
BACKSTORY
In 1963,
Lee starred in her first comedy, The Wheeler Dealers, with
James Garner. Lee played a Wall Street analyst and Garner
played a Texas oil tycoon.
Garner, a man who loves to play practical
jokes, conned Lee into
doing a six second television advertisement for the movie. "It'll be
good for laughs," Garner urged.
Lee was told that she and Garner would do
a blurb about coming
into an oil well, without realizing that a half-gallon pail of thick,
gooey black oil had been rigged above them.
At the signal, the pure, black
gold doused both of them and
everyone had a good laugh.
However,
when Garner was asked who got the last laugh,
he said, "She [Lee] did. Next day I received a bill from her
hairdresser for fifty bucks."