Audrey Hepburn Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  CHAPTER 1 - Holland and the Bridge Too Far (1929-1947)

  CHAPTER 2 - England and the Chorus Line (1948—1951)

  CHAPTER 3 - Stardom Beyond Belief (1951-1954)

  CHAPTER 4 - Ruling the World (1954-1957)

  CHAPTER 5 - Huckleberry Friend (1958-1962)

  CHAPTER 6 - Fair and Unfair Ladies (1963-1964)

  CHAPTER 7 - Nights Off for Givenchy (1965-1967)

  CHAPTER 8 - Roman Holiday II (1968-1979)

  CHAPTER 9 - Dutch Treat (1980-1989)

  CHAPTER 10 - Apotheosis (1988-1993)

  CHAPTER 11 - Farewell

  EPILOGUE

  FILMOGRAPHY

  TELEVISION

  STAGE

  SOURCE NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Acknowledgements

  INDEX

  “Talented, kind, generous, beautiful—it’s hard to find anything bad to say about Audrey Hepburn, and by the end of Barry Paris’s thoroughgoing biography, you are ready to take up arms against anyone who might dare.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Illuminate[s] the complex inner life of the highest paid actress of her time.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A sensitive, thorough biography of a beloved star.”—The Atlanta journal-Constitution

  “Warm and comprehensive ... Accompanied by superb photographs, Paris’s biography allows Hepburn’s grace, goodness, humility and charm to shine forth. A fitting tribute to a talented, beautiful and compassionate woman.”

  —The Sunday Star-Times (Auckland)

  “[Hepburn] was an intelligent, interesting figure who always saw her profession in a clear light. That comes through here, and alone is worth the price of the book.”

  —The Providence Journal-Bulletin

  “Splendid ... substantial.”

  —Financial Times (London)

  “Meticulously researched, elegantly written.”

  —The Scotsman

  “[A] full, informative, and touching biography.”

  —The Sunday Times (London)

  “Paris has given [Hepburn] the wise, sympathetic biography that she deserves. It stands far above the usual ‘celebrity bio,’ never indulging in gossip for its own sake. From beginning to end it is a solid, scrupulous account that allows Hepburn’s charm to shine on its own.” -The Daily Telegraph

  “A vibrant new portrait of Hepburn ... meticulous research.”

  —The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)

  “Lively reading.”

  —The Albany Times-Union

  “[Paris’s] account seems more personal than other recent biographies of Hepburn have been. In part, this may be because Paris had better access to family and friends, but he is also a very good writer, and his mix of anecdote and observation is just right. Despite her glamour and elegance, Hepburn is one star who has always been seen to have real heart, and this essence is what Paris captures.”

  —Booklist

  ALSO BY BARRY PARIS

  Louise Brooks

  Garbo

  Audrey hepburn

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  A Berkley Book

  Published by The Berkley Publishing Group

  A division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 1996 by Barry Paris

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / September 2001

  eISBN : 978-1-101-12778-0

  Paris, Barry.

  Audrey Hepburn/by Barry Paris.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-12778-0

  1. Hepburn, Audrey, 1929—93. 2. Motion picture actors and actresses—

  United States—Biography. I. Title.

  PN2287.H43P37 1996

  791.43’028’092 96-3029 CIP

  [B]—DC20

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  FOR GEORGE COLEMAN

  FOREWORD

  AUDREY HEPBURN is the biographer’s dream and nightmare simultaneously. No other film actress was so revered—inspired and inspiring—both for her on-screen appearances and for her passionate, off-screen crusade. She remains so beloved that virtually no one has a bad word to say about her. The worst thing she ever did, it seems, was forget to mention Patricia Neal at the 1964 Oscars. She left no lurid secrets or closet cruelties to be exposed. Beneath her kind, warm surface lay more kindness and warmth to the core.

  The challenge is to capture but not canonize her, to find the real woman beneath the icon. If this effort succeeds at that, it is due to all those who shared their knowledge of her with me. A full list of them is found in the Acknowledgments.

