Working Girl

Working Girl is an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture and an Academy Award winner for Best Song ("Let the River Run" by Carly Simon), which tells the story of a Staten Island-raised secretary, Tess McGill, working in the mergers and acquisitions department of a Wall Street investment bank. When her boss, Katharine Parker, breaks her leg skiing, Tess poses as Katharine in order to put forward her own bank deal ideas.

The movie was written by Kevin Wade and directed by Mike Nichols. It features a dramatic opening sequence following Manhattan-bound commuters on the Staten Island Ferry accompanied by Carly Simon's song "Let the River Run", for which she received the Academy Award for Best Song. The movie was marketed with the tagline "For anyone who's ever won. For anyone who's ever lost. And for everyone who's still in there trying."

Main cast

Plot summary

Tess McGill is an intelligent, working-class young woman who has earned a college degree in business in night school and wants to succeed on Wall Street. As she turns 30 years old, however, she is unable to land a position above secretarial level. After being misled by her boss into thinking she will be hired for a better job at another company, when in fact he has set her up for a sexual encounter, she calls her boss a pimp and has to be transferred.

Tess is then assigned as secretary to executive Katharine Parker, who encourages her to come to her if she has any good ideas. She does in fact go to Katharine with an idea of Trask Industries buying into radio instead of television. When Katharine tells her she will help, Tess begins to feel that her luck is finally changing.

However, when Parker goes on a ski trip she breaks her leg and is unable to be moved. After she tells Tess to look after of her house, Tess discovers that Katharine is planning to steal her idea. Extremely disappointed and hurt, Tess then returns home to find her boyfriend in bed with another woman. Soon after, Tess calls executive Jack Trainer, posing as her own boss. She tells him that she has a proposal to run by him and asks if they can meet. He agrees, and they arrange an appointment for the next day.

But Tess decides to talk to him that night at a party in order to get a head start. While there, she does in fact meet him but does not know it because when he speaks to her he doesn't tell her his name. After a few drinks, she sees one of her old bosses and quickly leaves but not before telling him to get her coat and to meet her outside. When outside, he sees her nearly passed out in a taxicab due to the fact she took a Valium before the party and is unable to give the driver her address. Jack takes her to his place and talks to her for the time being.

Tess wakes up the next morning in her underwear and leaves before Jack awakens. On entering the meeting, she instantly recognizes him and he introduces himself. She submits her proposal to him and three other colleagues, Jack seems intrigued, but the rest of his colleagues aren’t interested. Back at the office, Tess cries to her best friend Cyn (who knows what Tess is up to), saying that she at least gave it a shot and is mortified about the previous evening. She then turns to see Jack approaching and quickly runs into Katharine’s office, Cyn pretending to be her secretary, Jack tells her that they liked her idea and are going to proceed with it. He later asks her out, but she refuses because they are now in a business deal together and her life is too complicated as it is.

The movie then switches to Cyn’s engagement party, where she talks to her boyfriend Mick; she is still angry with him, though to everyone else, it looks as though they are still happy -- only Cyn knows what happened. In front of everyone, Mick is pressured into proposing. Tess responds "Maybe," but outside they argue and officially break up. A couple of days later, Tess and Jack crash Oren Trask daughter’s wedding in order to meet him and schedule an appointment to pitch their plan. They succeed and meet with two of his employees.

The Trask employees say no, but Trask himself is interested. When leaving, Tess and Jack start to kiss and end up sleeping together. While in bed, Tess says she has something to tell him, but Katherine calls -- it turns out that she and Jack have been involved. When they hang up, Tess is angry and turns away from him. Jack tells her that it’s over between him and Katherine, that he was going to tell her on the ski trip, but he had to work and didn’t have the heart to dump her after she was hurt. Tess changes her mind about telling him the truth about herself.

The next day, the day of the meeting, Katharine comes home. Jack visits Katharine’s house to see her but doesn’t stay long and almost dumps her. At the same time, Tess is hiding in the closet, and as soon as Jack leaves she rushes out of the apartment, saying that she has a doctor's appointment, but leaves her notebook behind. Katharine reads it, discovers what Tess has been up to, and gets dressed to go stop her.

At the meeting, Jack tells Tess that he loves her and she says she loves him, too. The meeting with the owners of the Metro radio station and Trask begins, but Katharine soon barges in, accuses Tess of stealing her idea, and announces that she is, in fact, just a secretary. Tess tries to make the others understand that Katharine is the liar but is unable to do so. She leaves with apologies, and Jack proceeds with the meeting.

Back at the office, Tess is packing her things and says good-bye to her friends, who now know the whole story. When leaving, Tess sees Jack and the others in the entrance to the main lobby, she tries to leave another way but a man bumps into her and she spills all her papers. Jack comes forward to help and tells her he has been trying to find her and asks her if them sleeping together was part of the scheme too. Tess tells him no but adds that if she had told him she was just some secretary he would never have taken the meeting but would have tried to fill her with drinks and get her into bed. Tess also tells him that if he really thought she said she loved him as some sort of scheme, then that was pathetic.

As Katharine tries to lead the group onto the elevator, Jack refuses to come, stating that Tess is this team's leader and that he believes her. He and Tess manage to get Trask to step off too and they ride up in the next elevator. Tess explains how she came up with her idea, convincing him that Katharine has been lying. When they get off, Trask asks Katharine how she got the idea for Trask to buy Metro Radio Network. When she is unable to answer, she asks Jack to help, but he refuses. Trask proceeds to tell her that he is going to make sure she gets fired, Katharine leaves and slams into her office. Trask then offers Tess an "entry-level" job, which she happily accepts. As Trask and the group head back to the elevator, Tess and Jack kiss each other and her friends happily applaud her.

Soon after, Tess, now living with Jack, is getting ready for work. She arrives at Trask Industries and is told where to go, but when sees a woman on the phone in the office she thought was hers, Tess assumes that she is once again merely a secretary. As it turns out, it is Tess’s office and the woman is her assistant. The movie ends with Tess calling Cyn to tell her the big news, and Cyn excitedly tells the other secretaries that Tess has made it out.

Awards

Winner:

• 1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
• 1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Melanie Griffith)
• 1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture (Sigourney Weaver)
• 1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song - "Let the River Run"
• 1989: Academy Award for Best Song - "Let the River Run"
• 1990: Grammy Awards of 1990 for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television- "Let the River Run" (Composing and arranging)

Academy Award Nominations:

• Best Actress in a Leading Role (Melanie Griffith)
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Joan Cusack)
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Sigourney Weaver)
• Best Director and Best Picture

Trivia

• The movie is David Duchovny's screen debut. He appears in two scenes; once at Tess's birthday party at her apartment and later at Cyn's pre-wedding party.
• The lobby of Tess's office building was that of the now-destroyed 7 World Trade Center. The scenes of Tess's secretarial pool and Katharine Parker's office were filmed at 1 State Street Plaza at the corner of Whitehall and State Street. [1] [2]
• Many scenes were shot in the New Brighton section of Staten Island in New York City.
• When Tess goes to meet Katherine Parker on the helipad, she is carrying a stuffed gorilla, a direct reference to the film Gorillas in the Mist, a film that Weaver had finished a few months earlier.
• The film had grossed over $64,000,000 in the Unites States.

TV series

Working Girl was also made into a short-lived NBC television series in 1990, starring Sandra Bullock as Tess McGill. It only lasted 12 episodes.

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