Read Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait Online
Authors: Diana Maychick
Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (9 page)
Dressed
in tailored suits and pillbox hats, with her ubiquitous white gloves spotless,
Audrey was the good daughter every parent longed for. And that kind of
innocence embodied its own brand of sex appeal—she was the forbidden fruit,
the unapproachable one. In fact, however, she was game for a variety of
rough-and-tumble activity.
“I
was doing a lot of modeling at the time,” Audrey recalled, “and the
photographers were always shocked that I was willing to take some risks for the
photo shoot. I got a kick out of jumping across streams or hanging from the
edge of a building. I wasn’t afraid of stuff like that. After living through
war, those things were minor.”
But
when one photographer suggested that she pad her bra to appear more bosomy,
Audrey balked, until her press agent at the time, the influential Frederic
Mullally, convinced her it would increase her wages. He kept a copy of the
resulting ad and inscribed it “Audrey Hepburn—and friends.”
The
early fifties were the most delightfully free and easy years of Audrey’s life.
It was the first time she’d ever allowed herself enjoyment without worry. Her
biggest indulgence was clothing; she got her first taste of couture while
modeling for advertisements, and she finally began to appreciate her mannequin
figure. She scrupulously studied her physical assets and liabilities and
decided that pale colors and neutrals would best complement her sallow
complexion. “Bright reds and blues tended to overwhelm me then,” she
said. Although her life was still circumscribed by work and her mother,
financial security eased other burdens.
She
became close to the cast and crew of
Sauce
Piquante,
and they all started to socialize offstage as well. She no longer
rushed home to the Baroness after her busy days of drama and dance classes,
rehearsals, auditions, and nightly appearances in the show. But her
well-rounded life offered new complications.
Marcel
le Bon, the popular French singer and her costar, developed a serious crush on
Audrey, becoming the first of many of her colleagues to fall in love with her.
“It
was very innocent on my part,” Audrey recalled. “Marcel would leave
me sweet little billets-doux, nosegays, flowers, poems. He was the first man to
pay this kind of attention to me and in the beginning, I was smitten more by it
than him. Still, he was awfully kind. We had wonderful times together, but
Cecil Landau worried that romance among his cast would ruin his show. He was a
madman! He instituted a `no-marriage‘ clause in my contract, can you
imagine?”
There
was also a twinge of jealousy on Landau’s part. He opened a new revue,
Summer Nights, at the landmark nightclub
Ciro’s, and fired le Bon even before the show opened.
The
singer was so distraught he left for
the Baroness happier. She did not want her daughter settling down with an
unreliable show-biz personality just as her career was taking off. In fact, she
did not want her daughter to settle down at all, although that was all Audrey
really wanted to do. The days ahead would be rocky ones for Audrey and her
mother.
Chapter 8
Working
in a nightclub seemed glamorous to Audrey. She loved the sound of glasses
toasting and the scent of perfumes mixing in the air. She often stepped back
from her life and looked at it with a sophisticated gleam of self-satisfaction
in her eyes—but in her eyes only.
The
only real indication that she was a woman of the world was the fact that she
arose at ten. That was good enough for Audrey; she felt like a lady of leisure.
No matter that she was a slave to show business from the moment she awakened
until
would walk home from work exhausted and sweaty from the high kicks of the
chorus line. The very fact that she could get up later than the average
shopgirl, despite the reality that she worked longer and harder than most,
meant indulgence and luxury to her.
Modeling
jobs were especially plentiful. Audrey’s gamine look impressed magazine editors
as totally new. Her boyish beauty supplanted the standard images of glamorous
artifice and hourglass figures long associated with high style. She was the
real thing—a refined, naturally elegant brunette who exuded an inner warmth
and vulnerability. It was the combination of these elements which made her look
timeless and so impressed people who caught even a glimpse of her.
Actor
John McCallum was one of them. One night he stopped by the floor show at Ciro’s
with his wife, Googie Withers. They were both so awestruck by Audrey’s magnetism,
they took it upon themselves to recommend her to casting director Robert
Lennard. He was just as impressed with her ability to take command of a room,
even when she was just one among many dancing girls.
Lennard
also recognized that Audrey was the least talented dancer among her peers. He
saw that she was flat-chested. He feared that her arms and legs might be on the
verge of getting tangled up all the time. He wondered if she could actually be
as skinny as she looked. Yet he also knew that she would be a star.
He
persuaded friend and colleague Mario Zampi, a director of screwball comedies,
to give Audrey the lead in his
Laughter
in Paradise,
the story of a rich recluse who leaves in his will a fortune
for each of his relatives—provided they perform outlandish, sometimes criminal
acts.
