Audrey

This is tough to say but I do not think Audrey Hepburn was a great actress.  I thought she was a good actress.  I thought she was a great human being, immensely interested in world suffering, particularly children.   She exuded grace and charm.  She was an undeniable icon of style.  Over the years when I asked people who their favorite actress was, hers was the name I heard the most, mainly, if not exclusively, with women.  Women championed her more than men although I think a lot of gay men attached themselves to her.

I always thought Audrey Hepburn was a bit sad.  I've read enough about her over the years to know she would rather have been married to one man who loved her dearly and they would have had about eight kids whom she would have loved and nurtured until the day she died.  She would have been happiest in a Swiss farm house, donning an apron and covered in flour from the comfort foods she would bake for her brood.  It was not to be.

I don't think she ever cared much about being a movie star.  She liked the money and she liked the fame insofar as it allowed her to reach out to the poor and disenfranchised and make a difference.  For one of the biggest stars the world has ever known, she only made 20 American films, a number far below her contemporaries and in fact most name actors.  She also made a few European films and one television movie.  She was a star from the first day of her debut American film.  She was usually top-billed and occasionally  second-billed under the weighty name of an important male actor.  No other woman was ever billed over her in an American film, if we discount her cameo role in her final film.

Of those 20 American films, I thought about six of them were poor (although her performances varied).  She was miscast in a couple of films and served up only so-so performances in several.  I also think she was in five great films and/or gave five great performances.  I assure you now that we all won't agree with my every assessment.  But hey, isn't that the fun of it all?  If you and I agree on everything, one of us isn't necessary.

Her immense fame started at the very beginning of her American career when she won an Oscar for her first film, Roman Holiday.  This always spells magic for actors... ask Julie Andrews and Barbra Streisand for starters.  Listen, I like and even own Roman Holiday (mainly for Gregory Peck). I thought it was a cute movie (and that's all) but I am now as I was then astonished that she won an Oscar for it and that Deborah Kerr lost for her magnificent performance in From Here to Eternity.

Charade affected me just about the same.  Another huge costar in Cary Grant but the script was little more than any number of those little romantic-comedy-sleuth pictures that came out in the 1960s.  I do think she and Grant, despite their age difference, were very well matched but I wish they had been in something better.  Ditto Funny Face.  She was top billed over Fred Astaire (wow, she had arrived) but I thought she was one of his worse partners, rather awkward in her dancing, and it wasn't one of Astaire's shining moments either.

She was satisfactory in The Children's Hour, as one of two teachers accused of being lesbians, but the film was no great shakes.  I did not care for her in War and Peace with Henry Fonda, Love in the Afternoon with Gary Cooper, Green Mansions with Tony Perkins or How to Steal a Million with Peter O'Toole.   I also did not care for the films themselves, particularly Green Mansions, the negatives of which should all be destroyed and all DVDs turned in.

I thought she was enchanting as Sabrina, a chauffeur's daughter on the estate of a wealthy family with two sons who fancy her at one point or another.  An actor I have always admired, Humphrey Bogart, was apparently rather testy on the set because he thought he was wrong for the role and I agree.  The idea that Sabrina would wind up with him over the brother, William Holden, is laughable.

In real life, however, is was a different scene.  Hepburn and the married Holden were hot and heavy for a while, talking of marriage, but it all collapsed when she discovered he had had a vasectomy.  She wanted children more than anything in the world.  They remained very close for years although that was tested when they made Paris When It Sizzles, a dud, 10 years later and he was an alcoholic who still fancied her while she was over her romantic notions of him.

Sabrina was responsible for Hepburn's introduction to clothing designer Hubert de Givenchy.  They helped make one another very famous and their business relationship and deep friendship would last the rest of her life.

She received a second Oscar nomination for her work in The Nun's Story, the first really good film she made while working with an enormously talented cast.  She brought a heartwarming dignity to her role as Sister Luke, a Belgian nun who questioned her decision,  Hepburn, also from Belgium, claimed this was her favorite film.

She made one western, co-starring with Burt Lancaster in The Unforgiven (not to be confused with Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, made years later).  I quite liked the film and thought she was good in it as an adopted daughter of a prairie family.  Her possible Kiowa birthright puts everyone in a frenzy.  Critics nagged about her performance as being too refined to play a western woman.  As famous as the film itself is that Hepburn broke her back in a bareback jump on a stallion.  It caused her to have a miscarriage.

