by Sam Wasson
Marriage was one such tonic. In 1951, when Audrey was off shooting Monte Carlo Baby, one-third of the nation’s nineteen-year-old girls had found husbands, and those husbands, many of them veterans racked with battle fatigue, had taken too long to get home. Now that they had, their brides were pulled out of the workforce and sent back to the kitchen where they were meant to be—or afraid to become anything other than—mothers and wives. To keep the order, gender lines, formerly blurred, had to be reinstated and the American woman found herself alone at the sink, wondering how it all happened. Why did getting what she’d wished for suddenly feel so wrong?
Thank God for popular entertainment, which gave her something to look at all day. It reminded her that she was doing the right thing to sit and sip and wait, and that being perfect was, as she suspected, absolutely perfect. Consider, for instance, the brand-new Alligator White Philco Seventeener TV she kept in the kitchen. The little box fit just about anywhere and weighed next to nothing, so she was able to carry it into the dining room for Father Knows Best, bring it right back into the den for Ed Sullivan, and then take it with her into the bathroom for a nice long soak and a moment alone with a fresh pack of Chesterfields.
She listened to the man on TV talk about a senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy and his defense of our perfect union against communist subversion, and asked herself all the while if she understood everything he was saying. She decided instead not to worry and turned the channel to Ozzie and Harriet. He’ll be home soon enough, she thought, and he’ll explain everything.
If he was delayed—and he often was—she could open up Modern Screen magazine and read all about the real-life marriages of Hollywood stars like Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh: “In 1954, a close friend relates, ‘Janet made the greatest sacrifice she had ever made. She relinquished the career that had taken so many years to build’ for Tony’s sake. On New Year’s Eve, 1959, Janet summed up her feelings. ‘Scout’s honor, Tony,’ she whispered. ‘I resolve not to forget all the wonderful ways God has blessed us.’” And under a photograph of Janet and Tony engaged in what appears to be serious conversation, the caption: “Sharing hopes and dreams with Tony, Janet learned that it is better to be wrong and happy sometimes, than to be right but alone and in tears.”
With an unprecedented degree of leisure time, and more media access than ever before, the fifties woman was the single most vulnerable woman in American history to the grasp of prefab wholesale thought, and by extension, to the men who made it. The message of conformity poured in through every opening from the outside, making it impossible for her to shut it out without shutting out the world. Banish the crazy, she discovered, and sit in silence, or sit in silence and go crazy. Either way, the unwanted voices of rebellion were quieted by the self-soothing mantras she learned from TV, print, and movies. They told her, through the likes of Doris Day, Marilyn Monroe, and Debbie Reynolds, that happiness was right where she thought it was: at home. All along it was right there (“Have another drink, honey”); it was right there all along.
She was the market, and from his desk at Paramount, AC Lyles had his eye on her. He knew what she liked and what she didn’t like, but he couldn’t be certain of what she’d make of Audrey.
THE PRODUCT
No one was quite sure how Audrey would fit. Just look at the movie stars around her. From man to wife and boy to girl, they were cut from the same benumbingly conformist mold. And each and every one of them was a product made to order.
Working at full speed, the Hollywood studios cast their stars from an amalgamated mold of cultural, political, and financial factors, which, when mixed in the right proportions, could hit the zeitgeist’s bull’s-eye with profitable regularity. Sure, some of them may look to us, the paying audience, like a beautiful, magical accident fresh off the bus from Wherever, PA, but in fact, beauty, as has been proven many times over, has very little to do with stardom (if it did, we’d still be talking about the most beautiful movie stars of all time, but the names Loretta Young and Hedy Lamarr rarely come up).
Movie stars were built, not born, and their parents were not their mothers and fathers, but the legions of writers, directors, costumers, and most of all, studio heads, who saw to it that their personae—their screen personalities—fit the particular needs of their place and time. That was a good way to sell tickets.
