Category: Excerpts
Excerpt: ‘Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.’
THE Audrey Hepburn book of 2010. Enjoy reading this excerpt from the new book by Sam Wasson, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman.
Chapter One
Thinking It
1951-1953
The First Holly
Traveling was forced upon little Truman Capote from the beginning. By the late 1920s, his mother, Lillie Mae, had made a habit of abandoning her son with relatives for months at a time while she went round and round from man to high-falutin’ man. Gradually the handoffs began to hurt Truman less — either that, or he grew more accustomed to the pain — and in time, his knack for adaptation turned into something like genius. He was able to fit in anywhere.
After his parents’ divorce, five-year-old Truman was sent to his aunt’s house in Monroeville, Alabama. Now was Lillie Mae’s chance to quit that jerkwater town and hightail it to a big city. Only there could she become the rich and adored society woman she knew she was destined to be, and probably would have been, if it weren’t for Truman, the son she never wanted to begin with. When she was pregnant, Lillie Mae — Nina, as she introduced herself in New York — had tried to abort him.
Perhaps if she had gone away and stayed away, young Truman would have suffered less. But Nina never stayed away from Monroeville for long. In a whirl of fancy fabrics, she would turn up unannounced, tickle Truman’s chin, offer up an assortment of apologies, and disappear. And then, as if it had never happened before, it would happen all over again. Inevitably, Nina’s latest beau would reject her for being the peasant girl she tried so hard not to be, and down the service elevator she would go, running all the way back to Truman with enormous tears ballooning from her eyes. A day or so would pass; Nina would take stock of her Alabama surroundings and once again, vanish to Manhattan’s highest penthouses.
Had he been older, Truman might have stolen his heart back from his mother the way he would learn to shield it from others, but in those days he was still too young to be anything but in love with her. She said she loved him, too, and at times, like when she brought him with her to a hotel, promising that now they’d really be together, it looked to him as though she finally meant it. Imagine his surprise then when Nina locked him in the room and went next door to make money-minded love with some ritzy someone deep into the night. Truman, of course, heard everything. On one such occasion, he found a rogue vial of her perfume and with the desperation of a junkie, drank it all the way to the bottom. It didn’t bring her back, but for a few pungent swallows, it brought her closer.
For the better part of Capote’s career as a novelist, that bottle — what was left of his mother — would be the wellspring of most of his creations. The idea of her, like the idea of love and the idea of home, proved a very hard thing to pin down. He tried, though. But no number of perfume bottles or whiskey bottles, no matter how deep or beautiful, could alter the fact of her absence. Nor could most of the women or men to whom Truman attached himself. They could never pour enough warmth into the void.
In consequence, Capote was equal parts yearning and vengeance, clutching at his intimates with fingers of knives that he would turn back on himself when left alone. However sharp, those fingers pulled his mother from the past and put her on the page where, in the form of language, he could remake her perfume into a bottomless fragrance called Holly Golightly. That’s how Truman finally learned the meaning of permanence.
Once the reading world got a whiff of it, eau d’Holly made everyone fall in love with Truman, which, since his mother had left him that first time, was the only thing he ever wanted. That and a home — a feeling of something familiar — like an old smell, a favorite scarf, or the white rose paperweight that sat on Truman’s desk as he wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
The White Rose Paperweight
When he was in Paris in 1948, soaking in accolades for his lurid first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman was delivered by Jean Cocteau to Colette’s apartment in the Palais Royal. She was nearing eighty, but the author of Gigi, the Claudine novels, and countless others, was still France’s grandest grande dame of literature.
In full recline, Colette, racked with arthritis, no doubt smiled at Truman’s author photograph on the dust jacket of Other Voices. Staring out at her with his languid eyes and slick lips, the boy’s salacious look was one the old woman knew well; in her day, she had rocked Paris with a few succes de scandales of her own, both on the page and off. Now here was this rascal with his angel’s face — a hungry angel’s face. How delicious. She felt for sure there existed a kind of artery between them, and even before he entered her bedroom, Truman sensed it too. “Bonjour, Madame.” “Bonjour.” They hardly spoke each other’s language, but as he approached her bedside, their bond grew from assured to obvious. The artery was in the heart.
