Audrey
Hepburn
Modern
Screen magazine November 1953
Interview
Life magazine December 1953
Gallery of Stars
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Audrey
Hepburn
She
is the most exciting star of 1953
and
here is her own story,
told
in her own words to Jane Wilkie
Everything
Hollywood has ever accomplished, all the actors it has ever discovered, all the
pictures it has produced, have been ‘sensational’, ‘terrific’ and ‘colossal’.
The words have been used so often that by now nobody listens to them.
So when
Hollywood got its first look at Audrey Hepburn on’ the screen, in Roman Holiday, the press was left
without suitable adjectives. It was necessary, and accurate, to describe this
new, young actress in the most complimentary terms, but somehow the correct
words sounded empty. She is truly great, but the critics who saw the press
preview agreed it was going to be difficult to convince the public that Miss
Hepburn is that magnificent.
After the
showing was over, the editors present immediately began to plan Audrey Hepburn
stories, certain that the minute Roman
Holiday was released to the public, there would be a surge of curiosity
about her. The next morning, Paramount’s publicity department was swamped with
questions. Where did Audrey Hepburn come from? What was she like? Was she under
contract? What did she eat for breakfast? Was she married?
They didn’t
know a great deal. She had been born near Brussels and educated in England. She
had studied ballet, and she had played the title role in the Broadway
production of Gigi. Her performance
drew rave reviews. The show had toured the United States, and William Wyler had
contracted her for Roman Holiday, to
be made in Rome. Before Miss Hepburn was whisked away to eastern cities and
eventually to Italy, Paramount publicists managed to learn enough about her tq
write a brief biography. Unfortunately, Miss Hepburn was not available for
interviews. She was in England and would not return to Hollywood until
September, when she would star in Sabrina
Fair.
This was a
disappointment to everyone. Roman Holiday
would be released in September, and everybody would want to know all about
Audrey Hepburn, at once.
MODERN SCREEN
had an idea, though. “It must be done, and there’s a way to do it. Tape an
interview and send it to her in England, and with Paramount’s cooperation, she
will tape record her answers and send them back.”
So over at
Paramount studio, a very uneasy reporter was hooked up to a frightening machine
that looked like the instrument panel of a Stratocruiser. Then they stuck a
microphone in her hand and said, “Go ahead.”
This type of
interview had its limitations, of course, for there is no possibility of a
normal flow of conversation. The reporter remembered Miss Hepburn’s dignified
manner in Roman Holiday, and began
with “Well, Miss Hepburn, I’m going. to have to ask you a lot of sassy
questions.”
If she
objected to such personal questions, fired at her for a solid half hour by an
utter stranger six thousand miles away, her reply gave no sign of it. Her
answering tape arrived from England within a few weeks, and was equally long
and extremely gracious in tone. The most immediately remarkable thing about it
was her voice. Having been educated in England she speaks with the precise and
clipped diction of the British, yet there is something so soft, almost sleepy,
about her voice that it is enchanting. It is unfortunate that, along with a
report of the questions and answers, it is not possible to allow the reader to
hear this voice. It is expressive, sometimes lilting in laughter, sometimes,
when speaking of tragic things, barely audible. Maybe you can imagine it as you
read her answers.
Question:
Would you describe the
house near Brussels in which you lived as a child? What was your father’s
occupation? Did you have any brothers or sisters?
Answer: The house we lived in outside Brussels was a
very charming, quite large country house where I lived with my father and
mother and my two brothers, both of whom are older than myself. My father was a
businessman. I was very fond of my brothers. We had the normal squabbles, but
they were always happy ones.
Question:
Were your parents
strict, or do you feel you were spoiled? Were you a tomboy? Do you think you
were particularly difficult to raise?
Answer: My mother, 1 think, has brought me up as well
as any mother ever does. 1 think she did a wonderful job, with three children,
and I don’t feel she was overstrict or that we were spoiled. She brought us up
in a very natural, healthy way.
I don’t think
I was a tomboy. I'd say 1 was a rather moody child, quiet and reticent, and I
liked to be by myself a great deal — which made me quite an easy child to
raise. Nevertheless I needed a great deal of understanding, which I always got from
my mother.
