Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (10 page)

She
and Hanson, on the other hand, became inseparable when he wasn’t traveling on
business. Their romance was actually fueled by all the departures and
homecomings. For a young lady who was usually reticent about making a show,
Audrey seemed to thrive on the grandiloquent gestures of Hanson’s love. She
adored the roses and perfume, the public displays of affection at fox hunts and
at performances of light opera. (He was a trustee of the D’Oyly Carte opera
company, which had been doing Gilbert & Sullivan since 1881.) She shared
the Swiss chocolates he showered on her with her mother, and generally enjoyed
being the center of his world.

He
was flamboyant, she quiet. But in the beginning, when their opposite natures
were still getting to know one another, they appeared complementary. It was
only after Hanson began resenting Audrey’s career for interfering with their
social life (she would often have to miss a cocktail party in
Huddersfield
,
or a polo match at the club) that she began to see that their relationship
might not work.

It
was a possibility she admitted to no one, however. The very real breakup of her
parents’ marriage made Audrey extremely sensitive to implications, real or
imagined, that she was not working hard enough to come to a compromise. For the
rest of her life and in every relationship, Audrey felt that if she made the
effort, she could force herself to get along with the man in her life. There
was a price to pay. She would lose herself along the way.

Chapter 9

In
September 1950, Audrey took another bit part. But this time it was in a film of
considerable merit, the madcap comedy
The
Lavender Hill Mob.
Once again, she was a cigarette girl, but selling the
pack this time around to Alec Guinness proved fortuitous.

At
this stage in her career, nothing seemed to go wrong. Other young actresses
might have been disappointed at the relatively slow rise to fame. But Audrey
had no real interest in adulation. She just wanted to earn enough money for
herself and her mother, make more friends, and lead a useful life.

Although
The Lavender Hill Mob
was described
as hilarious and Guinness’s performance deemed brilliant, Audrey’s role was
completely forgettable.

Except
to Guinness. He was so taken with her gazellelike neck and big brown eyes that
he introduced her to the American director Mervyn LeRoy.

“I
never remember Guinness recommending anyone else to me, before or since,”
LeRoy said. “Some actors are always working at connecting people. Guinness
wasn’t like that. He even said he didn’t think she could act, but that she was
so beautiful, so delicate, it didn’t matter. Those are interesting words,
coming from a consummate actor! It doesn’t matter if she could act! I wanted to
see this amazing creature myself.”

Meanwhile,
director Thorold Dickinson was finally given the go-ahead by Ealing Studios to
get started on a movie totally unlike the light, romantic comedies upon which
it had rested its reputation.

The Secret People
was a serious movie whose theme
was extremely close to Audrey’s heart—the Resistance movement.

“It
was the first film I wanted to do,” Audrey recalled. “All the others
were the froth on top of the beer.”

The
story involves two sisters, played by Audrey and Italian star Valentina
Cortesa, who flee to London when their father is killed by a European dictator
and who become increasingly involved in political intrigue and espionage as
they attempt to avenge their father’s death.

“It
was the largest role I’d been given, and the whole thing was daunting,”
Audrey recalled. “The best thing about it was that I was more than
familiar with the subject matter—I’d lived it. That helped allay my
nervousness. Another stroke of luck is that my character, Nora, was a ballet
dancer. In the back of my mind, I felt if all else failed, if I couldn’t
remember a line, I could always pirouette away and I’d still be in
character.”

Her
dancing ability had actually won Audrey the role. Andree Howard, an associate
of Marie Rambert, had been hired to direct the ballet sequences in
The Secret People, and she had lobbied
all along for Audrey. But director Dickinson was put off by Audrey’s
inexperience and her nearly five-foot, eight-inch height. He thought she was
too tall to play the younger sister.

“Up
until
The Secret People,
somebody
would want me for a minor role and I would take it or not,” Audrey said.
“With this movie began the long and protracted negotiations that I always
thought were a complete waste of time. Of course, there are agents,” she said.
“What creative person, or any person for that matter, would want to spend
time talking about the relative merits of height? The mechanics of film were
much more mundane than dance, but the money was better.”

Probably
because she had been born into a wealthy family that had lost its fortune,
money was always a practical concern of Audrey’s, but she had none of the shame
attached to it that people who crave it all their lives often exhibit. “A
certain amount is a necessity,” she said. “That amount changes with
the times, of course, but anything over that is really unnecessary. I’m not
just talking about enough for the bare essentials, either. Everyone develops a
way to live, a style, that ultimately makes them feel comfortable, secure. For
some it might mean Dubuffets and Dufys on the walls. I pity them, because that
takes a fortune. For others, it may be roses in the garden and a machine that
washes dishes. Without being greedy, which is a necessity for some sick people,
everybody intuitively knows what they need. Desires are a different thing
altogether. Money has nothing to do with them, but don’t fall into the trap of
confusing them with needs, either. But 1 did think this movie, and so many
others, could help pay the bills.”