After the tea was served, the room got warmer, and Colette opened Truman’s twenty-three-year-old hand. In it she placed a crystal paperweight with a white rose at its center. “What does it remind you of?” she asked. “What images occur to you?”
Truman turned it around in his hand. “Young girls in their communion dresses,” he said.
The remark pleased Colette. “Very charming,” she said. “Very apt. Now I can see what Jean told me is true. He said, ‘Don’t be fooled, my dear. He looks like a ten-year-old angel. But he’s ageless, and has a very wicked mind.’ ” She gave it to him, a souvenir.
Capote would collect paperweights for the rest of his life, but years later the white rose was still his favorite. Truman took it with him almost everywhere….
From Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman by Sam Wasson. Copyright 2010 by Sam Wasson. Excerpted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
Entry filed under: Books, Excerpts | Comments OffANTIQUES; To Daddy Dearest, From Audrey
This article is from the New York Times archives and contains snippets of letters from Audrey Hepburn to her father. The article was written in 2003, when Kenneth W. Rendell, a specialist in autographs, historical letters, sold 26 letters from Audrey Hepburn to her father. A similar collection of letters to her father and step-mother sold for £45,500 – nine times more than the estimate of between £3,000 and £5,000, in 1998.
Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) was celebrated for her luminous beauty, her acting ability and her humanitarian work for Unicef.
Another side of her character, that of a loving, family-oriented woman, emerges in the letters she wrote her father, Joseph Anthony Hepburn-Ruston; his third wife, Fidelma Hepburn-Ruston; and friends from 1951 to 1987.
Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels. When she was 6, her English banker father walked out on her mother, the Dutch Baroness Ella van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston. Her parents were formally divorced in 1938, when she was 9. Her father moved to Britain, where he was put in prison during World War II for pro-Fascist activities.
Mother and daughter were caught in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during the war; both suffered from malnutrition. Later they moved to London, where Ms. Hepburn studied ballet and became a model and actress.
Despite her father’s neglect, she reconnected with him when she was 30 and continued to write him faithfully for the next two decades. She signed her letters either Audrey or M.P., an abbreviation for Monkey Puzzle, her father’s nickname for her. Some of these are among the 26 Hepburn letters currently for sale by Kenneth W. Rendell, a specialist in autographs, historical letters, documents, manuscripts and rare books since 1959. The Rendell Gallery, 989 Madison Avenue, at 76th Street, has walls covered with framed letters by royals, composers, politicians and celebrities accompanied by their portraits.
Mr. Rendell sells presidential decrees, manuscripts from scientists like Albert Einstein, letters from Napoleon and Queen Victoria, and World War II memorabilia. Over the years he has helped Armand Hammer, Ross Perot, Malcolm Forbes and Bill Gates form their libraries and private collections.
He is fairly unusual in that he sells both historical and popular letters and manuscripts. ”I don’t deal in material by living people and normally wouldn’t do movie stars, but Hepburn stands out,” he said. He bought the Hepburn letters from an agent who had received them from Hepburn’s stepmother. He also has a few signed photos, including one of Rex Harrison and Hepburn taken on the set of ”My Fair Lady,” which both stars autographed.
Hepburn ”was clearly more than just a great movie star,” Mr. Rendell said. ”The letters show a complete, complex person dealing with the kinds of personal issues everyone faces — romances and tragedies — while balancing the needs of family and career.”
In 1963, having already won an Oscar for ”Roman Holiday” (1953), she writes about filming George Cukor’s ”My Fair Lady,” admitting that it was difficult for her to bring off the ”deliciously low, horribly dirty” side of Eliza. At that time she was married to the actor and director Mel Ferrer, who joined her in Los Angeles for six weeks of preparation and seven months of shooting the film with Harrison. He leased a villa in Bel Air with a tennis court and swimming pool for them and their young son, Sean. In August 1963 she writes:
- ”Dearest Daddy and Fidelma,
”The picture progresses. We start shooting on the 12th so the heat is on, any amount of things to finish before we start, but then if we rehearsed for another three years we still wouldn’t feel ready so we may as well start. I think so often of you both.”
