LEE
REMICK -
ACTRESS OF MANY SIDES
by Martin Andrew
News and Views on Film
1986
It’s very difficult to know where to start when writing about Lee Remick. She’s one of the few actresses whose complex personality has been effectively portrayed by media interviews; and one of the few of today’s stars who is first respected and second idolized. She keeps a low profile, yet manages to give enough interviews to keep her name, face and reputation – as well as her opinions and principles – fairly well known. She’s an American by birth (Quincy, Boston, Massachusetts, December 14, 1935), but most Americans now tend to think that she’s British and vice versa – the British tend to think she’s American. The truth is, she’s a confirmed Anglophile with homes on both sides of the Atlantic – one for her English husband, the other for her son and daughter (Matthew and Kate), being educated at American universities.
Lee
Remick is a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool Yankee. But she’s
one of only
a few Americans who could effectively portray
Britishers – Kay Summersby
in Ike (TV, 1979), for example –
or
British expatriates who happen to be
Churchill’s, as in Jennie
(TV, 1974), an important and prestigious
television serial which
won her lots of British acclaim and awards, including
a BAFTA
award for best TV actress. This series firmly established her
with
British viewers.
Lee
Remick is one of the few young actresses who actually
pleased Hedda
Hopper! – The formidable Hedda once wrote
(Washington Evening Post,
Nov. 30, 1958), that she has
“never known anyone more completely the
actress than Lee
Remick.” Time magazine eulogized her (Dec. 15, 1980) in
their
double review of her two cinema films, The Competition
and Tribute.
THE COMPETITION: “In the midst of this teacup tempestuousness one comes to admire Lee Remick…it falls to Remick to deliver most of the movie’s truly impossible lines – the stuff about art being a more reliable lover than any man can be, for example. Somehow, she manages to throw all that stuff away gracefully and emerge likeable. It is a triumph of professional grace for Remick, who must be one of the busiest – and best – actresses around.”
TRIBUTE:
“…only Lee Remick shines, as Scottie’s loving
ex-wife. In
the midst of the movie, (Jack) Lemmon and Remick
have a scene
together – just a few moments really – when
they sit together
and remember and embrace. For once the
actors are not performing,
but behaving; not seizing the
viewer’s attention, simply absorbing it.
For an instant, Tribute
becomes what it should have been; not a talk
show, but a
good movie.”
Remick
was third-billed, behind Richard Dreyfuss and Amy Irving in The
Competition; and Tribute was Lemmon’s
movie.
But Remick was the
best thing in either of them.
Tribute,
moreover, marked the reunion of Jack Lemmon and Remick,
co-stars and co-Oscar
nominees for 1962’s Days of Wine and Roses. Wrote David Shipman
about their performances in that film (The Great Movie Stars: The International
Years, 1972) “Lemmon was memorable; Remick was unforgettable.”
So Lee Remick is the kind of actress who can hold her own dramatically (if not financially) with a strong leading actor. She values good parts, and, subsequently, good solid performances more than good pay; quality more than quantity. She hadn’t been in a cinema film for four years before she made Emma’s War in Australia this year (1985); there aren’t enough good roles around for women unless you’re a Jane Fonda and can make fitness videos; and she despises the American production rules in the acting media, and longs for the day when she makes a film with the first scene filmed first, and the last, last! Furthermore, she does not believe in millionaires’ salaries for stars: “I want to be well paid for what I do, there's no doubt about that, and I certainly want to get what I’m worth or whatever the going rate is; but I don’t think the going rate should be one, two or three million dollars.” And as early as 1960 (Parade Annual), she has been quoted as saying that she wants “just the best parts – nothing more, nothing less…I can afford to be choosey.”
Remick was been every selective during her movie career, always opting for variety to avoid type-casting (she seems to always be a victim in her early films), sometimes choosing an unsuitable role – the temperance campaigner Cora Massingale, in one of her truly awful films, The Hallelujah Trail (1965) for example.
But
in the right role, in the right place, at the right
time, she
excels. She was right for the role of the
young, widowed,
Carol in Elia Kazan’s Wild River
(1960) – she possessed the
right blend of quiet
sensitivity and gentle beauty to breathe
a lot of
inspiration into her portrayal of the impoverished
Tennessee widow, acting “with a quality of truth
exceedingly
rare among Hollywood’s young
leading women” (Jules Beaufort
in Christian
Science Monitor, June 7, 1960). The introverted,
meandering, but ultimately >waterlogged film
became her favorite.
Remick was also right for the role of Georgette Thomas, young disillusioned wife and mother who loves Steve McQueen, part time singer and jailbird, fulltime rebel, in spite of not being able to understand the long-term effects of painful childhood and adolescence, in Baby, The Rain Must Fall (Robert Mulligan, 1965). The film was sensitive, but slow and undeservedly flopped at the box-office. Interestingly, the Columbia press-sheets to the film say: “The particular appeal of Lee Remick is hard to assay.” And then does not proceed to enlighten the reader. There’s an indefinable sincerity in Remick’s acting, and in her face, which makes her likeable and interesting to watch.
She hasn’t had many roles to which she was very well suited during her career. The first of note was in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), a sensational and controversial courtroom drama which debated whether her character was or was not raped. Her performance was universally acclaimed, and a new star had risen in the setting Hollywood sky. With the dawn of the 1960’s, they would be actors, not stars. Then came the moving Wild River. Days of Wine and Roses (Blake Edwards, 1962), also died her dramatic justice, and fortified her position as foremost among young actresses. The wife, Kirsten, (Remick attended AA meetings, visited drunkards in jail, etc.), was well publicized, and helped to bring new respect and kudos upon the talented actress. She showed that she could do comedy as well in a couple of early 1970’s British black comedies, A Severed Head, a version of musical beds (from Iris Murdock’s novel), and Loot, from Roy Orton’s play, in which she was grotesquely made-up in blonde wig a la Monroe and mole al la Swanson, as Fay, a greedy, money-grabbing nurse with a penchant for murdering husbands.
There was more fruit on stage and television in the 1970’s for her than in the cinema. A filmed play, A Delicate Balance (Tony Richardson, 1975) with Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield, and Remick again grasping the bottle, gave her another chance to do her alcoholic imitation. BBC’s Jennie, Lady Churchill gave her a chance to age as well as act superbly. She took to Henry James in a big way, and lit up the cinema screen wonderfully as Baroness Eugenia in The Europeans (a Merchant-Ivory Production, 1979), netting a Cannes nomination for best actress for her troubles. She had a similar role on the small screen as Maria Gostrey in The Ambassadors (1976), with Paul Scofield and lots of wigs and costumes. These were her best roles of the decade.
