BOOZE
TO BONDS
FOR LEE REMICK
by Leonard Harris
New York World Telegram & Sun
April 30, 1963
Lee Remick, a lovely blonde with cool blue eyes who made a name for herself — and won an Academy Award nomination — as a boozer in the film Days of Wine and Roses, is trying to redeem her image by playing a lady stockbroker in The Wheeler Dealers.
It may not be easy. As the tall actress stood at Broad and Wall Strs., sniffing to see which way the winds of finance were blowing and carrying a newspaper with the final market prices, a Wall Streeter who knows his movies yelled:
“I bet she’s got a flask hidden under that paper.”
This is unfair to the girl from Miss Hewitt’s Classes, Barnard College and Face in the Crowd. She’s no more a heavy drinker than she is a market expert.
And she’s sure no market expert. When she says “The Street” she means Fifth Ave. in the environs of Lord and Taylor, Saks and Bergdorf.
In town to boost the stock of The Wheeler Dealers, which will be released by MGM in October, Lee submitted to an impromptu financial quiz.
Q. Do
you know what is meant by the terms “bull” and “bear?”
R. “Oh! Are those stock market terms? Now I see. That’s why that
character in our movie is named Bullard Bear.” She grinned appealingly.
Q. Do
you know what “selling short” means?
R. A wrinkle of her small, well-sculptured nose and a hopeless, helpless smile,
“No.”
“You know,” she confessed, “I sit in on the conferences my husband (Bill Colleran, producer-director for TV and movies) has with our financial people. I try to look knowledgeable. Later, Bill translates for me.”
James Garner plays a Texas oil tycoon in the movie, and he tries to help Lee sell a dog of a stock called “Universal Widget.” It’s a task she’s been given by the male brokers who are trying to edge her out because they don’t think a woman belongs on Wall St.
Lee
is inclined to agree. “I don’t understand a lady stockbroker.
I could never be that. In the movie, a stockbroker makes a patronizing speech
to a luncheon of lady securities analysts. I stand up to challenge him by
asking a tough question. I kept forgetting the lines, because they sounded
like double-talk to me—It’s all about steel, cold-rolled, sheet,
bars, billets. I had someone explain them to me. Then I had no trouble learning
the lines.”