  But certain contributors warrant special recognition.

  I am indebted most of all to the family and Estate of Audrey Hepburn: Robert Wolders, Mel Ferrer, Sean Ferrer, Ian Quarles van Ufford, Hako and Christine Sixma van Heemstra, Yvonne Quarles van Ufford, Leopold Quarles van Ufford (former Dutch Consul General to the U.S.), Michael Quarles van Ufford, Mrs. Cemelia Wolders, Rick and Claudia Wolders de Abreu, Hans and Margaret Wolders Schouten, Dr. Ronald and Grada Wolders Glegg, Kirk Hallem and Rose Ganguzza. But I must stress that this is not an “authorized” biography; that it was not subject to the approval of the Hepburn family; that the family members who participated in this book did so in a limited way as individuals, not members of her Estate, and do not necessarily agree with any conclusions or characterizations herein. The Hepburn Estate reserves all rights to publish a book of its own in the future.

  I am very grateful for unprecedented access to the close friends of Audrey Hepburn who have rarely or never spoken about her before. Chief among them were Lord James Hanson, Connie Wald, Doris and Victoria Brynner, Hubert de Givenchy, Michael Tilson Thomas, Ralph Lauren, Anna Cataldi, Arabella Ungaro, Countess Lorean Gaetani-Lovatelli, Camilla Pecci-Blunt McGrath and Alfred Heineken III.

  Hepburn worked with many of the most distinguished directors in Anglo-American cinema, and I was honored to interview five of them: Fred Zinnemann, Richard Lester, Terence Young, Peter Bogdanovich and Billy Wilder. In a class by herself is Audrey Wilder, Billy’s wife, whose salty remarks pepper this narrative.

  Among Hepburn’s colleagues, the most valuable insights were provided by André Previn, musician and observer extraordinaire, and Roddy McDowall, a human archive whose generosity knows no bounds. Other marvelous reflections came from Leslie Caron, R. J. Wagner, James Coburn, Tony Curtis, Deborah Kerr and Peter Viertel, Eli Wallach, Patricia Neal, Valentina Cortesa, Sophia Loren, Ginny Mancini, Theodore Bikel, Katharine Dunham, Marni Nixon, Leonard Gershe, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and the late Jeremy Brett and Eva Gabor. Photographer Bob Willoughby was essential, as were Janis Blackschleger and Julie Leifermann of “Gardens of the World”—Audrey’s last, beautiful film project.

  My accounts of the Battle of Arnhem and Audrey’s experiences during the Nazi occupation of Holland are based on previously untapped material, located and translated by the foremost Dutch military historian and author, Paul Vroemen. I am deeply grateful to him and to Wyoming B. Pa
ris II—an excellent military historian in his own right—tor leading me to Mr. Vroemen. Another generous Dutchman, Leendert de Jong, programming director of the Hague Film Foundation, provided me with rare film footage from Hepburn’s early years.

  For film-historical information and advice, I relied as always on Steven Bach, Kevin Brownlow, James Card, Hugo Vickers, Lawrence Quirk, Leonard and Alice Maltin, Richard Lamparski and David Stenn. I also benefitted from the spadework of previous Hepburn biographers Charles Higham, Ian Woodward, Caroline Latham, Warren Harris, Alexander Walker, Sheridan Morley and James Robert Parish.

  The final sections on Audrey Hepburn’s dynamic labors for UNICEF could not have been written without the insights of Robert Wolders, Christa Roth, John Isaac, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, Jack Glattbach, Ian MacLeod and many other UNICEF personnel, as well as Senator Nancy Kassebaum, Anne Cox Chambers and William Banks. And I am grateful to G. P. Putnam’s Sons for agreeing to donate a portion of this book’s revenues to UNICEF and the Hepburn Estate’s “Hollywood for Children” foundation.

  It was a great loss to be deprived of George Coleman, the Putnam editor who conceived this book. But it was a privilege to have the ongoing support of Phyllis Grann and editors Laura Yorke, David Groff and especially David Highfill. Ian Trewin and Allegra Huston at Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) and Martin Appelmann at Bosch & Kuening (Netherlands) gave valuable assistance in Europe.

