by Sam Wasson
Axelrod hit big, he hit early, and he did it the way he wanted to—in full view of the hopeful audience.
Only a few months later, George was sitting in his kitchen when he got the call from Billy Wilder.
It was like getting a call from God, he said later.
George’s agent, the wily Irving Lazar—called “Swifty” because that’s how fast he made deals—had set the movie up at Fox, and Billy was ready to get to work. The Seven Year Itch, Wilder told him, was just his kind of material; funny, bitter, hot, and unapologetically impolite. George had been told this many times, but hearing it from his idol was like seeing it on a marquee shining forty feet in the air. The next morning, he was on a plane to L.A.
In between writing at 20th Century Fox and eating at Warner Bros. (where Billy’s favorite chef cooked Billy’s favorite food), Wilder and Axelrod walked around Beverly Hills, shopping and talking, buying bow ties and gourmet snacks, and debating the impossible problem of how to translate Axelrod’s sex comedy to the movies without ruffling the stuffed shirts of the Production Code Administration, whose code explicitly stated—and quite definitively—that “adultery must never be the subject of comedy or laughter.” At some point or another, every comedy writer in Hollywood had to deal with the PCA, and some, like Wilder, had even become quite successful at it. His films compromised without looking like compromises. From Double Indemnity to Ace in the Hole, they were masterpieces of bold innuendo and pushed—sometimes invisibly—every envelope to its breaking point. But Itch was different; it couldn’t cut corners. It couldn’t be invisible. If they weren’t downstage center with the subject of adultery, there would be no movie. How could the principles of high-minded innuendo work themselves into that? Wilder had purchased hundreds of dollars’ worth of bow ties by the time they figured it out.
At first, Axelrod had the idea that he and Wilder would submit the raciest draft they could. His hope was that they could buy themselves some negotiating power by overwhelming the censors, but Billy had been down this road before and assured George that it wouldn’t work, especially on this picture, which as a piece of material, was already notorious. This time, Billy explained, the Production Code Administration—also known as the Breen Office—was out to make an example of its power. They would not approve the final screenplay until all suggestions of the affair between Sherman and The Girl were eliminated.
There was only one way, then, to show it without showing it. They had to put it all in his head. Sherman will only fantasize about adultery. Neither Wilder nor Axelrod were happy with the idea, but there was no alternative. It was an itch they couldn’t scratch. “The bulk of my sex-comedy career,” Axelrod said later, “was done with this enormous handicap: not being allowed to have any sex. I was trying to write these so-called sex comedies in the fifties when we had to deal with the Breen Office.”
A WAY TO WINK
Axelrod and Wilder put the script aside, and Billy got to work on another movie, a romantic comedy that would eventually be called Sabrina. Joining him were writers Ernest Lehman and Samuel Taylor, author of Sabrina Fair, the play they were adapting. They all worked long, unrelenting hours, and as they progressed, they found they hadn’t progressed at all. Dissatisfied with Wilder’s changes to his play, Taylor quit, leaving Lehman and Wilder alone together. Bad idea. Wilder, cranky on a good day, was having back problems that made him exasperating company. Lehman, a fragile fellow to begin with, was pushed to the brink, and teetered on the precipice of a full-blown nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, there were major script problems; namely, the issue of sex as it related to Sabrina, who was to be played by the very chaste-seeming Audrey Hepburn. Wilder and Lehman went back and forth for months. Would she be having sex? Could she, under the regulations of the Production Code? If so, how would they show it?
With preproduction under way in the summer of 1953, they still didn’t have an answer.
But Billy Wilder kept thinking. There must be a way to wink, a way to show without telling, to imply. If Sabrina Fairchild was going to make a truly credible transformation from regular Long Island girl to Parisian sophisticate—in other words, from purity to sexuality—she was going to have to have the clothing to show for it. She would need an evocative costume change. The censors couldn’t get them for that, could they? Not if it was all done in the name of European good taste and elegance. Why, of course! They’d get an authentic Parisian designer to design Sabrina’s authentic Parisian couture.
