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Audrey Hepburn
April 17th 2007 21:52
Audrey Hepburn
I saw katyzzz's evocative art, inspired by the movie, Breakfast At Tiffany's Really Long Link The movie was inspired by a rather different story, written by Truman Capote. Truman Capote was the inspiration for the character of Dill, in the novel and movie, To Kill A Mockingbird.
I was inspired to focus on Ms. Hepburn for vintage culture, and orbled around to see what other bloggers had written about either the actress, or that unique movie. These folks mention the talented actress in just this community.
Audrey Hepburn
Really Long Link
Audrey Hepburn
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
Audrey Hepburn
Really Long Link
In the world at large Ms. Hepburn still so epitomizes chic that a part of a performance was the Gap ideal for a season's style of pant.
Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels May 4, 1929. Her father was an English banker (and left the family when she was six years old) and her mother a Dutch baroness. Though born in Brussels, as a child she attended school in England, and was a British citizen. In 1939 Ms. Hepburn's mother, because of war in Europe,moved them to the Netherlands. Holland was later occupied by the Nazi's.
Ms. Hepburn is quoted in "How To Be Lovely", a biography researched and written by Melissa Hellstern,
"“Don’t discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It’s worse than you could ever imagine.”
“We lost everything, of course-our houses, our possessions, our money. But we didn’t give a hoot. We got through with our lives, which was all that mattered.”
“At times like this, you learn about death, privation, danger, which makes you appreciate safety and how quickly it can change. You learn to be serious about what counts.”
“Being without food, fearful for one’s life, the bombings-all made me appreciative of safety, of liberty. In that sense, the bad experiences have become a positive in my life.”
“It made me resilient and terribly appreciative for everything good that came afterward. I felt enormous respect for food, freedom, for good health and family- for human life.”
During her early twenties she worked as a model, studied acting and danced. She had a role in a film being produced in Monte Carlo and met the novelist, Colette. Colette felt Ms. Hepburn was perfect for the role of Gigi.
After only a few films, she soon was to become world-famous. Her next movie was Roman Holiday, and she won an Academy Award for her performance.
Ms. Hepburn then returned to the stage, playing a water nymph in Ondine, where she met Mel Ferrer, and they married. She won the Tony Award for her performance.
In the movie Sabrina her wardrobe was designed by Hubert de Givenchy, and they continued to compliment each other's styles for decades. Their collaboration hellped shape fashion design for women around the world.
Audrey Hepburn
Speaking guilelessly of meeting Cary Grant, her co-star in Charade , she said,
“Cary and I had never met before we did Charade, so there we all were in Paris, about to have dinner at some terribly smart bistro. As it was early spring, Cary, who always dressed impeccably, was wearing an exquisite light-tan suit. I know I was thrilled to meet him, and I must have been terribly excited, because not ten seconds after we started chatting I made some gesture with my hand and managed to knock an entire bottle of red wine all over poor Cary and his beautiful suit. He remained cool. I, on the other hand, was horrified. Here we’d only just been introduced! If I somehow could have managed to crawl under the table and escape without ever having to see him again, I happily would have.”
After appearing in Wait Until Dark, in 1967, the actress went into semi-retirement. She had divorced from Mr. Ferrer and married an Italian psychiatrist, and focused mainly on family and a role as representative for children through the UN. She died January 20, 1993.
As much as one can imagine the rich emotions that flowed through a life that seems well lived even if only reading statistics and facts, the reality appears to have been even better.
