Lee Remick

We were ‘this’ close.

R1 She always seemed like a very fun person to be around

Rumored to have had an affair with RFK.

Mein Omen.

So pretty and a good actress too.

R4 boring

Is it true that Stephen Sondheim was madly in love with her romantically?

Love her. Beautiful too. She should have had the Oscar for The Omen.

Love Lee Remick. Otto replaced Lana Turner with Lee in "Anatomy of a Murder," when LT wanted designer clothes to play a small town tramp. Lee was sexy, fun, and a good actress as Laura Manion in this terrific film. Here's my take on this "based on a true story," filmed entirely in Upper MI, my neck of the woods!

It sounds corny but her performance in Days of Wine and Roses was nothing short of shattering.

I love her! And don't forget, she was in that Richard Dreyfuss/Amy Irving movie The Competition (1980).

I love her! And don't forget, she was in that Richard Dreyfuss/Amy Irving movie The Competition (1980).

Sorry! I don't know why my computer is double-posting.

I'm so glad they got a cast recording in for [italic]Anyone Can Whistle[/italic]. She executes the title song beautifully.

A great actress and a beautiful woman.

Here's the song.

I always remember her as the drum majorette Andy Griffith left Patrica Neal for in A Face in the Crowd.

Wish there was video to her Tony-nominated performance in "Wait Until Dark."

Love Lee Remick. Underappreciated--beautiful but highly intelligent; she seemed to have first-rate taste in her selection of parts. I have never seen her in anything where she didn't completely impress me. Her range was wide and powerful. Even in lighter fare she stood out.

I recall seeing an interview with her shortly before she died, and her wisdom and dignity about her life and impending death blew me away. She was a remarkable woman and artist.

^ Another link, sorry.

She was a Barnard graduate. Smart!

She was always really boring to me - of a similar type to Joanne Woodward. They tried really hard to make her happen in the early 1960s as a film star but the audiences were not buying it - I recall Pauline Kael writing something like that. Maybe she was great onstage if Sondheim liked her so much?

Actually she and Joanne Woodward did play sisters in something! The Long Hot Summer. That movie is a bit of yawn, Tennessee Williams drag but based off Faulkner stories. Orson Welles is a hoot in full scenery chewing mode and Paul Newman was just beautiful.

Actually, Lee Remick plays Joanne Woodward's sister-in-law in THE LONG HOT SUMMER. She's married to Tony Franciosa and Tony and Joanne's father is played by Orson Welles in Big Daddy mode. Orson's long-suffering girl friend is played by Lee's future Broadway co-star Angela Lansbury. And with Richard Anderson as Joanne's hopelessly neutered boy friend. Great cast!

I remember that movie fondly from watching it as a gayling on Saturday Night at the Movies on NBC which featured 1950s hits from Fox. There was a scene with a shirtless Paul Newman and a pillow that still makes me drool.

In all those fascinating silent home movies Roddy McDowall made at his Malibu home in the summer of 1965, it was Lee Remick IMHO who stood out as the most naturally beautiful of all those young actresses back then.

Ice cold.

She's memorably scary-funny in "Nutcracker: Money, Madness, and Murder."

I thought Lee and George Segal were charming and sexy together in "No Way to Treat a Lady," a respite to Rod Steiger's hamming.... My take here.

She told one of my favorite stories. A woman came up to her and shyly said: "Excuse me, but are you Lee Remick?" "Why, yes," the gracious star replied. "I thought so," the woman said. "She's so pretty."

She was great in "Experiment in Terror," with a Glenn Ford and a very young Stefanie Powers.

No gravitas.

Voice too high and nasally-lilting.

It takes more than Bambi eyes.

But she was sublime with "Anyone Can Whistle."

The Go-Betweens knew it.

R10, is your middle name Louise or Ann?

We know what you first name is.

Pauline Kael once noted that there are certain actresses that the studios keep pushing as stars but the audiences keep rejecting the idea. She named Remick and Woodward as examples.

By the late 50s and throughout most of the 60s there wasn't much room for truly big female stars besides Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Doris Day and Natalie Wood and eventually Barbra Streisand. Even Marilyn Monroe's star had fallen mightily.

Lee might have fared better in the 30s or 40s when "women's pictures" were still being made. I can't believe posters here are saying she lacked warmth, which I think she had in spades. She was very relatable, even when playing a bitch.

Agreed, Reply 34. And I thought Lee had a pleasant, distinctive voice, unlike that flat honk from Carroll Baker or nasal block of wood, Tippi Hedren. Here's Lee in a strong performance from the nifty Blake Edwards thriller "Experiment in Terror," my look at Lee here.