Paramount, Universal, Fox, Columbia, and MGM were companies after all, and though they were capable of making the greatest movies in the whole world, refining their aesthetic was not their objective. Like every other industry, the picture business endeavored to minimize its losses by making a science of its gains, and that meant if something worked, they did it again. And again. It also meant that if something worked for someone else, they stole it, renamed it, and turned it loose. If Fox was making a mint off Marilyn Monroe, then Columbia needed their own (enter Kim Novak), just as they needed a Cary Grant, or Katharine Hepburn, or any other x that = a lot of $. That was the formula, and since the beginning of Hollywood, the studio star machines used it to turn out stars like power plants churn out power, solving for x again and again until Archie Leach became Cary Grant and Norma Jean Baker became Marilyn Monroe.
But why Cary Grant? Why Marilyn Monroe? Why did they become stars and not the hundreds of other actors who were nipped and tucked and primped and plucked only to board Greyhounds back to sunny Wherever? Was it “star quality” that made the special people special? Was it “It’”? Was it “That thing”? No: it wasn’t magic. Like the stars themselves, magic was all construct, a precious commodity manufactured by Hollywood PR to up the value of its product, something they wanted the woman of the 1950s—indeed the paying people of any decade—to believe about the marvelous show folks of the silver screen.
The real reason certain actors become stars and others do not is regrettably not so glamorous. True, there is often something exceptional in attendance—be it Fred Astaire’s feet or Judy Garland’s voice or Audrey’s face—but the crude reality of supply and demand contends that great talent, no matter how awesome, must be a salable commodity marketable to its era, as desirable to its audience as the new Philco Seventeener or the myth of Soviet takeover were to theirs. To foster that desirability, studios manufactured stars to suit the fears and fantasies of the day, giving faces to paradigm shifts, and therefore historical consequence to their chosen personae.
And so it has always been. Since the era of Hollywood’s first stars, American moviegoers have been devouring a steady dosage of self-image. Whether it’s man or woman, boy or girl, the screen holds up mirrors to its audience, reflecting the shoulds and should-nots of family, love, war, and gender—sometimes knowingly, sometimes not, but always with an eye on sex. And in the fifties, if you were a woman, too much of it was wrong, and too little of it was honorable. You were either a slut or a saint.
DORIS AND MARILYN
For women in the movies, there existed an extreme dialectic. On one end, there was Doris Day, and on the other, Marilyn Monroe.
Doris Day was one of the saints. Take her in Lover Come Back. Sparring with Rock Hudson, a successful ad executive who uses any means necessary to get what he wants (even sex!), she says, defiantly, “I don’t use sex to land an account!” “When do you use it?” he asks. Her reply: “I don’t.” Lover Come Back, like Pillow Talk and every other Doris Day–Rock Hudson pairing, is a sex comedy without the sex, a story of how the sturdy all-American guy fights hard to get into Doris’s cold, cold bed. She’s always appalled, always shocked, huffing and puffing herself out of his arms, and never for a moment wanting so much as a kiss unless there’s a legal agreement of marriage to go along with it. (Oscar Levant famously said, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”) Toward the end of Lover Come Back, when Doris and Rock wake up together in a motel bed, she endures a requisite moment of absolute panic. Did they?!?! Could they?!?! The poor thing nearly explodes. “It’s all right,” Hudson reassures her. “You’re my wife.” Phew. Apparently they got so drunk t
he night before, she doesn’t remember that they also got married. Doris, duped, is so enraged, that she has the marriage annulled immediately, but there’s still a problem—a very 1950s problem—that she can’t reverse; that is, sex, and having had it with a man who is no longer her husband. Well, as it turns out she’s pregnant (birth control still to come), and is on her way to deliver the baby when, thank God, Rock arrives at the hospital, his lessons learned, in time to marry her before she has the kid.
