Audrey Hepburn

by Barry Paris

  Hepburn and O’Toole did not work together again, and in later years Audrey often expressed regret about it. Eli Wallach thinks the film never got proper credit for the fact that she was finally paired with a handsome lover her own age, instead of the older men with whom she was usually saddled.

  The problem with How to Steal a Million was McLuhanesque: Its message was its medium, and its medium was entirely Audrey. There is a point in any star’s career, says Caroline Latham, at which the real-life personality begins to dwarf or dominate the characters he or she plays. One solution is to mock the legend, playing on audience memories of the star’s previous roles. In this case, Wyler played on her persona as a fashion statement—“High Audrey” all the way. “The absorption with Hepburn’s looks and mannerisms,” says Latham, “teeters on the edge of parody.”18

  When O’Toole surveys her in the shabby cleaning woman’s disguise, he says, “That does it!”

  “Does what?” she asks.

  “Well, for one thing,” he replies, “it gives Givenchy a night off.”

  BULLETIN, widely published: “Audrey Hepburn and Richard Burton will star in the MGM musical remake of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, each to receive a salary of $1 million against 10 percent of the gross.”

  False bulletin. Her pal Peter O’Toole and singer Petula Clark would eventually take the roles, instead.

  The role Audrey much preferred at the moment was that of gardener in Tolochenaz—and expectant mother. She was ecstatic about both, but in January 1966, her joy ended in a Lausanne clinic with another miscarriage. Once again, she was overcome by sorrow. The mediocre reception of How to Steal a Million did nothing to pull her out of it, but Mel was determined not to let her wallow in depression. His antidote, as always, was the therapeutic activity of a new project. For psychological and professional reasons alike, he thought she should update her film image to suit the times—which were a-changin’.

  Of dozens of proposed scripts, the winning candidate was Two for the Road, to be directed by Stanley Donen. If she was going to do a real “makeover,” it would be under the guidance of an old and trusted friend. The offbeat story concept, on the other hand, was quite new and untested. Writer Frederic Raphael and his wife, from the time they were childhood sweethearts, always went on holiday to the south of France. Going to the same places over and over, he sometimes had the sensation of passing a former version of himself along the same road. He asked Donen if a movie about the relationship of a man and woman—told in five different time bands as they traveled their holiday road—sounded interesting. Donen said it sounded wonderful.19

  Two for the Road chronicled a faltering twelve-year marriage, not unlike the length and condition of Hepburn’s own. It would be her daring departure, once and for all, from the fifties to the swinging sixties (now that they were half over).20 Paul Newman was the director’s first choice for her leading man. When he turned down the role, Donen offered it to Albert Finney.

  The Angriest Young Man of the British new wave and one of its hottest properties was Finney, who had given brilliant performances in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Tom Jones (1963). Hepburn heard much about him from Peter O‘Toole, his fellow student at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. O’Toole had taken the lead in Lawrence of Arabia when Finney rejected it in favor of stage work in Billy Liar and Luther. At thirty, Finney was seven years younger than Hepburn, and she was the first real film superstar with whom he’d been teamed.

  “Audrey Hepburn Swings? You’re Kidding,” said the incredulous Ladies’ Home Journal headline, while shocking talk of miniskirts and nude scenes peppered the text beneath it. Audrey didn’t need “a look,” said the magazine. “She already is one.” She would alter her style about as readily as Charles de Gaulle. “Why change?” she once said. “Everyone has his own style. When you have found it, you should stick to it.” But that was then. Now, of her metamorphosis in Two for the Road, she was saying, “All convention is rigidifying. I think we should try to avoid being rigid—that does age one.”21

  Her revisionist declaration was a little stiff, but she was trying hard. Indeed, she would have to: Raphael’s script called for adultery, a bathing-suit appearance, and a steamy bedroom scene in which she wore nothing at all. “It is inconceivable that it could have been submitted to me ten years ago,” she said, “or even five,” and her qualms were many. But when Mel read it, his advice was, “Take it right away.”22

  When we first meet the Hepburn and Finney characters, Joanna and Mark, their relationship is set: They’re rampantly unfaithful to each another, but no time is wasted on background explanation. The issue is marital game-playing, and this marriage seems doomed at the outset—or maybe not, depending on the time frame.

