Jean Simmons and Muhammed Ali

In America from the early 1950s, Jean Simmons found out that RKO head Howard Hughes had purchased the remaining six months of her Rank Studio contract. When Hughes claimed that an oral agreement with Rank precluded her from being loaned out to any other studio, she sued RKO.

The legal battle raged for over a year. When the suit was finally settled, RKO had a three-year contract for Jean's services, but was obligated to pay her $250,000 in addition to her legal fees.

Furthermore, she won the right to work on loan to other studios at a substantial salary.

"Making 'Spartacus' (1960) was enough acting to last anybody a lifetime. You know, after we had been filming a year Kirk Douglas sent me a magnum of champagne with a little note saying, "I hope our second year will be as happy as our first."

Douglas was unsure about casting Simmons as Varinia in "Spartacus," as she was an English actress. American actors and actresses had been cast as the slaves, and British actors and actresses had been cast as the Romans. Douglas actually wanted a German actress to play Varinia (her actual portrayal in the Howard Fast novel), but since none were pretty enough, he decided to go with Simmons.

"I remember a long, long day of filming and it took forever to get Kirk Douglas up on his cross. We played a terrible joke on him when, as he was safely installed, the assistant director called lunch and left him up there. He could have had the lot of us fired, but he was very good about it. You have to have a sense of humor in this industry."

Thirty years after filming, Jean Simmons met the baby she held in this movie, who was working in the movie industry as a stuntwoman.

She died on 22 January 2010 (age 80 years), Santa Monica, California, United States from Lung cancer and some may remember her in Star Trek The Next Generation.

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Muhammed Ali

The late Muhammad Ali, world boxing legend, gave this answer in an interview, when he was under pressure to go and fight in Vietnam, or else be imprisoned, which actually happened.

'I'm not going to duck. I'm not burning any flags. I'm not going to run to Canada. I'm staying right here.

You want to send me to jail? Fine, go ahead. I've been in jail for 400 years. I could be there for 4 or 5 more, but I'm not going to go 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If I want to die, I'll die right here, right now, fighting you, if I want to die. You're my enemy, not any Chinese, not any Vietcong, not any Japanese. You're my opponent when I want freedom. You're my opponent when I want justice. You're my opponent when I want equality.

You want me to go somewhere and fight for you? You won't even defend me right here in America, neither my rights nor my religious beliefs. You won't even defend me here at home."

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Very eloquently put and what a brilliant response and sadly is so very true for the black - and many communities, in the USA, be it LGBT, Asian or anything not Caucasian Christian to this very day. JB.

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