That’s when the trouble began for Edith Head.
DOES EDITH HEAD GIVE GOOD COSTUME?
The news about the Parisian designer for Sabrina would have been shocking to Edith Head under any circumstances, but in light of her most recent Oscar for Roman Holiday, it was downright perverse. Didn’t they know who they were dealing with? After Marilyn, Susan Hayward, and the other top stars, Ms. Head was undoubtedly the most powerful woman in town. They couldn’t look their best without her.
Edith stayed up all night, got up early, and walked fast. She didn’t like to wait, and she didn’t like to keep anyone waiting.
“Good morning, Miss Head.”
“Morning.”
They all knew her. Joan Crawford wouldn’t buy a pair of socks unless she cleared them. Bette Davis insisted on her for All About Eve, and Barbara Stanwyck flat out loved her. The whole town thought they were, well, you know, but that’s what they said about every tough girl in pictures. Either she was frigid or she liked women. But Ms. Head was neither; she was just resilient, like a cockroach.
If they asked, she wore dark glasses, even inside, because she wanted to fade into the background, to give the actresses center stage in their fittings. But the truth was Edith was after inscrutability. There was mystique that way, and more power.
She had been costuming at Paramount since the 1920s, and as long as they kept renewing her contract, that’s where she’d die. One day, she’d just keel over on her drafting board and they’d carry her over to the cemetery behind the lot and drop her in. But that would mean she’d have to take the night off.
Without her, they all knew Veronica Lake’s neck would look too thin, Loretta Young’s too long, and Claudette Colbert’s too short. That’s why they came to Edith—a single stitch, and she erased all the wrongs. And that’s how she got her Academy Awards: Roman Holiday was her eighth nomination and fifth win.
She had worked especially hard on Roman Holiday, and ingeniously, camouflaging Audrey’s many physical irregularities. The list of alterations seemed to go on forever: Edith broadened Audrey’s shoulders wide enough to frame her face, she disguised Audrey’s spindly neck with jewels and scarves whenever possible, she decided against sleeveless blouses for the sake of Audrey’s too-frail arms, and she selected an especially long dress to keep Audrey’s gangly legs from the camera. Because it directed one’s eye away from Audrey’s problematic torso, the full skirt Edith designed helped a great deal to restore equanimity to the rest of the girl’s frame, and with the slimmer belts Edith made especially, she could downplay Audrey’s awkward waistline (the slimmest, she said, since the Civil War). Audrey, however, wanted thicker belts, and Ms. Head, despite her misgivings, dutifully consented.
Of course, if it were up to Edith, they would all be Grace Kellys. “She was Miss Head’s favorite to dress,” said Rita Riggs, Head’s former apprentice, “because she was the perfect 1950s beauty. She had the perfect waist, the perfect plucked eyebrows, and she fell right into the mold, the mold Audrey bluntly refused.” Quel chassis: not an architectural defect in sight.
Where other more exploitative designers would have seized upon Audrey’s runway-friendly figure to showcase his or her own talents, Edith congratulated herself for doing what was right for the character. She was a costumer, after all, not a fashion designer. As always, there was shrewd reasoning to this: the more stylized an item of clothing, the faster it would date, and for Edith, who feared (rightfully) the day when her work would no longer be relevant in Hollywood, that was tantamo
unt to the pink slip. Personal vision? Artistic innovation? Please. She knew pictures didn’t need any more showmen—that’s what the stars were for. What pictures needed were swift seamstresses who could touch up a hem between takes forty-three and forty-four at two in the morning after the director has walked off the set and everyone—including them—has been fired. Trends were for the kids.
