There's a new picture book on Audrey coming out November 2, and it's called Audrey 100. The premise? The 100 greatest pictures of Audrey Hepburn, as compiled by her son Sean Ferrer. What this means? Rare or private pictures, seen for the first time! The book is co-authored by Ellen (Erwin) Fontana, the director of the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund, who was also behind what I consider the best book out there on Audrey, The Audrey Hepburn Treasures.
While information is still trickling out, I can tell you that the book is slated for a release date of November 2, that it comes in at just under 200 pages, that it comes with a 9x11 photograph for framing, and that full retail price is $40 (though you can get it for less if you know where to look, of course). And, like Treasures before it, sales will benefit the Children's Fund.
Excited yet? There's more. You can pre-order through Barnes & Noble or Amazon, and you can even take a lovely virtual tour of the book here.
The news hasn't been up long, but actor Mel Ferrer died yesterday (Monday, June 2nd) at his home near Santa Barbara. He was 90.
Mel was Audrey's first husband, and he and Audrey had one child together, son Sean Hepburn Ferrer, who now runs The Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund with his half brother Luca Dotti. You can read a little more about Mel in the few articles up so far [here and here], and I'll keep checking back to see if any more news comes up.
After a little bit of a delay, audreybag.com is officially open for business and ready to take orders. Apparently, the site was delayed by just a couple of days because Luca Dotti was in charge of designing and maintaining the site, so communications had to go from Italy, where Luca is, to Santa Monica, California, where the Children's Fund offices are. So for all you curious types out there who wonder what Luca's up to, now you know. :)
Anyway, go look at the site already! You can sign up for the newsletter the site will release periodically, so you will be notified when the news page is updated and new collections are released. Yes, new collections! So if you were wringing your hands in despair because you couldn't afford any bags from this collection right away, don't worry. There will be roughly two collections per year, plus some one-of-a-kind bags, so there will always be something available for you. Make sure to read the news page while you're visiting, as it has an interview with Sean talking about the inspiration and motivation behind the audreybag, and photos of the bags being made by hand in Italy.
Last month I posted about a new BBC biography series called My Best Friend, and how Sean Hepburn Ferrer had filmed an episode about his mum, Audrey Hepburn. Beaker from L'Ange des Enfants was kind enough to send me a copy of this, and I've just finished posting it to You Tube for everyone to enjoy. :) If you live outside of the UK then chances are you haven't seen this biography yet, and I highly recommend that you do. Not only does it give you yet another side of Audrey, but we see more of the elusive Sean. The program seems to have been filmed at his house in Tuscany, but it also shows new footage of La Paisible, Audrey's wonderful home in Tolochenaz, Switzerland. Sean is very open about his relationship with his mother, and talks quite frankly about his parents' divorce and what went wrong. It's the most I've ever heard on the subject, and it gives a lot of insight to both Audrey and Mel Ferrer that most people either never got or seemed to have missed entirely. All in all, it's a lovely biography with fascinating content and great pictures, a good way to spend half an hour.
While the You Tube clips came out rather nicely, the original is far better without all the compression. I'll be posting the full show -- not chopped into three pieces -- on the website shortly, along with some other You Tube videos. I'm also working on getting some great Audrey clips that I only have on videotape uploaded to the computer to share as well, so keep checking back!
An article from the Daily Collegian discusses fashion icons and what made them tick, and Audrey is one of the lucky few mentioned. She's still noted daily as an icon to many people, but today's article has a nice bit added from Sean Ferrer that gives a little more insight into why Audrey's fashion sense stood out from all the rest. I won't spoil it for you, so click here to read the article for yourself (there are two short pages in total, and Audrey is on both). I will, however, say that it has a lot to do with inner beauty, and how clothes are just an extension of what's inside you.
