And we're back

Hello all, and many thanks for your enduring patience with me. To make a long life story short, I decided at the last minute to drive 500 miles south and spend the holiday with my family, since I hadn't had a holiday with them in 3 years for one reason or another. My mum's accident made me realize that our time with each other is limited, and I need to make the most of it. My baby nephew also turned one year old and his favourite aunt had to be onhand for that momentous occasion, of course. :) I also managed to write a novel for NaNoWriMo, but that's a different story, get it?

Long story short, I'm back and we have a lot of catching up to do! Here's a short list of things that have been going on in the world of Audrey Hepburn lately:

- Donald Spoto's controversial biography of Audrey, which was a subject of much debate in the Audrey Hepburn Circle after it's original release, is now available in paperback.

- It's that time of year again! As pointed out by the lovely Lotta both this year and last December, UNICEF and Nokia are uniting to offer holiday e-cards that will benefit everyone. Whether you send cards or not at this time of year, you may want to consider sending at least a little "Thinking of you" note now, since these e-cards will help children around the world have a better life. For every card sent that is opened by its recipient, Nokia will donate an undisclosed sum to UNICEF. The numbers go up every year, so let's see if we can't set new records this year! Go here to start sending your cards.

- This Thursday a black-tie ball benefiting the Irish Sri Lankan Orphanage Fund will feature a dress worn by Audrey herself, along with other famous dresses worn by equally famous women. Unfortunately, the posh Irish event is already sold out, but maybe we can hope for some pictures to surface online? I'd like to know which Audrey dress will be on display.

- In San Francisco now through February 2008, photographer David "Chim" Seymour's photographs are on display at the de Young Museum. Included in this display are his portraits of iconic celebrities, and of course Audrey Hepburn is one of them! On a clear day I can see the top of the de Young from my place, just peeking over the trees in Golden Gate park, so it would be absolutely unacceptable if I didn't get down there to see this for myself. The de Young is more lax about picture taking than the MOMA, so I may be able to get some shots for your enjoyment. :) If you're anywhere in the neighborhood, though, I highly encourage you to see for yourself. The first Tuesday of every month is free museum day.

- UNICEF's annual Snowflake Ball was another huge success, raising over $2 million for the charity. The Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award was also given to actress Téa Leoni at the ball, for her family's ongoing work with UNICEF, starting with Leoni's grandmother, who founded the U.S. chapter of the charity.

And there's the news that's fit to print. :) Thank you again for your understanding and patience throughout all of this.

Note: I tried to post this yesterday, but Blogger ate the post and I only found it again today. It's always something, isn't it?

rare insight into Audrey Hepburn

There's a new video on You Tube from a made-for-TV biography that I don't think I've ever seen. The clip that was uploaded was from a Chinese airing, but maybe it's been aired in English-speaking countries? Either way, it's fantastic interviews with Mel Ferrer, Henry Mancini (composer of "Moon River"), Stanley Donen (director of Funny Face and Two For the Road), and Hubert de Givenchy. It's a really fascinating segment to watch and gives more insight into Audrey's career and relationships with these men, you really just have to see it to appreciate it. I certainly can't do it justice!

My Best Friend: Audrey Hepburn continued

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!

My Best Friend: Audrey Hepburn

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!

Audrey Hepburn's car for sale? Plus, footage from her first screentest

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?

Audrey Hepburn: A Celebration author dies

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.

Free "Gardens of the World" screening

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

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Style and Substance, une nouvelle biographie, and more Funny Face

First off, another big thank you to Franklin, who has made us aware of a new French biography on Audrey. Audrey Hepburn, by Christian Dureau, was released November 9 2006, and while there doesn't seem to be very much information on it (at least on the French Amazon), it is 109 pages and available for €14,16. Judging from the author's other works, it seems like this biography is pretty barebones (the page count seems to say so, too) and wouldn't say anything new to the reader. There are also no reviews up anywhere that I can find, so it's hard to say for sure whether it's worth it. If my French were a little less rusty, I'd give it a go!

Next up, there's an excellent article on The Australian talking about style, and it talks quite a bit about Audrey and her je ne sais quoi. They also readily admit that no one has managed to come close to her effortless grace since, and there's an excellent quote that Givenchy made shortly after Audrey's death: "One thing that struck me about her, apart from her charm and elegance, was her ability to make herself loved and admired by women as well as men. Her image was unique. This is something that other great actresses have been unable to create for themselves." There is much more to the article than that quote, and I highly recommend reading it for yourself. The whole piece is here, and it starts talking about Audrey at the 10th paragraph and continues through about two-thirds of the page.