By this point she was married to actor Mel Ferrer, with whom she worked in War and Peace.  He was completely besotted with her but that coupling resulted in more of a Svengali-Trilby relationship.  Ferrer kept an iron hand on her and her career choices.  The union ultimately produced a beloved son but she came to heavily resent Ferrer and acrimoniously divorced him.

In 1961 she made the best film of her career and the one for which she is most fondly remembered, Breakfast at Tiffany's.  She never had another role like Holly Golightly.  There were those who were astonished that she would (or perhaps could) play a call girl.  Truman Capote, for one, the author of the piece, thought, at least at first, that she was all wrong for the part.  From the opening scene, munching a pastry and drinking some coffee in front of Tiffany's, to pulling that wet cat into the cab and into the arms of George Peppard, Hepburn was absolutely infectious, delicious, adorable.  I could never think of Audrey Hepburn without thinking of Holly Golightly... an iconic actress bringing life to an iconic character. 

I did not care for her in My Fair Lady.  I never watch it.  If one thought she was too refined for The Unforgiven role, then one should have felt the same about her cockney flower girl scenes.  I never bought it for a moment.  And to think that she for the most part lip-synced to Marni Nixon's voice is a shame when the loverly voice of Julie Andrews, Broadway's MFL, would have been much better.  Stupid, stupid Jack Warner.  I know I am not alone in my appraisal but die-hard Audrey fans are strong.

I think Two for the Road was the second best film the lady ever made.  The tale spilled out in a non-linear fashion, something I ordinarily don't particularly like, but it worked oh so well here.  It's the study of a marriage shown on a series of vacations or travels from the time of its inception to later years, jumping all over the place and then back again.  Hepburn was at her comedic-dramatic best and it's been said that may very well be because she was so happy making the film.  And she was happy because of Finney.  They may have sparred onscreen, but off screen the unmarried Finney and the married Hepburn had a romance that became a bit public, much to her chagrin.

Frolicking with Finney

Wait Until Dark was a film I liked (and in fact just watched the other day).  I enjoyed her performance although I thought some of the writing was embarrassing, particularly, but not exclusively, lines spoken by Efrem Zimbalist as her husband.  Ferrer produced the picture as their marriage was ending.  And Wait Until Dark was the last film she would make for nine years.

She entered another unhappy marriage to an Italian psychiatrist who endlessly cheated on her.  She had a son by him and for the sake of the child she put on a brave front and tried to stick in the marriage, but ultimately she couldn't.  After they divorced, she returned to films.

First up was, I believe a terribly under-rated film and an equally under-rated Hepburn performance, in Robin and Marian, costarring Sean Connery.  The Robin Hood legend is retold in a fashion not previously seen.  The characters are more human and the focus is more on their relationship rather than battles (although there is a pretty damned good one at the end).  At first glance one might perceive the Connery-Hepburn pairing an odd one.  He is so rough and ungentlemanly and she is so seemingly fragile and ladylike.  But he comes off very loving and tender with Hepburn while she toughens up and stands her ground with him.  She looked older but then why shouldn't she with a nine-year absence from the screen?  I loved this film.

She would only make three more theatrical films, none of which was particularly successful, although I enjoyed the all-star cast of Bloodline.  One of her costars in that one and also the next one, They All Laughed, was Ben Gazzara, in my mind, about the most unlikely person on the planet to become a Hepburn paramour, but it happened.  Her final film, only a cameo, was Always.  She seemed to have lost her sparkle in all three films.  Obviously it was time for her to say goodbye to acting.

With Ben Gazzara

She was a good friend to many.  One of her great friends was my beloved Capucine, who, in turn, was great pals with William Holden and Givenchy. Hepburn saved Capucine from several suicide attempts but was not able to do so ultimately.

The American Film Institute listed her as the third greatest female acting legend of all time, right behind Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis.  Try as I might, I just do not get that.  Listen, I like her, I really, really like her.  Haven't I said as much?  She should certainly be on the list.  But the third greatest female screen legend of all time?  Ahead of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley Temple (all on the list)?  Oh no, no, no.  I did enjoy her as an actress but I think her legacy is her iconic style and her tireless work with UNICEF. 

Let's close with a song from Audrey... an iconic one.  She crossed it in style one day.  It's the only way she knew how to do it.

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Favorite Film #18