LEE
REMICK SIGNED
FOR FIVE MORE MOVIES
by Hal Boyle
Quincy Patriot Ledger
June 5, 1957
At 21 Lee Remick, who looks like a vanilla ice cream cone topped with taffy, is a real “fortune’s darling.”
Almost every season now Director Elia Kazan takes an unknown for stardom, and Lee is his discovery for this year.
She has made her film debut in A Face in the Crowd, and Kazan was so impressed with her work he took for him the unusual step of signing her up for five more pictures.
Lee, a girl with a golden touch, may not have everything in life yet - but if her luck holds out she will have.
This lassie hasn’t had a disaster since she lost her baby teeth. She is tall, memorably proportioned, and breathtakingly beautiful. She not only was born on the right side of the railroad tracks, but picked a father who owned a department store. She was educated at an exclusive Manhattan finished school.
“Sure, I’ve been hungry in my life,” she said, smiling. “But there was always plenty of food in the refrigerator.”
Some girls get beauty but never get the breaks. Lee is a girl who got both.
She was sitting in Sardi’s restaurant when a playwright, drawn by her visible charm, asked her if she could act.
“Sure,” said Lee, who had studied ballet dancing but had never taken an acting lesson in her life.
The writer put her in his play. It lasted only two weeks, but long enough for television producers to notice her. And Kazan, after spotting her on a TV show, decided at first glance the girl had the makings of a star.
Despite her upbringing in wealthy surroundings, Lee is as fresh and unsophisticated as a June breeze. She is deeply and openly thrilled to stand at the doorway to fame so young.
“I love it,” she said frankly. “I guess it’s because everything is ahead of me at 21.
But I’ve always liked to be the age I was. That may sound hopelessly dull, but that’s the way I am.”
Everything about Lee seems right and natural - including the color of her hair, which looks as if it had been spun from sunbeams.
In her first movie role Lee plays a naive young Arkansas drum majorette who falls in love with an entertainment world idol who busts her little happy heart, the big heel.
“He doesn’t exactly ruin me,” said Miss Remick. “He marries me and brings me to New York. But after a while he fires me, as he does everybody else in his life and sends me back to Arkansas - and that’s the end of me.”
Lee spent several months learning the art of baton twirling.
“It isn’t as easy as it looks,” she said. “I picked up some interesting bruises.”
She spent some weeks living with an Arkansas family, and picked up a few phrases she had never head in Park Avenue Circles.
“I love their expressions,” she said. “Such as, ‘It’s as dark out there as a pit full of black cats,’ and 'It tickled me so I like to died.’ And do you know what they call parties? They call them ‘drop ins.’”
Having successfully launched her career as a professional actress, Lee now has only one big immediate problem.
“I’m
looking for a good teacher,” she said frankly. “I want to learn
how to act.”
