AUDREY HEPBURN
Audrey Hepburn: innocent beauty and secular saint: The style queen of Hollywood.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
Publicity Still. Circa 1954
As the NFT prepares its Audrey Hepburn season, David Gritten recalls the Continental poise that captivated the world
Think of Audrey Hepburn, and any number of words and phrases come tumbling into the mind: elegant, touch of class, gamine, clothes horse, sophisticated, chic, innocent beauty. And above all, a good person, thanks to her tireless work in her later years as a special ambassador for Unicef. Posthumously she has achieved the status of secular saint. This adds up to a complex set of associations, a fact that attests to the power of Hepburn's presence on screen in a film career that scaled the heights for 15 years. But these same associations mask her acting abilities. This makes the National Film Theatre's retrospective of her work especially welcome. Starting on Monday, the NFT's Hepburn season encompasses 18 of her films, ranging from big successes to rarely seen obscurities. Rachel Moseley, a film lecturer at the University of Warwick, who presents an introduction to the actress's career at the NFT on Wednesday, argues that Hepburn always seems to be herself on screen, rather than acting. But she also suggests that the season of films "demonstrates a range and depth of achievement in her performances". That sounds about right. Hepburn was no dim-witted ingénue, and in the 1950s and 1960s it was no accident that Hollywood's most accomplished directors - Billy Wilder, John Huston, Stanley Donen, Fred Zinnemann, King Vidor - queued up to work with her. Similarly, Hepburn played opposite many of Hollywood's great leading men (Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, William Holden, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart) and was eclipsed by none of them. She made acting look effortless, but she must have been doing something right. When Hepburn first arrived in Hollywood with her impeccable diction, it was broadly assumed she was English. Her father was indeed an Anglo-Irish banker, but her mother was a Dutch baroness, and after her parents divorced she spent much of the Second World War at school in the Netherlands. Thus she brought to Hollywood a regal manner, a touch of grace, but also a whiff of Continental sophistication. She arrived at exactly the right time. After three years on a London ballet scholarship, she won modelling assignments from fashion photographers and appeared in bit parts in British movies. We think of post-war America as insular and distrustful of otherness; but Hepburn's specific, non-American beauty and grace was warmly embraced by Hollywood. Above all, she had the look for her time. Slim, poised, with impossibly long legs, she looked equally chic in a ball gown or a black turtle-neck sweater and leggings. Whatever she wore appeared to have been designed especially for her. Her first four Hollywood films - Roman Holiday, Sabrina, War and Peace and Funny Face - were shot in a brief four years and sealed her legend.
Photo: Audrey, Circa 1991. Photo credit: UNICEF/John Isaac
In Roman Holiday, for which she won an Oscar, she found her quintessential role. She plays a princess who feels so shackled by royal protocol that she escapes for a day to experience normal life. Gregory Peck is the reporter with whom she has a romance. The film could hardly be more charming - or appropriate. One could believe that in real life Hepburn was a princess who had sneaked incognito into Hollywood. To watch the scene where her hair is cut short into a gamine style is to witness a star being born on camera. Billy Wilder pitted Hepburn against Bogart and Holden in Sabrina, which, like Roman Holiday, is an inverted Cinderella fable. They play two rich brothers, Bogart a stuffy tycoon and Holden a charming ne'er-do-well; she is the chauffeur's daughter. Back in America from a two-year cookery course in Paris, Hepburn, clothed by Givenchy, is irresistible. The film's a soufflé, of course, but one that could sink in lesser hands, as evidenced by an unhappy 1990s remake starring Harrison Ford. King Vidor's War and Peace is no one's idea of a great film, yet the visual images of Hepburn as Natasha still serve to haunt. She was a gift to cinematographers, as Jack Cardiff, who lit her in War and Peace, once told me: "She had a fascinating face to photograph. She embodied the feminine spirit of her age." Above all, Cardiff found himself entranced by "her huge, beautifully expressive eyes". The musical Funny Face paired her with Astaire playing a fashion photographer who transforms her from a bookish intellectual into a top Paris model. It's stylish, witty and great fun, and, like Roman Holiday, can be read as a deconstruction of the process that made Hepburn a star. Funny Face also proved that while Hepburn could act and dance, singing was not her forte. Intriguingly, Astaire - like Bogart - was 30 years older than Hepburn. Cary Grant, her Charade co-star, was 25 years her senior. Yet one never winces at this age gap as one does today, watching the likes of Harrison Ford or Woody Allen paw actresses half their age. This has much to do with Hepburn's on-screen persona - the paradox is that she radiates youth, yet seems older than her years. Her film romances never seemed sleazy, due in part to what critic David Thomson calls her "outrageous purity".
