Charade on Blu-Ray

Just a quick note to let everyone know that one of Audrey's best films, Charade, will be released on Blu-Ray tomorrow through Criterion. Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Paris, suspense, romance, comedy, what more could you ask for? And Criterion treats their films so well, so you can trust me when I say the Criterion edition of anything is worth it. (The commentary track with director Stanley Donen and screenwriter Peter Stone is so great, and the print has been restored.) If you want to investigate a little more, here's Charade's page on Criterion's website, and Amazon has the price knocked down from $39.95 to $29.49, even cheaper than the regular edition. Not bad!

Hello again

Hello everyone, I hope you had a good holiday, if you celebrate anything. If not, then I hope you enjoyed a day off to laze around in your pajamas all day. :) I'm sorry I've been MIA lately, I was silly enough to try and work two jobs during the holidays. Hit me with a fish the next time I get that ridiculous idea in my head! Thank you for your patience yet again, and here's your bit of post-holiday news.

Christie's had yet another film memorabilia auction on December 19th, but it didn't really seems to make any major news outlets, at least not that I could find. This was very surprising! But here's all of the Audrey Hepburn specific autions for you, since that's what we're interested in:

Lot 0078: a batch of 15 magazines featuring Audrey on the cover, all from the 1950s. The estimated going price was between £400-600, but was actually sold for £312. (That's still a whole lot, though!)


Lot 0079: Sheet music for Moon River, signed by Audrey Hepburn. The inscription reads, "To Al, best wishes, Audrey Hepburn." While the estimated selling price was between £400-600, the final bid was for £1,680!




Lot 080: A knee-length coat and a cream-coloured dress, both made by Givenchy, which Audrey wore in the film Charade. In the Criterion Edition of the film in the commentary, screenwriter Peter Stone mentioned that his wife and Audrey Hepburn were the same size (though Audrey had bigger shoulders), and he would take the clothes that Audrey didn't want for his wife to wear. These two items were taken for Mrs. Stone and are now being sold by her. The estimated selling price for these two items combined was between £10,000-15,000, and the actual selling price was £14,400. Whew!

Since the sale of these particular items didn't make the news, I don't think there's any way of finding out who bought the dress and coat. Whoever it was, they've got a good deal! Unlike the sale of the black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany's, Audrey definitely wore this dress and coat. I hope the new owner(s) wouldn't mind putting it on display for some of us to see, too.

P.S. I was right about which dress would be sold, too!

another Audrey Hepburn dress up for auction

I don't think I've ever seen so many Audrey Hepburn dresses up for auction in such a short period of time! Just this morning it was announced that Christie's would have a film memorabilia sale at its auction house in South Kensington on December 19th, and a dress made for and worn by Audrey in Charade will be up for sale. Unfortunately, Christie's website doesn't have any details about this auction up yet, so I can't find out which dress it is. I'll keep checking, though, and let you know as soon as I find any information.

In the meantime, you can read more about the auction as a whole here, and see some other great pieces that will be up for sale that day.

Audrey Hepburn's little black dress on display in Harrod's

Audrey Hepburn may have worn many little black dresses in her life, but that's sort of what she's known for, isn't it? Her little black dress with the sequined fringe that she wore in Charade (which was recently auctioned off, coincidentally) is now on display in Harrod's department store as part of their Harrod's Timeless Luxury promotion. It will be on the fourth floor at the Georgian Restaurant in the Little Black Dress Exhibition, along with other famous LBDs. You should hurry, since it looks like the display will only be up through mid-October. You can read more about it here.

watch Charade for free!

A lesser-known piece of information for you: the fantastic Audrey Hepburn/Cary Grant feature Charade has actually slipped into the public domain! I don't know how it happened, but it has, which means you technically don't have to pay to watch or own this fantastic film. While I still recommend at least watching the Criterion Collection edition of this film with the commentary by director Stanley Donen and writer Peter Stone (those two men are hilarious!), I completely understand the $40 price tag being a little much for a lot of Audrey fans out there. In the meantime, though, you can sit in the comfort of your computer chair and watch this stylish caper completely free on You Tube:

Edit: Links removed because the entire film has been taken down.

"Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's" -- a new book!

