Audrey Hepburn
Page 65
ap Hepburn hated Danish pastries and could hardly bring herself to nibble on one for that legendary scene outside Tiffany’s. She asked director Blake Edwards if she could lick an ice-cream cone instead, but he said no. Only one scene was actually filmed inside Tiffany’s, on a Sunday when the store was closed to the public. Twenty security guards kept a nervous eye on all the extras and technicians within snatching range of millions of dollars worth of jewelry. No pilferage was reported.
aq Efforts to translate Tiffany’s into other forms never quite worked: A 1966 Broadway musical version with Richard Chamberlain and Mary Tyler Moore was aborted, as was a proposed television show in 1968. James Parish quotes Capote’s complaint that the TV folks wanted to “make a big, boring Audrey Hepburn thing out of it.”
ar Richard Quine (1920—1989) was a child prodigy actor-singer-dancer who appeared in many films with the great juvenile stars of the ’30s and ’40s before becoming a director in adulthood. Among his hits was My Sister Eileen ( 1955) and Bell, Book and Candle ( 1958). In 1943, he married actress Susan Peters, who was shot and paralyzed in a hunting accident a year later. Quine was guilt-ridden about the accident and took his own life on June 10, 1989.
as The happy seller of those screen rights was CBS, whose canny chairman William Paley had originally invested a mere $400,000 in the stage production in exchange for exclusive rights to the cast album (which would sell 32 million copies). CBS subsequently became 100 percent owner of My Fair Lady by acquiring the interests of lyricist Lerner, composer Loewe and stage director Moss Hart.
at Though Beaton took full credit for sets, costumes, hairstyles, and virtually all other visual aspects of My Fair Lady, a great deal of work was done by art director Gene Allen, who went largely unnoticed as the film’s co-production designer.
au “It’s funny,” Marni Nixon told interviewer John Barba. “Alan Jay Lerner said in his biography that I dubbed Gigi, which I didn’t. It was Betty Wand.”
av Though she got no screen acknowledgement, Nixon did and does continue to get royalties from the sound track album.
aw “Jack Warner had wit like shrapnel,” notes Roddy McDowall.
ax The other My Fair Lady Oscar winners were Harry Stradling for Best Color Cinematography; Gene Allen, Cecil Beaton and George James for Best Color Art Direction and Set Decoration; George R. Groves for Sound; André Previn for Best Music Adaptation; and Cecil Beaton (alone) for Best Color Costume Design. Supporting actor and actress nominees Stanley Holloway and Gladys Cooper lost out to Peter Ustinov (Topkapi) and Lila Kedrova (Zorba the Greek).
ay Victoria Brynner decided she wasn’t cut out for acting—at least not Method acting. She would become a skilled photographer, instead (see photo 51).
az Fox would promote How to Steal a Million with a special Parke-Bernet exhibition in New York of forty brilliant forgeries that had been created for the movie.
ba Michael Boyer committed suicide in 1965. Charles Boyer did the same in 1978, two days after the death of his wife.
bb When Knott’s thriller did open on Broadway, at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on February 2, 1966, it earned a Tony nomination for Lee Remick and enjoyed a 373-performance run.
bc Most, but not all, loved Arkin. Andrew Sarris complained about his mugging and noted the logical absurdity of his dressing up in wigs and disguises in order to fool a blind woman.
bd The other, more veteran honorees were Pearl Bailey, Carol Charming, David Merrick, Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier.
be Sean’s excursions outside that nest always worried her to death. While he was visiting his father in mid-1972, Audrey got a chilling call from Mel, informing her that Sean had been injured on an outing to the Los Angeles Wild Animal Park. A lion had reached out of its cage and slashed him on the back of his head—superficially, it turned out.
bf She changed her mind years later and did an in-depth interview with Walters in March of 1989 (see Chapter 10, p. 303).
bg For Hepburn’s meeting and relationship with Lauren, see Chapter 10, pp. 325-26.
bh Robin Hood has inspired a score of movies. Silent versions were produced in England (1909, 1912, 1913) and in the U.S. (1912, 1913). The first great large-scale rendering was Douglas Fairbanks’s Robin Hood (1922). The best sound version was The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) with Errol Flynn as Robin and Olivia de Havilland as Marian. Cornel Wilde played Robin’s son (Robert Hood!) in The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946). Jon Hall was Robin in Prince of Thieves (1948). John Derek starred in The Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950). Walt Disney’s The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952) starred Richard Todd. Richard Greene was Robin in 165 half-hour episodes of the popular fifties television series.
