by Barry Paris
ROMAN HOLIDAY would be shot entirely “around” Audrey. Filming was to begin in Italy in June 1952, after Gigi closed in New York. She and Hanson were to be married in the interlude, but as it turned out, there was no interlude, and the wedding had to be postponed. Paramount’s schedule was so tight that she was required to go straight from the closing night of Gigi to Rome.
The film she was about to make was Cinderella in reverse. Some say it derived from an old Ferenc Molnar story. Others insist it was inspired by a telephoto-lens shot of Princess Margaret in a swimsuit on Capri. The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo, one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten, working under the pseudonym of “John Dighton,” with Ian McLellan Hunter.
Roman Holiday was a bit reminiscent of Capra’s It Happened One Night, with a big difference in tone: It was no screwball comedy of the thirties, but a sentimental escape of the fifties, unlike such other “realistic” new films as A Place in the Sun.43 Director William Wyler’s brilliant credits included Wuthering Heights, The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver and The Best Years of Our Lives. Paramount had approved his request to make it on location for self-serving reasons : It could be financed with “frozen” lira earned in (but not removable from) Italy. For economy’s sake, Wyler agreed to shoot Roman Holiday in black and white, “and by the time I’d realized my error it was too late to get enough color stock over to Italy,” he said.44
“He was the classiest filmmaker that ever lived,” says his friend Billy Wilder, who was determined not to cry during Best Years of Our Lives but did so throughout. “And I’m not a pushover. I laugh at Hamlet. There was a finesse in that guy that you would never expect, sitting across from him at a card table.”q
With Roman Holiday, Wyler first had to finesse Gregory Peck, a major star at thirty-six, thanks to his performances in The Keys of the Kingdom (1945), The Yearling (1946) and Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)-all of which had earned him Oscar nominations.
“When he told me that an unknown girl, a little dancer from London, was going to play the princess, I said, ‘Well, Willy, no one has better judgment than you, but have you seen her on film?’” Peck recalls. “He said, ‘Let me show you something.’”45
Wyler showed Audrey’s screen test to Peck, who had read the Roman Holiday script and realized now, more than ever, that “it was not going to be about me, it was about the princess.” On that basis, he rejected it. But Wyler knew just what button to push. “You surprise me, Greg,” he said. “If you didn’t like the story, okay, but because somebody’s part is a little better than yours, that’s no reason to turn down a film. I didn’t think you were the kind of actor who measures the size of the roles.“46
Peck capitulated. Moreover, he phoned his agent George Chasin to say, “The real star of this picture is Audrey Hepburn. [Tell] the studio I want Audrey Hepburn to be billed on the same line.”47 It was an unusually generous gesture, and the Paramount executives were initially much opposed. But soon enough, says Peck, “We all knew that this was going to be an important star and we began to talk off-camera about the chance that she might win an Academy Award in her first film.”48
Audrey knew no such thing. “Willie was a great, famous director when I met him,” she said, “but I didn’t really know much about directors [and I was] not really aware of his importance.”49
Neither Hepburn nor Wyler was aware of the hazards of filming in Rome: The noise was incessant, the summer heat was intense, and the logistics of clearing the crowded streets for shooting were a nightmare. Bribes were paid all around but provided no insurance against political violence: Fascists and Communists battled in the streets, as if the Christian Democrats’ election victory in May had never happened. At one point, five bundles of explosives were discovered under a bridge over the Tiber River, where filming was about to take place.
Wyler, undaunted, adhered to his perfectionist ways and made countless takes of each scene—modified only by the hordes of Roman gawkers who were always on hand, as Gregory Peck recalled:One of the first scenes we shot was at the Piazza di Spagna.... There were at least 10,000 people assembled at the foot of the Spanish Steps and in the street. The police couldn’t stop them from whistling and heckling. For Audrey and me, it was like acting in a huge amphitheater before a packed house of rowdies. I asked her if she didn’t find it very intimidating. “No, not at all ...” She took it as calmly and serenely as a real princess would have....