Question:
You were sent to
school in England? Did you like school?
Answer: I was. I went to a little private school in
England as, at the time, we were living in Belgium and my mother thought it was
right for me to speak English, being brought up as an English child. I spent
the first years of my life there, with periods back home either in Belgium or
wherever my parents happened to be at the time.
“Did you like
school?” you ask me. Well, I liked the children and my teachers, but I never
liked the process of learning. I was very restless and could never sit for
hours on end, learning things. I enjoyed learning the subjects I liked—I always
loved history and mythology and astronomy—but I hated anything to do with
arithmetic or that sort of thing. School in itself I found very dull and I was
happy when I finished.
Question: Your
biography says you were ten when the war broke out and your mother took you
back to Holland, where you later studied ballet. Why did you attend school in
Holland under a Dutch name? What about your entertaining in Underground
concerts to raise money for the Dutch resistance movement?
Answer: Actually, my mother was in Holland when the
war broke out, and I was at school in England. I flew over to join my mother in
Arnhem – that was Christmas of 1939, just before the Germans entered Holland – because
things were beginning to blow up all over Europe, and Mother thought the safest
place for a child was with her mother, after all. No one knew where it was
safest at the time.
Yes, I did go
to school under a Dutch name. I used my mother’s name because it wasn’t too
good an idea to draw attention to the fact that I was English. My nationality
just might have got me into trouble.
I was there
all during the war, and 1 started studying ballet very soon after I arrived in
Holland. I had taken various lessons in England and loved dancing, and once I’d
started in Holland, I decided 1 wanted to be a ballerina. I had a rather
sketchy and erratic training because of the war. Malnutrition stopped me on one
hand, and conditions got more and more ~ difficult.
I did indeed
give various Underground concerts to raise money for the Dutch resistance
movement. I danced at recitals, designing the dances myself. I had a friend who
played the piano and my mother made the costumes. They were very amateurish
attempts, but nevertheless at the time, when there was very little
entertainment, it amused people and gave them an opportunity to get together
and spend a pleasant afternoon listening to music and seeing my humble
attempts. The recitals were given in houses with windows and doors closed, and
no one knew they were going on. Afterwards, money was collected and given to
the Dutch Underground.
Question:
Would you tell me
about your family and your life during the war? Did your family suffer any
hardships because of it? Didn’t the English parachute into Holland near your
town of Arnhem in an attempt to deliver the Dutch from the Nazis?
Answer: I couldn’t really talk about the war without
talking for hours. It’s five years out of my life. I was living there and saw
the landing and was there all during the fighting.
Question:
An impertinent
question. Are your parents still living, and if so, are they still married? I
ask this because your biography mentions only your mother in your later life.
Does the family still own the home outside Brussels?
Answer: No,
they are not. I mean, they are divorced. They are both living. No, we don’t own
the home now.
Question:
When you went to
England in 1948, did you go alone? How did you get the part in High Button Shoes?
Answer: Yes, I went alone to England. It wasn’t until
I had my first job, in High Button Shoes,
that I was able to afford the luxury of having my mother come over. At the
time, there was a great deal of restriction where money was concerned, and I
couldn't get any money out of Holland. I did an audition for High Button Shoes and, with many other
girls, was put through my paces and then was engaged by the producer of the
show at the time — a man called Archie Thompson — who gave me my first real
break.
Question: How old were
you when you came to America to do Gigi
on Broadway? Did you sail or fly? Would you tell me your impression of New
York? Was there anything in particular you wanted to see, or eat, or experience
in the States? How did our cities impress you? What did you like about
Americans the most?
Answer: I was twenty-two when I went to New York to do
Gigi. I sailed, especially as I
wanted to approach America by sea for the first time, and was dying to see the
New York skyline and the famous Statue of Liberty. Of course it was my luck
that we arrived about three o’clock in the morning. It was pitch dark, and I stood
freezing in a nylon nightie in front of my porthole, and saw nothing.
I had a great
day. I was shown New York, and went to my first baseball game immediately.