The
dance sequences in
The Secret People
proved
extremely difficult for Audrey, and her always shaky self-confidence plummeted
when director Dickinson informed her ally, choreographer Howard, that the
fledgling actress was not up to snuff in the ballet either.

With
her feet and ankles weak with exhaustion, Audrey continued to rehearse daily,
never satisfying the perfectionist Dickinson, who was made even more
curmudgeonly by a flu bug he just couldn’t shake. By mid-March of 1951, the
director was ready to film the ballet, no matter what. He rented a theater to
serve as a backdrop for two days of nonstop work.

“The
rooms were subarctic,” Audrey recalled. “I always suffered from poor
circulation [as is often the case with underweight people], but it was hard
just to keep going when your fingers and toes are numb. The kids in the corps
de ballet and I would do all kinds of experiments to gauge exactly how cold it
was. A half glass of water left overnight would freeze solid. I wore three sets
of leg warmers, and every time we had a break I’d warm myself by an electric
heater. I was beginning to think acting was as torturous as hiding out in
basements. And during the dress rehearsals, matters got worse. I had to take
off the woollies and perform just in my tights.”

Of
course, physical discomfort was nothing new to her. After all, she had danced
for hours while nearly starving to death during the German Occupation. This
film, set at the time of the Resistance movement, forced her to confront awful
memories and long-buried anguish. Yet it was this pain that brought a new
dimension to her acting that was evident to everyone on the film.

In
one of the most wrenching moments of
The
Secret People,
the sisters talk about a terrorist explosion. Audrey must
describe the scene of death and dying.

“I
couldn’t do it,” she recalled. “I thought I was going to have to give
the money back and tell them I was sorry, but I couldn’t talk about those
things. It was as if the lines from the movie were about the real scenes I’d
witnessed during the war. I had suppressed all that for a few years, and I
realized now that it wasn’t as if I were over it, I just ignored it. But all
the images came back. I could do nothing to prevent them. Every time I tried to
memorize the scene I became frozen.”

Costar
Valentina Cortesa did her best to give Audrey strength during the scene. She
allowed her eyes to well up in empathy. When that didn’t work, she developed a
steely gaze. She knew Audrey was extremely insecure about getting so big a
part, and she didn’t want to feed into her doubts.

Director
Dickinson advised her to concentrate on the horrific images that were passing
before her eyes.

“I
sat in a chair in a far corner of the set and watched all that went on in
Arnhem
as if it were a
movie,” Audrey recalled. “In fact, what took place was more
devastating than the real movie they made about it [Richard Attenborough’s 1977
war epic,
A Bridge Too Far
]. And I
was connected to it. Instead of blotting it out, I let it wash over me. I felt
it. Then, since I didn’t die like I thought I would, I used the emotion for the
scene. That advice was better than any acting class I ever took before or
since. It made me rely on the genuineness of my feelings. And it taught me all
I know about concentrating.”

When
she delivered her monologue now, tears streamed down her face, and her costars
felt they were witnessing an important moment. While the movie was not a
commercial success, it had wide appeal in art houses, and it established Audrey
as a serious actress. Ironically, only after she achieved that status was she
offered the light, frothy roles which she made famous. It was as if the
directors of those films needed reassurance that Audrey was serious in the
hopes she’d lend dignity to their comedies.

In
fact, on the strength of her performance in
The
Secret People,
she was offered a minor part in the film
Monte Carlo Baby, an inane diversion
about a movie star involved in chasing after a missing baby. The movie starred
Jules Munshin (best known for his role as one of the sailors in
On the Town); Cara Williams, the
comedienne who was about to marry John Barrymore, Jr.; and bandleader Ray
Ventura, who also produced it, hoping to carve out an ancillary career for
himself in film.

Audrey
recalled, “I took the part for my usual upstanding reasons: I was to play
the part of the movie star and the costumes were fabulous. There was a Dior
dress I was told I could keep. That was reason number one. Number two is that
it was being filmed on the
Riviera
and I thought Mother could use a vacation. She had been feeling blue lately,
possibly because I was seeing so much of James [Hanson]. Number three is the
movie I really wanted,
Brandy for the
Parson,
was postponed just enough for me to be practical and go with the
one at hand.”

But
her visions of a leisurely shoot with plenty of time to explore beaches and
cafés was ruined by the primary reasons she had been given the part: Hoping for
wider distribution and more profits,
Ventura
wanted to film the movie in both French and English. Audrey would have to first
deliver her lines in French, then in English. It was an interesting lesson in
acting, to say the least.