by Sam Wasson
Everything That Is Important in a Female: Colette and Audrey’s brief exchange is taken from the sources listed above. “Everything that is important in a female” from Anita Loos, “Everything Happens to Audrey Hepburn” (The American Weekly, September 12, 1954).
The Cigarette Girl: Scene from Laughter in Paradise (Transocean/Associated British Films-Pathe, 1951).
Mrs. James Hanson, Deferred: For a full list of Gigi reviews, consult David Hofstede, Audrey Hepburn: A Bio-bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1994). Brooks Atkinson’s review, which included “charm, honesty, and talent,” is from the New York Times, November 26, 1951. Walter Kerr’s review, in which he praises Audrey’s “candid innocence and tomboy intelligence” is from the New York Herald-Tribune, November 26, 1951. “Oh dear, and I’ve still got to learn how to act” is from “Princess Apparent,” Time, September 7, 1953.
The Electric Light: The description of Hanson’s time spent on the sidelines of Roman Holiday was extrapolated from interviews with Hanson quoted in Paris’s Audrey Hepburn. Audrey’s remark “I’m not like an electric light” was selected from Mary Worthington Jones, “My Husband Doesn’t Run Me,” Photoplay (April 1956). For more on Wyler’s rigid working style, see Jan Herman, A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler (Putnam, 1996).
The Enchanting Unknown: The effect the Roman Holiday dailies had at Paramount was described to me in an interview with AC Lyles at his office on the Paramount lot, on April 2, 2009.
The Market: The startling statistic, “one-third of the nation’s…” I uncovered in Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1973). The even more startling portrayal of Mr. and Mrs. Tony Curtis, “In 1954, a close friend relates, ‘Janet made the greatest sacrifice she had ever made…’,” is from Modern Screen (1959).
The Product: There is no shortage of books about the Hollywood star system, though most of them are too misty-eyed to see their subject(s) clearly. Jeanine Basinger’s The Star Machine (Knopf, 1997) is loving and brutal; she lets the magic in without keeping us from the factory truth of how and why these often-unremarkable people became the world’s most brilliant stars.
Doris and Marilyn: My thinking about Doris Day and Marilyn Monroe was informed by Molly Haskell’s indispensable From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1973). Though she’s more generous to Doris Day than I could ever be, Haskell is the most elegant of critics, and quite simply the last word on the phenomenon of star meaning and making. When paired with Marjorie Rosen’s Popcorn Venus, it’s safe to assume that one has examined every culture-making actress, and from every significant angle.
Birth of the Cool: “Audrey had it in her to be the sugar coating on a bad-tasting pill,” AC Lyles to SW on April 2, 2009. “She thinks the authenticity…” from “H.R.H Audrey Hepburn,” by Dorothy Kilgallen (American Weekly, September 27, 1953).
Mrs. James Hanson, Deferred, Again: Audrey sums it up in Mike Connolly, “Who Needs Beauty?” Photoplay (January 1954). “We decided this was the wrong time to get married,” she said. “I’ve told you my schedule: a movie here in Hollywood, then back to the stage, then back to Hollywood, and so forth. He would be spending most of his time taking care of his business in England and Canada. It would be very difficult for us to lead a normal married life. Other people have tried it but it has never worked. So we decided to call it off. Oh, maybe sometime in the future—but not now, not for a while.” See also Joe Hyams, “Why Audrey Hepburn Was Afraid of Marriage,” Filmland (January 1954).
2. WANTING IT, 1953–1955
One Hot Spurt: Patrick McGilligan’s sprawling interview with George Axelrod, “George Axelrod: Irony!” from Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s (University of California Press, 1997), captures the wild, willful spirit of Axelrod’s quixotic sensibility, and, along with several other extended interviews (namely, Axelrod’s in Screencraft: Screenwriting, [Focal Press, 2003] and “A Hit in a Hurry” from Theater Arts [January 1954]), laid the groundwork for my characterization. Thanks also to Illeana Douglas, Axelrod’s former daughter-in-law, who spent a great deal of time remembering with me, quite fondly, those days and nights she spent in George’s company talking Hollywood, debating movies, and—most of all—cooking dinner. She described a great laughing Falstaff of a man who, despite his achievements, always struggled to assert himself as a writer of serious, adult romantic comedies. Axelrod said as much throughout his career, from Dennis Stack, “Films: Views and Interviews” (The Kansas City Star, January 28, 1958) to Vernon Scott, “Axelrod Emphasizes the Marital Theme” (The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 24, 1967). “The Seven Year Itch, in fact, is concerned with…” from The New Yorker’s review of the play, December 6, 1952. “The bulk of my sex-comedy career…” from Backstory 3.
