Hepburn continues unabated, says Tom Ryan.
BOMBSHELL? HARDLY.
Goddess? Not really. She was much too quiet and self-effacing a screen presence, more angelic than erotic, in truth just a wisp of a lass, which is probably why a swooning Billy observe, "This girl, single-handed, may make bosoms a thing of the Star?
Icon? Both most certainly. In her persona in films and as a fashion plate, in her sheer Audreyness, she embodied a femininity that is unique and universal and, even though she was born in Brussels and spent much of her acting career in Europe, she still shines bright in Hollywood's memory.
Actress? Perhaps. Her debuts on Broadway (in Gigi) and Oscar awards for best actress in 1953.
However, it's hard to tell because she was so consistently Hepburn, a haunting Cinderella presence wafting elegantly from one context to the next, bearing different names - Princess Ann official parameters of the roles she graced with her presence.
For those of my generation, the baby-boomer one, it's quite coincided with seeing her ageing, but still ethereally beautiful, Then, finally, there she was again, appropriately enough playing an angel, in Steven Spielberg's Always (1989). It was those appearances that prepared us for the horrible inevitability, sooner or later, of her death.
Sadly it turned out to be sooner. She died four years after Always was released, of colon cancer at her home in Switzerland. Almost 14 years ago.
However, the industry that sprang up around her long before she died shows no sign of abating. This year alone there's been the with Fred Astaire) and, courtesy of some smart digital enhancement, has her bopping to AC/DC's Back in Black. This month, just in time for Christmas, Paramount releases a DVD collection of five life.
ambitious of these. Compiled by Tony Nourmand, co-owner of London's Reel Poster Gallery, it's certainly a handsome collection, although it has limited itself to billboard artwork, costume designs and behind-the-scenes stills from only a handful of her films. But it's here, courtesy of a short essay by Sarah Hodgson, that we're in My Fair Lady fetched $US100,000 at auction in 2004.
On Tuesday, her black Givenchy dress for Breakfast at Tiffany's was sold for 467,200 ($A1.17 million) at Christie's in London.
The other two books are primarily biographical in their goals, following the contours of Hepburn's life.
Her troubled childhood in Brussels, England and the Netherlands, her love of dance and the Holland.
Then, after the war, the pursuit of a vocation as a performer, the life-changing meeting with Colette in Monte Carlo, the launching of her stage and screen careers, and the time she spent, after she stopped making films, selflessly working on behalf of those she described as "beautiful, silent children". And, of course, the men in her life.
side-by-side. The Audrey Hepburn Treasures is a bit like a lovingly assembled scrapbook, including a straightforward and completely uncontroversial sketch of Hepburn's life, more than 200 of interest (such as duplicates of private letters, cards and call More orthodox in approach, but no less admiring in tone, Donald Spoto's Enchantment cuts a lot deeper, tackling head-on the troublesome fact that Hepburn was human, fallible and fragile like the rest of us. The Hepburn who emerges from his serious, being about whom few had anything derogatory to say.
William Holden, Albert Finney and Ben Gazzara), ho-hum, but Spoto childhood.
was six, a trauma from which she never fully recovered and that led loved ones. The second was the desperation of her circumstances the late 1980s until her death.
has about his previous subjects, most notably Alfred Hitchcock - will be sorely disappointed.
He's clearly as in awe of her as the rest of us.
News RSS