Lastly, there's another screening of Funny Face this month, this time at the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. It's playing Sunday January 7 at 2pm, if you're interested and in the area. Also of interest, but not really Audrey-related, is that the Philadelphia City Institute Library is playing Pandora's Box the next day for free, so if you know a Louise Brooks fan in the area, definitely let them know! (I'm personally a Brooks fan, and we're familiar with the Louise Brooks Society, so a little co-mingling never hurt.) Thanks to citypaper.net for the information.

Audrey Hepburn: The Model of Style and Desire

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.

vintage Audrey, more Little Black Dress, and making your dreams come true

From the ever resourceful Audrey Hepburn Circle comes yet another great find: Time Magazine's first ever article on Audrey! 53 years ago, a then unknown actress was put on the cover of Time. It was the first -- and only -- time an actor had ever been featured on the cover before even one feature film of theirs had been released. That unknown was Audrey Hepburn, and you can read the entire article here. It's an exceptional article and has a surprisingly detailed biography on her as well. You almost don't need to read a book on her after reading this!


And, building up to the auction of the ultimate Little Black Dress on Tuesday, there's yet another article about it and the history of the revolutionary dress. This article is exceptionally good, giving a very detailed history of black dresses and how black was and still is important to fashion in general. It also mentions more recent Audrey-inspired black dresses, including a dress designed by Tu Ly called "Audrey" for Shepherd's Fashion and Accessories (Canada). You can read the full article here, and you can see Tu's dress here. (Since the site is all Flash, I can't give a direct link, so you must click on "Little Black Dress Collection," and from there click on "Audrey.")




And lastly . . . it's not exactly Audrey related news, but I liked the idea. GMTV -- "Europe's biggest breakfast show" -- is having a contest where your wildest dream could come true. Whether you've wanted to have a shopping spree or really have breakfast at Tiffany's, write in to them and they could make your dream come true. For more information and to enter, just go here.

UNICEF, pearls, and the lasting power of Audrey Hepburn

There's a really excellent article about UNICEF and the trials and tribulations of charities in the Guardian today. We've been seeing more and more articles popping up lately talking about the celebrity charity drive and how it can actually hurt charities more than help them, and this article lists some of UNICEF's more recent issues with its image and its partnerships. It also talks about certain big labels doing two-faced work by making their clothes via Third World sweatshops, yet launching conscientious items or lines to raise money for Third World citizens. *cough* Gap Red! *cough* It of course mentions Audrey's work and how she sort of started the celebrity spokesperson trend (though really the credit should go to Danny Kaye, who worked for 40 years as a Goodwill Ambassador and got Audrey involved), and how there are special classes celebrities take now to learn about charities and become spokespeople. Classes. It all seems very strange. Still, I highly recommend reading the whole article.


Next up, a book on Tiffany's pearls! I don't know how I've missed this one before, but Tiffany & Co. has released a book about their history with the lustrous gems. The history tends to be more entertaining than educating, but look who's on the cover:


Also featured inside is Liz Taylor and other pearl-loving stars. More information on the book and purchasing information can be found here.

And lastly, where would we be without another article marveling at Audrey's staying power? This is actually a very good write-up, and lists several recent mentions of Audrey I wasn't even aware of. It also gives a good mini-biography of her and has some good quotes by her and Sean. Go here to read the full article (2 pages).

EDIT: The Audrey reference mentioned in the last article about the TV show "The Class" is this; it's Halloween and a little girl has had help with her costume. She comes out like this:

Her mom doesn't get it. "Hello?!? Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's!" It's cute, but I wouldn't have mentioned it if I hadn't noticed what a spectacular job the costuming people did on the outfit. The tiara is great, the necklace is spot-on, and the dress is a near clone. Even the sunglasses are like mini-Wayfarers! Which made me wonder what one earth was wrong with the costumers on The Audrey Hepburn Story, if a 6 year-old could out-dress Jennifer Love Hewitt:

fresh out

I guess I posted the whole week's news yesterday! All I could find today was one article about the Spoto biography, although it does give a very good and thorough timeline of Audrey's life. It's definitely worth checking out here.

