Audrey Hepburn …. our beloved ‘huckleberry friend” 1929 – 1993

She was studying to be a ballerina until a war interrupted her dream. She never studied acting but she won an Academy Award for her first feature film. A screen test found her eyes too big, her nose too small and her mouth too wide but she became one of the most photographed women in the world. Then she opened her heart and her arms to the children of the world and became one of the most beloved stars of them all.

She was born Audrey Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston in Brussels, Belgium. Her mother was the Baroness Ella van Heemstra descended from a long line of Dutch nobility. Her father was Joseph Hepburn-Ruston, a British subject of Scots-Irish parentage and an international jack-of-all-trades. Audrey later challenged his status as a banker saying “he had no real job at all”. Both parents had been married before and Ella had two sons by her first marriage. Audrey adored her half-brothers but was crushed when her parents divorced before her ninth birthday.

 

 

RAF gliders over Arnhem	The Battle on the Arnhem Bridge
The Arnhem Bridge still stands today.

 

Audrey went to school in England until she was almost ten and then her mother took her to Holland. The drums of war were sounding and the baroness felt her home in Arnhem would be safe. The baroness was very wrong. On May 10th, 1940 at 3 a.m., the German army invaded Holland and Arnhem was their first stop. Germany held Holland in their grasp for four years while family estates, gold and other valuables, even the food that should have fed the Dutch was confiscated and sent to Germany. The deprivation almost cost Audrey her life.

 

Audrey and Babs Johnson at "High Button  Shoes" rehearsal.

In the autumn of 1944 Allied forces dropped 10,000 men behind enemy lines to capture 3 bridges in Holland. Audrey could see the white gliders and parachutes from her window.But the bridge at Arnhem held and only 2,500 of those men survived the bloodbath. It was called “The Bridge Too Far” and a book and a film were made to recall the disaster. On May 4th, 1945 (Audrey’s 16th birthday) Holland was finally liberated.(also see Arabella’s Notes for more on Audrey’s life in Holland during the war).

After the war Audrey and the baroness left Arnhem for Amsterdam and then England. In London Audrey tried to recapture her dream of becoming a ballerina but soon realized the dream was gone. She got work modeling hats, as a file clerk and finally dancing in a nightclub revue. A successful audition for the London production of the Broadway hit musical “High Button Shoes” led to more Broadway shows and by 1950, bit parts in British films.

...getting coiffed!

She even fell in love. The lucky guy was James Hanson, young British industrialist and the future Lord Hanson. But their engagement and planned fall wedding was sidetracked by Audrey’s career. She wanted to be a movie star more than she wanted to be a sedate Lady Hanson!

Audrey was in Monaco for a bit part in “We Go To Monte Carlo” when French novelist Collette spotted her and immediately set out to snare her for the Broadway production of “Gigi” But before Audrey even took a breath on Broadway, Paramount wanted her for a role in “Roman Holiday”. The play opened on Broadway on November 24th, 1951 and the marquee read “GIGI with Audrey Hepburn”. A few days later it was changed to “AUDREY HEPBURN in ‘Gigi’”! When the play closed on May 31st, 1952, Audrey walked off the stage and onto her flight to Rome and movie stardom.

At the fountain in Rome

In “Roman Holiday” Audrey played a princess who slips her royal leash for a few days in Rome. Her leading man was Gregory Peck currently tops at the box office. Before filming was over, Peck asked that Audrey get equal billing “because this girl is going to win the Oscar for her very first performance”.

In the summer of 1953 Audrey met two men who would become very important in her life. One was Hubert de Givenchy, the French coutourier who would give Audrey her most defining look. The other was Mel Ferrer, who would become her first husband. Audrey followed her next picture “Sabrina” with a Broadway play “Ondine” about a water nymph in love with a faithless knight played by Ferrer. The two soon ecame a twosome. On March 25th, 1954, still wearing her “Ondine” makeup, Audrey rushed to the Pantages Theater to accept her Oscar for “Roman Holiday”. And on a rainy September day in Switzerland, she married Mel Ferrer, twelve years her senior and already twice divorced.