Audrey
met with the director and his screenwriter and she so impressed them, too, that
a day later, they offered her the role.
But
two days after that, she turned them down.
“I
let my heart get the better of me,” Audrey explained. “I often let my
heart get the better of me!”
Back
from
Marcel le Bon, Audrey’s first suitor, had begged her to collaborate with him on
a new cabaret act, along with other alums of the Ciro show.
“I
felt sorry for him. He had nothing going on in his career, and I thought I
could help him. I had already committed to working on that little show when the
movie was offered. So I wrote one of my nice and proper schoolgirl notes—a
`thanks awfully, but no dice‘ note.
“I
wanted to work with Marcel,” she said. “It was a very simple
decision. We were going to do the cabaret brilliantly, get married, have
babies, and live happily ever after. That was all in my mind. I was very naive.
I didn’t know too much about film, certainly not enough to think I was throwing
away a big opportunity. I was at a time when opportunities kept presenting
themselves, one after the other, boom, boom, boom. I didn’t much discern among
them. If one came and I passed it by, another would come. That’s the way I thought
“Well,
reality intervened. Without Cecil behind us, the clubs took advantage. Our
bookings fell through. I was shocked. People lied. It was a rude awakening.
Marcel became angry. He took his disappointment out on me. We had terrible
fights. And then he picked up in a huff for
Audrey
was left alone, without a job. She did what she always did when she was up
against a wall—she nudged up against it and tried to push it down, gently
using all her strength. Little by little, it fell.
She
humbled herself and went back to director Zampi, politely telling him that her
circumstances had changed and that she was now free to do the job. Audrey was
invariably, and genuinely, polite. She never lied or made excuses. People
respected her honesty. But in this situation, there was little to be done.
Zampi had already cast Beatrice Campbell in the role. But the director was
still taken with Audrey.
“He
told me he still wanted to use me, despite the fact that I had turned him down.
He attributed that mistake to my youth, which in fact it was. So there were no
hard feelings. When he offered me a bit part, I took it gratefully.”
Audrey had one measly line: “Who wants a ciggy?”
Apparently
everyone did. Her presence on screen was so strong that Associated British
Pictures offered her a seven-year contract on the strength of her walk-on. It
wasn’t that people thought she was a natural actress, either. They recognized
that she was awkward and self-conscious. But for some reason, they couldn’t get
enough of her.
“I
thought it was the greatest gift,” Audrey said. “Not because I had
been dreaming my whole life of a movie career; I wasn’t. In fact, I didn’t see
many movies growing up. The few that were available were Nazi propaganda
pictures, and they didn’t much endear me to the form. I loved the contract
offer because it meant financial security. It was money I could count on. So
you see, I got into a profession where you can count on nothing, ever, because
it offered me security!”
For
the next several years, Audrey worked steadily in English films. She had
another walk-on as a hotel reception clerk in
One Wild Oat,
a farce about a spurned woman who tries to blackmail
her former lover. Then she was cast in another light comedy,
Young Wives’ Tale, about the housing
shortage in
inexperienced. I wasn’t quite sure she would make it as an actress, although no
matter what angle you saw her from, she was alluring. And she was the same
offscreen as on. There was no difference.”
It
was the beginning of a long season during which Audrey would be courted by the
world. At a parry soon after filming, she met a strappingly handsome, tall,
wealthy gadabout from
who was also impressed with her mesmerizing beauty.
“I
remember him asking me where I got my eyes,” Audrey recalled. “ `They
came with the package,‘ I said. ’Well, I’d like to buy a whole carton of them
to exchange with all the little squinty ones I see each day,‘ he said. `I’d like
everyone to have eyes like yours. It would make seeing so much more important.’
Of course, I thought I was in love.”
Hanson,
who had a reputation as a ladies’ man and who had been regularly escorting the
actress Jean Simmons until he met Audrey, also fell head over heels
immediately. At twenty-eight, after having served in the war in the Duke of
Wellington’s regiment, he felt it was time to settle down, and his wealthy
father, the
trucking firm, had agreed to finance a transportation business for his son.
“I
loved the idea of finding a partner,” Audrey said. “But it was just
that: an idea. As soon as it became clear that I would have to give up the
artistic and cultural life of
anxious to get married.”
The
Baroness adamantly opposed the alliance right from the start. She felt Audrey
was too anxious to throw away her career for any man who came her way.
Furthermore, she felt that Hanson would not be a loyal husband; she had
observed him flirting with several of Audrey’s girlfriends from Ciro’s and was
appalled at his boldness. She encouraged Audrey to dump him. Audrey wouldn’t
hear of it. She and her mother endured a tense period, one of the rare times
they stopped speaking to one another.