On Sept. 28, she writes:
- ”Dearest Daddy,
”We are only just surviving a truly ‘infernal’ heat wave that has had us all gasping for air the last week. At the studio 110-118 every day, up here 90-110 degrees without any cool off during the night, we pant through the night on top of our beds only to find a yet hotter blast of desert air to greet us in the morning. Weekends are spent submerged in the pool and wet bathing suits are our survival dress — but there is little I can do about Eliza’s heavy wool skirts and laced up boots under the multi kilowatts of light. I just float away underneath.”
On Nov. 17 she writes again, ”The picture has gone very well and is certainly the most deeply satisfying job I’ve done.” She continues,
- ”No. 1 on our list of important things to do this coming year is to come and see you.”
She writes often about having to move constantly to be with her husband as he directs and produces his own projects.
On Aug. 31, 1964, she confides to her father,
- ”I wanted to write much sooner but left almost immediately for Paris — just got back and had to plunge instantly into the packing for Rome, trunks and all as we suddenly have to go soon as Mel starts in Rome on Monday.”
She and Ferrer were divorced in 1968. She married Dr. Andrea Mario Dotti in 1969, and they had a son, Luca, in 1970.
She also took care of her mother. In July 1980, she writes Fidelma,
- ”I have been struggling to find a way to come to see Daddy — but everything always happens at once! My mother is very ill too — I have just brought her back from the hospital, I have been nursing her day and night, her heart is very bad and she has just had a third stroke.”
She continues:
- ”Added to all this my marriage is in bad shape so am suffering on all sides. God willing I can perhaps come for the day when I bring Luca back from the sea. I am very torn about all this, but I can only do the best I can.”
Later that year she flew to Dublin with her friend Rob Wolders, Merle Oberon’s widower, to see her ailing father. ”It was an amazing experience,” Wolders recalls in Barry Paris’s 1996 book, ”Audrey Hepburn.” Her father ‘’said extraordinary things” about her ”and about his regrets for not having given her more in her childhood, for not showing his love for her.” He died the next day. Her divorce to Dotti was final in 1982.
Hepburn’s first big break came in 1951, when she was cast in the Broadway version of ”Gigi.” That year she writes a friend in London about filming ”Monte Carlo Baby” in Monaco: ”Having a gorgeous time. Not working until Wednesday now, so can bask in the sun to my heart’s content.”
As it happened, the French novelist Colette was in Monaco working on a stage production of her book ”Gigi.” One day Colette watched the shooting of ”Monte Carlo Baby.” Afterward she told Hepburn, ”You are my Gigi.”
”These letters give you a sense of the kind of person Hepburn was,” Mr. Rendell said. ”She was not someone created by other people. Her unique style came from her.” He is selling the letters only as a set, for $175,000.
Will the letters sell? ”In the 18 years I’ve been here I have never had an Audrey Hepburn letter cross my desk,” said Marsha Malinowski, a senior specialist in the books and manuscripts department of Sotheby’s in New York.
But Christie’s in London sold a batch of 15 Hepburn letters, postcards and photographs in December 2000 for $13,000. In December 1998 it sold 12 Hepburn letters, consigned by Hepburn’s stepmother, for $72,000, against a high estimate of $8,000.
Christie’s New York has had two banner years in its books and manuscripts department. The totals for 2001 sales were $47 million; for 2002, $55 million. ”It’s a very hot market,” said Bendetta Roux, a Christie’s spokesperson. Sotheby’s, by comparison, had sales of $34 million in 2001 and $9 million in 2002.
From: The New York Times, article by Wendy Moonan, August 22, 2003 and BBC News, December 10, 1998
Entry filed under: Excerpts, Press Mentions | Comments OffAudrey Hepburn Treasures
We LOVE this book! The Audrey Hepburn Treasures is FABULOUS!
The Audrey Hepburn Treasures contains interviews, memories, unseen family photos, and beautifully reproduced replicas of Hepburn memorabilia:
LEFT: Two photos from the contact sheet from Audrey and Mel’s Wedding in 1954. “These pictures were shot by a family member or close friend who was among the twenty-five guests invited to join the couple for their wedding ceremony and reception in Burgenstock, Switzerland.”