Last year Sean Ferrer filmed a show for BBC called My Best Friend: Audrey Hepburn. It was part of an ongoing series about behind-the-scenes biographies of celebrities as told by their best friends. As Sean himself said at the time, "It doesn’t happen always that your parent is also your best friend," but he and his mum were always very close. He had also called Audrey his best friend in his book An Elegant Spirit. I haven't seen this show yet, but if you care to register at the website of the company that produced this, 3DD, then you may be able to see it for free online! (I'm waiting for my password.) You can click here to learn a bit more about the documentary, and you can register for your password here.
Also, there's been lots of activity in the Audrey Hepburn community. If you haven't already, check it out!
Thanks to the sharp eyes over at The Audrey Hepburn Circle (mainly those of chipmunkalvyne), a video has been found that shows off Tolochenaz, the small town in Switzerland that Audrey Hepburn called home for so many years. Actually, only the first 30 seconds of the video is directly Audrey relevant, when they visit the cemetery where Audrey is buried and view her grave, but the first minute and a half or so are nice to watch because it gives you a much better feel for the town than anything I've come across so far -- barring the photos Sean put in his book, An Elegant Spirit. It makes me want to visit even more! As an added bonus, our old friend Kendal's ceramic angel she left for Audrey is featured in the video. Look for it!
Audrey was also featured in a new software presentation for a German program that can take any photograph and morph it into an accurate three dimensional head. It's a pretty amazing video to watch, but feel free to skip to the 1:25 mark if you're just interested in seeing Audrey. The program is pretty cool to learn about, though this article from Wired wonders whether this will mean even more deceased celebrities shilling products from beyond the grave -- or worse.
I'm terribly sorry for the lack of updates lately, but it's really frustrating when there's nothing to report on. So I've decided that when it's been slow for a couple of days, like now, I'll just try to pull something from the archives that newer fans may have missed the first time 'round. For today, it's a reminder of the official unveiling ceremony for the Audrey Hepburn stamp released by the U.S. Postal Service. The ceremony took place in Los Angeles, and since the ceremony was open to the public, I was lucky enough to be able to attend! So I dolled up and brought along my notebook and my camera, and this is what came of it. (The picture to the left is Sean Hepburn Ferrer and Jennifer Love Hewitt, the "godmother" of Audrey Hepburn CARES in L.A., unveiling the stamp to the press.)
All in all, it was a very fun and exciting day, and I wish there were more goings-on like this that regular people like us could crash. :)
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?
While Audrey news is still slow going, I did find an article reviewing The Audrey Hepburn Treasures that was very different from the rest. I also wanted to share it because it expresses some of the same concerns a lot of Audrey fans had expressed themselves: how would she feel about having millions of people see her personal belongings? The article starts off by saying that going through Treasures is rather like going through someone's desk drawers after they've died, and you feel guilty and strange doing it. But the author of the article justifies the release of Treasures by pointing out that it was done with Sean's specific consent (his forward in the book further assuages guilt), and that sales of this book will help the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund. It also mentions Sean's own book, Elegant Spirit, as a further okay to this intimate peek at the private Audrey Hepburn.
You can read the full article from Film Buff Stuff here.
News is pretty slow today. Real slow, in fact. So I'm afraid I only have one thing to share, but it's a very excellent article. It starts off talking about the Christie's auction, and how the bidding frenzy and record-breaking price showed that the allure of Audrey is still going strong 13 years after she left us, and gives an excellent biography as well. To read the whole article, click here. (It's a bit long, but well worth the read.) There's one error, though: towards the end the author goofs and lists Sean Ferrer as Audrey's husband. Please, no Oedipus references.
Since it's that time of year (and since this is the only news coming in), here's two little shopping tips.
Are you planning on getting anyone Audrey Style this year, or even maybe buying it for yourself? It may cost a little more than Amazon's markdowns, but you can actually buy the book from UNICEF! It's in the For Adults section, or you can just go straight here. You can even throw in Sean's An Elegant Spirit, which is also available through the charity. If you're going to be buying some Audrey gifts anyway, it might as well help out someone in need and brighten two lives at once. :) Found through this article.