Also . . . I really don't like it when I search for Audrey through Blogger and get thrown into teenage girl's thinspiration blogs, especially when they brag about only eating crackers worth 220 calories for an entire day. Forget the Gap ads, that would make Audrey spin in her grave if anything could.

"Roman Holiday" screengrabs gallery!

Finally, the Roman Holiday screengrabs are here. There's 469 grabs for your enjoyment, and I must say this was a really fun one to work on. I mean, they all are, but I loved this film even more after doing the grabs, and it reminded me of just how much I loved all the authentic Italian talent they had in this film. I will always love Mario Delani, the barber.




Click here for the full gallery.

And while there still isn't really any new news, I did find another short review of Enchantment that's a little different from all the rest. They sum themselves up well, though, with the last sentence: "Spoto offers a pleasantly polite, though not groundbreaking, biography." For the full article, go here.

Tomorrow I'll post the new contest. The prize will be the special edition Gardens of the World series, since that obviously won by a landslide in the voting.

winter coats, book excerpts and ghosts

Some random updates today:

- a guide on buying a winter coat that will last (for the ladies), in the desperate attempt to buy something that really will be timeless and classic and last more than one season. Of course it mentions Audrey.

- a nice interview with Sir Roger Moore, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and recipient of the first ever Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award (2004). Close to the bottom (the last 3 paragraphs, in fact), Roger talks about his humanitarian work and how Audrey roped him into UNICEF -- very lovingly, of course. :)


And for those of you who haven't read or at least flipped through Donald Spoto's biography Enchantment yet, here's an excerpt from the book. I actually think I might have posted this a while ago, but I'm too lazy to comb back through my archives.

Lastly, Marni Nixon is making the rounds to promote herself and her book. I wasn't going to say anything about it, but I found it hilarious that Time Magazine once called her "the ghostest with the mostest" and her book was ghostwritten. Hah! Sorry. I just don't think it's right to complain all your life about doing other people's work when you have someone else write your autobiography.

And if you're interested, there's a silly impersonation of Audrey by British impressionist Ronni Ancona at about the 7 minute mark in this video:

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.

How to get Golightly hair, just in time for Halloween!

If you were planning on being Holly Golightly for Halloween, then this article comes just in time! And even if you were planning to go as Audrey, admit it: it's Audrey as Holly, right? Because that's the one costume everyone will know. It's okay, I've done that, too. ;)

Next up is an offshoot of a rather crass (but highly relevant) list from Forbes: the top earning dead celebrities. Audrey isn't on the top 13, thankfully, but she is mentioned in this video talking about dead celebrities hawking goods, and why exactly companies use old footage of well-known actors to shill their goods. Unfortunately, there are some annoying commercials in the video and you'll just have to stop it yourself after the interview is over, because it just keeps going and going.

After that comes yet another thing I want to roll my eyes at. Marni Nixon came out with a book last month called I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story. No wonder she's been making so many local commercials about her dubbing work! I'm annoyed, of course, because she's a big reason why the whole My Fair Lady controversy just won't die down, and why people, some Julie Andrews fans in particular, hold a grudge against Audrey. For the last time, she had no idea she was going to be dubbed until it was late in filming, and even recorded most of her songs herself before someone let it slip. Jack Warner had actually wanted to keep it under wraps indefinitely and not let Audrey know (though she wasn't stupid and would have realized what was happening after the first note), but it was leaked and Marni was pushing to be credited. There! And now Marni's making a new living off of being other, more famous people's voices, even though two of them (Audrey and Natalie Wood, who had both sung with their own voices in other movies) were not aware that they were going to be dubbed. You weren't the only one that was used, Marni. Get over it.

And lastly, I've added some new reviews to the site. Maybe some more picture galleries tomorrow. :) But for the time being there's a review on Barry Paris's biography, Alexander Walker's biography, Warren G. Harris's biography, Audrey Style, and Robert Anderson's novel supposedly about his affair with Audrey, After. Whew! That's it for today.

When all is said and done, Audrey came out on top

I found a really nice review of The Audrey Hepburn Treasures (though it's mislabeled as The Audrey Hepburn Treasury -- is it a bank?) which talks about Audrey's life compared to her peers' lives. She has by far had the closest to normal life and the less sensationalistic, and really, that's a better role model than you can find most other places. The full article can be found here, and inside the article is a link to a long excerpt from the book, both courtesy of Australia's Courier Mail News. If you don't want to read the review and just want to see the excerpt, click here.

