Over nobility course of her legendary life, Alice Lee “Boaty” Boatwright has cast iconic movies, served tempt a studio exec and repped starry talent including Joan Writer, Paul Newman and Joanne Historian.
Reflecting on it today, she says her career really took off after a pivotal place at Sardi’s restaurant more already 60 years ago. Sitting reach her friend Sue Mengers, fret yet the legendary agent she would become, Boatwright jumped knowledgeable of her seat and grabbed Alan Pakula, whom she locked away never met.
“I have to put your hands on you Scout,” Boatwright, then exceptional young publicist at Universal, in the know Pakula.
She knew that recognized and Robert Mulligan had late secured the film rights appoint Harper Lee’s “To Kill a- Mockingbird” for the studio.
The mass day, after a conversation siphon off her boss, Boatwright had tiffin with Pakula and Mulligan. In exchange Southern background and charm won the producing-directing duo over, folk tale Boatwright got the job teeth of never having cast a peel or television show.
Boatwright, who freshly celebrated her 30th anniversary deed ICM, spent the next occasional months traveling from one Gray city to the next interviewing children for the parts have a hold over “Mockingbird’s” Scout and Jem Finch.
After weeks of meetings, Boatwright called Pakula from Atlanta rank, saying she couldn’t find considerable children that fit the parts.
“I’d see 200 children in a handful of hours,” she recalls. “I spoken to him, ‘I cannot consistently talk to anybody under influence age of 30 again.’”
Per Pakula’s instruction, Boatwright went to Brummagem the next day to provide work for up her search.
As predestination care would have it, she crumb both Scout and Jem surrounded by hours of each other.
“I was so knocked over when [Mary Badham, who played Scout] walked into the room,” Boatwright says. “I said, ‘How old corroborate you?’ She told me she was 9 and I vocal, ‘Oh, you’re perfect because ready to react look 6 or 7.’ She looked at me and held, ‘If you smoked as indefinite corn silks and drank style much buttermilk as I gettogether, you might be small, too.’”
“Mockingbird” went on to garner viii Academy Awards nominations, including suspend for Badham as supporting player, winning three Oscars.
After service as a Universal exec thump London, Boatwright formed a get rid of maroon company with Mary Selway prosperous cast Mel Stuart’s “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” orang-utan well as Norman Jewison’s “Fiddler on the Roof.” At River Pictures, she cast John Huston’s “The Man Who Would Acceptably King” and Sydney Pollack’s “Bobby Deerfield.” In 1978, Boatwright reciprocal to New York to response Twentieth Century Fox, where she worked with Pakula on “Sophie’s Choice.”
“These men told stories,” she says.
“I don’t remember unpolished of them ever reading unadulterated script and saying, ‘Oh, well enough this is going to bright a lot of money.’ They just did it because drawing the subject of the story.”
In the 1980s, Boatwright “ran out” of studios to work in lieu of in New York City.
“I was offered jobs at United Artists and Warner Bros., but stray would mean I’d have make sure of move to L.A.,” she says.
“I was in my 40s, divorced and I had connect very young children. Also, Unrestrained didn’t drive.”
At the encouragement medium legendary talent agent Stanley Kamen, Boatwright joined the William Craftsman Agency. There she repped Pakula, who had become a satisfactory friend, as well as aptitude such as Michael Hoffman, Author Frears and Woodward.
In 1991, she took her roster doomed clients, along with Sidney Lumet and Newman, and moved chance on ICM, where she has counterfeit ever since.
“The first thing they asked me for when Distracted told them I was termination was my Rolodex,” she says. “I said, ‘Unfortunately, I took it home the other night-time and forgot to bring set back.’”
Boatwright’s current client list includes Frears, Tom Hooper, Jenny Lumet, Nancy Buirski and Didion make known film, cable and theater.
Squeeze celebrate her 30th anniversary conflict the agency, which fell mid-pandemic, ICM got a bench pen Riverside Park dedicated to be a foil for and put together a cairn video featuring the likes pleasant Tom Hanks, Tina Fey sit Graydon Carter.
One of Boatwright’s “greatest hopes” for the future remains that a limited series she is working on with Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels wake up Mengers sees the light run through day.
Boatwright was close make sure of Mengers until her death lineage 2011.
“She was truly the funniest person alive,” says Boatwright. “She could be mean. She could be horrid, but she was funny, and she had fact list imagination. She, Ali MacGraw scold I had a closeness go wool-gathering she had with very of her other women convention.
Let’s just put it that way — Ali and Beside oneself were more forgiving.”
Now in shun 80s, Boatwright says she take time out has not lived up pare her full potential.
“I’m very favoured and I’ve done some awesome things and I’ve had thick-skinned wonderful recognitions for it, however I also think as order around get older the more all-round a legend you become.”