| Working Girl | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Mike Nichols |
| Written by | Kevin Wade |
| Produced by | Douglas Wick |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Michael Ballhaus |
| Edited by | Sam O'Steen |
| Music by |
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Production company | |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
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Running time | 113 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $28 million |
| Box office | $103 million |
Working Girl is a 1988 Americanromanticcomedy drama film directed byMike Nichols, written byKevin Wade, and starringHarrison Ford,Sigourney Weaver, andMelanie Griffith. Its plot follows an ambitious secretary fromStaten Island working inmergers and acquisitions. The secretary, who has been going to business night school, pitches a profitable idea, only to have her new boss attempt to take credit. When her boss is laid up with a broken leg, she secretly takes over her boss's role to prove her capabilities in the corporate world.
The film's opening sequence followsManhattan-bound commuters on theStaten Island Ferry accompanied byCarly Simon's song "Let the River Run", for which she received theAcademy Award for Best Original Song[1] and theGolden Globe Award for Best Original Song,[2] and theGrammy Award for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television,[3] making her the first artist to win this trio of awards for a song composed and written, as well as performed, entirely by a single artist.[4] The film was met with critical acclaim, and was a major box office success, grossing a worldwide total of $103 million.[5]
Working Girl was nominated for sixAcademy Awards, includingBest Picture,Best Director, andBest Actress for Griffith, while both Weaver andJoan Cusack were nominated forBest Supporting Actress.[1] The film won fourGolden Globes (from six nominations), includingBest Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy,Best Actress – Musical or Comedy for Griffith, andBest Supporting Actress for Weaver.[2] It also received threeBAFTA nominations:Best Actress for Griffith,Best Supporting Actress for Weaver, andBest Original Score for Simon.[6]
Tess McGill is a working-class woman fromStaten Island who dreams of climbing thecorporate ladder to an executive position. Despite her holding a business degree earned through evening classes, her boss and male co-workers at thestockbroker firm inlower Manhattan where she works as a secretary treat her like abimbo, even though they benefit from her intelligence and business instincts. After reaching her limit with her boss's humiliations, Tess dramatically quits.
Tess then lands a job as an administrative assistant to Katharine Parker, an associate partner at mergers and acquisitions firm Petty Marsh. At first, Katharine seems supportive of Tess, encouraging her to share ideas, but eventually tells Tess her proposed purchase of a radio network by Trask Industries would not work out.
When Katharine breaks her leg skiing, she asks Tess to house-sit. While there, Tess discovers meeting notes that reveal Katharine plans to pass off the Trask Industries idea as her own. She later returns home to find her live-in boyfriend having sex with another woman. He later attempts to reconcile and proposes marriage, but she responds ambivalently, and they end things. With her boss away, Tess decides to use Katharine's connections and clothes to move ahead with her proposal for Trask. With the help of her friend Cyn, Tess cuts her hair and borrows Katherine's stylish clothing to look more professional.
Tess schedules a meeting with Jack Trainer, a mergers and acquisitions associate from another company. The night before, she attends on Katharine's behalf a dinner hosted by Trainer's firm, in an attempt to get to know him prior to their meeting. Trainer is attracted to and approaches Tess at the bar but does not reveal his name, even after she inquires whether he knows a Jack Trainer. Tess eventually leaves, and he follows, taking her back to his apartment after she passes out in a cab from a combination of Valium and alcohol.
Tess leaves early the next day, believing that they slept together, to attend her meeting with Trainer and is surprised to see he is the man from the previous night. They both feign non-recognition. Although Tess leaves the meeting with Trainer and his associates thinking it was a failure, Jack soon arrives at her office, telling her they did not sleep together and that he wants to move forward with her idea. Together, they prepare the financials for the merger proposal and present them to Trask. After the successful presentation, they give in to their attraction, ending up in bed. But when Tess is tempted to confess the truth about her position and the idea's origins, she demurs after discovering Jack has been involved with Katharine and planned to break up with her before her injury.