Fred
Zinnemann seized on this quality in The Nun's Story, casting Hepburn
as a sister whose ambition is to go to the Congo as a nurse. This
was a real change of pace for such a style icon, yet Hepburn was
convincing, and, ironically, framing her face in a nun's wimple only
accentuated her beauty. Yet years later Zinnemann remembered Hepburn
mainly as an actress. "I've never seen anyone more disciplined, more
gracious or more dedicated to her work than Audrey," he told me.
Still, she was best suited to lighter fare, especially romantic
comedy. Charade, her comedy-thriller romp with Cary Grant, is
high-class froth, but how those two sparkle. "Do you know what's
wrong with you?" she says to Grant. "Nothing." Superbly delivered,
it's one of film history's great lines. Not everything Hepburn did
worked as well. I'm of the school that found her a poor substitute
in My Fair Lady for Julie Andrews, who should have played Eliza
Doolittle. Hepburn wasn't believable as a coarse flower seller, even
if she looked grand as a society lady. Of course, Hepburn didn't
even sing, though she had rehearsed every number. She was dubbed by
Marni Nixon. And though this may sound like heresy, I don't buy
Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, even if it's
among her most popular roles. Holly, in Givenchy and pearls, is
after all a high-class hooker, and Hepburn seemed uneasy about it.
Truman Capote, author of the book, wanted Marilyn Monroe as Holly
and he was right. Monroe would have brought a raunchy element to
Holly's character; Audrey Hepburn didn't do raunchy. Still, hers is
a remarkable legacy. The affection in which she is held for a career
that effectively ended 35 years ago is remarkable. It helps that she
walked away from acting voluntarily to devote herself to good
causes. After she had retired, Steven Spielberg cast her in a cameo
role as an angel in his 1989 film Always. But of course. Who else?
'I suppose I ended Hepburn's career'. To many, she was a uniquely stylish icon, but to Sean Ferrer she was a devoted, unpretentious mother.
Ten years after his mother's death, the elder son of Audrey Hepburn is still haunted by his mother's face and voice. He can't help it. It's everywhere. "I look up as I'm driving," Sean Ferrer says, "and there she is, staring at me from a sign above the road. I see her on the cover of magazines and in ads for the Academy Awards. I hear her voice suddenly coming to me from another room when I'm taking a shower and the television has been left on. "For me, it's not the voice of an actress. What I hear is the woman who nursed me through ear infections or told me stories when I was young. It's very unnerving sometimes." The only child of his mother's first marriage - to actor and director Mel Ferrer - Sean is a tall, burly man of 43 who looks a lot like his father. When we meet at an outdoor cafe, not far from his home in Santa Monica, I have trouble recognising him in the crowd. "Who are you looking for?" a waiter asks. When I say it's Audrey Hepburn's son, he scans the tables and shakes his head. "Haven't seen anybody like that." As it happens, Sean is standing right over his shoulder. Bearded and 6ft 4in, he is the last person you would identify as the child of the delicate, pixieish Audrey. But it doesn't take long to spot the similarities between mother and son. He has her voice - soft and refined - and her dark, penetrating eyes. "The Ferrer genes are awfully strong," he says, with a laugh, "but if you saw the rest of my mother's family, you wouldn't be so surprised that I was her son. They are a stout bunch, very big and hearty. And she was the princess of the family - more graceful and agile than the rest. "But, don't forget, she wasn't exactly small. She was 5ft 10in and looked more delicate on screen than she was in person. She had the kind of figure that's naturally elegant. She used to say to me: 'I'm fake thin. Don't tell anyone'." Whatever her secret, Audrey's status as an icon of sophisticated beauty shows no sign of fading. Managing her image has become almost a full-time job for Sean, who is inundated with offers from corporations wanting to associate various products with her name. Like Elvis and Marilyn, she has left behind a thriving posthumous career. "There have been big advertising campaigns with Longines and others, but I try to pick companies that are not only suitable for her image but also will help sponsor the Fund."
Since her death, a good part of the money generated by her estate has flowed into the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund, which Sean oversees with the help of his younger brother, Luca Dotti, 33, the child of Audrey's second marriage to Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti. During her last years, the star worked tirelessly as a goodwill ambassador for Unicef, and the charity that now bears her name continues to support causes that benefit children throughout the world. As a way of commemorating the 10th anniversary of her death - and as a means of raising money for her foundation - Sean has decided to put up for auction a small collection of her treasured personal belongings, including memorabilia from some of her classic films. One item in particular is sure to fetch a very high price - a hand-embroidered Givenchy ball-gown designed to symbolise her transformation from waif to goddess in the hit film Sabrina. The auction will be held at Sotheby's in New York on April 21. "We've kept all of her things from the day she died," Sean says. "There are lots of photos and clothes and works of art. The photo collection alone is phenomenal. She knew so many people and went to so many places. I don't want to sell any of it, but I thought it would be nice to pick just 10 items for this auction - one for each year - and give the Fund a boost." Probably no one knew Audrey as well as Sean, whose relationship with her was always close. She lavished attention on him and put her career on hold to be near him when he was young. More Next