So Wilder wanted them to buy what they could have had Edith make for free. It wasn’t very nice, but then again, even Edith had to admit there was something of a precedent for shopping out of house. Just three years prior, Christian Dior had been commissioned to costume Marlene Dietrich for Hitchcock’s Stage Fright. But because they were shooting in Europe and the designer was conveniently at hand, it made financial sense to Warner Bros. and it made their beloved Dietrich very happy. But the business with Audrey on Sabrina was another thing entirely; not only was she far from Dietrich in stature, but Wilder’s production was based on the Paramount lot in Hollywood. That made Edith Head the obvious, fiscally reasonable choice.
Still, Wilder was convinced she was the wrong person for the job. If she was going to make the transformation convincing, Sabrina needed more than a knockoff. She needed a French fairy godmother. Or father.
THE MEMO
The timing couldn’t have been better. If Audrey’s schedule had her in Paris that summer, then what if she, not the studio, did the shopping and the shipping? Wilder posed the question to those who wrote the checks. Frank Caffey, Paramount’s studio manager, was one such person. His memo to Russell Holman, a lawyer in Paramount’s New York office, was the first in a detailed correspondence about exactly how, when, and where Audrey Hepburn was to shop for Sabrina. It begins the story of her evolution from movie star to fashion icon—a story that culminates seven years later with a little black dress. Caffey wrote:
Some weeks ago [executive] Don Hartman and Billy Wilder in discussing this picture thought it would be very advantageous to ask Miss Hepburn, when she was passing through Paris, to purchase certain items of wardrobe for use in the picture. They discussed this with Hepburn and a few days later Edith Head went to San Francisco and finalized it with her. I rechecked the requirements today and here is what we would like to arrange for her purchase:
1—Dark Suit. This should be of the type she [Sabrina] would wear crossing the Atlantic by plane and arriving up-state New York by train.
Several blouses, gilets or fronts to be used with the suit.
2—Extreme French Hats appropriate for the suit.
1—Very smart French day dress.
The above should be bought as Hepburn’s private wardrobe, and in no way should Paramount’s name be used as it might involve screen credit, duty coming into the country as well as possible holdup bringing it in. It should come into the country as Hepburn’s own personal wardrobe.
After selections have been made we would need to have sent ahead of time sketches of the items as well as sample colors and fabrics. Hepburn has been requested not to select dead black or dead white [this Head’s suggestion]. We would suggest dark blue or oxford or charcoal grey [also this].
Richard Mealand (who spotted Audrey in Laughter in Paradise years earlier) received the instructions, and added, “I suggest now, in view of Caffey’s letter, that we ask Gladys de Segonzac [wife of Paramount’s Paris head] to make some selections and let Audrey approve them and pick them up in Paris…. Meanwhile, I can advise Gladys as to what’s wanted and she can have adequate time, after the fashion openings, to find the right things, prepare sketches and send samples both to Audrey and Edith Head.” Holman saw the advantage to that. “Gladys de Segonzac,” he agreed, “being in the Paris couture business, knows clothes better than Hepburn.” Caffey took it from there:
The selections should be made at Balenciaga’s. When Hepburn goes through on July 13th she should complete the selections [tentatively made for her by de Segonzac] or choose new clothes from the same place. Edith Head and Hepburn discussed the fact that after Hepburn had tried on the model or type of clothes that will be selected for this picture, she will on the spot, with Mrs. De Segonzac’s help, change the color of the model and possibly the material, as well as perhaps altering collars and cuffs, all to the end that we do not wind up with clothes that will be exactly like the model as the model itself could very easily be turned over to an American manufacturer for making and distribution of reproductions in America. In other words, we do not want to select clothes from the latest Paris collections as is. Obviously we cannot afford to give any screen credit and the clothes as selected and modified by Hepburn should be under the guise of her own wardrobe without reference to Paramount.
And so it was that in the summer of 1953, before Roman Holiday had opened, Audrey Hepburn arrived in Paris for a shopping spree that would not only change her life, but as a pivotal blow to Dior’s reigning New Look, the lives of all women out for a new new look.