Katharine returns home on the day of the merger meeting, and while Tess is helping her get settled, Katharine brings up the Trask merger, saying she was intending to take it to Jack and give Tess credit eventually. But she says Jack's strict ethical code prevents him from looking at another's ideas without verifying the source, after being accused of stealing himself. Jack arrives in response to a call from Katharine, who unsuccessfully tries to seduce him. Tess avoids running into Jack at Katharine's apartment but accidentally leaves her notebook there before departing for the meeting. Katharine finds the book, which includes Jack's phone numbers and the scheduled merger meeting, and discovers Tess's deception.
At the meeting, Tess asks Jack whether he has such an ethical code, and he denies this or that he was ever accused of stealing. Katharine arrives and confronts Tess during the meeting, outing her as her secretary and accusing her of stealing the idea. Tess feels she cannot defend herself and leaves, apologizing profusely. A few days later, Tess return to Petty Marsh to clear out her desk and on the way out encounters Jack, Katharine, Trask and members of the team. Jack sticks up for Tess, who points out a news item that presents a possible risk to the merger's success. She explains to Trask how she came up with the idea for the radio acquisition. Trask then confronts Katharine, who is unable to explain where she got the idea, and promises to have her fired for her actions.
Trask offers Tess an entry-level job with Trask Industries, and she moves in with Jack. On her first day at Trask, Tess meets a colleague named Alice, who she initially assumes will be her boss but finds is actually her own secretary. Tess insists they work together as colleagues, showing she will be very different from Katharine. Finally, Tess calls her friend Cyn from her own office to tell her that she has made it.
ScreenwriterKevin Wade was inspired to write the screenplay after visiting New York City in 1984 and witnessing throngs of career women walking through the streets in tennis shoes while carrying their high-heels.[7]
Melanie Griffith read the screenplay forWorking Girl over a year before the production began, and expressed interest in playing the role of Tess McGill.[7] Approximately a year later,Mike Nichols agreed to direct the film after reading the screenplay while shooting his filmBiloxi Blues inArkansas.[7] Following Nichols's attachment, Griffith had a formal audition for the role.[7]Molly Ringwald auditioned but was deemed "too young."[8] Nichols was so determined for Griffith to have the part that he threatened to drop out of the production if the studio,20th Century Fox, would not hire her.[7]
Following the casting of Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford—both major stars at that point—the studio agreed to cast Griffith, as they felt Weaver and Ford's involvement gave them a higher chance of box-office success.[7]
Principal photography ofWorking Girl began on February 16, 1988, in New York City.[7] Many scenes were shot in theNew Brighton section of Staten Island in New York City. One half-day of shooting to complete the skiing accident scene took place inNew Jersey.[7] Four different buildings portrayed the offices of Petty Marsh—1 State Street Plaza; the Midday Club, which served as the company's club room; the lobby of7 World Trade Center (one of the buildings destroyed in theSeptember 11 attacks); and the reading floor of the L. F. Rothschild Building.[7]One Chase Manhattan Plaza was featured at the end of the film as the Trask Industries building.[7] Filming completed on April 27, 1988, with the final sequence being shot on theStaten Island Ferry.[7]
Throughout the shoot, Griffith was in the midst of struggling with a years-long alcohol andcocaine addiction, which at times interfered with the shoot.[9] "There were a lot of things that happened onWorking Girl that I did that were not right," Griffith recalled in 2019. "It was the late '80s. There was a lot going on party-wise in New York. There was a lot of cocaine. There was a lot of temptation."[10] After Nichols realized that Griffith had arrived on set high on cocaine, the shoot was temporarily shut down for 24 hours.[11] Griffith elaborated on the experience:
Mike got so mad at me, he wouldn't talk to me. Mike Haley, the first [assistant director], just came up and said, "We're shutting down. Go home", and I knew I was in so much trouble. … The next morning he (Nichols) took me to breakfast and said, "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to pay for last night out of your pocket. We're not going to report you to the studio, but you have to pay for what it cost", and it was $80,000. They wanted to get my attention and they really did. It was a very humbling, embarrassing experience, but I learned a lot from it.[11]