  Two for the Road’s structure was revolutionary: The couple’s shifting attachments unfold in episodic, non-sequential fashion. Donen cuts back and forth over a twelve-year period, with only the cars, clothes and hairdos to help us figure out the chronology.

  Beyond that are the metaphysical implications—“the past’s intrusion upon the present,” says Donen biographer Joseph Casper, who calls the film “a pas de deux on wheels.” Mark and Joanna sometimes even pass themselves surrealistically on the road. It was a “deconstructivist” narrative that helped introduce New Wave techniques to Hollywood, but the shooting was mostly in France. Audrey was introduced to Finney there in the summer of 1966 and was instantly struck by his muscular good looks and his sharp, unpredictable mind. Her impact on him was potent, too:Audrey and I met in a seductive ambience [in] a very sensual time in the Mediterranean. We got on immediately. After the first day’s rehearsals, I could tell that the relationship would work out wonderfully. Either the chemistry is there, or it isn’t.... That happened with Audrey. During a scene with her, my mind knew I was acting but my heart didn‘t, and my body certainly didn’t! Performing with Audrey was quite disturbing, actually.... With a woman as sexy as Audrey, you sometimes get to the edge where make-believe and reality are blurred. All that staring into each other’s eyes.... People are always asking me when I’m going to marry her.... I won’t discuss it more because of the degree of intimacy involved. The time spent with Audrey is one of the closest I’ve ever had.23

  The usual reports of a romance between costars were quick in coming, with one significant difference: This time, it was true. When production moved to the French Riviera, Hepburn cut loose even more, frugging away with Finney in the local discotheques and otherwise cavorting with him in their off-hours.

  The greater test of Audrey Hepburn’s new “liberation” lay in those much-ballyhooed scenes in which she had to unveil most of her self-consciously thin body. The beach scene with Finney had her in a stew. She told Donen she didn’t think she could do it. It was one thing for the younger, athletic Finney to run around in his swimming trunks; it was another for Audrey, at thirty-seven, to expose herself to the world. But Donen cajoled and talked her out of a body double, and she came through admirably.24

  That left the final challenge of the “nude” bedroom scene, filmed at the Hotel du Golf in Beauvallon near St. Tropez: After all the publicity, it turned out to be much ado about very little, the total nudity consisting of her upper back. The rest of her was demurely covered by a sheet. Finney, for his part, was even more demurely covered—clad in a T-shirt throughout their postcoital pillow talk in the scene.

  Audrey’s biggest problem in Two for the Road was the reverse of what she originally feared: not what she had to take off but what she had to put on. With Mel’s approval, Donen decided to dump Givenchy in favor of Audrey’s new, “mod” look—not too far removed from the one Raphael conceived the previous year for Julie Christie in Darling. “The beautiful simplification of her life was gone when Givenchy wasn’t to dress her,” said one of Audrey’s friends. “Mel was trying to tear away some of the cocoon which had been wrapped around her for too long.”25

  Most of her Two for the Road wardrobe would be purchased “off the rack”
pret-à-porter at Parisian boutiques. Ken Scott was brought in as fashion coordinator, and she took a liking to his Ban-Lon prints. But Scott found her “extremely rigid,” even about informal clothes. Red and most other primary colors were taboo. “I want to stay in fashion,” she told an interviewer at the time, “but being young in spirit counts more toward looking young than dressing in a hippie style.”26 There was always a certain defensiveness in her comments on the subject.

  Worn-out by arguing over every detail, Scott departed and was replaced by Lady Claire Rendlesham, who got along better with Audrey and worked hard to modify (and pad out) the selections, from miniskirts to swimsuits, according to her demands. Most of the clothes came from London’s Mary Quant, supplemented by Paco Rabanne and other top “mod” designers of the day.

