Audrey Hepburn (13 page)

Audrey went immediately to Valentina Cortesa, asking whether she should take it. Cortesa's response was unhesitant, as always: “I said, ‘Listen, if the cast is number one, if the director is number one, even if the part is not number one—do it. Maybe something else comes out of it.”'
⁵³

Nous irons à Monte Carlo
[We Go to Monte Carlo] was a sequel to Ventura's mildly successful
Nous irons à Paris
(1949). Audrey was cast as much for her bilingual fluency as for her charms: The film would be made both in French and English (with the snappier title
Monte Carlo Baby).
It was a series of skits loosely—very loosely—connected by the musical appearances of Ventura and his band. Audrey played a movie star chasing after her missing baby.

Compared with her serious role in
Secret People,
it was absurd. Her misgivings were compounded by a report that the jazz musician who would be her leading man was a notorious womanizer. She mentioned that to Nick Dana, her
High Burton Shoes
pal, who replied, “It's true, but Frenchmen are usually not as good as their words.” At that point, says Dana, “She looked at me and smiled and said, ‘What do
you
think I should do?' I said, ‘What did they offer you?' She told me. I said, ‘Ask for fifty pounds more.' She went back and said, ‘If I have to work with this man, I need more money.' And she got it.”

Three days before departure, she showed up at Dana's apartment in the St. John's Wood section of London with an announcement: “I feel like I should look different if I'm going to do a French movie.”

Dana, who had a few salon skills of his own, reflects on that moment with delight at his home in Rochester, New York, and is not too modest to deny credit for what happened next:

“I said, ‘You have the kind of face that needs a gamine haircut. I would almost take the ends of your eyebrows off so that you have a quizzical look. You have the kind of face for it—a pixie face. Let's make it a pixie.' So we did the eyebrows and I gave her a gamine cut. It was that simple.”
⁵⁴

Thorold Dickinson was accommodating, too, moving up her dialogue post-synching session for
Secret People
to May 28, since she had to leave for France that very evening.

“Everything significant in my life has happened gloriously and unexpectedly—like the trip to Monte Carlo tomorrow,” she told writer Radie Harris the previous night. “I've always longed to go to the French Riviera, but I could never afford it.”

A day later, she was installed at the Hotel de Paris, the most splendid Belle Epoque structure on the Riviera, and ready to start shooting
Monte Carlo Baby
under the direction of Jean Boyer. Boyer, one of France's most prolific directors, was a master of mass-audience fluff. His next assignment would be to direct Brigitte Bardot in her first film,
Crazy for Love
(1952). His current stars were less titillating: The biggest name in
Monte Carlo Baby
was sad-faced comic Jules Munshin. He was supported—not hugely—by Cara Williams, Michelle Farmer (Gloria Swanson's daughter) and John van Dreelen. Audrey would appear in the film for a total of twelve minutes.

Monte Carlo
was released in France and England in 1952, and poorly received. There was no interest in American distribution until May 1954, after Hepburn had become famous, when producer Collyer Young and his wife Ida Lupino bought the U.S. rights and exhibited
Monte Carlo Baby
in a few art houses, where confused American audiences could not understand why such a big new star was appearing in such a small part.
⁵⁵
The New York Times
called it “as witless a film exercise as ever was spewed from an ingenuous camera.” Audrey's role of the film star? “She made this film before she became one in reality. It is rather astonishing how she stands out in that seared desert of mediocrity.”
⁵⁶

 

 

THE HOLLYWOOD “star search” was typically full of sound and fury, most often signifying nothing other than publicity. The more dignified theater world usually disdained it—with the exception of
Gigi.
It was the last fiction work of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873—1954), written during the Nazi occupation of Paris. When published in 1945, it was just the sort of escapist fare Europeans wanted to read, and a huge hit. In 1948, it was made into a pleasant French film starring Danièle Delorme, which in turn led to the idea of a stage version.

