Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (8 page)

“Dire
circumstances spurred me on,” she said. “Looking back, I’m glad times
were tough. If they weren’t so bad, 1 wouldn’t have been bold enough to push
forward. I was always more introspective than outgoing, but when I really had
to be, I could go after what was necessary. 1 was optimistic about my
prospects, because the opposite was just too depressing. The truth is, I had no
idea what I was getting into when I decided Mother and I should move to
London
. But I did think
that changing my name would give me a boost. Edda had been through too much
already.*

Mother
and daughter arrived by boat with ten dollars between them.
London
, too, was still recovering from the
war in 1948 and could barely feed its own, let alone immigrants like the van
Heemstras. But Audrey and her mother had already proven they were from strong
stock. They cheerfully washed and darned their two pairs of stockings each,
aired their meager clothing after each wear to avoid dry-cleaning bills, and
always looked ahead to brighter times.

The
legendary Madame Rambert was sixty—wiry, eccentric, still dressed in black
tights and her trademark veiled cloche—when Audrey became her pupil, but her
energy and enthusiasm never flagged. She was an inspiration to Audrey, who
worked harder than ever under her tutelage. But the young student also had
practical concerns on her mind. The scholarship she had dreamed of did not
provide for food, clothing, or shelter, and Audrey and her mother again had a
difficult time making ends meet.

“I
worked for Mim [Madame Rambert’s nickname] after classes and during lunch
break,” Audrey recalled. “She and her husband [Ashley Dukes] even
took me in for several months to save on carfare. I think it was really just an
excuse to feed me! Mother first got a job in a florist shop, where she met a
businessman who helped secure her a position as an apartment manager in
Mayfair
. So she and I were climbing the ladder to
independence slowly but steadily. I would do my chores for Mim and then rush
off to audition in the
West End
. She went from
one small room in her apartment complex to a real apartment. I don’t think
either of us could have done it without the other. We kept one another
going.”

In
honor of their heritage, they used the decorative gold key from the family
castle at Doorn as a knocker on the door of their modest apartment. But they
didn’t tell anyone about their once-exalted circumstances. “We had few
friends,” Audrey recalled, “and the ones we had were struggling just
as much as we were. It is important, too, when times are tough, not to look
back.”

Madame
Rambert had come to the sad conclusion that Audrey would not be successful as a
ballerina. Although she was an eager student, her presence was too full of
energy to be able to fade into the background when necessary. No matter what
she did, Audrey could not fade into a troupe. Eyes were always focused on her.

“Mini
didn’t say anything to me,” Audrey recalled, “which I’m forever
grateful for. I guess I could sense that I wasn’t up to par, but she never made
me feel I was lacking. Oh, she still rapped me on the knuckles when my
extension wasn’t high enough, and she hurt! But she did that to all her
students. A little corporal punishment in a field devoted to the body didn’t
seem so outrageous.

“She
said very little, however, and words would have killed me if she had said aloud
that I wasn’t the right material. By keeping quiet, she gave me the chance to
come to the conclusion that ballet wasn’t quite right for me. But I didn’t let
that happen until I had something else to do in life. Otherwise, it would have
been too devastating.

“Imagine
persuading your mother to leave her homeland, find work and housing in a
foreign country, sacrifice her own life for yours, and then find the bubble has
burst! As much as I loved the art and discipline of the dance, it didn’t love
me!”

But
as so often was the case, the situation was not as desperate as Audrey had
initially feared. Just when she had accepted the fact that ballet was not her
metier, a regional troupe invited her to join it for an extended tour.
Simultaneously, she received word that she was one of ten chorus girls chosen
from among three thousand who’d auditioned for roles in the Jule Styne musical
High Button Shoes.

The
antic story of the adventures of a 1913 con artist, Harrison Floy, had enjoyed
a long and successful run on Broadway before being brought to the
West End
.

Choreographer
Jerome Robbins, today considered a genius of the stage, had arranged a number
of extremely difficult, beautiful sequences for his “Bathing Beauty
Ballet,” the climax of the show.

“I
remember going home after the audition and crying on my bed,” Audrey said.
“I had no idea about jazz dance steps and I had to remain stiff as a board
just to get the sequences right. It’s not that I even liked what I was doing!
There was no comparison to ballet, which is an art form. But I thought it might
mean money, which is something we desperately needed. I cried because I was
sure I didn’t have a chance.”

She
may have lacked expertise in the fields of jazz dance and musical comedy, but
what Audrey was missing in technique, she made up for with personality.
Coproducer Jack Hylton captured her spirit at the time. After seeing her
tryout, he wrote on a slip of paper: “Lousy dancer. Great verve.”
Verve would always carry Audrey when her mere mortal talents let her down.