  In the end, Audrey’s new duds enhanced her performance and, in the opinion of costar William Daniels, helped liberate her not only from her inhibitions and from Givenchy, but also from Mel. She seemed relieved to be out from under his supervision and to become a kid again—or at least her own woman—after years of conforming to his wishes. Daniels recalled her as “constantly laughing, relaxed and joyous,” often taking off with Finney to drink and dance at the bistros.27 Novelist Irwin Shaw, an old friend, described his visit with her on the set:

  “She and Albie had this wonderful thing together, like a pair of kids with a perfect understanding and a shorthand of jokes and references that closed out everybody else. It was like a brother-sister in their teens. When Mel was there ..., Audrey and Albie got rather formal and a little awkward, as if now they had to behave like grown-ups.”28

  Stanley Donen said “the Audrey I saw during the making of this film I didn’t even know. She overwhelmed me. She was so free, so happy. I never saw her like that. So young! ... I guess it was Albie.” Finney was youthful, frisky, impulsive and exciting—everything Mel was not.29

  She could not go too far, of course. The attachment with Finney was strong but temporary. It could not be allowed to compromise or endanger her custody of Sean. Though separated, she and Mel were on civilized terms and had decided to give the relationship another try. During one of many phone calls, Mel told her he was taking Sean to a matinee of My Fair Lady. The next day, she phoned to ask if he’d had a nice afternoon.

  “Yes,” said Sean.

  “Did you do anything special?”

  “Yes, we had ice cream.”

  “Did you see a movie?” she prompted.

  “Yes.... Mommy, why did you hate to take a bath?”30

  It was time to go home, hold him in her arms, and explain things like Eliza’s bathtub scene in person.

  DONEN CALLS Two for the Road the first Audrey Hepburn movie to deal with the aftermath rather than the initial euphoria of falling in love. Essential to its success was her comic timing which, in the director’s opinion, measured up nicely to Raphael’s sharp dialogue (and helped earn him an Oscar nomination for it).

  “When we married you were a disorganized, egotistical failure,” Joanna tells Mark. “Now you are a disorganized, egotistical success.”

  Two for the Road ended with a shocking, two-word exchange between the two stars—shocking, at least, for an Audrey Hepburn film, and the closest thing to profanity in any of her films:

  “Bitch!” says he.

  “Bastard!” she replies.

  As the insecure, egotistical architect, Finney had more difficulty than Hepburn, and his one-dimensional performance was somewhat grating. “Albie really can’t bear playing a man with pleasant charm,” said Donen. “He wants to play something more startling. He doesn’t like to come in and win you with his pleasant ways.”31 Eleanor Bron, William Daniels and Gabrielle Middleton (the horrid daughter) nearly stole the film in their several hilarious episodes as the travel-companions-from-hell.

  Many felt it was Audrey’s best performance in years, and some even said it was the best in her entire career. One of the film’s biggest fans is Audrey Wilder:

  “I was crazy about Two for the Road and thought she really let her defenses down in it. That was a real person. She let herself be seen in not the best light—the bathing suit and all. Actresses all try to protect themselves usually. That’s the nature of the beast. But she’s really real in that.”32

  Films and Filming hailed it as “a combination of American expertise and European cool,” adding that it would not have been nearly so convincing if Hepburn’s role had been played by the more overtly sexual Julie Christie or Jeanne Moreau.

  Two for the Road did moderately well at the box ofnce—better in Europe than in America, where it was handled as a kind of “art film,” just beyond mainstream appeal. But it was influential in changing the way Hollywood would treat the subject of marriage, and certain film historians still consider it “a veritable textbook on editing.”

  Donen’s next film, the brilliant Faust-parody Bedazzled (1967), would employ a much sharper satirical touch. His personal judgment of Two for the Road is that it was “a good movie, but I don’t think it should have been as sweet as it was.”

  “AUDREY CARED for Finney a great deal,” says Robert Wolders today. “He represented a whole new freedom and closeness for her. It was the beginning of a new period of her life.”