There are rare interviews available online at Audrey Hepburn Library
In the Saturday, Jan. 20, 2007 edition of Time Richard Corliss wrote, "Audrey Hepburn: Still the Fairest Lady":
Audrey Hepburn
"...[T]he world's final view of Hepburn was in 1992 TV newscasts of her visit to Africa last October - three months before her death at 63 - as she bestowed first her compassion on starving children and then her modulated anger at the causes of their condition. "
'In the 40 years between Hollywood's make-believe headlines and the horrifying reality of Somalia, Hepburn as actress and woman seemed an emissary from a finer world than ours. She taught, by example, what a lady was: a vessel of grace and gravity, ready wit, eldritch charm: a woman whose greatest discretion was to hide her awareness of her splendor. She refused to be tyrannized by her own beauty. "
"Today, these matters and manners may strike you as so very once-upon-a-time. Nobody "behaves" any more. In the post-Audrey age, when stars are in rehab before they're out of their teens, when British royals rut as strenuously as rock stars and a President gets impeached for accepting fellatio from an intern, deportment is a Victorian concept. Even in the 50s, a decade of such screen seraphs as Vivien Leigh, Claire Bloom, Grace Kelly and Jean Simmons (William Wyler's first choice for the role of Princess Ann), Hepburn was a glorious anachronism. She represented a moral and emotional aristocracy that no longer exists - if it ever did, outside of her pictures.
Audrey Hepburn
Hepburn, born on May 4, 1929, died 14 years ago today, and her ostensibly anachronistic glamour might have died with her. Yet it's that regality, along with her relentless generosity of spirit, that keeps her alive, burnishes her glow."
Mr. Corliss' comments dovetail nicely with comments made by Ms. Hepburn,
“Being the daughter of a baroness doesn’t make you any different, except that my mother was born in 1900 and had had herself a very strict, Victorian upbringing, if you like. So, she was very demanding of us-of me and my brothers. ‘Manners,’ as she would say, ‘don’t forget, are kindnesses. You must always be kind.’ Opening the door for old ladies is just a routine so that you know she’s helped. And she was always very adamant about that.”
“My mother taught me to stand straight, sit erect, use discipline with wine and sweets and to smoke only six cigarettes a day.”
“I was given an outlook on life by my mother. . . . It was frowned upon not to think of others first. It was frowned upon not to be disciplined.”
“It’s that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so don’t fuss, dear; get on with it.”
“As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself. . . .
All of which I’ve earned a living doing.”
Mr. Corliss also mentions the enduring quality of Ms. Hepburn's appeal : the Gap commercials, a Christie's auction of the famous little black dress and Katie Couric's Holly Golightly party at Tiffany's.
(The proceeds of the auction for Ms. Hepburn's dress, by the way, raised over $900,000.00 for City of Joy, a charity for children in India. The Charity's founder, Dominic Lapierre, said, "There are tears in my eyes. I am absolutely dumbfounded to believe that a piece of cloth which belonged to such a magical actress will now enable me to buy bricks and cement to put the most destitute children in the world into schools."
The giving does not stop there. A book of memories and mementos from family has been published, called "The Audrey Hepburn Treasures". Proceeds from sales will go to the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund.
It is very hard to speak more truthfully or eloquently than Mr. Corliss does about this enduring icon:
"All these are testimony to Hepburn's twin legacies: her eternal, effortless chic in movies and her later, to her more important, career as an ambassador and consciousness-raiser for UNICEF. She often spoke of her lifelong craving for affection and her need to give it. She knew both privilege and want, as a baroness' daughter who nearly starved in the Netherlands during the German occupation in World War II. You can see why Hepburn essentially retired from movies at 38 to care for her two sons, and why the starving children of Africa and Asia were kin to her. The photos of Audrey with the Somalian children show a woman nearly as thin as they. "
While Time, and many of her fans were charmed by her life-long lovely, gamine quality, Ms. Hepburn was not going to be other than who she was.
“Truly, I’ve never been concerned with any public image. It would drive me around the bend if I worried about the pedestal others have put me on. And also I don’t believe it.”
“People seem to have this fixed image of me. In a way I think it’s very sweet, but it’s also a little sad. After all, I’m a human being. When I get angry, I sometimes swear.”
“It would be terribly sad, wouldn’t it, to look back on your life in films and not know your children? For me there’s nothing more pleasant or exciting or lovely or rewarding than seeing my children grow up . . . and they only grow up once, remember.”
“You can only hope to get a combination of happy work and a happy life.”
“One thing I would have dreaded would be to look back on my life and only have movies.”
