Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (29 page)

“I
thought she was the most exquisite creature I’d ever seen,” Perkins said,
“and I was very nervous to be directed by her husband. What I mean is, I
wished she didn’t have a husband! I mean there was a lot of kissing and
touching and smooching in this movie, it was a charged atmosphere, with the
jungle and the animals, and the sense of heat and color, and the last thing I
wanted was for somebody’s husband to ruin it.”

When
asked how it felt to have one’s husband watch another man embrace her, indeed
tell that other man just how it’s done, Audrey looked up with her wide eyes and
smiled.

“Uninhibited,”
she replied.

Audrey
loved filming the movie, because she developed a strong attachment to one of
her costars. The deer that follows her in
Green
Mansions,
called “Ip” because of the sound it made, became so
close to Audrey that she adopted it. At home, it shared its bed with Mr.
Famous.

The
public didn’t care. They collectively avoided the $3 million movie, and it
turned out to be an unmitigated flop at the box office. Like his three previous
directorial efforts—
Girl of the
Limberlost, The Secret Fury,
and
Vendetta
—
Green Mansions was a blot on Ferrer’s
record of accomplishments.

Audrey’s
star, however, continued to rise.
The
Nun’s Story
was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Actress
for Audrey.
Films in Review
magazine
called her portrait of Sister Luke one of the great performances of the screen.
“Miss Hepburn reveals the kind of acting talent that can project inner
feelings, of both depth and complexity, so skillfully, you must scrutinize her
intently on a second or third viewing of
The
Nun’s Story
to perceive how she does it,” it rhapsodized.

Bosley
Crowther of the
New York Times,
who
had called Audrey his favorite actress in the whole world, also heralded her
performance: “Through the radiant-eyed Miss Hepburn,
[The Nun’s Story]
firmly details and reveals the effects of this
rigorous education on one sensitive young body and soul… In the role of
the nun, Miss Hepburn is fluid and luminous. From her eyes and her eloquent
expressions emerge a character that is warm and involved.”

Though
she lost the Academy Award to Simone Signoret for her portrayal of an older
woman in love with Laurence Harvey in
Room
at the Top,
Audrey won a host of awards for
The Nun’s Story,
including the New York Film Critics’ Award for
1959.

It
was at the gala dinner that someone compared her to the Virgin of Fra
Angelico’s
Annunciation.
Audrey loved
the comparison. She knew that the Virgin in any annunciation is without a doubt
about to become a mother.

Chapter 19

Immediately
before she began work on her first Western, John Huston’s
The Unforgiven,
Audrey discovered she was pregnant again.

“Of
course, I attributed it to my revelations at the leper colony,” Audrey
said. “After looking in on an insane asylum, visiting the leper colony and
going to Mass there, talking to the missionaries and watching all the doctors
and nurses perform so much good, I just felt better, freer. I knew that my lot
in life was just as it was meant to be. I had faith that if God wanted me to
have a child, I would. When I became pregnant again, I knew He wanted it, too.
But I decided to go ahead with the picture because I didn’t think it was a good
idea for me to sit around, waiting. Neither did Mel. Anytime I sat around for
too long, I’d work myself into nervousness. We both thought
The Unforgiven would be the perfect
tonic. And I was thrilled to be working with John Huston.”

What
Audrey didn’t bank on were filming conditions that rivaled those on
The Nun’s Story for level of discomfort.
Huston decided that the story of the rivalry between a pioneer family and the
Kiowa Indians in the Texas panhandle of the 1860s would have to be filmed in
Mexico, to have the proper primitive look. The fact that his family lived
nearby may have also influenced his decision.

She
and the rest of the cast—Burt Lancaster, Audie Murphy, and Lillian Gish among
them—arrived at the desertlike location after a six-hour trip in a rickety
station wagon during which everybody wondered what kind of transportation
Huston was taking.

But
like Audrey, the rest of the stars were fascinated by Ben Maddow’s script for
The Unforgiven. Ferrer had called it
“the thinkingest Western he’d ever read,” a line which Audrey adored
and shared with her new colleagues.

The
story of the rivalry between two ranching families—the Zacharys and the
Rawlinses—
The Unforgiven
focuses its
plot development on Rachel Zachary (Audrey), the adopted daughter of Mattilda
(Lillian Gish) and sister to Ben (Burt Lancaster), Cash (Audie Murphy), and
Andy (Doug McClure).

Rachel
is revealed to be a full-blooded Kiowa Indian by Abe Kelsey (Joseph Wiseman),
who tells a haunting story about her capture. Years ago, he says, his son was
kidnapped by the Kiowas. In an act of revenge, Kelsey and the Zachary sire,
Will, burned down an Indian village. Rachel was its sole survivor. Will took
the baby home and decided to raise it as his own. When the Kiowas offered to
trade Kelsey’s son for Rachel, the Zacharys refused.

“I
loved the melodrama of the story,” Audrey recalled. “And I felt that
I could easily play someone with Indian roots. But I didn’t count on riding
quite as much as I did.”

Although
Huston wanted to focus on the theme of racial intolerance in the movie, United
Artists insisted that he make the movie look like a traditional and highly
commercial Western. As a result, Audrey spent days on horseback.

“I
hadn’t ridden since I was a child,” Audrey recalled, “and I was
petrified, but willing. Somebody had told me I was the highest-paid actress of
the year, and I felt the company should get its money’s worth.”

In
fact, Audrey was paid $200,000 for
The
Unforgiven,
which did rank her with the Hollywood elite in 1959. But no
amount of money could compensate her for her well-being.