TCM Schedule for Thursday, August 26 -- Summer Under The Stars -- Lee Remick

Today's star is Lee Remick. Did you know that she and her husband, Bill Colleran, were good friends of Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy and frequent visitors to the White House? Lee was also an avid spokesperson for the Democratic Party. Enjoy!


6:00am -- Baby, the Rain Must Fall (1965)
A parolee tries to launch a musical career and keep out of trouble.
Cast: Lee Remick, Steve McQueen, Don Murray, Paul Fix
Dir: Robert Mulligan
BW-99 mins, TV-PG

Screenplay author Horton Foote was a native of Wharton, Texas, where portions of this movie were filmed. The Texas premier of "Baby the Rain Must Fall" was held in Wharton on February 4, 1965 at the now-demolished Rio Theatre.


8:00am -- The Wheeler Dealers (1963)
Texas tycoons try to mix love with finance on a trip to New York.
Cast: James Garner, Lee Remick, Phil Harris, Chill Wills
Dir: Arthur Hiller
C-106 mins, TV-PG

Screen debut of Laugh In regular Alan Sues.


10:00am -- Loot (1970)
A nurse, her lover and his boyfriend hide the money from a bank job in her dead patient's coffin.
Cast: Richard Attenborough, Lee Remick, Hywel Bennett, Roy Holder
Dir: Silvio Narizzano
C-102 mins, TV-MA

The Broadway production of "Loot" written by Joe Orton opened at the Biltmore Theater in New York on March 18, 1968 and ran for 22 performances.


12:00pm -- Experiment in Terror (1962)
A master criminal tries to force a bank teller to help him pull off a big heist.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Lee Remick, Stefanie Powers, Ross Martin
Dir: Blake Edwards
BW-123 mins, TV-PG

Several elements of this film inspired scenes in David Lynch projects. To begin with, there is the "Twin Peaks" (1990) sign at the beginning of the film which served as obvious inspiration for the title card and setting of Lynch's television series of the same name. Also, a scene or two later (the infamous "opening" scene,) when Kelly is in here garage, the killer mentions that he has "killed twice before" - this is something which "Bob," the supposed killer from "Twin Peaks" also mentions. This scene also has uncanny resemblances to a scene in Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990) where Willem Dafoe's character, Bobby Peru, has Lula Fortune in his filthy grasp and is talking to her similarly. Later in the film, we find out that the killer in "Experiment in Terror" is actually called Garland "Red" Lynch. The resemblance to David Lynch's name is something which the director no doubt noticed, as he also named a character in "Twin Peaks" after him (Major Garland Briggs).


2:15pm -- The Running Man (1963)
A man fakes his death to get back at the insurance company that denied an earlier claim.
Cast: Laurence Harvey, Lee Remick, Alan Bates, Felix Aylmer
Dir: Carol Reed
C-104 mins, TV-PG

Released internationally as The Ballard of the Running Man.


4:00pm -- Hennessy (1975)
When his family is killed, an Irishman with IRA ties plots to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II.
Cast: Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, Richard Johnson, Trevor Howard
Dir: Don Sharp
C-105 mins, TV-14

The first film of Patrick "Captain Jean-Luc Picard" Stewart.


6:00pm -- Telefon (1977)
A Russian agent travels to the U.S. to stop a crazed defector from triggering human time bombs.
Cast: Lee Remick, Donald Pleasence, Charles Bronson, Tyne Daly
Dir: Don Siegel
C-103 mins, TV-14

Director Don Siegel asked Charles Bronson to shave his trademark mustache off for this movie. Bronson replied, "No mustache, no Bronson." Siegel said in his book A Siegel Film: An Autobiography, "I felt that inasmuch as Bronson wore a heavy mustache in Russia, it would help his disguise if he had no mustache when he arrives in Canada. However he didn't want to shave it off."


What's On Tonight: SUMMER UNDER THE STARS: LEE REMICK


8:00pm -- A Face In The Crowd (1957)
A female television executive turns a folk-singing drifter into a powerful media star.
Cast: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau
Dir: Elia Kazan
BW-126 mins, TV-PG

Film debut of both Andy Griffith and Lee Remick.