DIOR’S NEW LOOK
During the Second World War, strict rationing rendered opulence outré, and simplicity politically correct. That all changed on February 12, 1947, when Christian Dior launched his first postwar line, christened the “New Look” by American Harper’s Bazaar. With his yards and yards of soft sumptuous fabrics, tight fitted jackets nipped in the waist, and full blooming skirts, Dior did away with the brawny shoulder pads and durable wartime fabrics of the early forties. In their place, he reintroduced the hourglass figure and the long-lost bust: all at once, women were allowed to be womanly again. (In fact, the New Look was so lavish, it was briefly condemned by the British Board of Trade.)
Now, to be truly façonnable, a woman needed girdles and waist cinchers. For those who couldn’t afford Victorian corsetry, there was the practical (but shapely) shirtwaist dress, which, in the words of its master, Edith Head, was “tight enough to show you’re a woman and loose enough to show you’re a lady.” In other words, the New Look was Edith’s Look, but by this time it was an old look. What Sabrina Fairchild needed was to look new.
31½-22-31½
It was decided, perhaps by Gladys de Segonzac, that Cristóbal Balenciaga would be too busy with his upcoming collection to see to the costuming needs of the then-unknown star. She offered instead to make a call on Audrey’s behalf to Hubert de Givenchy, a brilliant young designer (twenty-six to Audrey’s twenty-four) who had worked under de Segonzac at Schiaparelli before leaving in December of 1951 to establish his own house at 8 Rue Alfred de Vigny. As a strident Balenciagan acolyte, Givenchy was the ideal runner-up. At Schiaparelli he discovered elegance, but it was Balenciaga who taught Givenchy to listen to the material, and to design for the person, not the design. It would always be Balenciaga’s voice that told him what was right and what was wrong, and not just on the garment, but in his shop: during a fitting, the client’s street clothes were ironed so they would be fresh when she left.
At six foot six, the gentle giant Hubert de Givenchy was known to friends and regulars as le grand Hubert. Since the time he was a boy, Hubert, who could have been a basketball forward if he wasn’t so elegant, valued nothing above simplicity and beauty, even if they came—here Edith would gasp—at the expense of function. Givenchy never thought about, as he said, “whether the skirt is wide enough to walk in, [or] how the wearer will look getting into and out of a taxi,” and instead would, “consider the beauty and artistic value of fashion, not its utility.” One of few exceptions was the white linen smock he wore in the workroom, which he kept buttoned over his suit like a chef’s coat. All who entered would notice it, a sign of bygone gentility in an industry rife with the rush of what’s next. Indeed, it was not speed or flash, but fabric that made Givenchy’s head swirl. Fabric, to him, was the stimulus of creativity. The smell of silk, of a fresh bolt of cotton—these were the joys of his life. Balenciaga, his master, was the same way.
“Pardon, monsieur,” Givenchy heard. He was hunched over his drafting table. “Mademoiselle Hepburn is here to see you.”
One can only imagine Givenc
hy’s surprise when, stepping away from designs for his upcoming winter collection, he realized the Hepburn in question was not Katharine, but a five-foot seven-inch, 31½-22-31½ stripe of a girl with short hair, tiny pants, ballet flats, and straw beribboned gondolier’s hat that said Venezia.
“Bonjour!” she said.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” Givenchy replied. “Who are you?”
“Audrey Hepburn!”
“Ah,” he said. “Not Katharine?”
“Not Katharine.”
With her big eyes and thick eyebrows, she looked to him more like a fragile animal than an actual human.
“Monsieur,” she began. “I just made a film called Roman—”
“I am very sorry, mademoiselle, but I’m very busy with my new line. If you’d excuse me—”
“Yes, yes, I understand, but—”
“Mademoiselle, I don’t have many assistants, and I am pressed for time.”
It was no empty excuse. Charmed though he was, Givenchy was simply too busy.
“Please?”
“No, dear, I am sorry…”
“Please, please, please?” she insisted. “There must be something that I can try on!”
This could go on, Givenchy thought, for a long time. Better to appease her for the sake of peace and quietude than stand here all afternoon.