Does Edith Head Give Good Costume?: Reading David Chierichetti’s Edith Head: The Life and Times of Hollywood’s Celebrated Costume Designer (HarperCollins, 2003) alongside The Dress Doctor (Little, Brown, 1959), by Head and Jane Kesner Ardmore, and How to Dress for Success (Random House, 1967), by Head and Joe Hyams, a consistent picture of Edith fades into view. Though she tried her best to appear cool, she was, beneath the glasses, a bundle of nerves, and as much an actress as the women she dressed. When I interviewed him at his home on March 6, 2009, David Chierichetti was generous enough to show me the last filmed interview with Edith, which he conducted shortly before her death. Before the first question is asked, with the camera rolling, Edith carefully, nervously, strikes a pose, reconsiders it, and readjusts. Image was all for her, even to her dying day. However, a distinctly vulnerable side to Edith, which she showed more of to Grace Kelly than she did to Audrey, is on display in her various personal items—journals, photographs, and sketchbooks—available in the Edith Head Collection at the AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles. She laughs in candid photographs. Speaking with Rita Riggs, Edith’s former apprentice, in her loft in West Hollywood on February 13, 2009, offered me a vivid picture of Ms. Head—as Riggs still refers to her, over forty years later—in taskmaster mode, and was essential to my understanding of the pressures she placed on her coterie of employees as well as herself. She would be reluctant to admit it, but as Chierichetti assured me, Audrey broke her heart. “She was Miss Head’s favorite to dress,” Rita Riggs to SW on February 13, 2009.
The Memo: These pieces of correspondence, as well as many other Sabrina-related memos exchanged in the days leading up to Audrey’s Parisian shopping spree, are kept in the AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles.
31½-22-31½: Audrey’s meeting with Hubert de Givenchy, like her discovery by Colette, is ensconced in legend. The combination of Amy Fine Collins’s “When Hubert Met Audrey” (Vanity Fair, December 1995), from which I borrowed a great deal of dialogue; as always, Barry Paris’s version in Audrey Hepburn; and Audrey Style (Harper Collins, 1999) by Pamela Clarke Keogh, which gives one a good feeling for Audrey’s taste and the reasons behind it, all helped to separate the imagined from the likely, and formed the foundation of my own recreation. Also of use were Charla Carter’s “Audrey Hepburn” (Harper’s Bazaar, December 1991), and “Co-Stars Again: Audrey Hepburn and Givenchy,” by Gloria Emerson (New York Times, September 8, 1965). While a great deal has been written on Audrey and Givenchy’s collaboration, there is little by way of meaningful interviews. These pieces are exceptions. “Whether the skirt is wide enough…” Givenchy quoted in W Magazine (March 2008).
Mel: Audrey describes her first meeting with Mel in David Stone, “My Husband Mel” (Everybody’s Weekly, March 10, 1956). “Our first meeting was in London,” Audrey said, “at a film party, and it was very formal. I was enchanted by meeting him, very interested to meet him. I’d loved his performance in the film Lili. The thing I remember most about that first meeting was that he was so serious. He didn’t smile. I liked him…but that was all. He’d seen me on Broadway, in Gigi, and we talked about doing a play togeth
er, the way actors and actresses do. And we said that if either of us found a play that would suit us, we’d send it to the other.”
The Most Sophisticated Woman at the Glen Cove Station: The hilarious business of Wilder and Lehman straining over the question of Audrey’s sexuality in Sabrina came by way of Maurice Zolotow’s Billy Wilder in Hollywood (Putnam, 1977), which, in conjunction with the best biography on Wilder, Ed Sikov’s On Sunset Blvd: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (Hyperion, 1998), fill in most of what was left unsaid in Cameron Crowe’s Conversations with Wilder (Knopf, 1999). Screenwriter and novelist David Freeman, who inherited the script of Hitchcock’s unmade The Short Night from Ernest Lehman, served me a hearty stew of anecdotes about the man he called “the Robert Wise of Screenwriters,” which is probably the greatest remark anyone has ever made or will ever make about Lehman. “This girl, singlehanded, may make bosoms a thing of the past,” Billy Wilder quoted in “Princess Apparent” (Time, September 7, 1953).
