by Sam Wasson
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.
AUDREY AWOKEN
It all began for Audrey Hepburn in spring of 1951 on a gorgeous day like any other. She rose at dawn, had a cup of coffee in bed, and took her breakfast—two boiled eggs and a slice of whole wheat toast—to the window, where she could watch the morning people of Monte Carlo sail their yachts into the sea. Such a leisurely breakfast was a rare pleasure for her; back in England, where she had been working regularly, they started shooting at sunup. But the French liked to do things differently. They didn’t really get going until après dejeuner, and they worked late into the night, which gave Audrey mornings to explore the beaches and casinos, and time to place a call to James, her fiancé, who was off in Canada on business—again.
He really was a very sweet boy, and attractive, and from the Hansons, a good and wealthy family. He loved her of course, and she loved him, and from the way it looked in the press, they had everything. But everything is nothing when there’s no time to enjoy it. With her schedule taking her from film to film, and his seemingly endless tour of the world’s ritziest boardrooms, it was beginning to look like they were betrothed in name only. Perhaps, Audrey thought, she was foolish to think she could be an actress and a wife. If she wanted to settle down—and she did, very badly—she would have to put films aside. At least, that’s what James said. Only then could they really truly be together.
Somewhere in her mind they were. They had a house, two or three children, and a limitless expanse of days broken only by sleep. Thankfully, her role in Monte Carlo Baby was only going to last a month. That was no small consolation.
COLETTE AWOKEN
The Hotel de Paris was unquestionably the most stunning hotel in all of Monaco. Judging from its façade, a Belle Epoque confection of arches and spires, only the absolute cream of society could make a habit of staying there. For Audrey, who had never been to the Riviera, being at the Hôtel de Paris was a thrill tempered only by her longing for James and the inanity of the film (the script was drivel; some semimusical fluff about a missing baby). But for Colette, it was nothing unusual, just another drop in the great gold bucket of luxury; she had been a regular since 1908. Now, as a guest of Prince Rainier, Colette was the palace queen, and as her wheelchair was turned down the hotel’s stately corridors, that’s exactly how the footmen greeted her. No doubt they saw in the old woman all the arterial fire of her novels, which seemed to throb through her from toe to tête, culminating in an explosion of red-broccoli hair.
The doctors sent her there to rest, but resting, for Colette, required more effort than working. Since her New York agent’s assistant had taken it upon himself to single-handedly produce a play of her novel Gigi, Colette couldn’t get the idea out of her mind. She’d even gone a little delirious trying to cast the title part and began to see Gigis everywhere—on the street, in the sea, and popping up in photographs. But none quite satisfied Colette, and time wore expensively on. Those who had invested in the project grew restless, and—as tends to be the case in most casting legends—they were about to force the play upon a proven star, when, at the last minute, Colette was disturbed on her way to dinner.
What was about to happen would change Audrey’s life forever.
To her annoyance, Colette discovered that the main dining room had been closed for the shooting of Monte Carlo Baby. Would she, the maître d’ asked her, take her dinner in the breakfast room instead? Absoluement non! Insulted, Colette pushed her way right into the dining room and right into the middle of a take.
The scene stopped dead in its tracks. The crew looked up. No one breathed, except Colette. Catching sight of a strangely compelling young woman, Colette squinted through the beaming lights and raised her eyeglasses for a closer look.
Audrey, of course, had no inkling of being watched. Nor had Colette any inkling of who she was. What she did know, however, was that she seemed to have stepped into her own novel: in face, body, and poise, she was staring at Gigi come to life.
Perhaps Colette stared for full minutes, or perhaps just moments, but most likely she spoke out instantly, for as Audrey has proven millions of times since, that is all it takes for her to overcome whoever lays eyes on her. In an instant—a scientific measurement when speaking of stars—she conveyed to Colette what it took the author an entire novel to describe. That is, the story of a Parisian girl, who at sixteen, was set to undergo the education of a courtesan.
“Voilà,” Colette said to herself, “c’est Gigi.”