But Colette's New York agent was having trouble trying to sell
Gigi
as a Broadway play: The first dramatization by a French playwright called for nineteen sets and a cast of thirty-eight-much too much. The agent now asked Anita Loos (of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
fame) to streamline it, and she duly produced a version with just eight actors and four sets. But there were other obstacles.

“First of all,” said Loos, “the stage rights were acquired by Gilbert Miller, who hadn't the least intention of producing
Gigi.
Gilbert's main interest in life was to be an international playboy. At the same time, he didn't want some other producer to acquire a likely property, so he followed his usual custom: paid me an advance of a thousand dollars, tossed my script into the lower drawer of his desk, and went merrily off to Europe.”
⁵⁷

Miller was a powerful theatrical czar on both sides of the Atlantic.
Victoria Regina, What Price Glory?
and
The Cocktail Party
were among his hits, and he was a millionaire long before marrying the additional fortune of heiress Kitty Bache. He had his own airline, bank, estates in four countries, and was hugely fat. In London, he and Kitty lived royally in their Savoy suite overlooking the Thames.
⁵⁸
He was there now, laying plans to produce both Cleopatra plays—the Shakespeare and the Shaw—with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Before leaving New York, Miller had asked an ambitious young assistant named Morton Gottlieb to look after his affairs. Gottlieb found Loos's manuscript and took it upon himself to put it into production. Miller returned, furious to learn that
Gigi
had been announced in the trade papers.

“Gilbert then thought of one more chance to ditch the production,” said Loos. “Colette herself might possibly come to his aid by turning down my adaptation.” Miller sent Loos to the ancient Palais Royale apartment in Paris where Colette had long been bed-ridden with arthritis. “I presently realized that Colette's mind was wandering,” said Loos, “and her gaze was directed toward my feet.... ‘Where did you buy those adorable shoes?' she asked. From that moment on we hit it off.”
⁵⁹

Loos came away with Colette's approval of her
Gigi
script. That delighted Gottlieb as much as it annoyed Miller, who was now obligated to move forward—but there was still no Gigi:

They were about to compromise “on a none-too-pristine Hollywood starlet,” said Loos, when a telegram arrived from Colette via her husband Maurice Goudeket in Monte Carlo, where they regularly spent their summers as guests of Prince Rainier at the Hotel de Paris: “Don't cast your Gigi until you receive my letter.” The letter that followed told a remarkable tale:

Colette, seventy-eight, was being propelled through the hotel lobby—sipping a liqueur and resplendent in her red corkscrew curls—when her wheelchair was blocked by a group of actors, technicians and their film equipment. The chair got tangled in some wires, and director Jean Boyer was cross about the interruption. But he fell respectfully silent when he recognized Colette, and shooting was halted while he went over to pay his respects. During that interaction and the time it took to get her chair sorted out, Colette studied the activity with her usual curiosity. Several cast members came up to meet her, but her attention was drawn to one who did not: A girl in the background, oblivious to Colette, was taking advantage of the unplanned break to frolic with two of the musicians off to the side. She was dancing around them in playful fashion; she seemed graceful and awkward at the same time; she was extremely pretty. The old author's eyes narrowed. Suddenly she announced, “Voilà! There is my Gigi!”

“What author ever expects to see one of his brain-children appear suddenly in the flesh?” she would later add. “Not I, and yet, here it was. This unknown young woman was my own thoroughly French Gigi come alive!”
⁶¹

Colette thought the girl might be fifteen or sixteen—far younger than her twenty-two years—and summoned a crew member to enquire about her. “She's here with her mother, the Baroness van Heemstra,” the man reported. Ella, it turned out, knew Colette's novel well and was thrilled by the idea of Audrey in its title role.

