Dakota Beacon

This is the first Sunday of 2021, so it must be “special”.  I suddenly thought of Audrey Hepburn.  Don’t ask me why - I really don’t know, but somehow her voice and her image drifted through my mind and I thought, why not remember Audrey Hepburn this Sunday?

Many of us recall her standing before Tiffany’s in the wee hours of a morning, dressed in her elegant black dress and long black gloves.  Or sitting in the window on the fire escape singing “Moon River” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  Or perhaps the “Fair Lady” who charms one and all in Lerner and Lowe’s musical.  Maybe your favorite was as the terrified widow in “Charade”.  But her own story was as dramatic and fascinating as any role she played.

Born in Brussels to a Dutch baroness and a businessman of British and Austrian heritage in 1929, Audrey had two older half-brothers, Ian and Alex.  As the child of multinational parents, Audrey grew up speaking English and Dutch, eventually learning French, Italian, German and Spanish as well.  At the age of six, Audrey experienced what she termed the most traumatic event of her life - her parents separated after a heated dispute and her father went to Britain.  The year was 1935.  From this point on she was raised by her mother and her mother’s family.  She later told of the feeling of being “dumped”.  Two years later, her father wishing her to be educated in England, she was sent to Kent.  In 1939, two years after this, war broke out between Britain and Germany.  Audrey returned to Europe because it was feared that England would be more dangerous and during the previous war the Netherlands had managed to remain neutral.  It was hoped that it would be safer there.  These hopes were not realized, when Germany attacked the Netherlands.  Audrey’s uncle, believed to have been involved with the Dutch Resistance, was executed by the Germans.  Following this her brother, Ian, was taken prisoner and sent to a labor camp in Germany and her brother Alex went underground to avoid the same fate.  These were very difficult times.  The Germans blockaded the Netherlands and there was no food.  The Dutch people resorted to eating tulip bulbs and many suffered starvation.  Audrey, a young teen, managed to deliver messages and food to downed pilots and others escaping the German army, hiding in the woods, and thus served the Dutch resistance effort.  She remembered seeing Jews being taken away on trains to German concentration camps.  It haunted her all her life.  She later recalled that they lived from day to day, always hoping the German occupation would end in a week, a month, six months . . . she said that had they known how long they would be subjected to occupation they would have “shot themselves”.  It was an experience which would in many ways shape her future.

Following the defeat of Germany, Audrey studied ballet, at which she excelled.  However, because she was rather tall, and because her health and strength had been compromised during her formative years throughout the German occupation, she hadn’t the stamina to achieve all she hoped for as a ballerina.  Instead, then, she focused on acting.  She studied, she took small parts in film.  She got work as a chorus girl in some London musicals, drawing on her dancing talent.  Then, in 1952, she took a small part in a small film - Monte Carlo Baby.  It was during filming in Monte Carlo that she was noticed by famed author, Colette, who was interested in casting the Broadway version of Gigi.  Audrey, an unknown, was cast in the title role.  She was an instant success, bringing a fresh innocence to the stage, along with grace and a special sparkle which would forever characterize her performances.  By the time Gigi closed in the spring of 1952, Hepburn was sought by director William Wyler for the part of the “princess” in the movie Roman Holiday, opposite Gregory Peck.  He recognized instantly that she was going to be a star and insisted that her name be placed above the title in the credits, along with his own.  As the princess, Audrey channeled her patrician heritage.  It was the story of a cloistered, sheltered princess who longed to experience life and perhaps fall in love.  She escapes to have a brief romantic fling with a journalist in Rome to cover the royal visit.  The film was a huge success and Hepburn was acclaimed for her work, winning an Academy Award, the British BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe - a sort of “triple crown”. 

She played the part of a chauffeur’s daughter in Sabrina, sought by the two wealthy sons of her father’s employer, played by William Holden and Humphrey Bogart.  Another success.  Then she met actor and producer Mel Ferrer and fell in love herself.  She starred in a stage production of Ondine, in which a sea nymph falls in love with a human.  She married Ferrer in 1954 in Switzerland.  Many iconic performances followed - Holly Golightly, the solitary call girl with the past she wanted to forget in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the aristocrat Natasha Rostova in War and Peace, a beatnik opposite Fred Astaire in Funny Face, and, of course, Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady.  Many of us remember her performance in the comic-suspense drama Charade, with Cary Grant.  She played some serious roles, in The Nun’s Story and as the blind girl in Wait Until Dark.

Audrey was a hard-working, full-time star.  She became an all-time fashion icon in her own right - the too-thin, undernourished waif from occupied Holland, the “dumped”, abandoned child of a father who was really unable to show her affection, began to turn her attention to the plight of other children who were hungry and whom the world seemed to have abandoned.  She became an active spokesperson for UNICEF, traveling throughout the world to promote child welfare.  

She was married twice - to Mel Ferrer, with whom she had a son, Sean, Andrea Dotti, an Italian psychiatrist, with whom she had a son, Luca, and then began a long-term relationship with a Dutch actor, Robert Wolders, widower of Merle Oberon, which lasted the rest of her life.  

In September of 1992, she was diagnosed with cancer.  She died at her home in Switzerland January 20, 1993.  Throughout her life and career she inspired admiration for her hard work and consideration for others.  She brought a quality of luminescence to the screen in her wonderfully engaging smile.  She charmed us and created a style all her own.  She might perhaps wish most of all to be remembered as a humanitarian who recalled a bleak childhood and could relate to others who suffered.  

A few memorable moments with Audrey Hepburn:

We first meet Holly Golightly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JfS90u-1g8

Another memorable scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JfS90u-1g8

A few scenes from Sabrina (1954):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UirDQvdIdJ8

Dancing with Fred Astaire in Funny Face (1957):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB2vXHnS2QA

The irresistible horse race scene from My Fair Lady (1964): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uozGujfdS0

Charade (1963):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T-9mXdud1M

Roman Holiday, as a princess (1953):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edOIkL1zhbU

A biography of Audrey Hepburn:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNYW5Ur71-g

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