A weekly feature in which my four-year-old son is let loose on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Los Angeles, and chooses a star from among the more than 2,500 honorees. His “random” picks sometimes reveal unexplained connections such as the summer day in 2012 when he sat down on the star of actress Celeste Holm and refused to budge. We later learned that the Oscar-winning actress had died only hours earlier.
From the obscure back to the glorious, Charlie chose Oscar-winning actress Audrey Hepburn this week on the Walk of Fame. Hepburn’s star is in front of the old Taft Building at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine. The Taft, built in 1923, once housed the headquarters of the Motion Picture Academy and offices for all the major studios. It is currently undergoing a major renovation which accounts for the ugly white wall butting up against Audrey’s star.
Born on May 4, 1929 in Belgium, Audrey Hepburn became one of the most beloved screen legends in movie history — and certainly one of the most beautiful. Growing up in war-torn Holland, Hepburn suffered from malnutrition and anemia. She watched in horror as many of her Jewish friends were carted off to the concentration camps. “I remember, very sharply,” she recalled in an interview, “one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on to the train. I was a child observing a child.” Hepburn studied ballet for much of her young life, but her family desperately needed money to survive and she began doing small acting roles to help pay the bills. She had appeared in a few tiny roles in British films when she was discovered by the French novelist Colette to star in the Broadway stage version of “Gigi.” This led to her first role in an American film, William Wyler’s 1953 hit “Roman Holiday” in which Hepburn played a royal princess on the run opposite Greogory Peck as an ex-pat American reporter living in Italy. Hepburn was brilliant in the role and won the Best Actress Oscar that year. Has anyone ever seen Audrey Hepburn in a film and failed to immediately fall in love with her? I don’t think so. So much has been written about this amazing actress and humanitarian (she devoted much of her later life to working tirelessly as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF) so in honor of Charlie’s choice, we will just list our five favorite Audrey Hepburn performances.
Sabrina (1954). I recently had the chance to see this Billy Wilder film in a theater again and it holds up beautifully — far better than the 1995 remake with Julia Ormond in Hepburn’s role. Audrey plays Sabrina Fairchild, daughter of the chauffeur of a very wealthy family. Sabrina grew up hopelessly in love with David Larrabee (William Holden), the playboy son of the family, but he’s barely ever acknowledged her existence (fool that he was). But when Sabrina goes off to cooking school in Paris and returns with a très sophistiquée makeover, David does take notice — at first he doesn’t even recognize her as the girl he’s always known. David’s older brother, Linus (Humphrey Bogart), is worried that David’s newfound interest in Sabrina will put the kibosh on his brother’s impending marriage to his rich girlfriend. But in the process of trying to come in between David and Sabrina, he falls in love with her himself. Again…who wouldn’t? Edith Head won an Oscar for her gorgeous gowns in this film, but many of them were inspired by the work of Hubert de Givenchy, beginning a lifelong association between Audrey Hepburn and the French designer.
Funny Face (1957). In Sabrina, Audrey Hepburn ended up with Humphrey Bogart, 30 years her senior. In Stanley Donen’s delightful Funny Face, she’s paired with Fred Astaire, who was six months older than Bogart. Hey, if anyone can keep these men young, it’s Audrey! Hepburn appears as Jo Stockton, a shy, plain (cough) clerk who works in a highbrow New York bookstore. But when fashion editor Maggie Prescott (the glorious Kay Thompson who penned the wonderful Eloise books) and her star photographer, Richard Avedon-inspired Dick Avery (Astaire), team up to do a fashion shoot inside the bookstore, they end up convincing the reluctant Jo to be their model. Needless to say, Hepburn becomes a sensation in the fashion world even though she really only wants to get to Paris to meet her favorite philosopher. Loosely based on the 1927 stage musical that Astaire had starred in with his sister Adele, Funny Face features fabulous Gershwin tunes including “How Long Has This Been Going On,” “He Loves and She Loves,” and “S’Wonderful.” Audrey got to sing her own songs in the film and performs a beatnik dance number in a Greenwich Village club that you really need to see if you haven’t had the pleasure. And Givenchy’s spectacular gowns, especially when worn by Audrey Hepburn, were once again front and center.
The Children’s Hour (1961). After spending so much time being courted by older men, Audrey finally ends up with Shirley MacLaine, a beautiful redhead five years her junior! Not really, but the plot of this William Wyler film, based on Lillian Hellman’s hard-hitting 1934 play, hinges on a rumor spread by a disgruntled student that Hepburn and MacLaine, friends and co-owners of a private girls school in New England are…gasp…doing it! This being half a century before gay marriage was legalized in many states, the mere rumor of such a relationship threatens to destroy Hepburn’s and MacLaine’s lives and careers, no matter that Hepburn is engaged to hunky James Garner. In the end, the girl admits to making up the lie about seeing the two women kissing each other, but the damage is done. But did the women really have feelings for each other? In my opinion, MacLaine’s character was truly in love with Hepburn. (Again…who wouldn’t be?) Though somewhat stymied by the censors, at least this film alluded to the homosexual relationship, unlike the first adaptation of Hellman’s play in 1936, These Three, also directed by William Wyler.
My Fair Lady (1964). I know, I know, director George Cukor was crazy not to hire Julie Andrews to play Eliza Doolittle, the part she created on the stage in the iconic My Fair Lady. But sometimes ignorant studio decisions turn out to be acts of fate: if Andrews had made this film she never would have won an Oscar for Disney’s Mary Poppins and we would have been denied the joy of seeing Audrey Hepburn transform from Cockney flower girl into a Real Lady with perfect diction. Based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Lerner and Loewe’s take on Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) is simply one of the best musicals ever written. The film won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Hepburn was radiant in Cecil Beaton’s gowns. The only downside to her funny and moving performance is that Warner Bros. didn’t think Hepburn’s voice was good enough for the great songs that Julie Andrews had made so memorable on the stage. Despite the producers’ promises that Audrey could sing her own songs (and most were originally recorded in her own voice), she was dubbed by Marni Nixon in the end which she found bitterly disappointing. But this is still a near-perfect musical.
Two for the Road (1967). The best film about marriage ever made. Period. Notice I didn’t say the most romantic or the one that will make you want to get married! In this superb Stanley Donen film (written by Frederic Raphael), Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn play Mark and Joanna, a wealthy architect and his wife who take a good hard look at their 12-year relationship, infidelities and all, while on a road trip in the south of France. We jump back and forth in time throughout the film and see Hepburn and Finney’s relationship in all its various stages, from the ecstacy to the agony. My favorite segment is the one in which the couple is traveling with Finney’s ex-girlfriend and her fussbudget of a husband (wonderfully played by Eleanor Bron and William Daniels) and their hellish brat of a child. There are so many great things about this movie, from the gorgeous locales to Hepburn’s nuanced, gifted performance.
Oh, who am I kidding, limiting my favorite Audrey Hepburn performances to five? I also love her in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Nun’s Story, Green Mansions, The Children’s Hour, Charade, Paris When It Sizzles, Wait Until Dark, Robin and Marian and…um…everything else she ever appeared in. There will never be anyone like her. Audrey Hepburn died at the age of 63 on January 20, 1993. Thanks, Charlie, for making me think of this wonderful woman.