BELOW: “Ticket for an invitational preview screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s [on October 19, 1961]. Audrey’s performance as Holly Golightly became the defining role of her career, and the character’s Givenchy-designed “look” still inspires generations of fashion-conscious women.”
You can literally spend hours pouring over this book!
Excerpt: CELL (from Joseph Campana’s The Book of Faces)
Enjoy an excerpt from Joseph Campana’s charming book of poetry, The Book of Faces.
CELL
It’s the part of the film (Charade) after Audrey Hepburn has lumped ice cream on Cary Grant’s suit (though she doesn’t offer to lick it off) so he takes a shower fully dressed in her bathroom because she’s trapped him there (we can understand why) for a kiss (or something) but got (doesn’t it figure) slapstick instead.
I know that moment. Cary Grant should walk out in a housecoat with a towel wrapped around his neck, saying something funny, something irresistible. Because she’s just heard something awful on the phone. Was it about the nature of men? Always more names than fit on a passport, more features that fit in a damp bathrobe.
He doesn’t just walk in, though. Just like her husband (whose name she didn’t even know) never walked back in (someone threw him off a train). So it makes sense to see her instead, to see her everywhere (women make the best spies). When the door opens, no one’s there. She never gets to walk out of the frame (not even in Givenchy). She doesn’t get to walk into time.
No one gets to walk into the dark with eyes open. Into the shadowy closet of water where a thousand perfect souls swim like notes in the air, glimmering in a great chain that swirls upward, waiting to cycle back to life on the pulsing cell of the eye, of the mind at night, seeing what it does in the dark. No one sees angels. No one hears voices, no less explanations. Machines tick seconds on an ageless band spiraling into itself.
She picks up another cigarette (just breathe). Paces a silver cell: space without time. Savors the smolder that never kills, never burns. That’s the magic of the place (take me with you). She waits for the next one, the man who will come out of the darkness in satin. There’s always another one coming out, another one passing through.
From: The Book of Faces by Joseph Campana (Graywolf Press).
Entry filed under: Books, Excerpts, The Book of Faces | Comments OffExcerpt: HOW TO MAKE A MILLION (from Joseph Campana’s The Book of Faces)
Enjoy an excerpt from Joseph Campana’s charming book of poetry, The Book of Faces.
HOW TO MAKE A MILLION
1. Move to Switzerland for tax purposes.
2. “Steal” the part of Eliza (My Fair Lady) from the woman who played it on Broadway and could actually sing (Julie Andrews) and demand $1,000 a week for expenses while not actually realizing that another woman (Marnie Nixon) would actually play the voice of your song. Don’t get nominated for the Oscar.
3. Make a cameo appearance as an angel in a Steven Spielberg film (Always) then turn the money over to a charity of your choosing (UNICEF). Always take a part as a nun.
4. Marry a multilinqual man more than a decade older than you (Mel Ferrer) to tell you what to eat, what to wear, what to star in, and how much to change. Let him pimp you in the Amazon with a younger man (Anthony Perkins) to make a massive flop (Green Mansions) and then shove you in a basement as a blind woman to save his career (Wait Until Dark) thus ending your marriage but earning you an Oscar nod. Don’t get the Oscar.
5. Invest, invest, invest.
6. Star in a melodrama (Sidney Sheldon’s Bloodline), described as “a meretricious thriller of a type that would find its most exotic mutation in the next decade when series like Dallas and Dynasty hooked the viewing multitudes on several continents,” playing a pharmaceutical heiress half your age. Refer to this as “drawing your pension.”
7. Star as a cigarette girl, end as an angel: be a queen between.
8. Win an Oscar and a Tony for starring roles on screen and stage respectively (Roman Holiday and Ondine). Then, multiply your salary for Roman Holiday by an appropriate number with a repeating decimal (142.85142). Or, multiply your salary for Sabrina by a different by equally appropriate number with a different but equally repeating decimal (66.6). Or, total your salaries for War and Peace, Ondine, Mayerling, The Nun’s Story, The Unforgiven, and Green Mansions. Or, add up your salaries for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charade, Two for the Road, and How to Steal a Million and then divide by an appropriate number that does not repeat (3). What could be better than numbers?
