There was an eBay auction last week for a white Mercedes-Benz supposedly owned by Audrey Hepburn. There's a lot of speculation going around between Audrey fans, and the ad itself is very strange. The seller of the car (based in San Francisco) has a very long piece about the car up, though if you actually read the eight paragraphs, it's mainly insisting that Audrey's two favourite colours were white and red (the colours of the car), and lists every example in her films available to back up this fact. It might have been in a biography or it might have been speculation from another fan, but I had always heard that Audrey actually hated the colour red, and went so far as to tear up all red flowers in her gardens. She loved white and pastel colours both in her house and garden and on herself, and it is true that whatever car(s) she had with husband Mel Ferrer were white, and he drove them. The comments on the auction are also a bit strange and don't seem to ring true. But the part that bugs me the most is the fact that Audrey was never comfortable driving and would pretty much always have her husband or a friend drive her, and she stopped driving altogether after a minor accident and an ensuing lawsuit scared her for good. According to Barry Paris's biography Audrey Hepburn
, this accident happened around the time of The Unforgiven, which was filmed in 1959. The Benz that was for sale is a 1968 model, which means it was bought and shipped to California for Audrey a full 10 years after she stopped driving. I also don't understand why she would need a car for herself in L.A. because by 1968 she had effectively stopped her career -- Wait Until Dark was released in 1967 -- to try and save her broken marriage to Mel Ferrer and raise son Sean Ferrer, and didn't start filming again until 1976 with Robin and Marian. Why would she demand her own car on standby in America when she was raising a family in Italy and effectively a "Roman housewife"? Thankfully, the reserve was not met on this auction and so no one is out the $25,000 final bid, because it would be a shame to have someone scammed into buying an otherwise lovely car worth a quarter of the winning bid in the misguided belief that Audrey Hepburn had been the sole owner of the car before the current seller (who also implies in the comments section that he/she rode in the car with Audrey and knew her). Personally, I don't believe it at all, but you are of course free to believe whatever you'd like. I'm only here to give you Audrey news, not tell you what to think. :)
As an add-on to yesterday's news about the British Film Institute, there are two news video clips that show a brief bit of footage from Audrey's first screen test! The first clip comes from BBC's website, and the quality is unfortunately not very good. Click here to view the news story, and from there you can click the film clips link in the right column, or you can just click here to watch only the video. The second news clip comes from Sky News, and I actually couldn't get this to play for me, so I'm not entirely sure if it's the exact same footage they show in the BBC clip, or how the quality is. Either way, click here to view it. As it turns out, the screentest seems to be for a 1954 film called The Belles of St. Trinian's, and Audrey was auditioning for the role of a shopgirl. Judging by the date of the film, I'd guess she got booked for Gigi and Roman Holiday instead?
There are scads of books out on Audrey Hepburn now, from picture books to biographies to bizarre fantasy conspiracy "tell-all"s, but one of the first ones out on Audrey was Audrey Hepburn: A Celebration, by Sheridan Morley. While spotty and fairly breezy as a biography, it was a nice black and white picture book and very enjoyable to flip through. Morley was also a film critic, and is cited often in Barry Paris's biography of Audrey. Morley was most certainly a Hepburn fan from day one, it seems. To read more about Morley and his life, go here.
In other news, if you're an American looking to live in Paris for a while, this article can lend you some helpful tips. The first tip? Watch Funny Face before you go! There are more practical tips in the article as well, but the Funny Face part was the best, and possibly the truest. I have a friend leaving for Paris in two months and I'm determined she watch that film (and Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) and learn all the words to "Bonjour Paris!" before she leaves.
If you're in North Carolina or nearby and have some free time on Saturday, the North Carolina Arboretum is screening Gardens of the World absolutely free this coming Saturday! It starts at 1:30 in the afternoon and runs for an hour, and you only need to pay for parking. For more information and a contact number, go here.For any new or nearly new Audrey Hepburn fans out there, here's A&E's biography on Audrey. It's very good, with interviews from her best biographer, Barry Paris
, plus old friends like Harry Belafonte. There are four parts in all.