Within two hours of my arrival in New York, I was standing in the Yankee
Stadium, cheering my head off at a great game which I knew nothing at all
about, but found very exciting. Naturally, I wanted to see everything, but I
wanted to absorb America slowly, to take it as it is, as everybody sees it and
lives it.
The food?
Well, I must say—all those steaks! Very exciting! Incidentally, they did a great
deal for my health as I needed them at the time, and I’ve been a much healthier
person since.
The cities
showed me America. We went through Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago,
Washington, Wilmington, Richmond, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco. San
Francisco’s a great city, isn’t it? Oh, boy! I found it exciting to see America
this way —working my way across — and thought it particularly exciting because
each city was so different. It was like arriving in a different country each
time.
I liked the
unaffectedness of the Americans. They’re warm, they’re kind, and whatever
they’ve got to say, they say it.
Question: Were you
homesick when you were making Gigi?
Tell me about your meeting with William Wyler.
Answer: Never. I was too happy to be homesick. I was
too excited about what I was doing. This was something I’d been longing for all
of my life. I would have loved my mother to have been with me, and to have seen
it all with me, but otherwise there was too much to be grateful for to nibble
away at it with petty homesickness.
Mr. Wyler
came to London and I met him and his wife at his hotel. We talked about the
picture and he agreed I could be tested for it. I made the test, which he
arranged for me, as he wasn’t able to stay in London, and it wasn’t long before
I heard the great news I could do Roman
Holiday and that I was under contract with Paramount.
Question: Did you
enjoy making Roman Holiday, and
American methods of picture-making? :
Answer: The American method of picture-making was
slightly diluted by the Roman and Italian atmosphere. I don’t think I'll get
the real American method until I work in Hollywood. I thought it was a great
combination—good Hollywood organization with a bit of Roman sunshine thrown in.
We had great fun, and it was a fantastic experience.
Qustion: Has anyone
ever told you that you resemble Gregory Peck? Some people here have said your
face looks like a feminine version of his.
Answer: I must say I haven’t noticed, because I’ve
never thought of it. I’d like to think so because — I mean, he’s a pretty good
looking man. Isn’t he?
Question: Do you
consider London your home?
Answer: London is my home. We have a little apartment
here and my mother lives here. But I'm quite used to the idea now that I shall
be commuting for the rest of my life — I hope — between America and England. I
hope to spend a lot of my time in New York. I love New York. I'd love to settle
there. I love San Francisco and it’s a beautiful city, but you can’t compare
the two. I like New York because there you’re in the center of things.
Whatever’s going on in the world seems to sort of center around New York.
People pass through, and I have the theatre there. If it were not for the
theatre, I might very well live in San Francisco.
Question: What about
your appetite?
What are your
favorites?
Answer: I don’t say I eat a lot. I eat small meals,
but I love to eat quantities of the things I like. I love meat. I love a steak.
And I adore sweets and chocolate and things like that. But I try to take myself
in hand.
Question: How about
reading? What type of thing?
Answer: I read as much as I possibly can, not as much as I’d like to. Anything, as long as it’s by a good writer. My great hero has always been Rudyard Kipling — right now I’m a fan of Graham Greene’s. I’ve found that my life has been spent so much in ballet class or studios or working that I haven’t spent as much time in studying these things as I’d like to. In short, I’d like to see and read and know a lot more than I do, and I’m working hard on it.
Question: What about
love life? What can you say about your romantic life and your ideas on it?
Answer: Oh, boy. (pause) I’ve been asked the question often enough — I should know the answer. Everybody knows I was engaged and no longer am, at this point. I’ve not as yet discovered a way to combine a career and married life, both of which are full time jobs and entail a great deal of responsibility because mainly they involve other people. It would be simple if it involved only one’s self. You’ve got to be pretty sure, and to be able to say with certainty that you can cope with the combination, and until I find a way of doing that, I don’t think I dare get married. Right now I’m still pretty levelheaded about it. I’m not a great girl for going out with a lot of people. I have my particular friends and like to see a lot of them. This is all a lot of talk — you realize that, don’t you?