9. Never eat too much. Try not to eat too little.
10. Clip coupons. Buy something smaller than a mansion (nine bedrooms) preferably in a small town. Stagger your salaries into yearly payments. Have an expensive divorce (at least once or twice). Live modestly as a matron in Rome (at least once or twice). Buy a lottery ticket and test your luck. Pick your numbers — pick with care.
From: The Book of Faces by Joseph Campana (Graywolf Press).
Entry filed under: Books, Excerpts, The Book of Faces | Comments OffExcerpt: “I CAN RECALL…” (from Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit)
Enjoy an excerpt from Sean Hepburn Ferrer’s delightful book, Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit.
I remember that unmistakable soft smell that sometimes still envelopes me when I open an old box of my mothers clothes. I remember her soft hands and those powerful embraces that told how much and how deeply she loved.
I remember her long hair, her bare feet, which as a little boy I often caressed while she put her makeup on. Whenever she had to go to a dinner or a cocktail party, she would always say, “Oh, if only I could stay home and eat in the kitchen with you.â€
I remember the beautiful evening dresses: Givenchy always, and Valentino in Rome… peacoats in the winter, collars turned up… square-toed boots in the 1970s, cotton pants and Lacostes in the summer, ballet slippers and a long robe around the house in the morning…
Sean Hepburn Ferrer offers an intimate glimpse into the life of his mother. In this emotional and candid memoir, Sean tells his mother’s remarkable story. It is a rare look at Audrey not from the photographer’s lens, but through the eyes of the son who adored her. Learn more about Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit.
Entry filed under: An Elegant Spirit, Books, Excerpts | Comments OffExcerpt: THE REAL AUDREY HEPBURN (from The Audrey Hepburn Treasures)
Enjoy an excerpt from The Audrey Hepburn Treasures, a brand new book from the Hepburn Estate containing interviews, memories, unseen family photos, and beautifully reproduced replicas of Hepburn memorabilia — “a dazzling celebration of an extraordinary human being, that offers fans an intimate and revealing portrait of the woman they admire and adore.” Learn more about this book.
DICKINSON remembered seeing Audrey in Sauce Piquante and brought her in to test for the role of Nora. Although other girls tested for the part, Valentina Cortese fought for Audrey, and she was given her first dramatic role.
Secret People did not receive the warm reception everyone had hoped for, but Audrey got special mention in Variety: “Audrey Hepburn, in a minor role as the kid sister, combines beauty with skill, shining particularly in two short dance sequences.” In a Sunday Graphic article recapping 1951 film releases, The Stars Didn’t Shine in 1951, writer Jack Davies had at least one good thing to say: Audrey Hepburn arrived.
While still shooting Secret People, Audrey was told about a small role in a film being shot simultaneously in English and French entitled Monte Carlo Baby. The job paid well and Audrey’s character was to be outfitted in Christian Dior dresses. And, as if that wasn’t enough, filming would take place for one month in beautiful Monte Carlo. The French Riviera was a place Audrey had always wanted to visit. And on May 29, that’s exactly where Audrey found herself, standing in the lobby of the Hotel de Paris.
The film, which was not well received, gave Audrey 12 minutes of screen time. The New York Times nevertheless mentioned Audrey in its review and said, “It is rather astonishing how she stands out in that seared desert of mediocrity”.
If the film had no future, the same could not be said of Audrey. In what would turn out to be a classic case of being in the right place at the right time, Audrey’s future would play out without her ever having to leave the lobby of the Hotel de Paris.
Famed French novelist Colette and her husband, Maurice Goudeket, were staying at the hotel, as guests of Prince Rainier. Colette’s novel, Gigi, was being adapted for Broadway by Anita Loos, a prolific playwright, novelist, film producer and screenwriter. Two hundred girls had already auditioned in New York for the title role. Luckily, they hadn’t found her yet.
