Oscar Profile #332: Lee Remick

Born December 14, 1935 in Quincey, Massachusetts to Gertrude (nee Waldo), an actress and Francis Remick, a department store owner, Lee Remick was educated at Barnard College, where she studied dancing as well as acting.

Remick made her TV debut at the age of 17 in an episode of Armstrong Circle Theatre. After several more TV roles, she made her film debut as the Southern majorette baton twirler who catches Andy Griffith’s eye in Elia Kazan’s 1957 film, A Face in the Crowd, the same year that she married TV director Bill Colleran. Her second film role was also as a Southern sexpot in Martin Ritt’s 1958 film of William Faulkner’s The Long, Hot Summer alongside Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Franciosa, Orson Welles and Angela Lansbury.

The actress gave birth to her daughter Kate in 1959, the same year she starred opposite Don Murray and Richard Egan in Richard Fleischer’s These Thousand Hills and ended the year in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder in which she became a major star in a role intended for Lana Turner opposite James Stewart.

Remick rejoined Kazan for 1960’s Wild River opposite Montgomery Clift. She turned to Faulkner again for Tony Richardson’s 1961 film of Sanctuary, giving birth to son Matt that same year. She then made two films for Blake Edwards in 1962, Experiment in Terror opposite Glenn Ford and Days of Wine and Roses opposite Jack Lemmon, for which she received her only Oscar nomination.

Although she was on screen periodically throughout the 1960s in such films as Baby the Rain Must Fall, No Way to Treat a Lady and The Detective, she made her biggest splash during the decade in Broadway’s Anyone Can Whistle and Wait Until Dark, earning a Tony nomination for the latter.

Remick was divorced from Colleran in 1968. She married British director Kim Gowans in 1970, the year in which she moved to England.

Alternating between film and TV work during the 1970s, her theatrical films during the decade included Sometimes a Great Notion, A Delicate Balance, The Omen and The Europeans. Her TV work included four Emmy nominated performances in The Blue Knight, QB VII, Jennie and Wheels. She would earn an additional three Emmy nominations in the 1980s for Haywire, Eleanor: In Her Own Words and Nutcracker.

Lee Remick’s last film was the TV movie, Dark Holiday in which she played a real-life American tourist incarcerated in a Turkish prison. She died of kidney and liver cancer in 1991. She was 55.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959), directed by Otto Preminger

Remick became a major star with her portrayal of the woman at the center of a sensational major murder trial when she took over the role from Joan Crawford who either quit or was fired, depending on which version you believe, over a wardrobe dispute. Remick’s husband Ben Gazzara is on trial for killing a bartender he claims molested his wife. He is defended by small town lawyer James Stewart with the assistance of Arthur O’Connell and Eve Arden. George C. Scott is the prosecutor and Joseph N. Welch is the judge. Remick was nominated for a Golden Globe, but did not place among the film’s nine Oscar nominations.

WILD RIVER (1960), directed by Elia Kazan

Remick made her screen debut in Kazan’s 1957 film, A Face in the Crowd, but her favorite role was said to be that of the widowed grand-daughter of the stubborn old lady played by Jo Van Fleet who is torn between reference to her grandmother and falling for the Montgomery Clift as the man from the Tennessee Valley Authority who wants to flood the old lady’s land. Kazan was nominated for a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the film did place on the National Board of Review’s list of the year’s ten best films, but other than that, sadly received no major awards recognition.

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES (1962), directed by Blake Edwards

J.P. Miller’s shocking drama about an alcoholic who marries a young woman he systematically addicts to booze, was first performed for TV’s Playhouse 90 in 1958 featuring fantastic performances by Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie along with Charles Bickford as Laurie’s disapproving father. Jack Lemmon, in what was then a rare dramatic role for him, and Remick both received Oscar nominations for recreating Robertson and Laurie’s roles, while Bickford got to recreate his TV role. The film was also nominated for Art Direction and Costume Design and won for Best Song, its title song by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer.

A DELICATE BALANCE (1973), directed by Tony Richardson

Remick almost got to work with Katharine Hepburn early in her career in 1957’s The Desk Set, but the part went instead to Dina Merrill. The two finally got to work together in this adaptation of Edward Albee’s play. Remick plays Hepburn and Paul Scofield’s 36-year-old daughter who returns to their Connecticut home after the collapse of her fourth marriage. Also on hand are Joseph Cotton and Betsy Blair as Hepburn and Scofield’s best friends. The film, however, is stolen by Kate Reid as Hepburn’s alcoholic sister, a role originally assigned to Kim Stanley who was fired for forgetting her lines.

THE OMEN (1976), directed by Richard Donner

The biggest box-office hit of Remick’s career turned out to be this classic horror film in which she co-stars as the wife of the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, played by Gregory Peck. The film begins with Peck rushing to the hospital where Remick has just given birth. Informed by a priest (Martin Benson) that the baby was stillborn, he is urged by the priest to accept the substitution of a newborn orphan in his place without Remick’s knowledge. Mysterious deaths start occurring on the boy’s (Harvey Stephens) fifth birthday, which leads to the eventual realization that the child is the Anti-Christ.