  No such sweeping, intercontinental project as this is possible without enormous domestic and moral support. In my case, it came from Robert (“le Diable”) Gottlieb, ace agent Dan Strone, the Deco duo of Charles Busch and Eric Myers, Jack Larsen, Wallace Potts, Rick and Deborah Geary, Ron Wisniski, Albert French, Stephen Baum, Rose Hayden, James and Queen Christina O’Toole, Pamela and David Loyle, Wyoming B. Paris I, Merica Paris and Wyoming B. Paris III.

  The most crucial come last: Writer-researcher Maria Ciaccia is simply the best in the business, and the most devoted. John Barba (with the long-suffering Margie’s support) is my brilliant friend, closest advisor and, in many ways, the coauthor of this book. And finally, Myrna—Diva and pillar of strength—whom I thank and love, as ever.

  BARRY PARIS

  Pittsburgh

  March 7, 1996

  CHAPTER 1

  Holland and the Bridge Too Far (1929-1947)

  “I had an enormous complex about my looks. I thought I was ugly and I was afraid nobody would ever marry me.”

  —AUDREY HEPBURN

  ON THE DAY OF THE GREATEST AIRBORNE INVASION IN HISTORY, Audrey Hepburn was a skinny girl of fifteen—stunned and exhilarated by the prospect of imminent liberation from the Nazis and incredulous that it was taking place in her own provincial Dutch town of Arnhem. Now, on September 17, 1944, Arnhem found itself the scene of the single most daring Allied gambit of World War II. That day—combined with 1,800 other days under the Nazi occupation—would have repercussions on her life forever.

  Strange circumstances had brought her there, and even stranger circumstances would turn the teen who stood watching that invasion into the most beautiful icon of her era. “Audrey Hepburn looks like every girl and like no girl,” said a friend. “She doesn’t even look like Audrey Hepburn.”1 She was a ballet dancer, who never performed a full ballet. She was the world’s highest paid film actress, who never studied acting.

  The pessimists said no new feminine ideal could emerge from the war, wrote Cecil Beaton, but the rubble of Holland, an English accent, and an American success would produce a wistful child who embodied the spirit of a new day. “Nobody ever looked like her before,” said Beaton, except maybe “those wild children of the French Revolution.” She had enormous eyes and thick eyebrows, an incredibly long and slender neck, and was “too tall” by the standard of the day. And yet, like a Modigliani portrait, “the distortions are not only interesting in themselves but make a completely satisfying composite.”2

  She would come to represent not just a new look but a new femininity—the diametric European opposite of the American sex goddess. Diva Maria Callas, and a few million others, would use her as a model.3 “She comes at an historical moment,” wrote critic Molly Haskell, “just before feminism, easy divorce and the sexual revolution.” She was the vulnerable waif, discreet and ambiguous to the end. That persona in Love in the Afternoon, said Stanley Kauffmann, was typical: “The sign of her preparing to take the plunge was when she removes a glove.”

  Child-women have fascinated film audiences since Lillian Gish, but Hepburn’s version came with a paradoxical glamour and sophistication. Most glamour queens began as waitresses or shop girls and had to be groomed for the throne by their studios. Not Audrey Hepburn. She arrived more or less in complete form, like Botticelli’s Venus on the half-shell. Beauty and glamour may coincide but are by no means the same thing. Beauty is visual—necessary but not sufficient for glamour, which is more abstract. And if glamour is a form of mass hypnosis, Hepburn was the finest film hypnotist of her time.4

  Of the great movie goddesses, only Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor decorated more covers of Life than Audrey Hepburn, and only Garbo held more aloof from Hollywood. Over forty years, she starred in just twenty films but imbued them all with a remarkable, original presence. When she sings “Moon River,” softly confiding her melancholy to her guitar, “she is not an actress we judge but a person we know and love,” wrote one admirer. “That face would have excused a lot of awkward performances and bad movies. Happily, it didn’t have to.”5

  What shined through, too, was her regal aura. “She is one of us,” Queen Mother Elizabeth reportedly told her daughter after they met Hepburn. It seemed to Haskell “as if she dropped out of the sky into the fifties, half wood-nymph, half princess, and then disappeared ... leaving no footprints ... a changeling of mysterious parentage, unidentifiable as to nationality or class.”

