Before 'The Wolf': 5 Hollywood Takes on Wall Street

Before 'The Wolf': 5 Hollywood Takes on Wall Street

By Justin Sharon  // 

Working Girl

Working Girl (1988) told the rags-to-riches story of Staten Island secretary Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), who toiled away in the M&A division of an investment bank before getting her big break when her boss broke a leg. This Mike Nichols-directed vehicle also starred Sigourney Weaver, Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack. It contained some memorable lines from the titular character (“I have a head for business and a bod for sin”) and an earworm song (“Let the River Run”), which won Carly Simon an Academy Award. Very much a product of its time, the film featured unbelievably big hair atop shoulder-pad-sprouting yuppies. While no one would confuse Working Girl with Casablanca on artistic merit, the movie made a more-than-respectable $102.9 million worldwide and took home the 1989 Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.
 
S&P 500 Index that year: up 16.61 percent. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 84 percent.

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20th Century Fox