bi Hepburn’s sackcloth habits were created by British designer Yvonne Blake, based on medieval originals.
bj The role went to Liv Ullmann, who seemed destined for Audrey’s hand-me-downs: Ullmann also took the role Hepburn declined in Richard’s Things (1980), written by Frederic (Two for the Road) Raphael. As for A Bridge Too Far, its lumbering, three-hour screenplay was filmed with scrupulous fidelity to Cornelius Ryan’s book about the 1944 Allied airdrop in Arnhem. It had fine battle scenes but was relentlessly downbeat and did not do well at the box office.
bk Mel Ferrer’s career is unrelated to Audrey’s at this point, but perhaps the reader will indulge our footnote efforts to keep up with its highlights: Adnan Kashoggi, the Saudi Arabian financier and later go-between for U.S.-Iran arms deals, had asked Mel to head up the Entertainment Division of his Triad company and, later, to undertake the Arab-financed film epic, Mohammed: Messenger of God (1977). Ferrer counter-proposed a better project newly under option: Little House on the Prairie, starring Michael Landon, with NBC as partner. But Triad opted for the $10 million Mohammed, starring Anthony Quinn and Irene Papas. In mid-production, King Hassan gave the company twenty-four hours to get out of Morocco—he had royal objections to the script’s religious content. The film was completed elsewhere but lost its whole investment. Little House on the Prairie, on the other hand, is still in reruns.
bl Bogdanovich also provided small parts in the film for his own daughters, Antonia and Alexandra, as Gazzara’s daughters.
bm Novak and Sean Ferrer later convinced several actors to work for deferred payment in their jointly produced film, Strangers Kiss (1984), a remake of Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss (1955), which was a critical but not a commercial success.
bn Thirty-three-year-old German photographer Elke Krivat.
bo Stratten’s life and death inspired two lurid films: Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story (1981), hastily produced for TV, starred Jamie Lee Curtis and Bruce Weitz. Star 80 (1983), with Mariel Hemingway as Stratten, was much better directed by Bob Fosse (his last movie) and highlighted by Eric Roberts’s brilliant, chilling performance as the psychopathic Snider.
bp Merle Oberon inspired many colorful myths. It was said she came from the slums of Calcutta but pretended to be an aristocrat and hired her own mother as a maid (keeping her identity a secret). The facts: She was born Estelle Merle O‘Brien Thompson in Bombay in 1911, to a Ceylonese mother and a British father. She grew up in India and went to school in Katmandu before the family moved to Tasmania. The maid story derives from Michael Korda’s book (later film), Queenie, a fictional version of Oberon’s life. Korda’s uncle, director Alexander Korda, saw her in London when she was a teenager working under the name “Queenie O’Brien,” and married her in 1939. It was Korda who wanted to suppress her ethnic background because he feared it would harm her career. They divorced in 1945, after which she married cinematographer Lucien Ballard. Bruno Pagliai was her third husband and Rob Wolders her fourth.
bq In addition to his successful screenplays, Leonard Gershe wrote the Tony Award-winning play Butterflies Are Free ( 1969).
br Andrea Dotti never remarried, but in the months following their divorce, his celebrity dating picked up steam. The ever-vigilant Tony Menicucci dogged his footsteps a
nd, in 1983 alone, photographed him with Daniela Trebbi, Marilu Tolo, Denise Pardo, Roberta Balsano, Lynn Wyeth, Donatella Zegna, and Italian TV personality Elizabeth Vigili, among many others.
bs Continuing our footnote bulletins on Mel Ferrer: His “date” at his son’s wedding, properly enough, was Lisa, his wife of fourteen years. Everyone was charmed by Lisa. Ferrer’s career was on the upswing, thanks to his role as the smooth-talking lawyer friend (and eventual husband) of matriarch Jane Wyman in the popular television series Falcon Crest.
bt Hepburn remained loyal to Frings until his death in 1990.
bu Audrey’s actual citizenship was British, as it had always been. She also had a United Nations laissez-passer that enabled her to travel virtually everywhere without visas and a Swiss permit allowing her to live (but not work) in Switzerland.
