Read Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait Online
Authors: Diana Maychick
Although
the critics were lukewarm about the play, they generally concurred that Audrey
was the acting find of the year. “She gives a wonderfully buoyant
performance which establishes her as an actress of the first rank,” wrote
the distinguished Henry P. Murdoch of the
She
went to
Broadway, at least face it with equanimity.
Back
at the Blackstone Hotel, David Niven had taken the room next door to Audrey’s
while in town to open opposite Gloria Swanson in a play called
Nina.
A
week before
Gigi
opened, Audrey
rushed into Niven’s room when something crashed on her windowsill, then fell to
the ground.
“He
was newly married,” Audrey recalled, “and his lovely wife Hjordis was
in the room, and God knows what I was interrupting, but I was too petrified to
care. It turned out that a poor guest of the hotel on a high floor had become
so despondent, he jumped. Well, as sad as this story was, when we found out
what really happened, that it was the sound of a body thumping, we couldn’t
stop laughing.
“It
was awful. There we were, the three of us, gleefully whooping it up over
somebody’s dreadful misfortune. But David was worried about his opening night,
I was scared to death about mine, and that awful suicide broke the ice. I knew
after that night, nothing was going to be so bad. I was going to make it, no
matter what.”
Gigi
opened in
which happened to be Cathleen Nesbitt’s sixty-third birthday. And in the scene
where Nesbitt, as Aunt Alicia, instructs Audrey in the fine art of cooking and
eating a lobster and picking and choosing a man (pursuits that were not so
different in writer Colette’s view), Audrey was able to wish her costar and
mentor a happy birthday by whispering in her ear, without breaking character.
“I
knew then that I could do this thing called `stage acting,‘ ” Audrey said.
“I was no longer paralyzed. I could be myself and an actress, too.”
Although
she forgot several lines in her last scene, Audrey had already impressed the
critics to the point where they didn’t care about a few missed sentences. It
was the feeling that counted. And Audrey conveyed the feeling.
“Audrey
Hepburn is a young actress of charm, honesty and talent,” raved Brooks
Atkinson in the
New York Times.
“Miss Hepburn is as fresh and frisky as a puppy out of a tub,” wrote
Walter Kerr in the
New York Herald
Tribune,
adding, “She brings a candid innocence and a tomboy
intelligence to a part that might have gone sticky, and her performance comes
like a breath of fresh air in a stifling season.”
Audrey
was literally an overnight sensation. Producer Miller was completely won over.
At the Fulton Theater he advised the stagehands to change the marquee. Before
opening night, it had read: “GIGI with Audrey Hepburn.” Afterward, it
said: “AUDREY HEPBURN in GIGI.”
On
that fateful opening night of Gigi, a star wasn’t so much born as baptized.
Now
she had a harder task ahead. Having been branded a celebrity, Audrey could no
longer retreat into the cocoon of obscurity. Once the flashbulbs started
popping, they never stopped.
Chapter 11
It
would never let her down, even as she grew older and wrinkled. The camera loved
Audrey like a best friend.
And
after her difficult (if ultimately successful) introduction to the stage in
Gigi, she returned to movies as if
running home to Mother.
Eminent
director William Wyler embraced her like a prodigal daughter. The overseer of
Academy Award-winning films like
Mrs.
Miniver
and
The Best Years of Our
Lives
had been trying to cast the leading role in
Roman Holiday
for several years, ever since director Frank Capra
had passed on the sweet, escapist comedy.
Those
in
blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo,
Roman
Holiday
never had a chance at being produced until Trumbo asked his
colleague, Ian McLellan Hunter, to front for him to help get the movie off the
ground. The story of a princess who momentarily ignores her royal duties for an
adventurous romp with a street-smart reporter was a sweet variation on the
Cinderella myth. It had settings and characters that would appeal to highbrows
and lowbrows alike.
Yet
finding an actress to portray Princess Anne, an impish young woman severely constrained
by the duties of her position, was a daunting task. She had to be beautiful but
innocent, alluring yet untouchable. After Wyler failed to come up with a
suitable candidate (Elizabeth Taylor had been interested five years before,
when she wanted to star opposite Cary Grant), Paramount Pictures hired Paul
Stein as a test director to interview and film actresses in fifteen-minute
audition pieces.
The
studio was attempting to eke out advance publicity on
Roman Holiday,
and approached the search for Princess Anne much as
David O. Selznick had the casting of Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone With the Wind.
Audrey
did her audition in
Gigi
. A small indication of her growing power is that she requested
that Thorold Dickinson, her director on
The
Secret People,
be allowed to film her for the test. Her wish was granted.
Wyler had remembered her from a bit part in
Laughter
in Paradise
and was smitten enough with her elegant beauty to capitulate to
her wish.
“She
completely looked the part of a princess,” he said. “A real, live,
bona fide princess. And when she opened her mouth, you were sure you’d found a
princess. The one variable was: Could she act like a princess?”
At
the time, Audrey wasn’t sure she even wanted to continue acting at all; the
more frightened she became, the more readily she found solace in the prospect
of marrying James Hanson and settling down in Huddersfield as a dutiful wife.
Despite
her reluctance, however, she was extremely impressive on the audition film,
especially in the off-guard moments when she assumed the camera had stopped
rolling. She was seated on a bed for the scene, and when
could get off of it, she winked.
“I
didn’t hear anybody say ‘Cut,’ ” she said.
According
to everybody who saw the audition film, Audrey won the role of Princess Anne in
that brief moment, exuding charm and playfulness and a regal regard for
propriety.
The
test was flown to
to a one, fell in love with the impish Audrey.
“Exercise
the option on this young lady,” they wrote to their
certainly one of the best ever made in
signed by Barnett Balaban, Frank Y. Freeman, and Don Hartman, the studio’s
president, vice president, and production chief, respectively.
In
that one short missive, Audrey was welcomed into the big time.
Designer
Edith Head was dispatched at once to meet her and begin preliminary discussions
about what a movie princess would wear. It was a smart move. Audrey salivated
at the prospect of discussing clothing with anyone, let alone the preeminent
She
and Head quickly discovered they had similar tastes: simple lines, little
ornamentation, superb materials. Audrey candidly discussed what she perceived
as her physical shortcomings, and Head made copious notes about “scrawny
arms, no breasts, and a neck that stretched on forever.” But that was
Audrey’s assessment, not Head’s.
The
designer delighted in the possibility that she might be conceiving a wardrobe
for this lithe creature, and immediately decided to incorporate Audrey’s own
schoolgirlish look—rounded collars and tailored suits—for the commoner side
of Princess Anne. When Head showed her several sketches and samples of rich
brocade to help clothe the character’s regal persona, Audrey lamented her lack
of curves.
“You
should wear falsies,” Head told her.
“What
are they?” Audrey asked.