Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman (20 page)

It started with a phone call from my agent, David Halpern. He told me I was about to get a phone call from Julia Cheiffetz, an editor at the newly formed imprint HarperStudio. An hour or so later, I was on the phone with Julia, and about fifteen minutes after that, we had an idea for a book about
Breakfast at Tiffany's
. People like to throw around the phrase “I couldn't have done it without…” and a lot of the time they're overstating it or trying to be modest, but in the case of Halpern and Cheiffetz, I quite literally could not have done it without them. Halpern, with his patience, directness, humor, and unerring eye on integrity, is a kind of dream agent, and very likely the secret love child of Max Perkins and Swifty Lazar. What he does, he does with a finesse so refined it's practically invisible. I don't know how, but I think his wardrobe has a lot to do with it. And Cheiffetz: how she listened, considered, gave space, understood, challenged, soothed, had faith, and charged forth! As an editor, she readily dedicated herself to the consideration and reconsideration of what may have seemed trivial to anyone else, and, quite courageously, allowed us—
both of us—to listen to the book reveal what it wanted. To me, a nervous writer stepping out onto the ledge, she was the trampoline below.

David Freeman, this book's minder, is my first reader for the very simple reason that he probably knows more about show business than anyone anywhere in the world. He also knows how to make the best martini (about six to one), which is an essential skill for anyone who knows anything about show business to have, if only because it's the most efficient way to assuage the inevitable feeling of hopelessness that comes from discussing it at any length. Without Freeman, I would have been on my own, and the process of writing this book would have been confined to the cramped screening room of my mind—the only place, outside of David's house, where I can get a laugh from a joke about Geoffrey Shurlock.

For their time, recollections, and/or expert punditry, I thank Jeffrey Banks, Jeanine Basinger, Peter Bogdanovich, Chris Bram, David Chierichetti, Gerald Clarke, Robert Dawidoff, Illeana Douglas, Blake Edwards, Gene Lees, Molly Haskell, Travers Huff, Elaine Kagan, Kip King, AC Lyles, Robert McGinnis, Fay McKenzie, Joyce Meadows, Billy Mernit, Miriam Nelson, Brad Peppard, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, JP Radley, Rita Riggs, Aram Saroyan, Patricia Snell, Edmund White, and Albert Wolsky.

I want to extend my most profound gratitude to Judith Crist, Sean Ferrer, Patricia Neal, Richard Shepherd, and Robert Wolders. These wonderful people didn't have to devote all those hours to answering my questions, nor did they have to speak honestly and personally about themselves and their work, but they did, and with the kind of trust, openness, and
generosity that ensures a writer like me will have great material for his book. Thank you Judith, Sean, Pat, Dick, and Rob for giving so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And for making a call, solving a problem, or just plain lending me a hand, Karen Abbott, Sandra Archer, Tessa Dahl, Bob Dolman, Jack Dolman, Jennifer Edwards, Kate Eickmeyer, Judy Gingold, the Goldblatts, Barbara Hall, Lisa Hoffman, Noah Isenberg, Gary Khammar, Ian King, Selina Lin, Lynne Littman, Andrea Martin, Mark McVeigh, Lynn Povich, Melanie Rehak, Kathy Robbins, Jenny Romero, Sara Rutenberg, Steve Shepard, Ed Sikov, Mom, Dad, Maria and Sophie, I owe you a big lingering hug that could potentially go on too long and make you slightly uncomfortable.

At HarperStudio, my team behind the scenes was always warm, and on occasion, addictively fun to watch from afar. Thank you, Sarah Burningham, Bob Miller, Mumtaz Mustafa, Katie Salisbury, Jessica Weiner, and Debbie Stier.

And finally, Amalia—who got me sandwiches, held my hand, eased my mind, and deliberated with me over every page, paragraph, and period—we can talk about something other than
Breakfast at Tiffany's
now.

What follows is a hybrid of traditional sourcing and open-hearted homage to those works that influenced the writing of
Fifth Avenue, 5
A.M
. Because this book contains a considerable amount of factual re-creations, I thought it best, when citing their origins, to take the time to explain how and from where I extrapolated what I had, rather than spill out a list of endless citations. In those cases, for the simple reason that entire works, not merely direct quotations, fed the mill of my own writing, these little paragraphs seemed the most comprehensive and least clinical way of describing the unscientific process by which I set out to capture the experiences of my real-life characters.