There's yet another new picture book coming out on Audrey! This one, called Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's: Photographs by Howell Conant, features pictures of Audrey onset for publicity photos and candid pictures during filming of her most iconic film, Breakfast at Tiffany's. The description on GermanArtBooks.com, which has the most information I can find yet, says that there are also fashion shoots, but it's unclear if they are Tiffany's related or not. All photos in the book were taken by Conant, who was also a good friend of Grace Kelly's, and there is some text written by actress Leslie Caron (who was often referred to as "The Other Audrey Hepburn"). And here is the release information for various countries -- at least as much as I could find at this time:
U.S. and Canada: May 2007
UK: ?
Germany: February 2007
France: ?
Japan: February 2007

The book is 80 pages long, with 40 colour and duotone plates. Ooh, I can't wait!

Next, with all the buzz around the Golden Globes and upcoming Oscar nominations, everyone is gravitating towards red carpet talk. A new list has come out naming the top 7 Icons That Have Shaped Red Carpet Jewelry, and Audrey came in #2! She was noted for her understated tastes and simple jewelry, while contemporary Elizabeth Taylor came in at #1 with her more flashy, diamond-oriented tastes. To read the full list, click here.

Last up for today, there's a few more Audrey Hepburn film screenings to mention. San Jose's California Theatre, which screened Breakfast at Tiffany's last weekend, will be showing My Fair Lady this coming weekend. You can find all screentimes and dates here, as well as ticket information. The Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, which screened Funny Face earlier this month, will be showing Charade on Sunday, January 21st. Ticket information can be found here.

more news from audreyhepburn.com

I received an email from Ellen Erwin, the Executive Director of the Children's Fund this morning. Since it's short, I'll just copy and paste it for everyone to read:

Just to let you know, the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund website has been recently updated and we are redesigning a brand new flash website for launch next year. Thanks for the mention on your website. Will you let your visitors know that our website is current? Thanks so much and best regards

Isn't that great? I can't wait to see how it will change. And maybe they'll post a full schedule of the exhibit's tour in Europe . . .

In other news, tons of articles are popping up about the upcoming auction of the Breakfast at Tiffany's dress, but I've found one article that stands out from the rest. Besides predicting that the dress will fetch about £70,000 ($126,000), this article says that other Audrey dresses will be auctioned! From Charade and Sabrina, though it doesn't say how many. I don't know, maybe the article is wrong, but maybe not. When the My Fair Lady dress went up, all the attention was on the dress, and no one mentioned that costume sketches from The Nun's Story were being sold as well. Well, either way, here's the full article.


The next article talks about the recent Melbourne races (it's the Australian equivalent of Ascot), and how the Little Black Dress was the most popular item worn there. About halfway down the page it talks about Audrey's role in the history of the dress, but the whole article is definitely worth a read, just to get a better history of the dress. You can read it here.

The last article is also from Australia, where they're preparing an exhibition on the ten most photographed people in the world. Audrey is included! Along with Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Queen Victoria, Adolph Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali and Elvis Presley. The exhibit runs from December 9 to March 25 at the Bendigo Art Gallery, and includes rare or "lost" photos along with more well known photos. The original article is here, and you can find a little more information, including ticket prices, here, at the museum's site.

A blast from the past, plus an extended trailer

Audrey news seems slow today (I'll refrain from making any Day of the Dead jokes), but I did find two fun things. The first is an excerpt from an old issue of Variety -- from 1958, to be exact. If you're not familiar with the "trade rag," it's written in slang, since it's mainly for people in the entertainment industry who understand that silly talk. Anyway, the excerpt was from the set of Audrey's latest movie, The Nun's Story, and talks about her upcoming projects, including one that never made it off the ground. To read the whole article, click here.


Variety also made a list of the Top 100 Icons of the Century, and Audrey made the list! I don't know exactly where, since the list is alphabetized and only the top 10 are actually numbered, but the whole list can be found here, and she is about halfway down the page, directly to the left of Hitchcock's picture (ironically).

Wow . . . I was searching through Variety's news archives and one of the first stories to pop up was from November of 1993. It said that Diana Maychick's terrible biography, Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portait, had been optioned for a film and they were eager to cast Audrey and produce a 4 hour miniseries. Obviously, it never came to be, but I was amazed that I'd never heard of this before! Granted, I wasn't a fan yet, but even so, you'd think the story would have been more often told. Anyway, you can read the story for yourself here, and if you'd like, here's a link to all of the Audrey-related searches on Variety.