Italians are all born film actors [and] were quite hands-on about the whole thing.... Wyler would say, “Good, that’s it, print it.” They might say, “No, no, no, let’s have another one.” Or Wyler would say, “Let’s do it again,” and they’d say, “No, no, molto bene!”—they wanted to print that one. And Wyler usually followed their advice.50
The single most famous scene in Roman Holiday is the one in which Peck and Hepburn dare each other to stick a hand inside the mouth of an ancient Roman cave dragon: To get a spontaneous reaction, Peck resorted to an old vaudeville trick—drawing his hand up into his cuff so that it looked severed. Unforewarned, Audrey reacted perfectly, with a shriek. “It was the only scene Wyler ever did in one take,” she said.51
Peck recalls “a girl who was good at everything except shedding tears—wacky and funny, a very lovable girl who was always making faces and doing backflips and clowning around. But when it came to a poignant scene, she couldn’t find that within herself; she just couldn’t find the right kind of emotion.” 52
He was referring to one of the most touching final scenes in which the princess must leave the journalist and return to royal imprisonment.
“I don’t know how to say goodbye,” she says. “I can’t think of any words.”
“Don’t try,” he replies, as the music swells.
It seemed straightforward, but “I had no idea how to come by those tears,” Audrey recalled. “The night was getting longer and longer, and Willy was waiting. Out of the blue, he came over and gave me hell. ‘We can’t stay here all night. Can’t you cry, for God’s sake?’ He’d never spoken to me like that, ever, during the picture. He’d been so nice and gentle. I broke into such sobs and he shot the scene and that was it. Afterwards he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I had to get you to do it somehow.’”53
Years later, when a BBC interviewer asked how much she had learned from Wyler, Audrey replied, “I’d say almost everything. His attitude was that only simplicity and the truth count. It has to come from the inside. You can’t fake it. That is something I long remembered.”
Then and thereafter, Audrey did not watch the rushes, but Wyler did: “She was every eager young girl who has ever come to Rome for the first time and I, crusty veteran that I was, felt tears in my eyes watching her. Audrey was the spirit of youth—and I knew that very soon the entire world would fall in love with her, as all of us on the picture did.”54
Gregory Peck was first among them. “It was my good luck,” he said, “during that wonderful summer in Rome, to be the first of her screen fellows, to hold out my hand, and help her keep her balance as she did her spins and pirouettes. Those months [were] probably the happiest experience I ever had making movies.”55
Peck, her screen lover, was friendly with James Hanson, her offscreen lover, who was present and accounted for on the Roman Holiday set. “I was able to spend time with her in the flat that the company found for her and her mother on the Via Boncompagni,” says Hanson. “They would do shots of Audrey, and Greg would be in a trailer waiting to do his stuff. He and I would go into the Caffé Greco on the Via Condotti and play gin rummy for hours. I enjoyed being there, encouraging her and watching her. We were going to be married as soon as Roman Holiday was finished. All the plans were made.”56
But once again the best-laid plans went awry. When Roman Holiday filming ended in September 1952, there was not even a hiatus let alone a wedding for Audrey, who had to go directly into the American road tour of Gigi. She returned to the United States, opened at the Nixon Theater in Pittsburgh on October 13, 1952, and cont
inued for eight months, through Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Washington and Los Angeles. She was exhausted long before the tour was over and, according to Cathleen Nesbitt, under heavy pressure from her mother to break off the engagement. Midway during the tour, she announced it was over.
“When I couldn’t find time to attend to the furnishing of our London flat, I suddenly knew I’d make a pretty bad wife,” she told Anita Loos. “I would forever have to be studying parts, fitting costumes and giving interviews. And what a humiliating spot to put a husband in ... making him stand by, holding my coat, while I signed autographs for the bobbie soxers!”57
Pestered endlessly by the media, she gave variations on that theme—some more diplomatic than others:
“I felt it would be unfair to James to marry him when I was also in love with my work.”
“It was a mutual decision and a very personal matter about which I have nothing more to say.”58
“The time will come when I can afford the luxury of a husband. Just now, I haven’t got the time.”
