ACTRESS
SCORES SCRIPT WRITERS
by Murray Schumach
New York Times
January 07, 1963
Lee Remick in demand, finds few good roles.
The growing affinity between Hollywood and Broadway has established a new criterion for gauging the success of a performer – the number of scripts he or she receives from Broadway.
Broadway producers have become increasingly eager to get movie stars for plays as box office attractions. At the same time an increasing number of movie stars are interested in acquiring the added stature and experience of a Broadway hit.
Lee Remick, whose original acting experience was in legitimate theater, is now high on the mailing lists of Broadway producers, directors and would-be playwrights.
This, Miss Remick explained, is very flattering but a mixed blessing. Miss Remick, whose latest picture is Days of Wine and Roses, has doubled the script load of her letter box now that she is appearing in her first movie comedy, The Wheeler Dealers and has expressed a desire to do a play that is either comic or serious.
She has been astonished by the number of scripts pouring in from the East and by the low quality of the writing. She has yet to see a single script she thinks has any value. Only one of the scripts she has read in the last three years has been produced and that was a flop she preferred not to name.
“So many of these plays fall into the same dreary pattern,” she said. “There is the poor little kooky girl in Greenwich Village. Sometimes there are two girls in the village. They are supposed to be funny. They are not. I don’t know what has happened to humor. These writers do not know how to handle dialogue. They do not have an ear for idiom for everyday speech. They have no style.”
The serious plays seem to fall into a pattern of sex abnormalities. Recently, Miss Remick said, she read one play that included abortion, suggestions of incest, in addition to routine sex.
“You name it,” said the actress, “and this play had it.”
Life on the receiving end of script fall-out calls for special protocol in rejecting plays. “You say: ‘This is not the part for me,’” she said. “You are always very polite. If you say you are committed to a movie, they will tell you that they will wait until the movie is finished. And then you are in a worse spot than before.”
“It is just as much a mistake to say you don’t like the play,” continued Miss Remick. “Because then they will ask you why you don’t like it and you become involved in all sorts of arguments.”
It is considered poor taste for one actor to discuss a script with another. For one thing, the other actor might receive the script next and might be offended at being considered second choice. It is, moreover, a violation of confidence.
In many cases, Miss Remick pointed out, she and other Hollywood stars are asked to read the script within a week. Since a number of these scripts come from directors or producers she may know socially, she tries to meet their deadline. At times, however, she is behind, trying feverishly to catch up and at the same time read movie scripts that have been sent to her.
“If a play is really hopeless,” she said, “I don’t read more than half of it. But sometimes they are so terrible I can’t help wondering where they are going and I read them to the end.”
One play she received recently had been sent to her three years ago with a different title. She recognized it after four pages and stopped reading long before the end when she realized the rewrite had improved it very slightly.