Nonfiction of the sort I endeavored here, the kind that strives to re-create history more than merely recount it, must negotiate a perilous path between the analytic interpretation and the imaginative one. To keep them distinct is no easy task, and one hell of a slippery slope, which is why it struck me as disingenuous to present my research in an exclusively empirical form. Though, naturally, any person or work I quoted directly has been cited the old-fashioned way.

SAM WASSON
LOS ANGELES
NOVEMBER
2009

COMING ATTRACTION

Irving A. Mandell's remarks about
Breakfast at Tiffany's
appeared in Hazel Flynn's
Hollywood Citizen-News
column, February 20, 1962.

1.
THINKING IT
, 1951–1953

The First Holly
: It's madness to write about Truman Capote without looking to Gerald Clarke's
Capote
(Linden, 1988), and thankfully, I could supplement knowledge I gleaned from Clarke's book with knowledge handed to me from Mr. Clarke himself. The e-mail correspondence he and I exchanged proved essential to both my portrait of little Truman and his absentee mother, as well as to my investigation of the real-life Holly Golightly. Also useful were
Too Brief a Treat
:
The Letters of Truman Capote
(Random House, 2004); George Plimpton's rollicking oral history,
Truman Capote
:
In Which Various Friends
,
Enemies
,
Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career
(Doubleday, 1997); and Lawrence Grobel's
Conversations with Capote
(New American Library, 1985), all of which made an impression on this book's Capote. Each of those impressions has been sourced in more detail in the notes below. So too have those occasions when I explicitly quoted Clarke, his great book, or a voice heard in it. Without them, my own Truman would have been airless.

The White Rose Paperweight
: The account of Capote's meeting with Colette was pieced together from Nancy Caldwell Sorel's sketch, “Colette and Truman Capote,” which appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly
(May 1995), as well as Truman's own essay, “The White Rose,” collected in
Portraits and Observations
:
The Essays of Truman Capote
(Random House, 2007), from which I took this section's dialogue.

Audrey Awoken
: One account of Audrey's breakfast regimen can be found in Eleanor Harris, “Audrey Hepburn,”
Good Housekeeping
(August 1959).

Colette Awoken
: The story of Colette's discovery of Audrey has been written about so many times and from so many differing points of view, that by now, it's got to be 50 percent legend, 50 percent myth. How much can one be certain of? The description in this book is culled from a variety of sources (and is peppered with miscellaneous details about Colette I pulled from Judith Thurman's
Secrets of the Flesh
:
A Life of Colette
[Random House, 2000]), including Eleanor Harris, “Audrey Hepburn,” (
Good Housekeeping
, August 1959) and “Audrey Is a Hit” (
Life
, December 1951), but none checked out better than the evocation in Barry Paris's
Audrey Hepburn
(G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1996) for the simple reason that his presentation of the meeting had more in common with all of the other variations of the scene than any of the variations had with each other (chief among them was producer Gilbert Miller's own variation, published as “The Search for Gigi,” [
Theater Arts
, July 1952]). Apropos, it should be said that Paris's account of Audrey's life is a favorite of both Sean Ferrer and Robert Wolders. That only won Paris more of my favor. On separate occasions, Ferrer and Wolders were quite direct with me on this point (“It is the
only
one,” Wolders said. “It comes the closest to her”), and after considering a great many biographical alternatives, I can finally agree with them. Paris is definitive. Perhaps more so than any other movie star, Audrey Hepburn incurs in her admirers the kind of idolatrous, cliché-ridden fan writing that sounds sincere when spoken, but falls flat on the page. “Elegant,” “lovely,” and—worst of all—“perfect” are three such easy, throw-pillow-type examples, and though Paris can't help but succumb on occasion (I can't see how anyone could be completely exempt), his gaze is not quasi-religious. He looks Audrey Hepburn
squarely in the eye, is modest with his superlatives, and maintains formal and scholarly integrity throughout.

Everything That Is Important in a Female
: Colette and Audrey's brief exchange is taken from the sources listed above. “Everything that is important in a female” from Anita Loos, “Everything Happens to Audrey Hepburn” (
The American Weekly,
September 12, 1954).

The Cigarette Girl
: Scene from
Laughter in Paradise
(Transocean/Associated British Films-Pathe, 1951).