That nasty, nasty Ross Martin making poor little Miss Stefanie Powers strip.

[quote]Pauline Kael once noted that there are certain actresses that the studios keep pushing as stars but the audiences keep rejecting the idea. She named Remick and Woodward as examples.

Pauline Kael could be seriously wrong and a cunt. Some actresses are very happy to be good actresses and star in good movies without being a "star."

Only time I saw her live was when she was at the final performance of the original Merrily.

Kate: Lots of men have affairs, Allie. Even Ike.

Allie: Oh, no, not Ike!

Kate: I saw it on tv. With Lee Remick.

Allie: Ike had an affair with Lee Remick?

Kate: It was a movie, Allie...

Whenever I think of Lee Remick this exchange from 40 years ago on Kate and Allie always comes to mind. The dialogue doesn't do it justice, but Jane Curtin's delivery is hilarious.

Pauline wasn't always right and like fellow homely critic Judith Crist, she was hard on beautiful actresses. I'd say two actresses who were pushed down the public's throats were in the "realistic" later '60s/early '70s, Sandy Dennis and Karen Black, who were better as supporting/character actresses.

Karen was fine as a lead in Day of the Locust, r40.

When Sandy and Karen finally got cast in the same movie, Karen stole the show.

R40, Kael was not hard on beautiful actresses, If anything, she was ridiculously soft on them. She loved Cybill Shepherd and Ann Margret before it was considered cool. She hated Ali McGraw and Candice Bergen, but then, who didn't. Now John Simon was the total reverse but no one ever quotes him for anything other than his bitchy comments about actresses' looks.

Hardly, r42. Cher was the one (in my estimation) who wasn't quite in their dramatic league. I think she was miscast.

She was beautiful and talented.

And Kael was one who noted that if Shelley Winters and Liz Taylor had switched roles in Place In The Sun, the conversation would have shifted to the concept that it was the character's poverty that made her repulsive. With Winters as Alice, the story became obvious.

I can see where Kael might like Cybill in The Last Picture Show, but certainly not At Long Last Love, Daisy Miller, and other clunkers. And Pauline once referred to A-M's '60s persona as porny. I just remember Kael being hard on golden era stars who were still stars in the '60s/'70s.

[quote]That nasty, nasty Ross Martin making poor little Miss Stefanie Powers strip.

It was much more fun when he made Robert Conrad strip on "The Wild, Wild West."

I was suprised to learn she was from Boston as she was so good at playing southern girls.

As for Pauline Kael, I enjoyed reading her work because she cared so much about movies and was so opinionated. I didn't necessarily agree with her on much.

FOLLIES

I love this song.

Stephen Sondheim considered Lee Remick his true soulmate. They talked of marriage -both openly acknowledging that it would not be consummated. He loved her as much as he ever loved anyone.

She looks like some young actress. I can’t put my finger on it. The actress would be in her early-mid 30s. Who am I thinking about.

Kael liked Shepherd in Daisy Miller but not in At Long Last Love. She aptly noted that although AM's performance in Birdie was appalling, she was an undeniable presence.

She's a Elizabeth Montgomery type.

I rather fall for her too.

She's not as CLASSY as she looks. She's a little rough. Sort of woman who'd surprise you with her course sense of humor.

Whereas E. Montgomery was the real thing.

In 1966 Pauline Kael, in a review of Stagecoach, wrote "Ann-Margret comes through dirty no matter what she plays. . . (she) gleams with built-in innuendo. She's like Natalie Wood with sex, a lewd mechanical doll."

And a NYT book reviewer had to say about a Pauline Kael review collection: This description of Redford suggests another characteristic of Miss Keel's criticism‐her preoccupation with the physical look of actors. At her best, she is able to write about the human face as if it were the equivalent of a moral act. She is also capable, at her worst, of Hollywood groupie gush, as when she loses her heart to Shelley Duvall ("You go right to her in delight, saying ‘I'm yours.'") or‐though this infatuation later cools‐when she falls head over heels for Barbra Streisand ("the greatest camera subject on the contemporary American scene”). At times, too, she gets so lost in her work that she seem to have no reference points outside of films. It is disturbing to see her wasting elaborate descriptive resources in comparing a stiff like Cybill Shepherd with her zombie predecessor, Gloria Grahame ("Shepherd doesn't have Grahame's marvelous trashiness, or her acting control either, but she has aroused the same vindictive masculinity,” etc.).

“She's hard and snippy and artificially mechanical,” Pauline Kael wrote of Shepherd as Daisy..