And like that, Audrey’s transformation had begun.
“Voilà…” Like that.
It all sounds so magical, and indeed in a way it was, but like all perfect acts of casting, Colette’s epiphany was born of more than just gut feeling—it was born from fact. Although Audrey’s innate sensuality, her Gigi-ness, was written all over her, no one until Colette had seen it. Perhaps it was because of Audrey’s strangeness. Her legs were too long, her waist was too small, her feet were too big, and so were her eyes, nose, and the two gaping nostrils in it. When she smiled (and she did often), she revealed a mouth that swallowed up her face and a row of jagged teeth that wouldn’t look too good in close-ups. She was undoubtedly not what you would call attractive. Cute maybe, charming, for sure, but with only the slightest hint of makeup and a bust no bigger than two fists, she was hardly desirable. The poor girl was even a bit round-faced.
And yet Colette couldn’t stop staring. She was fascinated.
WHAT SHE SAW PART I: THE FACE
Audrey’s might not have been the face of a goddess, but like most teenagers, Gigi did not begin as a goddess. She was simply a girl on the precipice of young adulthood, full of potential, but without experience. And her eyes said that, didn’t they? They were certainly on the big side, but they were also wide, and wide-eyed people have a look of perpetual curiosity. Colette’s Gigi had that. So do all those who don’t yet know the world. But that nose would be a problem, wouldn’t it? It was not sleek or pretty in the manner of high society ladies, and neither were her hair, teeth, or thickset eyebrows. So how would such a Gigi, looking not unlike a stray puppy, gain access to the haut monde?
There was little that was womanly about her in the sexual sense, nothing that said she was capable of pleasing a man, and certainly nothing that looked ahead to the naughty insinuations of Holly Golightly.
Or was there? Was there a drop of sex someplace beneath?
Smiling now, Colette lowered her eyeglasses and leaned forward for a closer look.
WHAT SHE SAW PART II: THE BODY
The girl carried herself like a suppressed ballerina. Despite what were then considered physical imperfections, Audrey had a remarkable discipline in movement, one that told of self-possession impossibly beyond her years, and so much so that to watch her, Colette had to wonder at how a thing so young could have understood poise so completely. In her simplest gesture Audrey communicated a complete knowledge of propriety, and by extension, an inner grace that belied whatever made her look that unusual in the first place. She wasn’t dancing, but she might as well have been.
EVERYTHING THAT IS IMPORTANT IN A FEMALE
“Madame?”
A flock of admirers had approached Colette. She swatted them off. (Colette would enchant them later. If she was in the mood.) The old woman reached up and pulled down an unsuspecting member of the crew.
“Who is that?” she croaked, nodding in Audrey’s direction.
“That is Mademoiselle Hepburn, madame.”
“Tell her I want to speak with her.” She released him and added a touch of pink powder to her nose. “Tell them to bring her to me.”
Colette’s conviction grew as she watched Mademoiselle Hepburn approach. This girl was even more startling up close than she was from afar.
“Bonjour, madame,” she said.
“Bonjour.”
Colette took her ha
nd, and together, they moved into the hotel foyer. There she told Audrey that she intended to cable her producer and writer in New York and tell them that they should call off their search, that she had found her Gigi, and though they wouldn’t have heard of her, they were to fly to London and meet her at once.
Audrey listened to it all, but was not quick to respond.
Finally, she spoke. “I can’t” is what she famously said. “The truth is, I’m not equipped to play a leading role. I’ve never spoken onstage.” Then she added, “I’m a dancer.”
“Yes, yes, you are that,” Colette returned. “You are a dancer because you have worked hard at it, and you will now work hard at acting, too.”