Mrs. James Hanson
,
Deferred
: For a full list of
Gigi
reviews, consult David Hofstede,
Audrey Hepburn
:
A Bio-bibliography
(Greenwood Press, 1994). Brooks Atkinson's review, which included “charm, honesty, and talent,” is from the
New York Times
, November 26, 1951. Walter Kerr's review, in which he praises Audrey's “candid innocence and tomboy intelligence” is from the
New York Herald-Tribune,
November 26, 1951. “Oh dear, and I've still got to learn how to act” is from “Princess Apparent,”
Time
, September 7, 1953.

The Electric Light
: The description of Hanson's time spent on the sidelines of
Roman Holiday
was extrapolated from interviews with Hanson quoted in Paris's
Audrey Hepburn
. Audrey's remark “I'm not like an electric light” was selected from Mary Worthington Jones, “My Husband Doesn't Run Me,”
Photoplay
(April 1956). For more on Wyler's rigid working style, see Jan Herman,
A Talent for Trouble
:
The Life of Hollywood's Most Acclaimed Director
,
William Wyler
(Putnam, 1996).

The Enchanting Unknown
: The effect the
Roman Holiday
dailies had at Paramount was described to me in an interview with AC Lyles at his office on the Paramount lot, on April 2, 2009.

The Market
: The startling statistic, “one-third of the nation's…” I uncovered in Marjorie Rosen,
Popcorn Venus
(Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1973). The even more startling portrayal of Mr. and Mrs. Tony Curtis, “In 1954, a close friend relates, ‘Janet made the greatest sacrifice she had ever made…',” is from
Modern Screen
(1959).

The Product
: There is no shortage of books about the Hollywood star system, though most of them are too misty-eyed to see their subject(s) clearly. Jeanine Basinger's
The Star Machine
(Knopf, 1997) is loving and brutal; she lets the magic in without keeping us from the factory truth of how and why these often-unremarkable people became the world's most brilliant stars.

Doris and Marilyn
: My thinking about Doris Day and Marilyn Monroe was informed by Molly Haskell's indispensable
From Reverence to Rape
:
The Treatment of Women in the Movies
(Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1973). Though she's more generous to Doris Day than I could ever be, Haskell is the most elegant of critics, and quite simply the last word on the phenomenon of star meaning and making. When paired with Marjorie Rosen's
Popcorn Venus,
it's safe to assume that one has examined every culture-making actress, and from every significant angle.

Birth of the Cool
: “Audrey had it in her to be the sugar coating on a bad-tasting pill,” AC Lyles to SW on April 2, 2009. “She thinks the authenticity…” from “H.R.H Audrey Hepburn,” by Dorothy Kilgallen (
American Weekly,
September 27, 1953).

Mrs. James Hanson
,
Deferred
,
Again
: Audrey sums it up in Mike Connolly, “Who Needs Beauty?”
Photoplay
(January 1954). “We decided this was the wrong time to get married,” she said. “I've told you my schedule: a movie here in Hollywood, then back to the stage, then back to Hollywood, and so forth. He would be spending most of his time taking care of his business in England and Canada. It would be very difficult for us to lead a normal married life. Other people have tried it but it has never worked. So we decided to call it off. Oh, maybe sometime in the future—but not now, not for a while.” See also Joe Hyams, “Why Audrey Hepburn Was Afraid of Marriage,”
Filmland
(January 1954).

2.
WANTING IT
, 1953–1955

One Hot Spurt
: Patrick McGilligan's sprawling interview with George Axelrod, “George Axelrod: Irony!” from
Backstory 3
:
Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s
(University of California Press, 1997), captures the wild, willful spirit of Axelrod's quixotic sensibility, and, along with several other extended interviews (namely, Axelrod's in
Screencraft
:
Screenwriting
, [Focal Press, 2003] and “A Hit in a Hurry” from
Theater Arts
[January 1954]), laid the groundwork for my characterization. Thanks also to Illeana Douglas, Axelrod's former daughter-in-law, who spent a great deal of time remembering with me, quite fondly, those days and nights she spent in George's company talking Hollywood, debating movies, and—most of all—cooking dinner. She described a great laughing Falstaff of a man who, despite his achieve
ments, always struggled to assert himself as a writer of serious, adult romantic comedies. Axelrod said as much throughout his career, from Dennis Stack, “Films: Views and Interviews” (
The Kansas City Star,
January 28, 1958) to Vernon Scott, “Axelrod Emphasizes the Marital Theme” (
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
December 24, 1967). “
The Seven Year Itch
, in fact, is concerned with…” from
The New Yorker
's review of the play, December 6, 1952. “The bulk of my sex-comedy career…” from
Backstory 3
.