As soon as Colette set eyes on Audrey in the hotel lobby, she knew she’d spotted her Gigi. “What author ever expects to see one of his brain-children appear suddenly in the flesh?” Colette mused. “Not I, and yet, here it was. This unknown young woman was my own thoroughly French Gigi come alive!”
When Colette told Audrey she wanted her to play Gigi on Broadway, Audrey responded with her trademark modesty. Grateful and sincere, Audrey replied, “I’m sorry, Madame, but it is impossible. I wouldn’t be able to, because I can’t act.”
Colette, however, was completely charmed by Audrey and felt she already embodied so many of Gigi’s qualities that she sought a second opinion, arranging for Audrey to meet Anita Loos at the Savoy in London.
Audrey showed up wearing a man’s white shirt tied around her waist, a black skirt and flats. She read for Loos, who completely agreed with Colette’s assessment of Audrey. But there was someone else who would have to approve casting Audrey in the title role: producer Gilbert Miller.
Miller heard Audrey read and was not impressed. Colette still insisted on casting Audrey and Miller decided to trust veteran character actress Cathleen Nesbitt’s opinion. They put Audrey onstage and, unfortunately, she was barely audible. Nonetheless, Nesbitt was favourably inclined towards Audrey and offered to personally coach her in New York. Miller acquiesced and Audrey was cast in the lead role of Gigi at a salary of $500 a week.
By all accounts, it seemed that James Hanson was the only one disappointed in Audrey’s acceptance of the role. However, she pledged to marry him at the end of Gigi’s run and Hanson was appeased, at least for the moment.
An announcement placed in the December 4, 1951, edition of the London Times newspaper read: Mr J.E. Hanson and Miss A. Hepburn: The engagement is announced between James, son of Mr and Mrs Robert Hanson, of Norwood Grange, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, and Audrey Hepburn, daughter of Baroness Ella van Heemstra, of 65 South Audley St, London, W1.
But before she left London to begin work on Gigi in New York, Audrey was asked to do what would turn out to be a career-making screen test. The much beloved director, William Wyler, sought an unknown, non-American girl to play a princess in his new movie, Roman Holiday. Not available to do the screen test himself, Wyler asked Thorold Dickinson, Audrey’s director on Secret People, to conduct the test for him.
On September 18, 1951, Audrey arrived at Pinewood Studios ready to begin. She’d memorised her scenes and did a very capable, nice job with the readings.
But it was what happened after the screen test that got Audrey the role. Because Dickinson knew there was more to Audrey than what the screen test could deliver, he decided to keep the camera running after the test had concluded. Audrey came alive while she talked casually with Dickinson and he was able to capture for Wyler a much more authentic picture of her.
Wyler reviewed the test and was captivated by Audrey. She was offered a salary of $12,500 and an option for a second Paramount picture. “William Wyler came to London looking for an unknown,” Audrey quipped, “and I was fully qualified.”
Characteristically, she was worried about her abilities and hoped that the role of Princess Anne in Roman Holiday would not be bigger than what she was capable of handling.
This acknowledgment was reflected in the note she sent to Richard Mealand, chief of Paramount Pictures. “Heaven help me live up to all this,” Audrey wrote, not knowing that Paramount was thinking the exact same thing. The studio and everyone else was waiting to see how Gigi would be received. Only then would they know if heaven would answer Audrey’s prayer.
Audrey was immediately immersed in Gigi rehearsals and coaching lessons with Nesbitt, who had been cast as her great-aunt Alicia in the production. Rehearsals did not go well for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was that the director, Raymond Rouleau, was French and did not speak a word of English.
Consequently, Anita Loos translated the script into French and the cast was forced to rehearse in French for a play being performed in English. The cast began to wobble and buckle under the rehearsal conditions. The strain was also getting to Audrey. She was wrought with doubts and misgivings. Was she in over her head?
Gigi previewed in Philadelphia on November 8, 1951, at the Walnut Street Theatre. The play had a shaky start, but the critics went crazy for Audrey. She was called the acting find of the year.
A Variety review said, “Miss Hepburn has real talent as well as a magnetic personality. Furthermore, in a wholesome and youthful way, she exudes sex.”
Three days before opening on Broadway, Gigi was previewed once again at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. Audrey’s reviews were glowing.