Three weeks after filming was completed, Griffith entered a rehabilitation facility to receive treatment for her addiction.[12] Ironically, according to the biographyMike Nichols: A Life, written byMark Harris, Nichols had been battling a cocaine addiction of his own around the same time.[13]
The film's main theme "Let the River Run" was written, arranged, and performed by American singer-songwriterCarly Simon, and won her anAcademy Award, aGolden Globe Award, and aGrammy Award for Best Original Song,[14] making Simon the first artist to win this trio of awards for a song written, as well as performed, entirely by a single artist.[15] As a single, "Let the River Run" reached No. 49 on the U.S.Billboard Hot 100 and No. 11 on theBillboard Adult Contemporary chart in early 1989.[16]
The film's additional soundtrack was scored by Simon andRob Mounsey. Thesoundtrack album was released byArista Records on August 29, 1989, and peaked at No. 45 on theBillboard 200.[17]
The film was released in the United States and Canada on December 21, 1988, in 601 theaters before expanding to 608 theaters on Friday, December 23; 1,046 theaters onChristmas Day; and 1,051 on Monday, December 26.[7][18] It grossed $4.7 million in its opening four-day weekend and $5.6 million in its first 6 days.[5][19] It went on to gross $63.8 million in the United States and Canda and $39.2 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $103 million.[5]
Working Girl was released on VHS and Laserdisc in 1989 byCBS/Fox Video; "Family Portrait",one of the shorts fromThe Tracey Ullman Show featuringThe Simpsons, was included before the movie on the VHS release. The film was released on DVD on April 17, 2001, by20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.[20] Special features included two theatrical trailers and three TV spots. The film was released onBlu-ray on January 6, 2015.[20][21] The special features from the DVD release were carried over for the Blu-ray release.[22]
Working Girl received critical acclaim upon release. On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 83% of 48 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's consensus reads: "A buoyant corporate Cinderella story,Working Girl has the right cast, right story, and right director to make it all come together."[23]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 73 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[24] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[25]
Chicago Sun-Times film criticRoger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "The plot ofWorking Girl is put together like clockwork. It carries you along while you're watching it, but reconstruct it later and you'll see the craftsmanship".[26] In her review for theWashington Post, Rita Kempley described Melanie Griffith as "luminous asMarilyn Monroe, as adorable as one ofDisney's singing mice. She clearly has the stuff of a megastar, and the movie glows from her".[27]Janet Maslin, in her review forThe New York Times, wrote, "Mike Nichols, who directedWorking Girl, also displays an uncharacteristically blunt touch, and in its later stages the story remains lively but seldom has the perceptiveness or acuity of Mr. Nichols's best work".[28] In his review forTime, Richard Corliss wrote, "Kevin Wade shows this in his smart screenplay, which is full of the atmospheric pressures that allow stars to collide. Director Mike Nichols knows this in his bones. He encourages Weaver to play (brilliantly) an airy shrew. He gives Ford a boyish buoyancy and Griffith the chance to be a grownup mesmerizer".[29]
The February 2020 issue ofNew York Magazine listsWorking Girl as among "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars."[30]
The film is recognized byAmerican Film Institute in these lists:
Working Girl was also made into a short-livedNBC television series in 1990, starringSandra Bullock as Tess McGill.[42] It lasted 12 episodes.
A Broadway musical version was in the works as of 2017, with a score to be written byCyndi Lauper fromFox Stage Productions and Aged in Wood Productions. For Aged in Wood, the producers were Robyn Goodman and Josh Fiedler. Instead of a production company onWorking Girl, the musical adaptation was switched to a license production by Aged in Wood Productions since Disney took over ownership of Fox Stage in 2019.[43] The show premiered at theLa Jolla Playhouse in November 2025.[44]
In 2022 a reboot ofWorking Girl was reported to be in development atHulu, withIlana Peña adapting the script.Selena Gomez was in talks to produce.[45]
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