But this is Hollywood, and every “Good” has a “Bad.” If marriage was deep in the heart of the fifties heroine, what was in the heart of the fifties villainess? The answer: sex without marriage. Gentlemen may marry brunettes, but Marilyn Monroe was living proof that they preferred blondes, and not always the smartest or most willful blondes, in fact, the dumber and more childlike the better. Joining her were the likes of Kim Novak, Mamie Van Doren, and Jayne Mansfield, who helped turn ladies into girls and girls into Barbies (Barbie herself was born in 1959) and revealed in the process the adolescent boy lurking latent within the American adult male. And why not? When the nation represses its sex drive, it should come as no surprise that deep within every daddy is a teenage boy just burning to brush up against anything. But of course he can’t. This is the age of look but don’t touch. If you’re a mom, it’s worse; you’re not even allowed to look. And if you’re a daughter, like Sandra Dee, or Debbie Reynolds in Tammy and the Bachelor, you can touch, but it should only be a kiss—your first kiss—and also your last. Keep in mind: once you’ve gone all the way, you can never come back. Ever.
So remember, American girls: be good. You’re princesses.
BIRTH OF THE COOL
But princesses come in all shapes and sizes. With Audrey, in whose face and gait Colette saw the whole history of girlhood, Roman Holiday becomes about discovering the world, and not, as was true of Audrey’s predecessors, about attracting a man. As Princess Ann, Audrey says she wants only “to do just whatever I like the whole day long…to sit at a sidewalk café and look in shop windows, walk in the rain, have fun, and maybe some excitement.”
The baby boom produced a fresh batch of American youngsters—teenagers they were called—and they were suddenly coming of age. But until Roman Holiday, it was hard for them to see themselves in the movies. What Audrey offered—namely to the girls—was a glimpse of someone who lived by her own code of interests, not her mother’s, and who did so with a wholesome independence of spirit.
Wholesome and independent. AC Lyles saw the value in this combination, one so appealing, it seemed Audrey’s reach might even extend beyond the teenage girl. Men could fall in love with her, that was no surprise, but significantly (unlike Marilyn), she didn’t antagonize their wives in the process. Mothers would be happy if their sons brought Audreys home—and so too would their daughters.
How did Audrey do it? With a haircut.
It’s Princess Ann’s first and only day in Rome, and she wants to change the way she looks. How much does she get cut? So much that the barber is scandalized. Never in all his career, we are led to believe, has he ever heard of hair so short on a girl so pretty. “Are you sure, miss?” asks the barber. “I’m quite sure, thank you.” “All off?” “All off.”
The barber does as he’s told, and by the end of it, Audrey looks so utterly changed that he surprises the both of them by asking her out. But this is not an ugly duckling transformation—one of those scenes where the girl removes her glasses and she becomes a babe—this is a transformation from Ann’s conformist self (a girl with traditionally long, traditionally “feminine” hair), to Ann’s true self. That is why the barber calls her new do “cool.” The idea is that he appreciates it, not lusts after it, and the distinction denotes a notable change in the feminine ideal, from the fifties young lady who matures by falling in love and becoming wifelike, to the early sixties girl who matures by cultivating a fashion sense so unique, it could only be hers and hers alone.
Voilà. In this era of stark conservatism, Audrey managed to make different okay. Better than okay: she made it good, and she was able to rally her troops with a visual dialect only they could understand, like an underground spy leaving coded messages for her emissaries. Often without knowing it, mothers and daughters of the 1950s saw in Roman Holiday a star who spoke directly to them, politely pointing the way out without ever having to wave a flag. “Audrey had it in her to be the sugar coating on a bad-tasting pill,” Lyles said. “She made everything palatable.” Now that’s antiestablishment with a smile.
Princess Ann walks early 1960s, but she definitely talks mid-1950s. Yes, she yearns for more, and based upon her brave new personality and look she might even get a hand on it, but as Roman Holiday draws to its bittersweet end, it becomes clear that no matter how unique the individual (or haircut), duty must eclipse freedom. A fifties princess was still castle-bound.