On November 24, 1951, Gigi opened on Broadway with James Hanson and Ella in the audience. Because it opened on a Saturday night, the cast and crew had to wait through an interminable weekend before the reviews came out on Monday morning.
As it turned out, it was worth the wait. Walter Kerr of the Herald Tribune said Audrey “was as fresh and frisky as a puppy out of a tub. She brings a candid innocence and a tomboy intelligence to a part that might have gone sticky, and her performance comes as a breath of fresh air in a stifling season.”
Accordingly, on the following evening, the marquee at the Fulton Theatre went from having all seven cast members names situated below Gigi, to AUDREY HEPBURN in GIGI. It was Audrey herself who hoisted the A on to the bulb-laden marquee with press photographers snapping away.
The Fulton Theatre sold out every seat for the six-month run of the play.
James and Audrey still found time to see each other during Gigi’s run, as he had offices and an apartment in New York. Their intention to wed had been left informal with an understanding that it would take place sometime after Gigi closed and before Roman Holiday began shooting.
To make it official, James proposed to Audrey again and presented her with a beautiful engagement ring. Audrey was 22 and engaged to a wonderful, supportive man. And as if that wasn’t enough, she was also the toast of Broadway.
This is an edited extract from The Audrey Hepburn Treasures, by Ellen Erwin and Jessica Z. Diamond, with a foreword by Sean Hepburn Ferrer (Simon and Schuster, $59.95). The book will be released next month.
Source: The Courier-Mail, October 21, 2006
Entry filed under: Books, Excerpts, Press Mentions | Comments OffExcerpt: HOW TO BE A STAR (from Joseph Campana’s The Book of Faces)
Enjoy an excerpt from Joseph Campana’s charming book of poetry, The Book of Faces.
HOW TO BE A STAR
1. Name your goldfish George, your dog Famous, your cardinal Richelieu, your fawn Ip.
2. Collapse into (Marcel le Bon, Lord James Hanson, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, Mel Ferrer, Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Anthony Perkins, Peter Finch, Burt Lancaster, George Peppard, James Garner, Cary Grant, William Holden, Rex Harrison, Peter O’Toole, Albert Finney, Andrea Doti, Sean Connery, Ben Gazzara, Robert Wolders)’s arms.
3. Try diamonds. Try Paris, try Rome. Try New York, try London. Try singing, try dancing. Try Givenchy, try Valentino. Try older, try younger. Try men, try women. Try too hard: don’t bother at all. Try flowers.
4. Take up a habit: dogs or clothes, praying or eating—don’t stop eating.
5. Learn the right tune: “Isn’t It Romanticâ€â€”“La Vie en Roseâ€â€”“Fascinationâ€â€”“Wouldn’t It Be Loverlyâ€â€”“Moon Riverâ€â€”“Charade.†Sing, and the moon’s reaching for you.
6. Arrange poignant childhood experiences: paternal abandonment, devotion to ballet, war, Nazi invasion and occupation, malnutrition, near starvation, disappearance, liberation. Arrange poignant adult experiences: depression, anxiety, anorexia, troubled marriages, miscarriages. Arrange poignant golden years: flowers, children, land mines, charity.
7. Always know which side of your face to show.
8. Make brassieres a thing of the past. Wear ballet slippers. Show a bit of neck, a bit of shoulder. Dress down before you dress up. Forget makeup. Don’t go blond. Find the right hat for the right hair. Do your own hairdo at home. Go for Givenchy. Diamonds after forty, skirts before. Go new wave if you can. Don’t just wear: live. Try Valentino, Lauren, Ferragamo. Look good in everything. Look good in nothing.
9. Be discovered by Colette, bankrolled by Paramount.
10. Encourage emulation. Inspire idolatry. Be a muse, be a nymph, be a sprite, bewitch me. Rise from obscurity. Set trends. Break habits. Make statements. Count blessings. Distribute kindnesses. Arouse devotion. Devote yourself to nobility. Ascend, ascend, ascend.
From: The Book of Faces by Joseph Campana (Graywolf Press).
Entry filed under: Books, Excerpts, The Book of Faces | Comments Off