The Dream Begins: Audrey’s remark, the baby “will be the greatest thing in my life, greater even than my success,” is from Ellen Johnson, “Will Hollywood ever see Audrey Hepburn Again?” Modern Screen (April 1955).
Oscar Night: Edith Head’s acceptance speech on record at the AMPAS Library.
Mrs. Mel Ferrer: “My mother wanted to have a kid because she wanted to right the wrongs of her childhood,” Sean Ferrer said to me on September 17, 2009. “She carried that into her UNICEF work.” For a woman who didn’t like to give interviews, Audrey was quite vocal about the importance of motherhood in her life. “I don’t think I was a whole woman then. No woman is without love,” Audrey quoted in Carl Clement, “Look Where You’re Going, Audrey (Photoplay, April 1956). “He’s a protective husband, and I like it. Most women do…” from “Audrey’s Advice: Have Fun, Let Hubby Wear the Pants” (New York Journal American, August 19, 1957). “She was in part attracted to Mel…” Robert Wolders to SW on October 23, 2009. All through her life, Wolders assured me, Audrey had no qualms about trumpeting the kind of domesticity that many women found regressive. Naturally, she gave it a lot of airtime here, in the mid-1950s. “She’s known dictators in her early war-shadowed life,” Audrey quoted in Mary Jones “My Husband Doesn’t Run Me,” Photoplay (April 1956). “Mel was jealous of her success,” Brynner quoted in Warren Harris, Audrey Hepburn (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). “Of course, it’s a problem…” Ferrer quoted in Joseph Barry, “Audrey Hepburn at 40,” McCall’s (July 1969).
3. SEEING IT, 1955–1958
The Swans: Gloria Vanderbilt and Carol Matthau’s own memoirs provided me with valuable firsthand accounts of swan life. “I rarely asked anyone to my studio,” from Gloria Vanderbilt, It Seemed Important at the Time: A Romance Memoir (Simon & Schuster, 2004). “You have freed yourself,” Capote quoted in Carol Matthau, Among the Porcupines (Turtle Bay Books, 1992). Also of service was Aram Saroyan’s Trio: Oona Chaplin, Carol Matthau, Gloria Vanderbilt: Portrait of an Intimate Friendship (Simon & Schuster, 1985), as well as my correspondence with Mr. Saroyan about the effect Breakfast at Tiffany’s had upon his mother. “I think Carol was pleased to be associated with Holly Golightly,” he wrote in an e-mail of January 14, 2009, “and to some degree dined out on the association. When I recently reread the book, I did see touches that reminded me of Carol, specifically the zingers like ‘The next time a girl asks for change for the powder room, don’t give her 50 cents.’ That sounded like Carol to me. I think Carol relished the association more than the other two. Gloria had her own fish to fry, and Oona was an extremely shy person. Then too, looking at the three of them exclusively, Carol does seem to have had more of Holly Golightly’s qualities than either Gloria or Oona.”
Beautiful Babe: In All His Glory (Simon & Schuster, 1990), Sally B. Smith’s magisterial account of Bill Paley, contains such a wealth of information about Babe it’s practically a dual biography. Her strange and fractured relationship with Truman, however, is, understandably, explored only peripherally, and here is where Clarke’s Capote was of immeasurable help. The book works in perfect counterpoint to Smith’s, balancing both sides of the Capote/Babe love story, such that, when taken together, a diptych of startling sadness, and perhaps even tragedy, comes into view. In this section, Truman’s quotations—the passages beginning “When I first saw her…,” “whose sole creation…,” and “I was madly in love with her…”—are all from Capote, and the evocation of Truman and Babe’s conversation about her marriage to Bill was adapted from dialogue related in Smith’s book. The Billy Wilder remark is also from In All His Glory.
George Axelrod Dreams of Rich People Saying Witty Things and Screwing: “The film version of The Seven Year Itch…” from Daily Variety film review of The Seven Year Itch, January 1, 1955. “In the Eisenhower years, comedy resides in how close one can come to the concept of hot pussy while still living in the cool of the innocent,” from Norman Mailer, Marilyn, A Biography (Grosset & Dunlap, 1981).