Meanwhile, back to Lee Remick. Here she is having fun vamping in Sondheim's "Follies."

Loved her going head-to-head with Kate Hepburn in A Delicate Balance.

ADB

Oh please, the Meryl loons and other Pauline Kael haters on here love to throw out the idea that Kael hated beautiful women for some bizarre reason and that makes her a cunt. She did not. She worshipped Michelle Pfeiffer years before anyone was calling her extremely talented. She was also a fan of Vivien Leigh, Isabelle Adjani, Faye Dunaway, Sophia Loren (and many others) - all of whom were way more beautiful than Lee goddamn Remick. She did like Cybill in some things, AM in some things, but one thing she would never do is universally praise her "pet" favorites - directors or actors, which is why she's a good critic.

I think she is very spot on about both Remick and Woodward - not all actresses HAVE to be stars, these women were being specifically pushed as such (both inherited or were offered Marilyn Monroe roles after she died) and no one was biting. Very easy to see why - they were BORES. Both ended up with the careers they should have had all along. Contrast Shirley MacLaine, even if she wasn't some knockout beauty- she was both a critically respected actress and a star to the public. Her movies made quite a bit of money, including the MM roles she inherited - Irma La Douce and What a Way To Go.

[quote] "Love her. Beautiful too. She should have had the Oscar for The Omen."

She should've won for "The Days Of Wine And Roses"

[quote] "It sounds corny but her performance in Days of Wine and Roses was nothing short of shattering."

It was, R10.

[quote]I think she is very spot on about both Remick and Woodward - not all actresses HAVE to be stars, these women were being specifically pushed as such (both inherited or were offered Marilyn Monroe roles after she died) and no one was biting. Very easy to see why - they were BORES. Both ended up with the careers they should have had all along.

They were both very pretty and photogenic women (Remick was even genuinely beautiful), but both were genuine actresses more than they were classic stars.

Woodward had a better career than Remick did, and was more honored (Woodward had four Oscar nominations, winning once; ten Golden Globe nominations, winning three times, and nine Emmy nominations, winning four times). Woodward was the bigger talent. There are times where she just could blow everyone else out of the water (like the scene in "Mr and Mrs. Bridge" where her son is supposed to hug her at a Boy Scout's meeting and he refuses to do so, and she feels publicly shamed).

I saw her walking in Westwood in mid 80's. I recognized her from behind because she had such a distinctive way of walking, kinda tomboyish.

Piper Laurie always seemed to be in a similar category as Lee Remick.

Other than in Anatony, Lee Remick did not exude sex. She was beautiful and a gifted actress but it was difficult to image her as a carnal woman even in her more carnal characterizations such as The Detective.

Her father owned a department store in Quincy, Mass. that closed in the 1980's. When I was growing up on the South Shore I remember going to Quincy Square to shop and Remick's was the classiest store in town.

R68 Indeed, Lee was born and raised in Quincy (not Boston, as stated in a few replies above) until she was 7, when her parents divorced, and her mother moved with Lee to NYC.

Someone's working very hard to proliferate threads. Wikipedia link "just because" the OP was "thinking" of Remick?

Please.

I'm so embarrassed. I thought I was just about Lee's biggest fan. Yet I had no idea she was so musically gifted. She is good. She does it so effortlessly.

Thank you all for your fantastic replies. ❤️ this thread.

R71 you don't own the obc of Anyone Can Whistle? Get off DL!

[quote] Other than in Anatony, Lee Remick did not exude sex. She was beautiful and a gifted actress but it was difficult to image her as a carnal woman even in her more carnal characterizations such as The Detective.

I disagree. She's very sexy in "A Face in the Crowd."

R74 absolutely. It was funny how sexy she was in her drum majorette outfit. The polar opposite of the weathered attractiveness of Patricia Neal.

I thought Lee was charming and sexy with George Segal in "No Way to Treat a Lady."

She OOZED repressed sexuality. Something, for some reason, straight guys love.

I absolutely loved her. She could play just about everything. I think the brief affair was with JFK. She was very much a Democrat. She died the same day as Michael Landon. I remember being upset that she didn't get her due.

I wish Netflix/or some channel would put on something showing a lot of her work. When she's on the screen, you can't take your eyes off her. I'm surprised Hitchcock didn't try to get her in one of his movies.

Hitchcock should have did himself and audiences a favor and cast her in "The Birds" and especially "Marnie."

[quote]Hitchcock should have did himself and audiences a favor

Oh, DEAR!

Rick you know better than should have did.