Lastly, Criterion has a profile on You Tube now and is posting trailers to some of the movies they offer in their collection! There's a 3 minute trailer of Charade (below), but here's the link straight to their profile, if you want to see what other great movies they have to offer.

"Charade" screengrabs! Plus, a top ten villain and the Little Black Dress turns 80

I promised a picture gallery today and I delivered! (But just barely.) The latest picture gallery is a Charade screengrab gallery with 633 lovely stills for you, including a few from the theatrical trailer.


Click here for the rest of the goodies.

Next up, chron.com came out with a list of the Top 10 Truly Terrifying Performances, and Alan Arkin's neurotic psychotic terrorizing Audrey is on the list! So if you're wandering around the Internet on Halloween night and can't think of what to do, maybe you could watch Wait Until Dark. (Which is what we're going to do now.) Or, if you read this on November first and want to continue your Halloween hangover, watch it anyway! With the lights off, if you please. To see the full list, click here.



Last up for tonight, the timeless Little Black Dress turns a classy 80 years old. Starting with Coco Chanel in 1926, the LBD has gone through many incarnations throughout the years, but it's one of the main reasons why Audrey is remembered in the fashion world -- especially with Breakfast at Tiffany's and Holly's two famous black dresses. It's nice to see that some beautiful things never go out of style, no matter how bizarre (and maybe ugly?) fashion can get at times. See the full history of the LBD here.

clarifications on the Harper's dress, "Charade" commentary

A lot of people have been searching for more pictures of Natalie Portman in the Breakfast at Tiffany's dress from Harper's Bazaar and find this picture, thinking it's the front of the dress:


But if you actually look at this dress, then you'll notice that the fabric is completely different, more of a linen than satin (or, more simply, not shiny versus shiny). While Natalie does wear Givenchy in the rest of the photo shoot, there's no way this is the front of the same dress. Also note the stitching across the bodice, which would show on the sides and back of the other pictures. And the fact that her hair and jewelry are different. Just thought I'd point it out, since it's been bugging me. :) And if you're interested, you can see a little bit of the article from Harper's here. The rest you can just read in the magazine aisle of your local bookstore, like I probably will. ;)

Secondly, I finally watched Charade with the commentary on, and it's honestly as fun as watching the movie. It's on the Criterion edition of the movie and it's with screenwriter Peter Stone and director Stanley Donen, and they are hilarious! They're constantly insulting each other (in a friendly way), and have such great stories to tell about the film. I don't want to give anything away, but here's one of my favourite bits:

"Audrey was very tall. How tall was she?"
"Five-eight."
"No!"
"Probably. When she was standing on her money."

There hasn't been much Audrey news lately, but tomorrow there might be a large photo gallery coming up for your enjoyment . . . Also, if you want to win a good prize in the next contest, you'd better go vote on what you want! So far we're getting one vote for each suggestion (and multiple voting is disabled).

Someone's been busy

... on You Tube, and it wasn't me. Today I found four goodies I'd love to share:

The Charade trailer


The Funny Face trailer


And two short but very powerful clips of Audrey on her UNICEF missions. If you haven't really seen suffering people, children especially, then these two clips might be a bit too much for you and you may want to pass on these. They are very touching and shows how unafraid she was to dive into such famine- and war-torn areas for the sake of the children, but it still might be too overwhelming for some people.





Elsewhere I found a clip of Katie Couric talking about those infernal Gap ads on "Katie's Notebook." She has some particularly strong words for Sean Ferrer, which is surprising but not out of line in comparison with what most Audrey fans are saying. Watch the clip here.

Lastly, Jam! (something from Canada, I'm not sure what) has come out with a list of the 50 hottest sex symbols in Hollywood, and Audrey came in at #39. What's nice about it is the fact that they didn't try to sex her up at all. Here's their bit on her:

Hepburn, the personification of grace, was an icon of cinema and fashion whose influence continues to resonate. One example: Not so long ago, someone tried to make a movie called Why Can't I Be Audrey Hepburn? It never got made because nobody wanted to star in it. Why? Because everyone already knows no one can ever be Audrey Hepburn again.