  Perhaps, then, it is no surprise to learn that she was the daughter of a real-life baroness.

  AUDREY HEPBURN’S MOTHER belonged to an ancient family of the Dutch nobility. Her grandfather, Baron Aernoud van Heemstra (1871-1957), was a lawyer and familiar figure at the court of Queen Wilhelmina. His ancestors had held high positions in the Netherlands as statesmen and soldiers from the twelfth century. Audrey’s life had its share of problems, but she would never suffer from an identity crisis: Portraits of her ancestors hung in museums and aristocratic homes throughout Holland.

  The van Heemstras’ original wealth derived from colonial trading, but Baron Aernoud preferred government service to commerce. In 1896, he married Elbrig van Asbeck, who bore him five daughters and a son. Ella, the third child and future mother of Audrey, was born in 1900 in the province of Gelderland.

  Ella wanted to study for the opera, but the stage was out of bounds. “Whatever you do, don’t associate with actors and actresses,” the Baron decreed. “You’d bring disgrace on the family.” Ella’s friend Alfred (“Freddie”) Heineken III, of the Dutch brewery family, calls her “a born actress, very dramatic, highly emotional, with a great sense of fun. But in those times, a daughter of the nobility was forbidden to have a career. She was expected to marry well and have lots of children.”

  Ella would lament that she “grew up wanting more than anything else to be English, slim, and an actress.” The dutiful daughter forsook those yearnings but vowed that if she ever had a talented daughter, she would encourage her. Her own comfortable childhood was spent at several family estates—notably Doorn Castle near Utrecht (now the Huis-Doorn Museum), a gorgeous manse surrounded by beautifully landscaped grounds and a swan-filled moat. But Ella’s generation of van Heemstras did not occupy it for long.

  Dwarfed by the powerful memory of World War Il is World War I: Few recall that Holland was neutral in that conflict, at the end of which Kaiser Wilhelm II fled Germany for the Netherlands. The victorious Allies declared him a war criminal, but the ever-clement Dutch declined to hand him over. The van Heemstras were obliged not only to accommodate him at Doorn but, in 1920, to sell it to
him. There he fantasized about his restoration and, in noxious Prussian fashion, cut down a tree a day “for exercise.” Joseph J. O’Donohue IV—a future in-law of the future actress Audrey Hepburn—recalls visiting Doorn in the early 1930s at the invitation of the Kaiser’s grandson, Prince Louis Ferdinand:One was received by Baron von Grancy, the Hofmarshall, and escorted across the moat to the castle. There, one was introduced to the other guests in a large room notable for [its German] furnishings. [After sherry] a lackey opened a large door [and] a plump Dachshund waddled regally into the room, followed by the Kaiser whose gait was considerably livelier. [After presentations], we proceeded into the handsome dining room where I was seated on the Emperor’s right. [Following lunch], we retired to the Smoking Room, largely dedicated to paintings and memorabilia of Frederick the Great, for whom the Kaiser had a hero-worship almost as great as his love for his grandmother, Queen Victoria.6

  The last of the kaisers lived at Huis-Doorn until his death in 1941 (when Hitler granted him a military funeral). The van Heemstras, long before that, had taken up residence at another of their estates just outside the western Dutch town of Arnhem: Zijpendaal, a pristine mini-castle, dating to 1743, was nestled in a picturesque rustic setting with stables and a water mill and out-buildings for the keepers of its well-manicured park and horses.a The Baron and his brood lived there in aristocratic fashion from 1910 through 1920, during which he served as the burgomaster—or mayor—of Arnhem.