Irregardless, Lee would have been a big improvement over hopeless Hedren! : )

[quote] Irregardless

Oh, DEAR!

We sat in the front row when she was starring onstage in Agnes of God during its pre-Broadway run.

She was wonderful but we were so close to the stage that she appeared to have recently had a facelift and the scar under her chin was visible despite, I'm sure, whatever makeup they'd used in an attempt to minimize it.

She was replaced by Elizabeth Ashley ("by mutual consent" with no further explanation offered) when the show opened in NYC in March, 1982.

R84 how was she in it? Did she seem to struggle at all like MTM in Rose's Dilemma?

Just thinking of that situation, sweet Lee Remick replaced by Elizabeth Ashley, who was certifiably crazy and heavily into all kinds of drugs and coke at that time in her life....how desperate were they? How bad could Lee have been? I suspect Lee left of her own accord, for whatever reasons.

Lee Remick was also in the Merchant-Ivory film The Europeans.

James Ivory said he always wanted to work with her again, but she got sick/passed away.

She said she would have been a bigger star if she moved to LA but didn't want to because she wasn't willing to risk brain damage. That does suggest she wasn't able to play the game but it also shows naivety on her part. Moving to LA was not the reason she wasn't a star. She wasn't because she wasn't and location would not have helped her. She was in The Omen and it did nothing for her career.

If you look at her credits, Lee Remick had a pretty good career in films. TV, and on stage, overall.

She had a body of work that 99.00% of all actresses, from the dawn of time, would have killed for.

I liked her in “Torn Between Two Lovers,” really.

Are you feeling like a fool?

I always thought she and Beverly D'Angelo should have been cast as mother/daughter

The producer of "Agnes of God," Ken Waissman did a podcast last year where he told the whole story of firing Remick in Boston. It starts at 6:15 at the link.

"We're having a lot of problems with Lee Remick: she just doesn't seem to get it."

A few months after she was fired, she saw "Agnes of God" on Broadway and send a note to Weissman that said, "I was in New York and I snuck in to see the show, and I must say I was wrong for it. I can see that now, and Elizabeth Ashley is just wonderful."

Then Weissman says, "So, she had a lor of class."

*lot* of class

Where did she say that, R88?

That seems apocryphal, because she lived in L.A. in the '50s to make her biggest film hits, moved to England from 1970 to 1981, then split her time between Cape Cod and L.A., where she died.

She was going to play Desiree in the LA Production of A Little Night Music opposite John McMartin but she became too ill and was replaced by Lois Nettleton. Glynis Johns played the mother and was fantastic. I was especially impressed with the vocals of Petra, Kathleen Rowe McAllen but nothing much came of her career.

She would've been interesting in Ordinary People.

R10 'Shattering' boy is that a perfect word for it.

After all these years I still occasionally think of that scene where she is going away down the street drunk and he has reformed (Wine and Roses) and wishing she could be saved.

She got to me.

R98 no. Mary was heartbreaking in that part. Perfect. Also, all the above posts dismissing Lee’s career - i don’t get it. She had a career any actress would want. The list of her films was good to great. I bet she worked up til her death.

Mary wasn't acting.

Mary was great. Lee would have been just as good but I see her possibly over acting it just a tad. Mary was so fucking restrained which made her perfect for the role. However, if Lee had played the part, she would have gotten the Oscar.

I feel like Mary working really hard to withold being Mary Richards/Laura Petrie, which Redford was continually directing her to do, added a layer of restraint to her interpretation that might have not been intentional but worked so well with Beth. I agree, Remick, who was thought of as more a Beth 'type' would have not felt the same restraint in her approach, though I think she would have been excellent. Part of what makes MTM's Beth so good is the unexpected component of seeing MTM portray a stealth bitch.

Someone noted that what made the portrayal so shattering was because we all knew Mary. Good old Mary Richards. She'll come around. She'll understand. When we finally get that she simply CAN'T come around, it's devastating.

Redford understood the public would want to see Mary do a complete 360 from Mary Richards and Laura Petrie also. Which would put asses in the seats. The fact that it turned into this big Oscar winning film confirmed he was right. A part like Beth was in Lee’s wheelhouse. I think she would’ve done wonders with the role also. Lee had some consolation that year with a plumb supporting part in The Competition. Not anywhere near the acclaim of OP, but she was outstanding in it, and I always laugh like hell at her lines.

[quote] She always seemed like a very fun person to be around

So sayeth Steve McQueen , Peter Lawford , Herbert Greene, Elia Kazan, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Richard Burton, Elia Kazan and Robert F. Kennedy.

Her "Could I Leave You?" was definitive.