Audrey by Givenchy

Between 1954 and 1960 Audrey made six films all with great reviews. She received two more Oscar nominations as well as numerous other awards here and abroad. But her dream of becoming a mother seemed just beyond her grasp. A pregnancy early in her marriage ended in a miscarriage. A second in late 1958, complicated by a bad fall from a horse while filming ‘The Unforgiven” ended the same way.

Audrey and Mel on their wedding day

She went home to Switzerland for a complete rest and everal months later, she tried again. Third time was the charm and Sean Ferrer was born on January 17th, 1960.

1965 was a year of disappointment and renewal. Snubbed by Hollywood and the Academy for “My Fair Lady”, the role they felt belonged to Julie Andrews, Audrey needed to retreat and regroup. So she went to Switzerland and, for the first time in her life, bought a home of her own. In a village with a very long name….Tolochenazur Morges ( shortened to Tolochenaz), she bought an 18th Century farmhouse she named “La Paisible” …the place of peace.

But it wasn’t enough to keep her marriage together. Slowly the fabric of the relationship was fraying and hopes for a second child to help save it ended with another miscarriage. The marriage ended with it.

"La Paisible"

In the summer of 1968 Audrey met Dr. Andrea Dotti, 30 years old and the assistant director of the Rome University psychiatric clinic. Audrey was lonely and in need of someone strong and supporting in her life. Feeling she had found that someone, she married Dotti on January 18th, 1969. Four months later she was happily pregnant. Another son, Luca, was born on February 8th, 1970. But Audrey hadn’t made a film since before her marriage and seemed to be perfectly content to stay home at Tolochenaz with the children. It was that decision that put a strain on her marriage. It seems Dr. Dotti wanted a movie star for a wife not a mother hen. Audrey went back to work but the dream of a happy family life didn’t survive.

Wedding #2

Audrey did only 3 more films before retiring from the screen (she would come back for her ‘angel” part in “Always” to raise money for UNICEF). She offered her services as a goodwill ambassador to UNICEF in 1988 after Danny Kaye’s death not knowing at the time it would take over her life. She also met Robert Wolders, the grieving widower of Merle Oberon and they found something in each other that they could share. But it was the children that occupied their lives from then on…the thousands of starving children that needed Audrey and her celebrity to bring their story to the world at large. And she gave wholeheartedly until her health finally gave out.

Audrey began to have abdominal pain and colitis before her trip to Somalia in August, 1992 and it got progressively worse. But Audrey put off having tests to tend to her many UNICEF duties. On November 2nd, 1992 she had surgery to remove a malignant tumor in her colon but despite the surgeons efforts the cancer spread to her other organs. Audrey Hepburn died at Tolochenaz on January 20th, 1993. She was 63 years old.

 

 

 

Audrey Hepburn's grave in the little cemetery near her home in Tolochenaz.

 

 

For more on Audrey Hepburn and her life onscreen and off see Arabella’s Notes. For my sources on this or any other article in this magazine write to me at mamalion27@aol.com

Filmography

We Go To Monte Carlo 1951 Laughter in Paradise 1951 One Wild Oat 1951 The Lavender Hill Mob 1951 Young Wives Tales 1951 The Secret People 1952 We Will All Go To Monte Carlo 1952 Roman Holiday 1953 Sabrina 1954 War and Peace 1956 Funny Face 1957 Love in the Afternoon 1957 Green Mansions 1959 The Nun’s Story 1959

The Unforgiven 1960 Breakfast at Tiffany’s 1961 The Children’s Hour 1961 A New Kind Of Love 1963 Charade 1963 Paris When It Sizzles 1964 My Fair Lady 1964 How To Steal a Million 1966 Two for the Road 1967 Wait Until Dark 1967 Robin and Marian 1976 Bloodline 1979 They All Laughed 1981 Always 1989