“When I get married, I want to be really married.”59
Zsa Zsa Gabor says Ella wasn’t the only one pressuring Audrey to get unengaged : “When she got the part in Roman Holiday, the studio advised her not to get married.”60 Indeed, Paramount and most film companies encouraged “romances” but generally opposed star marriages (especially to non-stars) in the belief that millions of lovestruck fans would be disappointed thereby.
Forty years later, Lord Hanson reflects on the breakup in his candid, magnanimous way:[After Roman Holiday], she came to me and said, “I really don’t think I want to get married at this time. I hate to do this to you. I love your family....” She made her decision as much based on what she felt would be best for me as what would be best for her. I said, “Fine, okay.” If somebody makes a decision they think is best for them, I say one of two things: “Think it over,” or else, “I agree with you—do what’s best for you.” There was disappointment, yes. But there was no rift or rupture, just a natural decision made by both sides.
So I went my way and started to build up businesses, while she went her way and continued to build up her career. Had she married me, Audrey would have continued with her career. No doubt about it. I believed in that. There was never any “either/or” [marriage/career] problem. She was somebody whose star and whose destiny had been set by her talent. It would have been pointless to try to persuade her to do anything else.... I loved Audrey very much. I’ve not loved very many women in my life in that way. Yet I have no regrets whatsoever about her decision.61
If anyone, Audrey was the one with regrets. The amicable nature of their split was proven by the fact that they continued to see each other. In December, Hanson went to visit and spend Christmas with her in Chicago:
“I got the impression Audrey had reflected upon it and wanted to take it up again that Christmas. But I believed she had made the right decision and that it wouldn’t be right to backtrack on it—not for any reasons of spite. You couldn’t be spiteful about Audrey. She was just too delightful. She tried to make a reconciliation but by that time, I felt I could not go back. We spent a happy Christmas together in Chicago, after which we parted as good friends.”62r
The subject of her romantic life remained a hot topic for many months, even after the Gigi road show came to a close, on May 16, 1953, in San Francisco. When no-nonsense columnist Dorothy Kilgallen asked her if she had always had “beaus buzzing around her,” Audrey replied, “Well, I’ll say this. I’ve never wanted for one—not since I was seventeen, anyway.”63
They came in all shapes, sizes and ages. The day after she accepted a dinner invitation from sixty-two-year-old Groucho Marx, the newspapers wasted no time in speculating on their betrothal.
“Nonsense,” replied Groucho. “I don’t want to be ungallant, but Audrey’s too old and wrinkled for me.”
UNTIL NOW, nobody but the studio had seen Roman Holiday. When it finally opened, in August 1953, audiences and critics alike loved it. Mostly it was the doe-eyed little star they loved. In the opening sight gag, the princess’s shoes are killing her during a royal reception; she kicks one of them off beneath her floor-length gown and then can’t find it.
Audrey’s performance captivated throughout. Irate about being a royal prisoner, the princess throws a tantrum and is given a tranquilizer—but sneaks out of the palace before it takes effect. Journalist Gregory Peck finds her snoozing in a public square and promises his editor a scoop. Peck and the film are aided by the beautiful cinematography of Franz Planer and the romantic background music of Georges Auric.s
But most of all, they were aided by the face and mesmerizing voice of Audrey Hepburn—a soft mezzo that turned soprano in excitement. And everyone was caught off-guard by the film’s conclusion—perhaps the first romantic comedy with an unhappy ending. Molly Haskell called it a “heartbreaking moment of renunciation.”64
Roman Holiday turned out to be strangely relevant to the moment. Nineteen fifty-three was a busy year for English royalty: The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the “commoner” romance of her sister, Princess Margaret, had both received saturation news coverage. Paramount denied any connection but slyly exploited the similarities between Princess Anne’s love for a reporter in the film and Princess Margaret’s involvement with Captain Peter Townsend in real life. In publicity terms, there could have been no more fortuitous a coincidence.
The picture earned back a third of its production costs in Japan alone (where it is the no. I favorite foreign film of all time, ahead of Gone With the Wind). There and in Europe and America, Audrey and her “look” became the rage.