One day I'll just fall in love and get
married, career or no career. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t in love last time — I
was very much so. Perhaps too much so to dare embark on a life I didn’t know
too much about. Well — at this point I’m free lance, and I think it’s the best.
Question: What about Sabrina Fair?
Answer: I read the stage play but haven’t yet read the
screen script. I love the story, I love the idea. I think Paramount bought it
for me partly because I like it so, and I’m very happy about the whole idea — and
that Billy Wilder is going to direct. How lucky can a girl be? She makes her
first picture with William Wyler and her next with Billy Wilder. It almost
seems too good to be true, and I’ll try to live up to all this.
I’d like to
add something to this now I’ve finished it. Dear Miss Wilkie, I want to thank
you very much for this interview. On hearing it played back, I find it rather
incoherent and hope you will forgive me for being so. I do hope to meet you
very soon when I come out to Hollywood. I’ll say goodbye, and thank you very
much.
If Miss
Hepburn thinks she gave an incoherent interview, she should know that the most
vitriolic profiles ever written were those in which the writer reported
verbatim the conversation of his subject. It is an unflattering method,
usually. Miss Hepburn had no idea her replies would be set down verbatim (and
they wouldn’t have been if she had been less competent). Yet she comes out of
it a charming and articulate girl.
At first
glance, the story seems to give little besides the statistics of Audrey
Hepburn’s life. Examined more closely, it establishes the fact that she is a
girl of tact and refinement. She is a grateful and devoted daughter. The utter
silence on the subject of her father suggests that the family rift disturbed
her considerably, yet she has the taste to bypass the subject.
She is a
candid person, being one of the few actresses to admit delight when school was
over, and to admit a feeling of inadequacy where self-education is concerned.
Reading between the lines, one understands that Miss Hepburn suffered
considerably during the war, yet she does not dwell on the fact. She glosses
over the fact that she has been a victim of malnutrition, that she was a
spectator of bloody fighting, and that today she can’t get enough meat or
chocolate. She treats lightly the fact that she contributed to the Dutch
resistance movement, an activity for which she could have been caught and put
into a concentration camp.
She modestly
neglected to answer questions that would necessitate a bit of boasting — such
things as her linguistic ability and the extent of her travels. She discloses a
delightful sense of humor, a zest for life, a sincere liking for Americans and
the — adoption of American slang. She seems to be a self-reliant, ambitious and
courageous girl who has a deep capacity for love. Her recent engagement to a
wealthy British businessman is discussed, however briefly, in a frank and refreshing
manner, and her ideas about marriage would prove her to be an unusually
thoughtful girl.
This is all
we know. This, and the description of people who have met her. They are the
only ones, at this writing, who are capable of describing her in terms slightly
new to the Hollywood vocabulary. They include coquettish, saint-like, alluring,
hoydenish, disarming, sensitive and captivating. The American press will soon
be swamped with news about her, but in the interim Modern Screen has copped the
first interview for a fan magazine. Despite the revolutionary method of
interviewing, it was successful because the new star is, among other things,
coherent.
END
Part
II.
Life
magazine, December 7, 1953
A
GLAMOROUS WAIF BEGINS HER CHORES
Audrey
Hepburn at the age of 24 has made only one American movie, Roman Holiday, in which she costarred with Gregofy Peck. But
already in Hollywood's inner circles she has caused more talk than any recent
actress, including Marilyn Monroe.
The talk
about Audrey has to do with her acting talents, charm, poise, dignity and
beauty. Nobody ever quite sums her up because Audrey defies definition. She is
both waif and woman of the world. She is disarmingly friendly and strangely
aloof. She is all queen (her grandfather was a Dutch baron) and all commoner —
you can imagine her lifting a lorgnette at a ball or milking a cow in a barn.
She has been called chic, soignée, ravissante, and a lot of other fancy French words; she has also
been called a slick chick.
In this
photographic essay Mark Shaw shows the elements that comprise Audrey’s elusive
charm. The pictures on these two pages show how she starts her working day, not
because there is anything so markable about it but because whatever Audrey
does, she looks pretty remarkable doing it.