  But given that the Ferrers were still trying to work out their marriage, the reports of her activities with Finney caused Mel concern. Audrey, for her part, was concerned about Mel and a fifteen-year-old Spanish dancer named Marisol.

  Marisol had captivated both Ferrers a year or so earlier at a party given by the Duchess of Alba in Madrid. With fiery eyes and voluptuous breasts, Marisol thrilled that gathering with her remarkable singing and dancing. Soon after, Mel and Audrey began to plan a movie around her, Cabriola. Mel’s story and screenplay were accepted by Columbia as a vehicle for Marisol and Spain’s great bullfighter, Angel Peralta. The picture would be made primarily for the Spanish and South American markets.

  Mel would direct.

  Audrey took it upon herself to take Marisol to Alexandre of Paris, who restyled the girl’s hair under Hepburn’s supervision. During and after Cabriola, rumors of Ferrer’s “affair” with Marisol abounded. With much weariness, Ferrer today denies it: “There was no romantic involvement; it was common knowledge that Marisol was involved with the Spanish producer of the film. Audrey and our son Sean were with me as we went from location to location in Madrid and Andalucia.”33

  Marital difficulties notwithstanding, he and Audrey decided to build a villa on the Spanish Riviera near Marbella. The Peter Viertels lived there, too, and often visited, Deborah Kerr recalls:

  “It was a charming house, very simple, and of course everything was white. Wherever they went, everything was white. I always thought that was—not strange, but so indicative of her: Everything had to be white. The car was white. Even the baby was dressed in white.”34

  At the end of Cabriola filming, “We decided to stay on at the Marbella Club and have a little holiday with Sean,” Mel recalls. “Audrey had brought a stack of unread scripts with her, and while she and Sean went for a stroll on the beach I tried to unwind by going through them.” One of them came from Kay Brown, a friend of Mel’s who had found Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind in galley form and persuaded David O. Selznick to read it.

  “The play Kay submitted was Frederick Knott’s Wait Until Dark,” says Ferrer. “When Audrey returned from her walk, I took Sean back to the beach and she read the play. We called Kurt Frings in California and set a deal that afternoon.” 35

  KNOTT WAS the author of Dial M for Murder, and—thanks to Kay Brown—Mel read his Wait Until Dark even before it opened on Broadway. He immediately pegged it as a tour de force for his wife—by far the most vulnerable of all the vulnerable roles she had played to date, or ever would: a blind girl terrorized in her Greenwich Village apartment by three vicious criminals.bb

  “Wait Until Dark was a pivotal moment in Audrey’s career,” Ferrer contends. “She went from an ingenue to a
leading woman in it, and it was one of the best films she ever made.” Warners paid $1 million for the screen rights and provided Audrey with an exceptional supporting cast: Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Jack Weston, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. and child-prodigy Julie Herrod. Mel was the producer and quickly signed up Britain’s Terence Young for his Hollywood debut as director.

  Young’s very first film, it may be recalled, was the powerful war documentary Men of Arnhem (1944), which Audrey revered. More recent and spectacular were his three wildly popular James Bond pictures, Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Thunderball. Young was the man who had rejected Audrey for a part when she was a total unknown but predicted she would “make it” and asked her to let him direct a future film of hers one day. She now did so. Warners was nervous about his reputation for heavy gambling and habitually going overbudget. But he was the firm choice of both Ferrers, and they would have their way.

  Young had wanted either George C. Scott or Rod Steiger to play the main villain who tries to kill Audrey, but both of them declined to take such an unsympathetic part and the role went to Alan Arkin—recently Oscar-nominated for his own debut in The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966). “Arkin may not have had the brutal, cold menace that Scott could have delivered,” said Young, “but he gave it all sorts of new dimensions—the total lack of feeling and that memorable quality of evil.”36

  Audrey, meanwhile, did her homework. She studied first with a doctor in Lausanne whose specialty was teaching the blind and then in New York, where Mel had secured the cooperation of the Lighthouse Institute for the Blind to prepare her further for the role. She observed the behavior and movements of the sightless there and learned how to read Braille.