“I never expected to be a star, never counted in it, never even wanted it. Not that I didn’t enjoy it all when it happened. (But) it’s not as if I were a great actress. I’m not Bergman. I don’t regret for a minute making the decision to quit movies for my children.”
“I may not always be offered work, but I’ll always have my family.”
(All quotes attributed to Audrey Hepburn from "How To Be Lovely" by Melissa Hellstern)
Closing the Time piece Mr. Corliss points out that at a tribute in 1990 at the Museum of Modern Art, it was similar to Roman Holiday, with reporters in a line to meet a Princess.
He calls it "Serene Majesty: it was what she was and what she possessed."
""Radiance is the word," Joe Ferrer, a Time editor of the 80s and 90s who is Mel's nephew, wrote to me in an email just after Hepburn's death. "As a person, too. Though I don't think I saw her more than once after the divorce, she maintained a warm and sturdy bond with my mother. She was an exceptional person, kind, caring, involved and strong. She was someone you wished you could be like - a person who, so far as I could see, was even better than she appeared to be.""
I agree with wondering about how great acting touches us, contrasted subtley to those performances lit from within by the personalties of great stars, and that Ms. Hepburn displayed the gifts of each, with an inimitable light. She was always herself, and effortlessly, a lady.
Mr. Corliss closes, saying, "In Paul Rudnick's wonderful new play "Regrets Only", the dress designer played by George Grizzard enunciates the difference between style and fashion. "Fashion is for followers," he says. "Style you create for yourself." Audrey Hepburn created, embodied, her own fabulous style. Here's hoping it never goes out of fashion. "
Audrey Hepburn
If you go to the Unicefsite, right now, this is what you will read:
"I can testify to what UNICEF means to children, because I was among those who received food and medical relief right after World War II," said actress Audrey Hepburn on her appointment as a Goodwill Ambassador in 1989. "I have a long-lasting gratitude and trust for what UNICEF does." As a result of her work for UNICEF over subsequent years, that gratitude is mutual.
"On a mission
"Soon after becoming a UNICEF ambassador, Hepburn went on a mission to Ethiopia, where years of drought and civil strife had caused terrible famine. After visiting UNICEF emergency operations, she talked about the projects to the media in the United States, Canada and Europe over several weeks, giving as many as 15 interviews a day. It set a precedent for her commitment to the organization.
"In the years that followed, Hepburn made a series of UNICEF field trips, visiting a polio vaccine project in Turkey, training programmes for women in Venezuela, projects for children living and working on the street in Ecuador, projects to provide drinking water in Guatemala and Honduras and radio literacy projects in El Salvador. She saw schools in Bangladesh, projects for impoverished children in Thailand, nutrition projects in Viet Nam and camps for displaced children in Sudan.
"Hepburn also worked tirelessly for UNICEF when not making field trips. She testified before the US Congress, took part in the World Summit for Children, launched UNICEF's State of the World's Children reports, hosted Danny Kaye International Children's Award ceremonies, designed fundraising cards, participated in benefit concert tours and gave many speeches and interviews promoting UNICEF's work.
"Hepburn received the United States' highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in December 1992. During that year, though ill with cancer, she had continued her work for UNICEF, travelling to Somalia, Kenya, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France and the United States.
"Movie classics
"Audrey Hepburn was born on 4 May 1929 in Brussels, Belgium. Her father was an English banker and her mother a Dutch baroness. She studied ballet, but a small part in a French film led the French writer Colette to ask her to play the title role in Gigi, which Collette had adapted for Broadway. The same year, Hepburn landed the starring role in the movie Roman Holiday, with Gregory Peck, the first of a long list of American movie classics in which she starred.
"Towards the end of the 1960s Hepburn retired from films to devote herself to family life, emerging only for a handful of films in the 1970s and 1980s. She devoted the final years of her life to UNICEF.
"She knew better than anyone else that the recompense for such work lies in the eyes of those in need of succour," Sir Peter Ustinov wrote in the European. "It is they who bring it home, in all its simplicity, that such work is worthwhile."
"Audrey Hepburn died at her home in Switzerland on 20 January 1993."
Audrey Hepburn
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