The Producers: A substantial portion of the information I used to evoke Marty Jurow came from his own book, Marty Jurow Seein’ Stars: A Show Biz Odyssey (Southern Methodist University Press, 2001), and what I know of Richard Shepherd and his own career was relayed to me, over the course of several interviews, from Shepherd himself.
What Truman Capote Does in Bed: Truman’s interview with Patti Hill, “The Art of Fiction No. 17,” originally published in The Paris Review (Spring-Summer 1957), goes into Capote’s working methods, as does Gerald Clarke’s Capote. “When it’s a quarter to two and sleep hasn’t come…” from Capote’s essay “The White Rose,” collected in Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote (Random House, 2007). The morsel of Capote’s old purple prose style, “he was spinning like a fan blade through metal spirals…,” is from Other Voices, Other Views (Random House, 1948). Capote’s observation, “Every year, New York is flooded with these girls…,” is taken from his interview with Eric Norden, Playboy (March 1968).
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Traveling: The exact words Nancy White objected to are noted in some file somewhere in Gerald Clarke’s possession. “Of one thing I am certain,” he wrote to me on November 2, 2009, ‘“Fuck’ was not one of the four letter words to which Esquire objected. That would have been much too strong for the fifties, and Truman would have known it wouldn’t pass. I think the words were more like ‘hell’ and ‘damn.’” Capote’s letter to Cecil Beaton, “The Bazaar is printing it in their July issue…,” is excerpted from Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote (Random House, 2004). “Truman Capote I do not know well, but I like him…” Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself (G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1959). “Whenever Capote tries to suggest the inner life of his heroine…” Alfred Kazin, from “Truman Capote and ‘the Army of Wrongness’” collected in Contemporaries (Little, Brown, 1962).
The Real Holly Golightly: “The Bonnie Golightly Sweepstakes” is detailed in “Golightly at Law” (Time, February 9, 1958). James Michener’s side of things, from which I drew all of the quotations that appear in this section, takes up a hunk of his introduction to Lawrence Grobel’s Conversations with Capote (New American Library, 1985). Truman’s typically slippery take comes from his interview with Eric Norden (Playboy, March 1968). “Truman mentioned such a woman to me too…” Gerald Clarke to SW on December 23, 2008. “Beatnik” coined by Herb Caen in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle, April 2, 1958. Here it is: “Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.’s Beat Generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!), hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 Beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles’ free booze. They’re only Beat, y’know, when it comes to work…”
4. TOUCHING IT, 1958–1960
Jurow and Shepherd Make Their Move: This sequence between Marty Jurow and Richard Shepherd comes to the page by way of Jurow’s own book, Marty Jurow Seein’ Stars: A Show Biz Odyssey (Southern Methodist University Press, 2001), in additi
on to the several conversations I had with Shepherd, who, with astonishing generosity, made himself, as well as his own shooting script of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, exceedingly available to me. All of his quotations come from those exchanges. “Well-written, off-beat, amusing…” quoted in a Paramount reader’s report on file in the Special Collections in the AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library. The dialogue between Truman and Jurow, and Jurow and Paula Strasberg, is as reported by Jurow himself in Marty Jurow Seein’ Stars. “I remember it this way…” Shepherd to SW on November 24, 2009.
Marilyn: Truman’s intense feeling for Marilyn survives in “A Beautiful Child” from Music for Chameleons (Random House, 1975). After reading the piece, she ends up looking a lot like Holly. Or Holly a lot like her. “It’s not that she was mean…” Billy Wilder quoted in Michel Ciment, “Billy Wilder urbi et orbi,” Positif (July–August, 1983). Strasberg’s phone conversation with Marty Jurow is recounted in Marty Jurow Seein’ Stars.
The Serious Writer: The details of Jurow-Shepherd’s deal with Sumner Locke Elliott are drawn from an extended correspondence kept in the AMPAS Library Special Collections. Contained there are all of the various memos, changes, and legal stipulations of his contract, as well as the draft he turned out.
The Gag Man Gagged: “Truman, they won’t use me…” / “Well, bullshit…” This brief exchange comes by way of Joan Axelrod, quoted in George Plimpton, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career (Doubleday, 1997). George tells another version of the same story in Backstory 3 (University of California Press, 1997).