Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (38 page)

At
the last minute, Audrey had been asked to present the award for best actor, in
place of Patricia Neal, who had suffered a recent stroke and was unable to
attend.

“It
was a wonderful stroke of luck that I got to give Rex Harrison the Oscar for
My Fair Lady,” she recalled.
“He was so grateful, and so gentlemanly. Of course, Julie Andrews was in
the audience, and she had done it so brilliantly onstage with him. He looked a
little flustered. He looked at me and then at her and said, `Deep love to, uhm,
well, two fair ladies!‘ Then he quietly offered to cut it in half and share it
with me.”

It
was quite a night for
My Fair Lady.
Prior
to Harrison’s win, George Cukor had been honored as the top director, Harry
Stradling as best cinematographer, Gene Allen and Cecil Beaton for art
direction, set decoration, and costumes, George Groves for sound, and Andre
Previn for adaptation of a score.

“Right
before the Best Picture award was announced, and right after I had given Rex
his statue, came the Best Actress award. Julie Andrews won for
Mary Poppins. I was delighted for her. I
really was. But everybody else was even more thrilled. I think the world
perceived her win as some sort of divine justice, and I think I wasn’t
nominated because they wanted to punish me because she didn’t get the part. I
realized something then, that it’s always better to be thought of as the
underdog, and never the winner. The thing is, I always felt like the underdog.
For my whole career, I felt like the underdog.”

That
year, the world perceived her far differently: as a big star who stepped on her
lesser colleagues. The day after the Oscars, Patricia Neal’s husband, Roald
Dahl, publicly blasted Audrey for not mentioning that she was taking his wife’s
place at the awards ceremony. “She ignored Pat,” he fumed.
“Audrey acted as if my wife never existed.” Newspapers played up the
story as yet another Audrey snub. Even Jack Warner, the man who had hired her
for
My Fair Lady,
rebuffed her. When
the press asked him who he had voted for as best actress, he said, “Julie
Andrews. Who else?”

I
couldn’t do anything right that year,“ she recalled. ”I’d even lost
my wedding ring.“

And
she didn’t replace it immediately, either.

Chapter 23

Audrey’s
marriage was in serious trouble. Cast and crew members on
My Fair Lady
recall hearing loud arguments emanating from Audrey’s
dressing room whenever Ferrer came to visit, but Audrey’s publicist, the
consummate professional Henry Rogers, was able to keep reports about their
difficulties completely out of the papers.

“I
was lucky in that regard,” Audrey recalled. “Some actresses were
always being written up for some transgression or other. Poor Elizabeth
[Taylor]! She was portrayed as a man-eater. They didn’t go after me quite the
same way. Maybe it was my image or something, but they seemed to want to
believe in the fairy tale of my life with Mel as much as I did.”

The
fairy tale, however, was crumbling.

Ferrer
felt Audrey should make it her business to do interviews and pose for photos to
offset the impression that she was aloof. But after her treatment over
My Fair Lady, the last thing she wanted
to do was submit to more humiliation from the press.

In
general, Ferrer felt she was being too submissive about her career. He
encouraged her to confront Hubert de Givenchy over his use of her photos to
promote Eau de Givenchy, a new line of perfume inspired by Audrey. He thought
she should make herself more accessible to the public and tried to persuade her
to attend the opening of the Cannes Film Festival in 1965.

“It
got very ugly,” Audrey recalled. “Mel kept coming up with all these
ideas that I just hated. I mean, I would never ask Hubert for money. He was my
friend. If I could help him in his business in any way, I would. That’s just
the way I am. I don’t have lots of friends, but the ones I do have last
forever, and I would do anything for them. I think it’s the same way with them.
But Mel and I were at loggerheads. Sadly, my publicist got caught in the
crossfire. Mel would tell him one thing, I another, and he didn’t know what to
do. But when he made some overtures about getting me a special award in order
for me to attend Cannes, I balked. The whole thing was out of hand. I fired the
poor man. It wasn’t his fault at all, but I didn’t even want to go to Cannes in
the first place.”

Instead
of working on her career, Audrey dedicated herself to saving her marriage. She
traveled with Ferrer on location for a series of his forgettable movies, hoping
that constant togetherness might mend their rifts. These small-budget European
productions, not one of which would be released in the United States, had none
of the amenities she was used to in making Hollywood movies.

“I
knew then that Mel and I probably couldn’t make it work. My success was killing
us. I was a good sport on the locations—making beds, cooking meals; there was
no extra money for anything. But he probably felt he wasn’t providing for me in
the manner to which I’d grown accustomed, and he felt less a man because of it.
He had spent the last couple of years in a sort of Mr. Hepburn role, and he was
not well suited to taking second place. I admire him for being not well suited.
He was his own man. But my success was eating away at what the two of us had
together. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

Audrey
returned to Switzerland after traveling on and off with Mel for nearly a year,
determined to find a new residence in the French-influenced part of Switzerland
so that Sean wouldn’t have to attend a German school in Burgenstock.