Months later, Audrey was at the Savoy Hotel in London to meet with the play’s writer, Anita Loos, and Gilbert Miller, its producer. She told them what she had told Colette, that she was not an actress, and that playing Gigi would be impossible for her. Miller nearly buckled under the weight of her protestations, but Loos wouldn’t leave it at that. Though Audrey stood before her a wholly inexperienced girl, wearing, somewhat gawkily, an oversized shirtwaist and flat shoes, the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes knew she had spotted something special. With Audrey’s gender-redefining interpretation of Holly Golightly still ten years off, Loos had the keen sense—a sense so many flappers like her once had—to note the tides changing a generation in advance. Audrey Hepburn, she said sometime later, had “everything that is important in a female.” She would be proven right in the years to come.
But it would take Audrey a long time to get there. Since she was a little girl, what Audrey had really wanted to be was a ballerina. But her body was wrong, and she was left with no choice but to join a music hall chorus where she was spotted and rushed into films. From there, it was bigger parts in bigger films, and she soon saw that her dream of getting married to James Hanson, like her dream of dancing, had to be put on ice. Now if she took Gigi, it would have to be put off again. But Audrey’s star was stronger than she was. At the urging of all who were close to her, she reluctantly accepted the part of Gigi. Colette, Audrey maintained, was wrong.
THE CIGARETTE GIRL
Sitting at his desk, fretting over the dreary state of Roman Holiday, the impossible-to-cast production they were trying to cobble together at Paramount, Richard Mealand, the studio’s man in London, recalled a brief scene in a film called Laughter in Paradise. It was the summer of 1951.
Of the picture’s regrettable ninety minutes, a certain twenty-two seconds stood out. In it, a distinguished-looking sort of gentleman, sitting alone at a bar, is interrupted by a soft and knowing “Hello!” He looks up. The cigarette girl, a twenty-one-year-old waif called Audrey something, is standing over him.
“Want a ciggie?” she asks with an open smile.
“Hello, sweetie,” he chuckles. “No, I’ll be smoking cigars from now on. But what about a date later on this evening? I feel like celebrating.”
She smiles again, but guilelessly, as if the word date were never mentioned.
The man gets up. “Well,” he says, putting his hand on her shoulder, “I don’t want that old goat in the telephone box to see us talking.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Well, don’t think me mad,” he says, sitting again, “but just for the moment I’m not allowed to talk to women.”
The smile fades. She looks down. “Don’t I count as a woman?”
She was adorable. It was worth a shot, Mealand thought, but would the studio go for it? They had Gregory Peck, and they wanted a name, a name just as big, for the part of Princess Ann, one like Elizabeth Taylor or Jean Simmons. But their schedules had not aligned. Both were unavailable.
The studio was desperate when Mealand wrote Hollywood about the young actress he saw in Laughter in Paradise.
THE TEST
On September 18, 1951, just before she was to begin rehearsals for Gigi in New York, Audrey was led into a soundstage at England’s Pinewood Studios for a screen test.
To see if Audrey Hepburn the person was like Audrey Hepburn the actress, and genuinely had that combination of naïveté and worldliness he wanted, William Wyler, director of Roman Holiday, secretly instructed his cameraman to keep the camera rolling after her scene had ended.
“Cut!”
Audrey bolted up in bed. “How was it?” she asked. “Was I any good?”
There was no response, only silence, and she heard the clicking whir of the camera. Oh, she realized, I’ve been tricked. They’re still shooting. Her embarrassment turned to laughter and her heart burst open. She shone then a forthright humility so pure and a joy so pervasive, the crew could see in her a certain royalty of spirit, if not real royalty itself. And yet, when she spoke, it was without the stiffness or pretentious solemnity that afflicts those too accustomed to the spotlight. Her voice had a natural-sounding richness, and as it reached the end of her sentences, it expanded like an afternoon getting warmer, or a heart beating faster.
She got the part.
However, schedules would have to be rearranged. Because Audrey was obliged to begin rehearsing Gigi for Broadway, Paramount was forced to put Roman Holiday on hold until the show’s run was complete.
MRS. JAMES HANSON, DEFERRED
To Audrey’s utter astonishment—not to mention the astonishment of the entire company of Gigi—she opened on Broadway to good reviews. Times critic Brooks Atkinson praised her “charm, honesty and talent,” and Walter Kerr, her “candid innocence and tomboy intelligence.” But it was from Gilbert Miller himself that Audrey received her best publicity. He ordered the Fulton Theater marquee be changed from “Gigi” to “Audrey Hepburn in Gigi.”