Next up, for those of you in the UK doing some shopping, HMV has drastically reduced prices on boxed set DVDs, including the price on The Audrey Hepburn Collection. Originally £49.99, it's now down to a remarkable £14.99! You can read more about it and other good deals here.
First up, the lovely Lotta has sent us a great find. It seems that in Finland in 1955 there was an Audrey Hepburn lookalike contest, and the grand prize was a trip to Stockholm! If you can read Finnish, then there's a short article here, and you can see a small picture of the winner. There is also a link to a short video about the contest on that page, or you can just click here. It seems that even then, everyone wanted to look like Audrey.
Next up, there's an article out about the top ten chick flicks. I personally don't care for the phrases "chick flick" or "chick lit," but this article does list Breakfast at Tiffany's at #5, and has a great description of Audrey's take on Holly: "Representing the woman almost any female wishes she could be, Hepburn plays Holly with an air of sophistication, sweetness, sexuality and vulnerability that can just never again be matched." That pretty much nails it. Up next, Marni Nixon did a radio interview for the BBC, and there's more talk of Audrey. There's also a section that was sort of Audrey vs. Marilyn Monroe, which is like comparing apples and oranges. All the same, you can hear the entire interview here.
A school in Nevada does a really cool thing every year about this time: the kids do a live wax museum of people who were influential the year the kids were born. This year Audrey was featured! And while it's a little sad to think that she died around the time that most of these kids are born, it's pleasing to know that she's still remembered and that this generation is made aware of her. You can read all about it here.And speaking of wax museums:
The wax Audrey Hepburn from the Shanghai Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Pretty cute! And her cigarette glows. (Photos from Flickr and Artem)
For the ladies: yet another article about the upcoming auction (five days!), and this one gives you some dos and don'ts on what to do to make your little black dress a success. It also has a most unflattering picture of yet another model in the Breakfast at Tiffany's dress, which makes me wonder how stretched out it's going to be by the time it hits the auction block. Anyway, the whole article can be found here. Turner Classic Movies is interviewing director Stanley Donen for their Private Screenings series, and he will be discussing his many spectacular films. I'm sure there'll be some good Audrey stories told as well, since he always seems to be full of them on his commentaries, and TCM will also be showing Funny Face on December 6th. You can read more about TCM's upcoming events and details about the Stanley Donen marathon here.
And lastly, an article I found about Sean's work. In 2001 he directed a documentary on Albert "Racehoss" Sample, and while it's been very hard to find so far, it's had very positive reviews. This article talks about Racehoss and his mesmerizing life story, and at the end hints that maybe the film will be seeing some more mainstream distribution soon. Now I'm interested in seeing it . . .
So I just got an email from the Children's Fund (don't get huffy, I'm on the mailing list just like a million other people are), and they're finally offering The Audrey Hepburn Treasures for sale on their website like they did when Sean's Elegant Spirit came out. But unlike Elegant, Treasures is not signed, so please make note of that. It's also selling at full price ($49.95 US), so I personally think you're better off at Amazon. And don't worry about hurting the Children's Fund, since they published the book anyway and will get the writer's cut.
What's better than that, though, is the fact that they've finally updated the events page! Now you can see what they're doing. They kind of cheated by entering stuff from the more recent past that hadn't been up before, but here's the link to the events page (now with pictures!), and for the lazy amongst you, here's a list of their upcoming events:
November 4, 2006 Audrey Hepburn will receive the Lifetime Humanitarian Rose Award at a gala being held at Kensington Palace in London, England. The honor is being given by the People's Princess Charitable Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in memory or Princess Diana, whose mission it is to raise funds for charities around the world using the Princess' collection of dresses it owns and which annually recognizes, "extraordinary individuals."
November 28, 2006 The 2006 Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award will be presented at UNICEFS's annual Snowflake Gala in New York City. Established in 2004, past recipients include Sir Roger Moore, Pamela Fiori and special award recipients Bob Geldof, Bono and One org.