ANN: I’m sorry I couldn’t cook us some dinner.
BRADLEY (Gregory Peck): Did you learn how in school?
ANN: I’m a good cook. I could earn my living at it. I can sew, too, and clean a house and iron. I learned to do all those things. I just haven’t had the chance to do it for anyone.
BRADLEY: Well, it looks like I’ll have to move, and get myself a place with a kitchen.
ANN: Yes.
It wasn’t just the movie that kept Audrey’s provocative allure in check; the press was only too eager to lend a hand. Published in time for Roman Holiday, the article “H.R.H Audrey Hepburn” showed a demure Audrey, white gloves pressed sweetly to her chin. The idea was to further the notion of Hepburn, an elegant thing, pure of word and deed, and bred to continental perfection. Included in the piece was the following:
She thinks the authenticity she was able to assume for her role of the princess was due in part to her early training—“My mother brought me up to always stand erect and keep my head up and sit straight when I sat in a chair”—and also to the fact that she spent so many years in England and Holland, where she was able to observe queens and princesses in person.
AC Lyles made sure a very modern Audrey was packaged in a very fifties way.
MRS. JAMES HANSON, DEFERRED, AGAIN
Production on Roman Holiday came to a close, and Audrey’s plans to marry were thwarted again. She had to begin the American road tour of Gigi. There would be no honeymoon, no week of afternoons to lie about as Mr. and Mrs. Hanson, just listening to records, eating and sleeping. Worse still, there would be no children, and no family. At least not now, while she was on the road. And so, rather than struggle forward, Audrey and James solemnly acquiesced, believing, even if what they were doing didn’t feel right, doing as they should was the way of the world. And in a single snap, Audrey’s dream of family, her one unyielding dream, was boxed up and shelved.
By December of 1952, their engagement was off for good.
Audrey was single again. All over the media, she made her good intentions clear. She was a dear to the press, a girl who wanted to find a husband, become a mother, and then, finally, be what she was raised to be: a housewife. She only smoked six Gold Flake cigarettes a day, and restricted her lunches to milk, fruit, cottage cheese, and sometimes yogurt. See? She was just the girl American daughters were supposed to be. Best of all, there wasn’t a drop of sex on her.
Boy, were they wrong.
2
WANTING IT
1953-1955
ONE HOT SPURT
There was a time when George Axelrod, the would-be screenwriter of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, didn’t have to fight so hard to have sex—in his work. But these days, it was tougher to pull it off. TV was the problem. When he wrote for radio, George could get away with a lot of sex comedy because no one could actually see it, and if he were smart and judicious, most of them wouldn’t even catch it, but if they did, it didn’t matter because it was all live, and once they said it no one could undo it. TV sex was touchier, but the pay was better, which is why George Axelrod, before arriving at his day job writing gags for t
he small screen, dutifully worked every morning for an hour between eight and nine on a play called The Seven Year Itch. Onstage, where there were no sponsors, George knew his dialogue could be as frank and funny as he could possibly make it. There was no dumbing down or sanitizing on Broadway, so if he wanted to go against everyone’s better principles and say the truth, George just might smash the myth that sex and laughter don’t go together.
The Seven Year Itch came out of George in one hot spurt—fifteen hours, he said, between Easter Sunday and Fourth of July—and from there, onto the desk of a producer friend of his. By September of ’52—around the time Roman Holiday wrapped—Itch was in rehearsals at the Fulton Theater, where it opened two months later to blow the lid off the seventh commandment (Thou Shalt Not Commit etc.). The New Yorker wrote,
The Seven Year Itch, in fact, is concerned with the flesh only to the extent that for most of its cheerful length it goes on about sex in its most specific possible aspect; that is, with an adultery that takes place as nearly in full view of the hopeful audience as the rules of decorum and the ordinances of Manhattan will permit.