Sean speaks about "Enchantment" and "Treasures"

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.

Natalie Portman is Audrey's "clone," but Audrey was a Martian anyway

I've seen these articles come into my inbox quite a few times now, so I thought I'd share. Apparently Natalie Portman wearing Audrey's dress is a big deal, leading many to call her our generation's Audrey Hepburn and Audrey's clone. Unlike some starlets, Natalie has openly admitted that she could never fill Audrey's shoes and doesn't even want to try, which is nice and refreshing and really what people need to hear. She has also said she would never play Audrey in a biopic, so get that idea out of your head. Audrey clone or not though, we could do a lot worse on role models for young women. To view the article, click here.

Another article I'd like to share starts out as a review for the Spoto biography, but quickly morphs into something completely different. It's a sort of lovesong for Audrey and her uniqueness, and it's very lovely. The author even throws in a brief -- but very good -- biography of Audrey at the end, which would make it very hard for any casual reader to not be curious about her afterwards. The article can be found here.

The last article is just a quick add-on. Its main point is that Audrey always seems to be in style, which is nice, but I was personally very intrigued by the last half of the piece. It compares Audrey with the starlets of today, especially the D-listers like Paris Hilton (may I never mention her name again) and Jessica Simpson. The interesting part is the author's hypothesis that even Audrey herself wouldn't have emerged unscathed from the tabloid machines today, who take any innocuous happening and turn it into the basest trash. That's something I've always wondered about myself, really. You can read the full story here.

And if this doesn't make you mad (or ill), nothing will.


I know it's old, but it never ceases to be irritating. What was it Mag Wildwood said about "a piece of cheap Hollywood trash"?

The Nun's Story

Last week I bought a copy of The Nun's Story (the book) off of Amazon. I lucked out because as I did a search for the book, there happened to be a copy of it with Audrey on the cover, released in an edition that came out right when the movie was coming out. The book isn't being printed anymore, so if you want a copy for yourself, it's going to have to be an old one. If you're all nice, I might end up buying more copies like mine and giving them away. :)

Anyway, I was standing in a hallway reading while I was waiting, and twice in 10 minutes people actually noticed what I was reading! The first time a lady I vaguely knew walked by and noticed, and she said "Oh yeah, Nun's Story. I remember seeing that in high school!" I was shocked because she didn't look nearly that old. "Didn't that have Audrey Hepburn?" I said yes, and she said "That was a beautiful lady." I smiled and said that I loved her, and the lady said "Good! You look like her." I said thank you, it'd be nice to be like her, and we parted ways. Not 10 minutes later a man I know walks by and asked what I was reading. I showed him the cover and he said "Oh, Nun's Story. That book looks 50 years old! Wasn't that a movie?" I said yes, the movie was based off of this book, and he said "Who was in it? Audrey Hepburn?" I said yes again, and he said "That was a good movie. You should see it." He seemed shocked that I had.

Both of these people were older than me, old enough to have been around (though young) when the film came out. I had totally forgotten how well the movie did when it actually came out, and how popular the book was beforehand. While the younger generations only seem to know Audrey for Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady, people who were around during her career still remember her by her more powerful films, where her acting talent truly showed. That's not bashing her talent in other films, but most younger fans agree that when they do finally watch The Nun's Story, a whole new side of Audrey opens up to them. I guess that's how people felt when the film first came out, too. Even people who weren't fans of hers sat up and took notice of her performance.

And if you were interested, the book is just as good as the movie. As Donald Spoto's biography points out, screenwriter Robert Anderson stayed very true to the book, and the book itself is very engaging. It isn't dull or dry as a lot of big hits in the day were (have you tried reading Ben-Hur?), and is still very readable to modern generations. It's a shame that it is out of print, because I'm a sure a lot of Audrey fans would love to read it after seeing the film, and it's worth the read.

Speaking of Robert Anderson, I also found a copy of his book After, written about his supposed love affair with Audrey during Nun's Story, on Amazon. This book too is out of print and harder to find, but my copy should be here any day. I may regret spending even $5 on it and I feel vaguely guilty over buying a book that might be exploitative, but curiousity just keeps getting the best of me. I'll let you know how it turns out after I read it, and if it's worth pursuing.