Part 1
Terribly sorry for the lack of updates recently. Due to the holidays, work has been insane (to put it one way), and it was all I could do to eat and sleep in between. I'll build up my stamina, promise. :) Anyway, there hasn't been much real Audrey news lately, so you haven't missed anything. She's still mentioned many times per day in news articles, but it's usually "she looked very Audrey Hepburn-ish" or "I felt like Audrey Hepburn," things usually totally unrelated and not worth posting.
So on to the news! What little there is. First up is a review of Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. That film has been mentioned here before, and it's being mentioned again because the short review likens Nicole Kidman's pointless wanderings to that of Audrey's character Suzy Hendrix in Wait Until Dark. The reviewer? None other than Barry Paris! That makes me doubly surprised that he would liken Nicole to Audrey. Anyway, he doesn't give the film a very good review, mainly because it focuses (no pun intended) on her twisted psyche involving her upstairs neighbor and never really shows the art she became famous for. If you're interested, here's the full review, about halfway down the page.
The next news article comes thanks to The Audrey Hepburn Circle. Marni Nixon recently did a radio interview promoting herself and her book, and she of course talks about her career as a dubbing artist. She talks about Audrey, and I'll just quote chipmunkalvyne, who said it best: "She says Marilyn Monroe's voice went with Marilyn Monroe. Well, so did Audrey's with Audrey!" To hear the interview for yourself, simply click here.On a side note, it's very sad to hear how Natalie Wood and Audrey were both fooled throughout filming just to get a good performance from them. Also, how did no one ever knew that Marni was present at Audrey's singing lessons! I wonder what lie they told Audrey to make her okay with someone sitting in on her lessons. Marni used to claim that she and Audrey rode in to the studio together in Audrey's limousine, and that Audrey knew full well who Marni was and what she was doing, and that Audrey was very cold to her. Funny how the story's changed . . .
Anyway, does anyone remember the old online Audrey paper doll from a few years ago? It had most of Audrey's better known costumes from her films, and you could just drag clothes on and off of her, including hats, jewelry and shoes? It seemed to have been lost forever, but it seems to have just moved! Hooray, I really used to like that paper doll. Anyway, here it is.
P.S. I personally don't care for the boots (stockings?) and handbags. Not very Audrey-ish!
There was an eBay auction last week for a white Mercedes-Benz supposedly owned by Audrey Hepburn. There's a lot of speculation going around between Audrey fans, and the ad itself is very strange. The seller of the car (based in San Francisco) has a very long piece about the car up, though if you actually read the eight paragraphs, it's mainly insisting that Audrey's two favourite colours were white and red (the colours of the car), and lists every example in her films available to back up this fact. It might have been in a biography or it might have been speculation from another fan, but I had always heard that Audrey actually hated the colour red, and went so far as to tear up all red flowers in her gardens. She loved white and pastel colours both in her house and garden and on herself, and it is true that whatever car(s) she had with husband Mel Ferrer were white, and he drove them. The comments on the auction are also a bit strange and don't seem to ring true. But the part that bugs me the most is the fact that Audrey was never comfortable driving and would pretty much always have her husband or a friend drive her, and she stopped driving altogether after a minor accident and an ensuing lawsuit scared her for good. According to Barry Paris's biography Audrey Hepburn
As an add-on to yesterday's news about the British Film Institute, there are two news video clips that show a brief bit of footage from Audrey's first screen test! The first clip comes from BBC's website, and the quality is unfortunately not very good. Click here to view the news story, and from there you can click the film clips link in the right column, or you can just click here to watch only the video. The second news clip comes from Sky News, and I actually couldn't get this to play for me, so I'm not entirely sure if it's the exact same footage they show in the BBC clip, or how the quality is. Either way, click here to view it. As it turns out, the screentest seems to be for a 1954 film called The Belles of St. Trinian's, and Audrey was auditioning for the role of a shopgirl. Judging by the date of the film, I'd guess she got booked for Gigi and Roman Holiday instead?