Audrey sighed when she saw it. “Oh dear,” she said, “and I’ve still got to learn how to act.”
Audrey’s run of Gigi ended in June of 1952, and without a moment to lose she flew to Rome to begin Roman Holiday. Once again, she told James they would have to postpone their plans to marry. There was too much work. Now they would do it in September, after shooting was complete.
THE ELECTRIC LIGHT
James could only wait. He would appear during the production to steal a walk with his fiancée between setups—that is, if she could spare the time—but on the whole, he was relegated to the sidelines and passed the hours trying not to think about what was becoming more and more obvious to him and everyone else (though they said nothing). Audrey was disappearing from him. Not that James wasn’t prepared—this was just the kind of thing he had heard film people talk about—but he had never understood it until he got to Rome. It wasn’t coldness, it was necessity; show business folk were just a different animal. Perhaps the species shouldn’t intermingle.
James had time. He played cards with Gregory Peck and strolled from café to café and chatted with those who recognized him as Audrey’s fiancé. Later, he’d wait for her at their apartment on the Via Boncompagni. She’d be delayed and he’d wait. Making films, he saw, was so much about waiting. Waiting for the light. Waiting for the location. Waiting for the stars. It seems they did more waiting than anything else. How could they stand it?
He would sometimes stroll to the set to watch a few takes, or conduct a bit of business, or meet Audrey for lunch. But when he did, she was clearly someplace else. Her mind was on work, the stunning sensation of starring in a big movie, and though she was careful how to frame it, the surprising generosity of Gregory Peck. He knew Audrey was scared to be in front of the camera. Take after tiring take, her emotions would harden and break away from her. She’d get stiff. When the lines came out naturally, it seemed like an accident, like Audrey wasn’t the one doing it, and she’d look up to Wyler’s face for reassurance, for anything, and he would offer a word of support. But then, a few minutes later, they’d be doing the scene again, and then again. By midday, Audrey’s reserve would be nearing depletion.
“What is it?” James asked.
“I’m not like an electric light,” she muttered. “I’m incapable of switching my feelings
on and off.”
He might not have known she was talking about acting.
“Miss Hepburn?”
She looked up. It was an Italian boy sent to bring her back to the set. Apologizing to her fiancé, Audrey went with him.
James would have to wait.
THE ENCHANTING UNKNOWN
Back at Paramount, the early footage of Roman Holiday was a sensation. Everyone agreed there was something enchanted about the Hepburn girl, something new and wonderful, though it was difficult to say exactly what. Audrey was beautiful, but not the most beautiful. She was talented, but she wasn’t brilliant. The paradox was consuming. All across the studio, people were sneaking away from work just to try to steal a peek at the dailies. Directors wrapped early, writers’ offices shut down, and soundstages were covertly vacated, all for a shot at a glimpse of a hit. Only the publicity department stayed at their desks. They were already talking Oscar.
As Paramount’s chief publicity man, what AC Lyles needed to do was ensure that Audrey would be as popular outside the gates of Paramount as she was within. He’d have to make sure they got her to the right audience. But what was the market? Who was the audience of 1953?
THE MARKET
It was the 1950s, and the entire country, it seemed, was on vacation. But who could blame it? The six years of World War II had been pure horror, separating man from wife and limb from torso. The task now was to forget, or at least deny. Anything to take the edge off. Anything to keep everything at bay. Booze helped, and so did psychoanalysis, but tranquilizers were best. If you could get it, chlorpromazine cleared the mind like Clorox bleached the sink. (And so what if it made the mouth a little dry? The doctors said it was okay.) In those postwar years, the anxiety-relief industry hit an unprecedented high, growing ever higher through the decade as the Bolsheviks grew ever closer. But fifties America was well armed. Everyone could stop worrying and love the bomb, because for every Russian vodka there was a perfect tonic.