10:30pm -- Anatomy Of A Murder (1959)
A small-town lawyer gets the case of a lifetime when a military man avenges an attack on his wife.
Cast: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O'Connell
Dir: Otto Preminger
BW-161 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Stewart, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Arthur O'Connell, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- George C. Scott, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Sam Leavitt, Best Film Editing -- Louis R. Loeffler, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Wendell Mayes, and Best Picture

Otto Preminger originally wanted Lee Remick for the part of Laura because he had been impressed with her debut in A Face in the Crowd (1957) and knew that she could play a young sultry woman (even though Remick was 8 months pregnant when Preminger approached her for the role). A few weeks later he called to tell her that he had given the part to Lana Turner and instead offered her a smaller role of Mary Pilant, but Remick boldly refused. On an especially hectic day when Remick received a call saying that she had the part of Laura, she thought it was a joke and hung up. It took another phone call to convince her that she truly did have the lead female role.


1:30am -- Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
A husband and wife fight to conquer alcoholism.
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman
Dir: Blake Edwards
BW-117 mins, TV-14

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Henry Mancini (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the song "Days of Wine and Roses"

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Jack Lemmon, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Lee Remick, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Joseph C. Wright and George James Hopkins, and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Donfeld

The film's title comes from the poem "Vitae Summa Brevis" by Ernest Dowson: "They are not long, the days of wine and roses: / Out of a misty dream / Our path emerges for a while, then closes / Within a dream." Dowson also wrote the poem from which the title Gone with the Wind (1939) came.


3:30am -- The Competition (1980)
Competitors in a classical piano competition fall in love.
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Lee Remick, Amy Irving, Sam Wanamaker
Dir: Joel Oliansky
C-126 mins, TV-14

Nominated for Oscars for Best Film Editing -- David E. Blewitt, and Best Music, Original Song -- Lalo Schifrin (music) and Will Jennings (lyrics) for the song "People Alone"

When the film was released, the press releases promoted the fact that this was one of the rare times when the audience actually got to see the actors playing the keys of the piano. Most films that dealt with scenes or plots where characters play the piano would be shot from behind or in front of the piano so their hands were not visible. The actors for The Competition rehearsed so that they could actually mimic the hand movements of a pianist.

When Lee Remick came upon the movie scene in the late 1950s, there was an engaging freshness about her looks, her personality and her talent. While she could play a minx or a slattern as well as a lady, one always had the feeling that underneath her characterizations was a woman of breeding, intelligence and, above all, clear-eyed sanity.

She was born Lee Ann Remick in Quincy, Mass., in 1935, the daughter of a department-store owner. After studying acting at Bernard College and the Actors Studio, she made her Broadway debut in 1953 in Be Your Age. Her film debut came as the baton-twirling cutie who catches the eye of Andy Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957).

After attention-getting roles in The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and These Thousand Hills (1959), Remick got her big break in movies when Lana Turner dropped out of Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and she inherited the role of a flirtatious wife who may or may not have been raped by the murder victim. She ran with the role and held her own in a cast that included such stalwarts as James Stewart, Ben Gazzara, George C. Scott and Eve Arden.

Remick consolidated her star status with vibrant performances in Kazan's Wild River (1960), a film version of William Faulkner's Sanctuary (1961) and the thriller Experiment in Terror (1962), in which she plays a bank teller terrorized by an extortionist. She's quite heartbreaking in her Oscar®-nominated performance in Days of Wine and Roses (1962) in which she and Jack Lemmon play an alcoholic couple -- and she's the one who can't be rehabilitated.

Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Remick created a gallery of compelling characters, both in film and television. Her theatrical features included The Running Man (1963), The Wheeler Dealers (1963), Loot (1970), Hennessy (1975) and Telefon (1977). She was especially memorable in Robert Mulligan's Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965) as the melancholy wife of a hard-knocks country singer (Steve McQueen).

After The Competition (1980) Remick turned her attention almost exclusively to television, where she had many challenging roles (including those in musical productions) and was routinely nominated for Emmy awards. She also had distinguished herself on Broadway in such vehicles as the Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle (1964) and the thriller Wait Until Dark (1966), which brought her a Tony award nomination.

Remick, who was twice married and had two children, succumbed to cancer in 1991.

by Roger Fristoe

* Films in Bold Type Air on 8/26