Hylton
signed her up on the spot. “He bellowed that I had the job,” Audrey
said. “He was so forceful that I didn’t dream of telling him I had another
offer in my real field. Besides, I finally accepted that I wasn’t going to be a
great big ballet star. I was being given an opportunity to try something
new.”

A
few weeks into the run of
High Button
Shoes,
British impresario Cecil Landau attended a performance and “was
captivated by a girl running across the stage,” he said. “It’s hard
to explain. It wasn’t much. Just a pair of big dark eyes and a fringe flitting
across the stage.”

Anyone
who saw Audrey in her earliest performances had a similar reaction. Here was a
live wire, a broad-smiling, long-legged imp who just dripped with good
breeding. Her effect was infectious; she got under people’s skins and made them
feel happy. She, too, was in a good mood. Hearing laughter every night from a
packed house raised her spirits.

At
nineteen, she had so far lived a frighteningly somber life, and this injection
of levity was a real boon.

It
was time for a change.

“Life
as a chorus girl was a revelation,” she recalled. “The ten of us
shared a dressing room and I discovered for the first time in my life that I
was a cutup. I loved to mimic people with funny accents and I had the girls
laughing all the time. I was modeling for soap ads in my spare time. [Fellow
chorine and future wife of Rex Harrison] Kay Kendall and I became friends. It
was a wonderful time.”

Audrey
was on a roll. Cecil Landau offered her a part in his new 1949 revue,
Sauce Tartare. She accepted the offer
before even asking what she had to do.

The
international musical travelogue, a kind of parade of nations on stage,
required Audrey and four other dancers to cavort through a host of foreign
capitals in skimpy costumes. The cast was international as well, and Audrey got
to know performers from
South
Africa
,
Spain
,
Russia
,
Norway
,
Scotland
,
Portugal
, and
the
United States
.
But their differences, and the often-impenetrable language barriers, slowed
down rehearsals considerably. Landau, notorious for being blunt and often
nasty, couldn’t even lash out at many in his cast because they didn’t
understand him. He postponed opening night by a day and drilled his players for
twenty hours without stop.

When
the show opened, it was a resounding success. But Audrey was too tired to care.
Throughout her career, she’d overdo efforts to please and wear herself out in
the bargain. On her one day off, she slept for a full day and pretended she had
been out shopping. “I always fought being delicate,” she said.
“It made me feel inadequate.”

A
year later, when Landau was casting for a similar revue,
Sauce Piquante,
Audrey was his first choice. “The audiences
just loved her,” he told a colleague. “With all the stars in the
show, they always give that skinny little thing the longest ovation.”

Moira
Lister, the bona fide star of both revues and a comic actress renowned for her
ability to completely transform herself into her characters, said that Audrey
was “quite the opposite. She was herself whatever she did, and people just
loved her for it.”

Jealousies
did arise, however. “I’ve got the best tits onstage,” a buxom
Scandinavian named Aud Johanssen reportedly griped, “but everybody’s
staring at a girl who hasn’t got any!” Audrey always insisted the story
was apocryphal, but she laughed with glee anytime it was repeated. “It’s
true,” she said. “They did stare. But I think that’s because I stuck
out even more—in height, that is!”

Chapter 7

For
a girl who kept to herself throughout her teen years, the heady experience of
being watched and wanted was both intoxicating and frightening.

When
famed photographer Anthony Beauchamp first laid eyes on Audrey, he
“couldn’t quite fathom that she was real. There were so many paradoxes in
that face,” he recalled. “Darkness and purity; depth and youth;
stillness and animation. I had photographed many of the greats, Garbo included,
but I felt I’d made a real discovery when I found Audrey.

“She
had a fresh new look, a beauty that was ethereal. It certainly had nothing to
do with her dancing. She was on the wooden side in that area, but she was so
striking to look at, you barely noticed.

“She
was extremely nervous when I approached her backstage after the show. I got the
impression that a lot of gentlemen and not so gentle men were making her all
kinds of propositions at this time. When I introduced myself and said I wanted
to take her picture, she pleaded poverty. I told her the honor would be mine. I
wanted to have her in my portfolio! After the session, she sent me a proper
English schoolgirl thank-you note and a box of chocolates. She was one of the
nicest subjects I ever had.”

Critics,
too, were beginning to single her out. “She had no lines to say, no part
to play,” recalled reviewer Milton Shulman about her performance in
Sauce Piquante. “But with her
infectious grin, she actually looked like she was enjoying herself. Perhaps it
was this marked contrast to what the rest of us were feeling that made her as
conspicuous as a fresh carnation on a shabby suit.”

And
the beauty of it all was that her delightful way, that charming insouciance,
was a genuine reflection of her personality.