Does Edith Head Give Good Costume?
: Reading David Chierichetti's
Edith Head
:
The Life and Times of Hollywood's Celebrated Costume Designer
(HarperCollins, 2003) alongside
The Dress Doctor
(Little, Brown, 1959), by Head and Jane Kesner Ardmore, and
How to Dress for Success
(Random House, 1967), by Head and Joe Hyams, a consistent picture of Edith fades into view. Though she tried her best to appear cool, she was, beneath the glasses, a bundle of nerves, and as much an actress as the women she dressed. When I interviewed him at his home on March 6, 2009, David Chierichetti was generous enough to show me the last filmed interview with Edith, which he conducted shortly before her death. Before the first question is asked, with the camera rolling, Edith carefully, nervously, strikes a pose, reconsiders it, and readjusts. Image was all for her, even to her dying day. However, a distinctly vulnerable side to Edith, which she showed more of to Grace Kelly than she did to Audrey, is on display in her various personal items—journals, photographs, and sketchbooks—available in the Edith Head Collection at the AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles. She laughs in candid photographs. Speaking with Rita Riggs, Edith's former apprentice, in her loft in West Hollywood on February 13, 2009, offered me a vivid picture of Ms. Head—as Riggs still refers to her, over forty years later—in taskmaster mode, and was essential to my understanding of the pressures she placed on her coterie of employees as well as herself. She would be reluctant to admit it, but as Chierichetti assured me, Audrey broke her heart. “She was Miss Head's favorite to dress,” Rita Riggs to SW on February 13, 2009.

The Memo
: These pieces of correspondence, as well as many other
Sabrina
-related memos exchanged in the days leading up to Audrey's Parisian shopping spree, are kept in the AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles.

31½-22-31½
: Audrey's meeting with Hubert de Givenchy, like her discovery by Colette, is ensconced in legend. The combination of Amy Fine Collins's “When Hubert Met Audrey” (
Vanity Fair
, December 1995), from which I borrowed a great deal of dialogue; as always, Barry Paris's version in
Audrey Hepburn
; and
Audrey Style
(Harper Collins, 1999) by Pamela Clarke Keogh, which gives one a good feeling for Audrey's taste and the reasons behind it, all helped to separate the imagined from the likely, and formed the foundation of my own recreation. Also of use were Charla Carter's “Audrey Hepburn” (
Harper's Bazaar,
December 1991), and “Co-Stars Again: Audrey Hepburn and Givenchy,” by Gloria Emerson (
New York Times,
September 8, 1965). While a great deal has been written on Audrey and Givenchy's collaboration, there is little by way of meaningful interviews. These pieces are exceptions. “Whether the skirt is wide enough…” Givenchy quoted in
W Magazine
(March 2008).

Mel
: Audrey describes her first meeting with Mel in David Stone, “My Husband Mel” (
Everybody's Weekly,
March 10, 1956). “Our first meeting was in London,” Audrey said, “at a film party, and it was very formal. I was enchanted by meeting him, very interested to meet him. I'd loved his performance in the film
Lili
. The thing I remember most about that first meeting was that he was so serious. He didn't smile. I liked him…but that was all. He'd seen me on Broadway, in
Gigi,
and we talked about doing a play together, the way actors and actresses do. And we said that if either of us found a play that would suit us, we'd send it to the other.”

The Most Sophisticated Woman at the Glen Cove Station
: The hilarious business of Wilder and Lehman straining over the question of Audrey's sexuality in
Sabrina
came by way of Maurice Zolotow's
Billy Wilder in Hollywood
(Putnam, 1977), which, in conjunction with the best biography on Wilder, Ed Sikov's
On Sunset Blvd
:
The Life and Times of Billy Wilder
(Hyperion, 1998), fill in most of what was left unsaid in Cameron Crowe's
Conversations with Wilder
(Knopf, 1999). Screenwriter and novelist David Freeman, who inherited the script of Hitchcock's unmade
The Short Night
from Ernest Lehman, served me a hearty stew of anecdotes about the man he called “the Robert Wise of Screenwriters,” which is probably the greatest remark anyone has ever made or will ever make about Lehman. “This girl, singlehanded,
may make bosoms a thing of the past,” Billy Wilder quoted in “Princess Apparent” (
Time,
September 7, 1953).