For her new movie, Paramount’s “Sabrina Fair”
Audrey Hepburn stands ready to make up and costume to play the title role.
She is the director’s joy,
The studio help’s delight.
Once inside
the studio, Audrey concentrates sharply and assiduously on the business at
hand. Well disciplined and cooperative, with an innate respect for the
technical problems of movie-making, she inspires in her co-workers what one of
them calls “almost compulsory respect.” Her attitude toward her own acting is
notably intelligent. “She gives the distinct impression,” says her current
director, Billy Wilder, “that she can spell schizophrenia. I ask her to decide
which is the best take because her judgment is so sound. It may be she will get
lost in the whirl of technical revolution going on in the movies. That would be
too bad. There is no one like her.”
BEING COACHED by Director Billy
Wilder, she sings as he hums. Says he, “She has uncanny ability to withdraw
into herself when she acts and think about what she is saying.”
BEING ADMIRED, Audrey records song as film cutter leans raptly on the
piano to listen. Whenever she works, Audrey has audience of studio help. She
does her own singing, requires no dubbed-in voice.
GOING OVER LINES, she runs through
a scene with William Holden, who plays one of her suitors. Say he, “I think
people love her off the screen for the same reason they love her performance – a
kind of orderliness and formality.”
WHAT
DOES SHE DO AFTER WORK?
WORK.
DINNER ALONE is usually eaten on
floor where she squats easily because of lifelong ballet training. While eating
she often reads classical drama, with heave
helping of Shaw and Shakespeare.
Audrey's off
hours in Hollywood are occupied largely by work which directly affects her career.
This is nothing new for Audrey who has never been a girl with time on her
hands. As a child in The Netherlands, where she lived with her Dutch mother
during the Nazi occupation (her divorced father was English), Audrey gave dance
recitals to raise funds for the resistance movement.
After the war she moved to London to study
ballet and, to support herself, became a musical comedy chorus girl, did bit
parts in movies and finally was picked by the famous French novelist Colette to
act in her Broadway hit, Gigi.
Audrey says
she can’t remember ever having more than two hours in a row to call her own. By
resisting invitations and being determinedly aloof, she manages to get some free
time in Hollywood. “I have to be alone very often,” she says. “I’d be quite
happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my
apartment. That’s how I refuel.”
DESIGNING CLOTHES is a favorite
Hepburn hobby. She worked with Designer Edith Head on costumes for the film.
STUDYING
BALLET occupies her three nights a week.
Here
she works at bar with Instructor Eugene Loring.
SHE GOES HER
WAY ALONE AND REFUSES TO STAY PUT
Audrey has had
no difficulty in becoming a director's darling, critic’s darling, and a darling
to her co-workers. She has yet to prove that she will become an all-out public
darling. “Audrey,” says Director Wilder, “may be too good for most people.”
She is not an
easy symbol of sex, or sin, or purity — her mercurial beauty and her ability to
switch from gamin to glamor girl prevent her being an obvious type. She is
equipped, of course, with some standard attributes of stardom: she looks
helpless enough to protect, courageous enough to admire and pretty enough to
adore. But Hollywood is betting that the public will love Audrey for the very
qualities that raise her above most popular stars.
In her acting
she communicates warmth and humanity, seeming to open up the private rooms of
her mind to reveal what she is thinking and feeling. Audrey insists on going
her own way and has her own idea about her future. It involves, she says,
“living among all kinds of people. I don’t understand a lot, but the more I
learn, the better actress I'll be. That's why I don’t want to be tied down to
one spot, or work always in the same part of the country or world.”
ON DAY OFF Audrey strolls in front
of her Beverly Hills apartment, wearing a getup which is a favorite with her
and all the men who behold her; a pink cotton boy’s shirt with tails tied at
the waist and tight red slacks.
cover Audrey Hepburn
Life magazine, December 7, 1953
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[ ανάρτηση 24 Φεβρουαρίου 2024 :
Audrey Hepburn
Modern Screen magazine November 1953
Interview
Life magazine December 1953
Gallery of Stars
Καλλονές
Θεάματα
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