2007 Timeless Audrey Exhibit – European Tour After an 18 month, 10 city tour of Japan, Timeless Audrey, the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund traveling exhibit on the life and career of Audrey Hepburn, will launch its multi-city, multi-country European tour. Funds from the exhibit, created to benefit UNICEF's "All Children In School" educational initiative, help to provide 120,000,000 children with quality basic education.
No offense to the Europeans, but I'm pretty cheesed about that last entry. The exhibit was supposed to come to America this year (2006) and tour, and that would be the last stop. So you guys took our Audrey time! Completely not fair, unless I make a trip . . . well, thinking about it. Still, it was pretty mean of them to tell me about the American leg and get a lot of people's hopes up.
Also, there are a few new items in their shop for your shopping pleasure. Besides the two books they have up, there's also new UNICEF postcards, a DVD called "The Children of the Tsunami" (remember their big fundraising when the tsunami hit?), the t-shirts from before, the world music CD, and finally the Christmas cards with Audrey's drawings.
Moving on, I found an article that's really very funny. It talks about the upcoming dress auction, and as long as you're dreaming about buying it -- let alone wearing it! -- this article will help you choose some jewelry to go along with the priceless dress.
Next up is an article about Audrey's new wave of popularity, and while the author seems to admit that the Gap ads were crass and a bit silly, nothing could really hurt Audrey's image and it does well to promote her to new generations. It talks about her continuing popularity and her timelessness, and can be read in full here.
Lastly, here's yet another article talking about the Gap commercials, but this piece morphs into a review for Spoto's book. It says Spoto's book is formulaic, but gives a mini-biography of Audrey as well as some good quotes. One that's been pointed out in the Audrey Hepburn Circle is, "Humanitarian means human welfare and responding to human suffering -- that's what politics should be about, ideally." You can read the full story here.
I think this is the first time I've heard Sean Ferrer talking about Donald Spoto's biography Enchanted, and why he chose not to be involved in The Audrey Hepburn Treasures. The article talks briefly about why Spoto decided to toss his hat into the ring, since so many biographies on Audrey already exist, and turns from there to a phone interview with Sean from his Children's Fund office in Santa Monica. I think this quote is the most telling:
Sean said he had been aware of his mother's extramarital affairs, so Spoto's book would be no surprise for him.
Does this include the Robert Anderson affair? And if so, does he know about Anderson's book about the affair already? I'm about a quarter of the way through it so far, but my assistant has skipped ahead, and the book is, um, pretty steamy. I certainly know I wouldn't want to read that about my own mother. Anyway, the full article can be found here.
The next item is kind of silly, and flogging a dead horse, now that the Gap ads are done. But here's a member of an older generation giving her take on the commercials and why she likes them.
Next up is a short You Tube clip from Access Hollywood, which talks briefly (14 seconds, to be exact) about the B@T dress going up for auction and Natalie Portman wearing it for Bazaar. If you look closely, and if you've watched these clips already, then you'll notice that the interview was on the same day they paraded the dress around Tiffany's and had a press conference about the upcoming auction. There's also a new picture of her wearing the dress that I hadn't seen before.
(Picture found at natalieportman.com, hosted by moi. I hope they don't mind!)
And finally, more updates on the site. I've added a lot more quotes to the quotes page, both from Audrey and about her, and there's also a review of Funny Face up.
... 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.
There's a new picture book on Audrey coming out November 2, and it's called Audrey 100. The premise? The 100 greatest pictures of Audrey Hepburn, as compiled by her son Sean Ferrer. What this means? Rare or private pictures, seen for the first time! The book is co-authored by Ellen (Erwin) Fontana, the director of the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund, who was also behind what I consider the best book out there on Audrey, The Audrey Hepburn Treasures.
, and you can even take a lovely virtual tour of the book here.
