Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (18 page)

The
attention unnerved Audrey. What bothered her even more were the glowing
comments of people who knew her. Her
Roman
Holiday
director William Wyler concluded that “Audrey might be too
good for some people,” as he told one reporter who was doing a story about
the girl who seemed as comfortable in an evening gown as in a pair of jeans.

“After
so many drive-in waitresses in movies—it has been a real drought—here is
class,” Wilder went on. “Somebody who went to school, can spell and
possibly play the piano. She’s a wispy little thing, but you’re really in the
presence of somebody when you see that girl. Not since Garbo has there been
anything like her, with the possible exception of Ingrid Bergman.”

Bergman
herself was taken with Audrey’s debut. After seeing
Roman Holiday
in
Italy
,
she came out of the theater dabbing her eyes. “What are you crying
for?” her husband, Roberto Rossellini, asked her. “I was so touched
by Audrey Hepburn,” said the star of
Casablanca
, “that I had a genuinely emotional
response to her performance.”

As
more and more people, both celebrities and commoners, began to appreciate
Audrey’s appeal, the men in her life were becoming frustrated by her
inaccessibility.

Holden
still tried to woo her, not realizing his inability to father any more children
killed any possibility of a union between them. When she made it perfectly
clear that she didn’t want to see him at all, he took his disappointment around
the world, courting a different woman every night.

Ferrer,
on the other hand, realized how much Audrey cared about him, but recognized
they had to be in the same country on the same coast for the relationship to
test itself.

He
had a plan. He sent her a copy of a romantic fantasy, Jean Giraudoux’s
Ondine, that he thought she’d be perfect
in. He didn’t spell it out, but implicit in his suggestion was the idea they’d
costar in the play.

Ferrer
was a savvy negotiator. Unbeknownst to Audrey, he had secured the services of
the famed Alfred Lunt as director by promising him that Audrey would star in
Ondine. Part of the package was that
Ferrer would also have a role.

Despite
his obvious talents and successes, Ferrer had a difficult time working steadily
as an actor. At thirty-five, he was still in wonderful physical shape, his
frame still lean and muscular thanks to a regimen of tennis and fencing. But
his rough good looks were not matinee-idol perfect, and many roles that he
might have portrayed with ease were not given to him.

His
personality, too, was different from the norm for actors. Ferrer was extremely
intelligent and occasionally argumentative. Fluent in French, articulate,
worldly, and opinionated, he was often mistaken for a diplomat in the
international circles in which he traveled. A
Princeton
dropout, son of a Cuban-born
Manhattan
surgeon and his Irish-American heiress wife, Ferrer was born in
Elberon
,
New
Jersey
on
August 25, 1917
. He turned to acting when he realized he
was too restless to devote himself to studying.

When
that career didn’t pan out quickly enough, he began writing angst-ridden
fiction. When that pursuit, too, seemed to be developing too slowly, he wrote a
children’s book,
Tito’s Hat
, that was
well received. But the effort hadn’t challenged him enough. A short stint in
summer stock led to a job as a dancer on Broadway. He was finally beginning to
feel at home among the glamour and hard work of the stage.

But
a bout with polio had shriveled his right arm, and while Ferrer worked
unstintingly at getting back full usage, he learned one of the most important
lessons of his life: Patience and discipline can get you through the toughest
times. He left for
Hollywood
soon after and
achieved minor success as a director of screen tests for David O. Selznick. Of
course, he still wanted to be an actor, but he was willing to postpone his
dream with more realistic expectations.

Yet
by the time he met Audrey, he had costarred as a black physician who passes for
white in
Lost Boundaries, a
lame
puppeteer in
Lili,
and a toreador in
The Brave Bulls. He had also been
married three times: twice to sculptress Frances Pilchard (with whom he had a
son and daughter) and once to homemaker Barbara Tripp (with whom he had another
son and daughter).

In
the beginning of their budding relationship, Audrey was extremely businesslike,
knowing that a strong emotional entanglement could muck up the work they had to
do to prepare
Ondine
for Broadway.
But she couldn’t hide her feelings for too long. “I saw him, liked him,
loved him. It was as simple as that,” she said about her attraction to
Ferrer.

But
Alfred Lunt, the revered actor and director who was hired to oversee
Ondine, would not find it so simple.
According to his equally revered wife, Lynn Fontanne, Ferrer used Audrey’s
crush on him to rule her with an iron fist. And in the process, he nearly
ruined
Ondine.

Audrey’s
supreme loyalty to those she loved was always apparent, but in the first flush
of romance with Ferrer, she would listen to no one else.

The
Russian-born couturier Valentina, who had been hired by Lunt to do the
fantastical costumes for
Ondine
, told
her husband, George Schlee (onetime business manager for Greta Garbo), that
Audrey refused to make an even minor decision on outfits for the show without
consulting Ferrer.

Schlee
told columnist Radie Harris that Ferrer was a “veritable Svengali,
exercising influence in every area of Audrey’s life, from the food she ate [or
didn’t eat] to the number of sentences she spoke to reporters. It was as
if,” Schlee said, “he couldn’t get a handle on his own life or
career, so he decided to fixate on Audrey’s.”

In
the opulent town house on
East
Sixty-seventh Street
that also served as
Valentina’s business offices, Audrey would arrive each morning for her
fittings. With her tiny body and minuscule
measurements—34“-20”-34“—the designer had to be extremely
careful at striking a balance between beauty and whimsy. She could not
overwhelm her charge with too much detail of design, nor could she be so simple
that Audrey might look like a waif rather than a nymph.

According
to Schlee, Audrey second-guessed every one of Valentina’s ideas, making sure in
her mind that Ferrer would approve of the choices being made.

Valentina,
an extremely tall, extremely dramatic woman who counted among her clients the
Duchess of Windsor, Paulette Goddard, and Queen Marie of
Romania
, was
not used to discussing her creations before executing them. In her beautiful
fitting room, dominated by an eighteenth-century chandelier, a life-size
mannequin served as the initial model for Valentina’s ideas. But with Audrey,
who was so much smaller than the mannequin, Valentina had to drape Audrey
herself to get a notion of what would suit her as the title character in the
Giraudoux play.

The
fantasy centered on the relationship between the knight-errant (Ferrer) and the
water sprite Ondine, and Audrey wanted her costumes to suggest the
otherworldliness of her character. In fact, it was Ferrer who first described
to Audrey what he thought would be suitable attire: layer upon diaphanous layer
of pale chiffon and netting knotted with tiny shells.

While
Audrey stood, often for hours at a time, Valentina talked animatedly of giving
men the illusion of having the upper hand, while actually retaining it for
oneself. But Audrey was concerned that the layers of her costumes not become
too thick. Ferrer had stressed to her that sheer limpidity was the look she
should aim for.

At
the
46th Street
Theater, where Audrey rehearsed relentlessly with Ferrer and the rest of the
cast, the mood was considerably more tense.
Roman
Holiday
had magnified Audrey’s star and made it shine even brighter, while
the more modest success of
Lili
had
done little for Ferrer’s reputation. Everybody from lighting experts to sound
technicians wanted to be introduced to Audrey, but nobody much cared about
Ferrer. His already fragile ego could not withstand many more hits.