Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Lee Remick: Her Life Story (Jerry Skinner Documentary)

This is Lee Remick, the actress,

born Lee Ann Remick

in Quincy, Massachusetts

on December 14, 1935.

Lee's father, Francis Edwin Remick

(that everybody called Frank)

was owner and operator of Remick's department store.

It was one of the largest and best-known in Quincy.

Frank's father Alfred had started the company

and then passed it on to Frank after Alfred [died].

It's been said that even after Lee became famous through her many movies,

She would come back to her father's store to meet customers and staff.

Her mother Gertrude Margaret Waldo

was called Patricia (or Pat).

She had been a stage actress and desired the same for her daughter Lee Ann.

Lee had one brother 2-and-a-half years older than her, Bruce Waldo Remick,

and he was born May 6, 1933.

When Lee was seven years old, her father and mother divorced.

Frank stayed in Quincy and ran the Department store.

Pat and the children moved to New York.

Her mother enrolled Lee

at Miss Hewitt's, an exclusive school for girls

on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

She was groomed for a career in the performing arts.

As she grew older,

at the age of 16, in 1952,

she answered an advertisement for dancers in summer stock. Claiming that she was two years older than she was,

she ended up performing in 10 different shows in 10 weeks.

She was given a chance to read for a part of a sarcastic teenager in the broadway play "Be Your Age."

The play closed after only a few performances, but it helped Remick get a professional agent.

For the next five years,

she will audition and win several parts on live television.

She will appear on Armstrong Circle Theatre,

Playhouse Ninety,

Studio One,

and Robert Montgomery Presents.

It was a performance in May of 1956

on Robert Montgomery Presents that brought Remick to the attention of director Elia Kazan.

Kazan was looking for someone

to play a seductive baton twirler / Southern high school girl

in his movie "A Face In The Crowd"

starring Andy Griffith, Patricia O'Neill and Tony Franciosa.

The problem was Lee Remick was a stage actress and had never worked in film before.

She was also a Northern girl and no experience twirling a baton.

The small Southern town for the picture had already been picked.

It was a small town of Piggott, Arkansas.

Lee arrived in Piggott, Arkansas a few months before shooting started.

She was to stay a few weeks with a Robeson family.

Mr. Robeson was a school superintendent and his wife was a teacher,

and their 15-year-old daughter Amanda was the school drum majorette.

Now this is Amanda and Lee

practicing their twirling.

Along with learning to twirl a baton, she went with Amanda everywhere she went,

trying to learn how to speak Southern

and act like a Southern teenage girl.

Now this is a system that Remick will apply

throughout her career.

She will study her subjects sometimes for months before any performance.

Remick was not the only newcomer to the film - it was also Andy Griffith's first film.

He stated that his part in "A Face In The Crowd"

was so dark that he would never play such a part again, and he didn't.

The movie was not received very well at first, but in years to come it'll become a classic.

It was good for Lee Remick, though,

because after "A Face In The Crowd"

she was offered a seven-year, one-picture-a-year contract with 20th Century Fox.

The same year "A Face In The Crowd" was released,

Lee will marry producer Bill Colleran on August 3, 1957.

They had met in August of 1956 and dated for a year before marrying.

Before her second movie "The Long, Hot Summer"

She'll move to Los Angeles with her husband.

She will play the sultry wife of Jody Varner

played by Tony Franciosa.

Again using her Southern accent that she had learned from her first movie of "A Face In The Crowd"

The movie will give Remick a chance to work with major stars

such as Orson Welles, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

After the finish of "The Long, Hot Summer"

even though Lee was pregnant with her first child,

director Otto Preminger sent her a script to read

entitled "Anatomy of a Murder."

Before she had finished reading the script,

Preminger called her back and said that he had hired Lana Turner for the part,

but offered Remick a second lead.

To his surprise, she refused.

On January 1, 1959, at the age of 23

Lee Remick will give birth to her daughter Katherine.

Not long after Kate's birth Lee receives a phone call

stating that Otto Preminger had fired Lana Turner

over a wardrobe dispute -

she wanted to wear designer clothes when the script called for clothes off the rack.

Preminger still wanted Lee for the part.

Remick believed the call was a joke so she hung up on the caller.

They quickly called back and assured that it was true.

Lee played the wife of a serviceman that was played by Ben Gazzara

who had killed a man that had raped his wife.

Critics said that Otto Preminger [as] the director was known for being a bully to his actors.

She said that she had just had a baby and was breastfeeding -

she convinced him that anything that upset her could sour her breast milk.

She didn't know if it did or not, but it kept Preminger off her back, she said.

She always said co-star James Stewart, who was also in the movie,

gave her the best acting lessons that she had ever received from an actor.

It helped Remick to get nominated for a Golden Globe.

These next pictures starred Don Murray and Richard Egan in "These Thousand Hills."

In 1960, Remick would star along with Montgomery Clift and Jo Van Fleet in "Wild River."

It will be directed by her friend, Elia Kazan.

It would be her first movie for Elia Kazan since "A Face in the Crowd."

Kazan will later say that "Wild River" was the best movie that he ever directed.

Montgomery Clift had to promise Kazan

that he would not drink while "Wild River" was being filmed

and he didn't.

With the support of Remick and Van Fleet,

he kept his word.

Remick said he was like a little wounded bird.

The movie was set in Tennessee back in the 30s

when TVA was moving people off their land in order to build a Dam.