Anita Loos was in New York with Paulette Goddard, getting ready to leave for a vacation in Paris, but after Colette's letter arrived, they arranged for a stopover first in London. There, at the Savoy, Colette's discovery paid them a visit:

“The girl came in, dressed in a simple white shirtwaist and skirt, but Paulette and I were bowled over by her unusual type of beauty. After talking for a moment, we arranged an audition for her to read for Gilbert the following day. But after she left, Paulette said to me, ‘There's got to be something wrong with that girl!' I asked, ‘What?' ‘Anyone who looks like that would have been discovered before she was ten years old.'

“There was nothing wrong, except the strange fact that perfection is almost impossible for the ordinary eye to see.... She had been in full view of the London public for two years, [but] it had taken Colette to see Audrey Hepburn.”

When Miller heard her read for the part, he was unimpressed. But such was Colette's insistence that he engaged her anyway and called on his old friend Cathleen Nesbitt for help. Nesbitt, a veteran character actress (formerly a leading lady and lover of Rupert Brooke), agreed to critique Audrey's delivery. Audrey did a reading. Nesbitt couldn't hear her. Serious coaching was in order, and Nesbitt told Miller she'd provide it if the girl would come regularly to her country home outside New York City.

No one was more aware of her deficiencies than Audrey. “I'm sorry, Madame, but it is impossible,” she told Colette the day they met. “I wouldn't be able to, because I can't act.”

Valentina Cortesa had told her something might come out of
Monte Carlo Baby,
and it did. “Fortuna!” Cortesa called it.
⁶²
And now, while Audrey waited for Miller and ABC pictures to sort out the business arrangements, more
fortuna
was on the way.

 

 

RURITANIAN PRINCESS visits foreign country, eludes her guardians, goes madcap for twenty-four hours, falls in love with American journalist, returns to her senses in bittersweet ending.

Dalton Trumbo and Ian McLellan Hunter had come up with that screenplay idea in the mid-forties and sold it to Frank Capra, who wanted but failed to make it at Paramount with Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant. William Wyler read it in 1951 and told Paramount he'd do it, but only if he could shoot on location in Rome. The studio agreed, Capra released the property to Wyler, and casting for
Roman Holiday
began. Everything hinged on the princess.

Wyler's first idea was Jean Simmons, but Howard Hughes—who owned her contract—refused to make her available. The search continued on two continents through July 1951, when Paramount's London production chief Richard Mealand wrote the home office: “I have another candidate for
Roman Holiday
—Audrey Hepburn. I was struck by her playing of a bit-part in
Laughter in Paradise.”

At the time, said Audrey, “I had no idea of who William Wyler was [and] no sense of what Mr. Wyler could do for my career. I had no sense, period. I was awfully new, and awfully young, and thrilled just to be going out on auditions and meeting people who seemed to like me.”
⁶³

She was busy enough trying to prepare for
Gigi,
and it boggled her mind to think of making a movie—before, during or even after. But if Paramount of Hollywood wanted her to do a screen test, she could hardly refuse. Upon returning to London from Monte Carlo, just prior to leaving for America, she acquiesced to Mealand's hasty arrangements.

“I wanted a girl without an American accent to play the princess, someone you could believe was brought up a princess,” Wyler recalled.
⁶⁴
He was in London and “sort of picked out a few girls but didn't want to stay and do the tests,” said Audrey. “So he put Thorold Dickinson in charge of testing me because I'd worked with him in
Secret People,
and he understood me.”
⁶⁵

Her
Roman
Holiday test took place at Pinewood Studios in London, September 18, 1951, under Dickinson's direction. “We did some scenes out of the script,” he said, but “Paramount also wanted to see what Audrey was actually like not acting a part, so I did an interview with her. We loaded a thousand feet of film into a camera and every foot of it went on this conversation. She talked about her experiences in the war, the Allied raid on Arnhem, and hiding out in a cellar. A deeply moving thing.”
⁶⁶

All of which was a prelude to the
real
test: In order to assess the
spontaneous
Audrey, Wyler had instructed Dickinson to keep the film rolling when she thought she was finished. After a scene in which the princess flings herself onto her bed, Audrey was told she could relax and leave. But she stayed put.