IN
PURSUIT OF LEE REMICK
by David Hunn
Photoplay Film Monthly
December 1968
Lee Remick was playing hard to get, and she plays it better than most. She plays to win.
I had gone to Madrid to meet her, this remote young lady who will never be met - this cool and beautiful creature, most talented and most interesting of America's few female screen stars, who believes in mixing neither with her colleagues nor with globe-trotting film journalists.
Which was precisely why I was padding determinedly about the parched brushland outside Madrid at 1p.m. on a blazing day.
It was time for lunch on Hard Contract, the intriguing 20th Century- Fox property, starring also James Coburn, that has been shooting through Spain and in Brussels and Tangier. Even Lee Remick must eat lunch. And there was I, plastic tray of steak and salad at the ready, waiting to pounce.
Coburn was already eating, at a trestle table with Burgess Meredith, Lilli PaImer, Helen Cherry and Sterling Hayden. Would Lee take the one remaining chair, or would she skip off to an outside berth?
Her car flashed past the mobile canteen. A lackey appeared, gathering grub: "Miss Remick will be eating in her trailer." Very nice, too. An ideal spot for a quiet chat over the tomatoes. "Miss Remick prefers to eat alone."
Come to think of it, Miss R. has always been a bit of a loner. Despite being involved in some fairly remarkable incidents, she has managed to avoid the spotlights. And on the rare occasions when she has been cornered, she speaks sharp and strong.
You'll remember Marilyn Monroe's last tragic engagement, Something's Got to Give. After Fox fired her - they said she had turned up for 12 days work out of 35-who took over but Lee Remick. The girl already tagged, to her great pleasure, as Hollywood's Brigitte Bardot was now to become the new MM.
She nevertheless avoided most of the reporters who hurtled to her door for comment and the leggy pix she would never give. But one man got through. And to him she was reported as saying:
It's quite right that Marilyn should have been fired. Actors shouldn't be allowed to get away with that kind of behavior. This is a tough business. Now I have taken over the part and that's that."
However, the film was scrapped, after co-star Dean Martin had said: "I signed to do the picture with Marilyn Monroe and I’ll do it with nobody else."
Lee received 35,OOO lbs. for being chosen for that take-over. Already she had replaced Lana Turner in what still rates as one of Lee's best movies, Anatomy of a Murder. Lana couldn't agree on the costumes. Lee, with only one hit behind her The Long Hot Summer didn't reckon to argue. And Otto Preminger, the director, responded by pronouncing her, in 1959; "Hollywood's next big star."
If he was wrong - and he was - there's nobody to blame for the disappointment but Lee herself. But blame is not at all the right word, since she has deliberately chosen to avoid stardom.
In 1963 Lee refused to renew her contract with Fox.
"They have been able to dictate to me," she said. "If I refused a script, they could suspend me indefinitely. That has been very tedious. I shall never again sign a long-term contract with anybody.
"From now on, I shall only do the films that appeal to me, whatever they are. Whether the roles I choose affect my public image or not doesn't matter."
She then proceeded to Days of Wine and Roses, the film that made Lost Weekend look like a temperance outing. For this brilliant alcoholic orgy with Jack Lemmon, Lee won an Oscar nomination and the San Sebastian Festival award.
And on to more films like The Running Man (with Laurence Harvey and Alan Bates), Baby, The Rain Must Fall (Steve McQueen), No Way to Treat a Lady (Rod Steiger), The Detective (Frank Sinatra). Every time a first-class performance by Lee Remick. But they don't add up to the crowd-pulling name she should have become.
Lunch was over and still Lee didn't emerge. "Miss Remick takes a siesta," they said. “Miss Remick doesn't like to be disturbed."
I went down to the set and hid under a tree from the searching, scorching sun. . . Stop dreaming and wake up. Here she is. Looking very fresh in a simple, sleeveless red dress. Her hair so gold it is almost silver. Her eyes blue and remote.
They put her in the front seat of a gigantic car. James Coburn and Burgess Meredith play half-a-dozen lines around it. Lee doesn't have to speak. Not too demanding this scene, but director S. Lee Pogostin takes it again and again and again.
While he discusses the scene with the two actors between each take, Lee sits still and says nothing. But smiles teasingly at the first assistant director, who is clearly very happy at the situation.
It goes on and on. Lee manages not to look too bored, which is quite an achievement in the circumstances. At last they release her. She comes to stand under the tree where I am crouching, her knee inches away from my nose. I've never studied a star's legs more closely.
Eventually I put myself on level terms with the lady - she once said: "I am ashamedly, a lady" - and we start talking, at 4.45 p.m. She is a pretty girl.
"I know the way I carry on is no way to be a star," she says, "but there's more to life than that. I make one or two films a year and no more. That gives me time to see my children, and that's what really matters.
"I couldn't make films back-to-back, like some people do. I don't know when they find time to recharge their batteries. I don't live in Hollywood, either - that's another thing I couldn't do. I tried it. There's work and there's family life and I don't want them mixed up."
She
went back to the car for one more 'take'. Still as cool as when she started.
How?
"I just pretend I'm not really there," she said.
Two minutes later she wasn't. The 'take' was in the can and she was off. The time: 4.55 p.m. A lift for me back to Madrid?
"Don't ask her," warned a publicity man. "She won't do it. She believes that when she is not wanted on the set, her time is her own. And how she spends it is her business. You can talk again tomorrow.”
Tomorrow never came. Her call to the set was cancelled. And Lee Remick (wife since 1957 of TV director Bill Colleran, mother of Katherine Lee, 9, and Matthew, 7) remained out of touch.
In the afternoon I called her hotel. She was out. In the evening I called again. She wasn't back. At 8.30 p.m. I called again and gave my name to the switchboard operator. A long pause.
"How
do you spell it?" I did. Long pause. "Miss Remick is not in the
hotel." At 9.30 - journalists are as thick-skinned as actors - I had
another go just for the fun of it and then went out to dinner...
