Read Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait Online
Authors: Diana Maychick
Audrey’s
personal life was coming to a boiling point as well. James Hanson had begun to
read about the rumors linking Audrey and Peck, and he decided to press her on
the marriage issue.
“Eventually,
I had to call it off,” Audrey said. “It became clear that I could not
be the kind of wife James wanted, at least at that heady stage of my career
when everything was moving so fast. I must say, I got caught up in the
excitement. The movie actually began to seem more important than my impending
nuptials, so I knew something was unmistakably wrong. Then the studio told me
about my commitment to publicize the movie. They said that stuff was just as
important as making the film. I felt I couldn’t let them down, and I wasn’t
sure how long it would take to sell it.”
But
Roman Holiday
needed little promotion
when it was released in 1953. Even though it was her first major film
performance, it was also one of Audrey’s best, in part because she had a dual
role: the real-life princess and the commoner she longed to be. Thanks to this
twist on the Cinderella story, plus an engrossing combination of romance,
comedy, drama, and an alluring
While
making a European tour, Princess Anne (Audrey), the daughter of a king of an
unnamed country, is complete-constricted by her “handlers.” She
cannot enjoy herself for fear she is not behaving properly. The rules she must
live by are stifling to this young woman who has a great urge to experience
life. In the early scenes, you sense she is about to explode.
In
an act of supreme rebellion for a member of the ruling class, she sneaks out of
her royal boudoir one night to experience life on life’s terms. After being
administered a sedative by her doctor, a drowsy, seemingly woozy Anne meets up
with impoverished American journalist Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck). He kindly
brings her back to his apartment to sleep it off.
In
the morning, he realizes just who she is and quietly congratulates himself on
his “find.” She may be just the story he needs to boost a sagging
career.
Bradley
persuades his photographer friend Irving Radovich (Eddie Albert) to support the
ruse financially by lending him enough money to take the princess on the town.
The relationship between the two men is casual and teasing; Wyler does a
wonderful job of differentiating between various kinds of friendship. The male
bonding scenes have more energy and camera movement than the moments when
Bradley and the Princess are alone. There is a quiet tentativeness to the
composition, as if Wyler is building toward some revelation.
He
delivers one the next day, when Princess Anne, free at last, savors the little
things in life that seem mundane to the rest of us. She loves walking down the
streets of
unencumbered by her entourage. She delights in getting a haircut, kicking up
her heels. The many beautiful sites astound her—she has never before been able
to get so close to monuments she has read about. In fact, she is a kind of
monument herself, except on this day when she comes to life.
But
the fantasy of living an ordinary life must come to an end, as all fantasies
do. While dancing with Bradley on a barge in the
she is discovered by some of her minions. Although Bradley has by now fallen in
love with her, Anne realizes that she must return to her world, the place she
now feels she belongs.
At
a press conference the next day, hordes of reporters and photographers crowd
the room where Princess Anne regally presides. When Bradley and Radovich
approach her, she is polite, but vaguely unapproachable, telling the
photographer she’ll treasure the souvenirs he gives her (photos of her night
and day on the town) while making idle small talk with Bradley.
Her
one day among the people becomes more like a dream to the Princess, while her
proletariat Prince Charming is left with nothing but the very real and painful
memory of falling in love with a mirage.
Because
Roman Holiday
relies almost
exclusively upon appearances to advance its plot, Audrey’s “look” was
vital to the success of the movie. Her bright-eyed magic illuminated every
frame and immediately turned her into a star. It was an important distinction
to note, and movie executives at every studio did. A virtually unknown actress
had captivated audiences in a light, frothy entertainment that had more charm
than substance.
Not
only would Audrey’s gamine pixie style change the definition of beauty in the
next decade, her insouciant manner would encourage moviemakers to be more
lighthearted. We would soon witness the buoyant age of American cinema, and
Audrey would become its most elegant messenger.
Chapter 12
That
exquisite blending of regal dignity and bubbly charm evident in
Roman Holiday would carry Audrey through
her next film as well, one that would have a profound effect on her personal
life as well as her increasingly well-constructed image.
Sabrina,
a bona fide Cinderella fairy
tale, is the story of a lowly chauffeur’s daughter who is transformed into a
chic young woman after a European trip.
In
Audrey’s own life, she would meet the love of her life while making the movie.
That relationship wouldn’t last, but she would also meet another man involved
with
Sabrina,
a designer, who would
help Audrey create a signature look of severe simplicity that would define her
style for the rest of her life and, sadly, outlast any love.
Audrey
actually picked the property herself after reading Samuel Taylor’s slight play
Sabrina Fair, which was slated to be
brought to Broadway with Margaret Sullavan in the lead. She asked her new
agent, Lew Wasserman, then a relative newcomer to show business, to persuade
property as a vehicle for her. After the surprising box office success of
Roman Holiday, and Audrey’s subsequent
Oscar,
In
fact, she had made a brilliant choice for herself in terms of material, but
would make a rather disastrous one when it came to personal interactions on the
set.
Her
costars, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, would alternately come to hate
Audrey and love her while working on
Sabrina.
Falling
in love with Holden was not something Audrey planned to do, nor was it something
she ever talked about, but it was an incontrovertible fact, like her mink-brown
eyes.
Those
eyes, in fact, are what sparked the whole thing. The first time they met on the
Sabrina
set, their eyes locked and
that was that. It didn’t matter that Holden was married, the father of two
sons. Something magical clicked between them, and a crowbar could not pry them
apart.
“Audrey
Hepburn’s attractiveness radiates from her eyes,” observed Australian
actor John McCallum. “Sex certainly started in her eyes. And I think it’s
true generally, but we don’t notice it because there are so few eyes like
Audrey’s. A close-up on film of an attractive woman’s eyes is far sexier than a
close-up of naked breasts. There is an expression to the effect that men make
love to women’s faces, and with Audrey, I’m sure it was true. I think Bill
Holden was sunk from the moment he laid eyes on her. A goner, and all he did
was look.”
It
would take some time for Audrey to realize that the man she was so smitten with
was an argumentative alcoholic who would break her heart with a candid
admission. And even after this became painfully clear to her, she would
continue to love him.
Sabrina
coscreenwriter Ernest Lehman
remembered walking into Holden’s trailer unannounced one day with some script
changes when he realized something was going on.
“They
were standing a foot apart,” he recalled, “facing each other, their
eyes meeting.” He remembers being embarrassed, but not exactly sure why.
“Something profound was happening between them.
Known
as a man’s man, Holden was actually an insecure, neurotic bag of nerves
underneath his bravura. His dual personality probably attracted Audrey—she
herself remained insecure about her looks for her whole life, and was most
comfortable with those people with whom she could share her doubts.
In
any case, they were inseparable on the set of
Sabrina,
spending all their free time together. Audrey had a little
green bicycle that had been given to her by Billy Wilder,
Sabrina’s
director, and she would ride it over to Holden’s dressing
room at the other end of the
Then they’d close the door.
In
fact, once when Sidney Skolsky came to interview Audrey in her own dressing
room (at one time the studio home of Dorothy Lamour), Audrey wasn’t quite sure
where anything was. She tried to offer the gentleman a drink, but didn’t know
if she had anything on hand to serve. The journalist found her arrogant. In
fact, she was insecure.