Lee Remick was on location in Tennessee filming when she learned that her husband Bill Colleran

was in an automobile crash and was barely alive.

Bill had been working on a Frank Sinatra TV special day and night without rest.

Lee and her mother Pat immediately flew from Tennessee to Los Angeles.

She said they checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel for a week until she was sure that her husband was okay.

When she went to pay the hotel bill,

she found it had been paid by Frank Sinatra,

[whom] she barely knew at the time.

On June 7, 1961, Lee and Bill will have their second child,

Matthew Remick Colleran.

The next year in 1962

Remick will star with Jack Lemmon in one of her best roles in "Days of Wine and Roses."

The movie explores the depths of alcoholism and

will win an academy award nomination for Miss Remick.

In 1963 she worked with James Garner and Phil Harris in "The Wheeler Dealers."

In 1964 Remick joined a short-lived musical

that was called "Anybody Can Whistle"

starring Angela Lansbury.

Lansbury was never quite comfortable with her role and the show closed after a few performances.

In 1965, Lee and Steve McQueen teamed up in "Baby the Rain Must Fall."

During that time Lee Remick was making $400,000 per movie

but the quality of movies were falling

such as "Hallelujah Trail" with Burt Lancaster and Jim Hutton.

In 1966, Remick got a chance to star in a major Broadway play, "Wait Until Dark."

Starring along with Remick in his broadway debut was Robert Duvall.

Lee said that she took the role because she

would arrive at the theater at 8 o'clock and would be back home to her family by 11:30.

She spent one month at the Lighthouse Foundation for the Blind

preparing for her role.

The show opened February 2, 1966.

It will run for 374 performances.

Lee will say that by the time the run was over,

she was so familiar with her character,

she could repeat her lines while at the same time

thinking of the things that she had to do when she got home.

Lee once said, I'm a housewife that is incidentally an actress.

Well, the housewife who was just incidentally an actress won a Tony award

for Best Actress in that play, "Wait Until Dark."

In 1969 while in Europe, then in "Hard Contact" with James Coburn,

Lee will meet assistant director William "Kip" Gowans.

A romance will soon develop and Lee will file for divorce from her husband of 11 years, Bill Colleran.

After the divorce, Colleran will continue producing and directing major TV shows

He will never remarry.

Bill will pass away on June 15, 2000, from a stroke

while living at the Motion Picture & Television Fund Hospital

in Woodland Hills, California.

He was 77 years old.

Lee Remick will marry Kip Gowans on December 18, 1970

after Gowans receives his divorce from his 30-year-old British actress wife Valerie Gearon.

Remick was named as co-respondent during the divorce trials.

After marrying Kip, Remick moved with him back to England to live.

She will continue to make movies while living overseas

like "The Blue Knight" in 1973 with William Holden

where again she will be nominated for an Emmy.

In 1974, she won numerous awards for her portrayal of Jennie in "Lady Randolph Churchill."

In 1976, it was "The Omen" with Gregory Peck.

In 1979 she played in TV movie "Ike: The War Years" with Robert Duvall.

After Lee and Kip move back to California to be closer to movie scripts,

they bought this house and property in Osterville, Massachusetts, where they will spend the next 12 years on and off.

Lee always considered, she said, Osterville on Cape Cod her real home.

Through the 80s Lee will work with her husband on a number of TV movies

including "The Women's Room"

and "Rear View Mirror."

Remick was once asked if she could give advice on how to become a movie star

and she stated:

"You cannot plan our map out a career. You just happen to be at the right spot at the right time."

Now this is a picture of Lee's daddy Frank Remick and his second wife Margaret.

Frank passed away in 1983 at the age of 73.

In 1988, Remick formed a production company with fellow actor James Garner and TV producer [Peter] Duchow.

One year after forming her production company,

in May of 1989,

Lee had just finished the last film of her career, "Dark Holiday," filmed in England

when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

When Lee began her battle with cancer, she took experimental drugs

including chemotherapy, and the removal of a kidney.

She confided in her close friend

Jill Ireland, a British actress and wife of Charles Bronson,

who had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

They both worked to raise money for cancer research.

Jill Ireland will pass away of breast cancer in May of 1990.

During the year of 1990, Lee Remick's cancer will be in remission.

She even goes back on the stage for a short time

in a local Los Angeles production of "A Little Night's Music."

When in the spring of 1991 she will learn the heartbreaking news that her cancer had returned,

on April 29th, 1991, Lee will be presented her star

on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6104 Hollywood Boulevard.

Her friend, Jack Lemmon, was there to his sister.

Lee always said that Jack was her favorite actor.

As you can see by this time Lee was very weak

and her beautiful face was swollen from treatments.

She will succumb to her battle of kidney and liver cancer two months after this picture was taken.

Lee Remick Gowans will pass away at 5:15 p.m., July 2, 1991,

at her home that's located at 570 North Bondi Drive in Brentwood, California.

Her family will be at her bedside.

Lee's eulogy will be given by Jack Lemmon and Gregory Peck.

Her children Kate and Matt will sang the title song from her Broadway musical "Anyone Can Whistle."

A list of Hollywood stars will attend.

Lee Ann Remick, at her own request, will be cremated and her remains given to her family.

She was 55 years old.

Her home at Osterville, Massachusetts, that she loved

will be divided between her husband Kip and her two children Kate and Matt

with the stipulation that Kip could live there as long as he lived or moved.

Kip lived there for several years after Lee's death

but finally, as his health began to fail,

he moved back to England to live with his daughter.