The trade papers were talking of a great new star, but the tabloids were talking scandal. The New York Mirror said Peck’s wife Greta was “giving him the bounce because of his affection for the sylph-like nymph, a willowy boyish miss” named Hepburn.65 Audrey bristled: “I saw her coming out of Romanoff’s the other day and she asked me to spend next Sunday swimming in the pool at her home. Does that sound like I’m a home-breaker?”66
There was, in fact, never any romance between Hepburn and Peck, whose marriage was dissolving before he and Audrey ever met. He would soon be divorced and, a year later, marry French journalist Veronique Passani, with whom he has remained.
But in truth, few cared about Gregory Peck these days. They cared about Audrey Hepburn. Young Senator John F. Kennedy was among many declaring Roman Holiday to be his favorite film and Hepburn his favorite actress. September 7, 1953, found her on the cover of Time magazine—never before occupied by an unknown star of a newly released film. Peck was temporarily left in the dust, but never resented it. Three decades later, returning from a trip to China, he gave her a grand cross-cultural tribute:
“When we climbed out of the airplane [in Beijing], to my amazement I saw about two hundred little Chinese Audrey Hepburns waiting at the airport. Roman Holiday was playing in China for the first time—thirty years after we made it—and attracting enormous crowds. Everywhere we went we saw little Audrey Hepburns with the bangs and the long skirts.”67
“SHE WAS A one-man woman, very loving,” says Lord James Hanson. “Once she gave up one man, it was then the next man. She didn’t play the field.”68 To the disappointment of the tabloids, the “next man” was not Gregory Peck—but he was a close friend of Peck’s. It was party time in London, where Audrey returned in July 1953 for the British opening of Roman Holiday. One of those fêtes was hosted by her mother, at Ella’s South Audley Street flat, where Cecil Beaton met Audrey for the first time and that night recorded in his diary:
“[She has] a huge mouth, flat Mongolian features, heavily painted eyes, a coconut coiffure, long nails without varnish, a wonderfully lithe figure, and a long neck.... She appears to take her wholesale adulation with a pinch of salt, and gratitude rather than puffed-up pride.... Without any preliminaries, she cuts through to a basic understanding that makes people friends.” Beaton added that the other guests include
d American actor Mel Ferrer—“a charming, gangling man, [who] described A.H. to me as ‘the biggest thing to come down the turnpike.”’69
Ferrer’s invitation had come through Gregory Peck, who was in London making Night People and had hosted his own party for Audrey in his Grosvenor Square flat. Ferrer was likewise in London at the moment, shooting MGM’s Knights of the Round Table at Pinewood Studios.t Mel was the twice-divorced father of four by then. But Peck wanted him to meet Audrey and gave him her phone number at Ella’s.
“She answered herself and said, ‘This is Audrey,’” Ferrer remembers. “When I told her Greg had suggested I call, she answered very cheerily, ‘Oh, I loved you in Lili!”’70 That lovely musical, released just a few months before Roman Holiday, starred Ferrer as a lame carnival puppeteer and Leslie Caron as the orphan girl with whom he falls in love.
“My first impression of Audrey when we finally saw each other was how simple and direct she was,” says Ferrer today. “She was gentle, delicate and sensitive. But full of life and sparkle.“71 The chemistry between them was instant.
Nearly six-foot-three in height, Mel was “gangly” indeed, as well as handsome, and his prospects for serious leading-man status and film stardom were on the rise. But he was not “just” an actor. He was also a stage and film director, producer and cofounder of the pioneering La Jolla Playhouse. Some thought of him—and he perhaps thought of himself—as the next Orson Welles.
Actor James Coburn first knew Ferrer at La Jolla, where Coburn and many other prominent young actors got their Actors Equity cards. A decade later, during a break on the set of Charade, Coburn and Audrey had an intimate discussion that was rare for both of them.
“She told me about first meeting and falling in love with Mel,” Coburn recalls, “and I asked, ‘What was the attraction?’ She said, ‘The way he looked me in the eyes—the way he just penetrated me with his eyes.’ That was the thing that really got her, she said.”72