. DeKnight)

“It will allow people who don’t watch it every single week to watch an episode and feel like they’re not lost at the beginning and they have a complete entertainment experience within that hour. I love serialization, I love the ability to tell that, but that said, within an hour, I like to have a beginning, middle, and end to the entertainment experience.” (Rob Tapert)

THE CHARACTERS:

“We are adding characters (that weren’t in the movie). We’re fleshing it out. There will be the main characters. There will be Spartacus, the owner of the school Batiatus. There will be the other two main gladiators Crixus and Oenomaus. Along with this we are creating new characters to fill out the ranks. There will be other gladiators. We’re giving Batiatus a wife. There will be a bunch of new characters. Within most of them, we’re pulling from usually a composite of actual historical characters or our best guess or suggestions from our historical consultants. You will see Crassus. You will see Glaber at some point.” (Steven S. DeKnight)

THE INEVITABLE “ROME” COMPARISONS

“I love the HBO series. I watched it. I wish that it had delivered more testosterone for me. It was pretty darn historically accurate, and we feel like “Rome” was its own show and this is a very different stylistic approach to the same material…or to historical material that has nothing to do with that. We’re a green screen show. We’ll never go outside. We’re not building Rome. We’re building Rome in 3-D models basically or Capua in this particular case. So it’s a different take and a different presentation of a historical event.” (Rob Tapert)

“I absolutely loved ‘Rome.’ But I think if you want to encapsulate more towards what this show is, there’s a gladiator fight in ‘Rome.’ I believe it was in Season 1 that actually I leaped off my couch when I saw it. And I think that’s closer to what the essence of this show is. And just speaking towards Crassus, Crassus, oddly, historically was not gay. He had a wife and kids and an entire family. But there will definitely be gay characters on the show, and relationships.” (Steven S. DeKnight)

ON THE CGI LOOK OF THE SHOW:

“It’s not going to be super monochromatic like a ‘Sin City’ or a ‘Spirit,’ nor is it going to be totally like the action scenes within ‘300.’ The stylization will come in the action scenes and the portrayal of violence. Once you get into Batiatus’s bedroom or into the school itself, it will have a design and a look that is slightly stylized, but no more so than a modern-day feature film. When you think of ‘300,’ there were a lot of scenes away from the action that took place just in him sleeping with his wife, or back in the Senate, or within the house, or within the garden at the beginning. Those were effected in the post-production process, but they actually weren’t special effects. There was no CGI. So we will make sure that the process serves the storytelling and not the other way around.” (Rob Tapert)

ON CASTING SPARTACUS:

“We are having a worldwide search for the role of Spartacus. We have our eyes on certain other characters, No. 2 through 13 on the call sheet, so to speak. So there are some people that we have in mind or that we’ve seen that we like for some parts. Percentage-wise, I don’t know where people are coming from, but I’m going to guess the bulk of the cast will come from outside of New Zealand, for a whole host of reasons. So we are actively looking. We have casting directors kind of everywhere, and we’re right dead smack in the middle of that. Ultimately, we want somebody who is an undiscovered action star. And when I think of the Daniel Craigs and the Viggos and Russell Crowe and all these characters, there aren’t many recently that have been Midwest American boys. We don’t know, and we’ll take them where we find them. But just if you were a betting man, it seems like history recently has shown that these heroic arc types come from somewhere else, but we certainly wouldn’t close a single door, and we’re looking here (in Los Angeles) and in New York and everywhere we can.” (Rob Tapert)

“Spartacus” premieres on Starz in the summer of 2009.