bv There is a “bootlegged” audiotape which at least preserved the sound. Thomas wanted to make a proper recording, “but I was still playing with it, and Audrey wasn’t certain. We should have gone for it. We just thought, ‘This is a work in progress. We’ll do it later.”’ Thomas later worked with Leslie Caron on a similar project, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, with D’Annunzio’s text and Debussy’s music. He and the London Symphony Orchestra made a beautiful Sony recording of it.
bw The Dominican Republic segment was not among the original six episodes aired. The final two parts, “Tropical Gardens” and “Japanese Gardens,” were released in the spring of 1996.
bx An official “Audrey Hepburn rose” was also developed during Gardens of the World production. “Audrey liked the whites and pinks,” says Janis Blackschleger, “so we asked Clare Martin to find one that was pastel. He found a beautiful rose in America, done by Gerry Toomey at Springhill nursery, with a perfect icing-on-a-cake shaped bud, but when it opens, it gets blowzy and informal, with a red heart. It goes from formal elegance to a more casual apple-blossom pink—perfect for Audrey.” When Dr. Ron Glegg asked her how she felt about the naming of a new rose in her honor, “Her eyes lit up as in a scene from Breakfast at Tiffany‘s, and she said, ‘It is the most romantic thing that could ever happen to you.’ ”
by The idea of Anthony Perkins in the Tony Curtis role of Some Like It Hot is bizarre—and “not true,” said Wilder in Beverly Hills recently. “I wouldn’t have wanted a man who had that affair with his dead mother in Psycho! It would have cast a shadow over Some Like It Hot.” Never mind that Psycho (1960) was made after both Green Mansions and Some Like It Hot. Wilder’s remark is cosmically if not literally true.
bz At Eastman House in Rochester in 1987; at the American Film Institute on March 15, 1989; at the Kennedy Center in Washington on December 26, 1991; and at Lincoln Center in April 1992.
ca Academy president Jack Valenti introduced Audrey that night. He attempted to apply President Kennedy’s remark about Jefferson to Audrey—one person doing the work of twelve—but garbled it and said the reverse. Afterward, blissfully unaware of his gaffe, he told Hepburn and Wolders they should “go on the road” with their act. “I couldn’t say, ‘Not if you mess up your lines,’ ” says Rob.
cb “I’m Audrey Hepburn. I’m a mother. Mother’s milk is the best gift that any mother can give to her child. It’s for his whole life.”
cc The following year, Anne Chambers and Audrey were both honorees at the annual ASPCA gala in New York. “I was delighted to accept,” Hepburn began her speech, “because, after all, I had dogs long before I had babies.” She said she and Rob slept with their two Jack Russell terriers. Why? “Because we couldn’t find a basket big enough for the four of us,” she explained.
cd A partial list of those performers on April 30, 1993: Roger Moore (remarks), Yo Yo Ma (Bach cello solo), American Boychoir with Atlanta Brass Ensemble (Dufay’s “Gloria”), Frederica Von Stade (Mozart selections), Harry Belafonte (remarks), Pinchas Zuckerman and John Browning (Brahms sonata), Barbara Walters (remarks), Henry Mancini (“Moon River”), Tokyo String Quartet (Schubert scherzo), Michael Tilson Thomas (Ravel’s “Pavane for a Departed Princess”), Gregory Peck (film tribute), Carol Vaness (Puccini aria), Tatiana Troyanos (DeFalla and Brahms songs), Hugh Downs (remarks), Terry Cook (“Deep River” spiritual), Elizabeth Taylor (film remarks), Cicely Tyson (reading), and Dave Brubeck & Ensemble (his 1954 tune “Audrey,” written—he said—with the image of Hepburn in her garden in his mind).
ce Among them: Dan Ackroyd, Richard Avedon, David Bowie, Matthew Broderick, Leslie Caron, Harrison Ford, Hubert de Givenchy, Marvin Hamlisch, Gregory Peck, Nancy Reagan, Julia Roberts, Winona Ryder, and Donald Trump. Hollywood for Children also has a “Kids Board,” with such child-celebrity members as Raven Symone from Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, Shawn Toovey of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Emily Hart from Tommy, Zachary Ty Bryan from Home Improvement, and Laura Bertram and Lani Billard of Ready or Not.