Daily News from New York, New York • 173

BYSUSIN SHAPIRO Idol Conversation VERYBODY WANTS TO LOOK LIKE a movie star, even if they don't admit it. Some people actually do look like il uiuTic aiaia uauaujr nicy urcj, aiiu ui course there ore movie stars who hauling around a teeny purse with gloves, and I looked like I should charge by the hour. I tried lengthening my neck by stretching it giraffe-like so I could see over the tops of the trees. After "Breakfast at Tiffany's," I tried putting my hair in pigtails, wearing oversized sweaters and little black cocktail dresses who but Holly Golightly could get away wearing a cocktail dress to visit Sally Tomato in the clink and look absolutely right? My hair fell out of the pigtails even with 20 rubber bands holding it don't look like movie stars, but nobody wants to look like them. About a decade ago, people thought I looked like a movie star, which was a flattering thing to hear, except it was the wrong movie star.

People thought I looked like Ali MacGraw when I wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn. Nobody ever said I looked like Audrey Hepburn; if they had, I would have married them, or at least stayed the night. Nobody has ever looked as good as Audrey Hepburn, then or now. Nobody could make anorexia look as chic as Audrey Hepburn, then or now. Nobody ever had collarbones like Audrey Hepburn, or smiled like Audrey Hepburn, or wept like Audrey Hepburn, or wore clothes like Audrey! From the late '50s through the DANIEL TULLY continued from page 8 America." And then they topped it off with the most important product Wall Street has seen in SO years: the Cash Management Account.

The CMA was already in the works when Tully moved to headquarters. It was brilliant and destined to become the most successful product in Merrill Lynch history. But it was also stalled on the drawing board because no one had the guts to market it. The problem: other than a $50 start-up fee, the CMA service was free. And that meant forcing the account executives to sell a product that would deprive them of their commissions.

"It was revolutionary and finally we had to take it directly to Don Regan for approval," recalls Tully, "It was a touchy decision. A lot of account executives didn't like it and if they didn't get behind it there was a good chance clients wouldn't want it, or understand it. But Regan didn't blink, he said to go with it. "I learned quite a few things from Don Regan, but that day I learned the best lesson. He taught me not to be afraid of taking chances.

You have to step up to the plate and swing if you want a chance at winning." His turn to take a chance came quickly. Tully began studying all aspects of the company and developed the theory that account executives cannot serve smaller investors if they are trying to handle very wealthy ones at the same time. He believed they should specialize. So in 1978, he proposed that the institutional side of the business be separated from the retail side. "It was not a very popular move around the company and there was a strong possibility of having it backfire," admits Fitzgerald, who has since retired.

"There were a lot of brokers making money on both sides and here was a guy coming along telling them they had to give up one or the other. If it wasn't handled correctly, we could have had brokers leaving left and right. But that's what Tully did- And so far it has been one of the most important moves he has made. It allowed us to develop the institutional side to a higher level." Then, last year, Tully took another, equally unpopular chance. He began telling account executives to work as financial consultants for the company.

He told them to put customer service first, sales second. It was the technique that had worked for him, but it also meant that many successful brokers would have to start all over again, studying hundreds of new investment products, taking financial-planning courses, spending a good deal of time with each investor, large and small, before selecting the investments that fit each individual's needs. "I would guess that Dan Tully is the only man who can pull off any project he puts his mind to," says Arthur Levitt, chairman of the American Stock Exchange. "I wouldn't want to be standing in his way." 1 Bhjstrabon by Lady McCrady early '60s, when Audrey Hepburn wore it you could see why high fashion was high fashion. Even in "Roman Holiday," her movie debut, where her eyebrows were thick and her body had more angles than a camera, she looked fantastic: a princess, a child-girl, an ingenue, a fawn.

Nobody today looks like Audrey Hepburn. Sure, there are some actresses with a gamin quality, like Rosanna Arquette, and some movie stars with a penchant for designer clothes: Raquel Welch wears Norma Kamali, which just goes to show you how far we haven't come. I mean, how can you compare Audrey in her Givenchys to Candice Bergen in her Armanis? After an Audrey Hepburn movie, like "Love in the where she played a pubes back; oversized sweaters (so in right now) didn't look oversized enough on me, and little black cocktail dresses were an extravagance I could not afford. All my efforts to look like Audrey Hepburn were a failure; I looked like an OK-looking girl trying to look like a movie star, which should explain perfectly the feeling of depression that overcame me every time I realized I was not Audrey Hepburn, would never remotely resemble Audrey Hepburn (well, maybe remotely), and chances were no one would ever mistake me for Audrey Hepburn no matter how clever I was at disguise. This reminds me of a joke, told to me by a person who knows lots of movie stars: 20 years ago, every woman in America wanted to look like Elizabeth Taylor, and now they do.

Twenty years ago, I wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn, and I still don't. My only consolation (and it isn't) is that even Audrey Hepburn probably doesn't look like Audrey Hepburn any more. But then again, who does? cent cellist who made up lovers with whom to torture a very wooden Gary Cooper, I would be wholeheartedly depressed. Transported, of course, but depressed. My eyes were brown like hers, but not big enough, not limpid pools of light.

I would go home and play with eyeliner and pencil, trying to widen my eyes into Audrey Hepburn's mirror image, and ended up looking like Emmet Kelly. After "Charade," I tried twisting my hair up into a French knot and R.B. Plunkett Jr. is consumer-affairs editor of The News. DAILY NEWS MAGAZINE NEW YORK AUGUST 4.

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