Audrey Hepburn (39 page)

But Donen gave plenty of time to Audrey, whom he cherished as a person and as an actress. They grew closer with each of their movies together. Audrey was fond of teasing him about his hopeless French, which, despite much moviemaking in France, he invariably butchered. On one trans-Atlantic flight to Paris together, she pointed to the NO SMOKING sign above their heads and reminded him, “See Stanley? No fuming!”

On New Year's Eve 1963, the Ferrers held a dinner party at their rented chateau outside Paris for eight: Donen and his wife, Adele, Peter Stone and his wife, Mary, and Cary Grant and his twenty-five-year-old amour (and future wife) Dyan Cannon, who had flown to Paris to lick her wounds after the disastrous three-night stand of her Broadway play,
The Fun Couple.
It was formal and fancy. The servants wore white gloves while serving huge baked potatoes, into which the guests ladled sour cream and Russian caviar from a five-pound tin provided by Grant.

“It was as glamorous an evening as one can imagine,” recalled Stone, “but it was truly boring. It wasn't anybody's fault. Nobody there was boring. But it was just one of those terrible evenings where nobody ... was in great humor. Cary and Dyan were arguing a bit. Mel and Audrey were arguing a bit, and Stanley and Adele were arguing a bit. The only ones who remained happily married to each other were Mary and me.”
¹²¹

But Cary Grant was Cary Grant, even on a bad day. As shooting progressed, James Coburn was ever more fascinated by Grant's idiosyncrasies and firm views on everything from acting and fashion to the battle of the sexes:

“Cary Grant always did things three times. Every shot, every scene he would do big, small, and right in-between. He would find a dynamic that seemed to work, but he explored all the possibilities first. He was always looking for something.

“One night we were sitting around the pool in the Rothschilds' hotel after work. The air was sparkling with little ice crystals. It was Cary's fifty-ninth birthday, and we had just all come up from dinner. We started talking and suddenly he said he was a little nonplussed about Audrey's film clothes: ‘She dresses like a kook!' I said, ‘It's Givenchy.' He said, ‘Yes, but it's too over-the-top. Too
fashionable.'

“He was always looking for longevity in films. He always dressed right in the middle because he knew very early in his career that for a film to last, it can't be too fashionable. Today, there's no lasting fashion, no style, no nothing. It's out the door, and on to video. So he was critical of Audrey's clothes in that film, but never of Audrey—except that he thought she was much too young for him.”
¹²²

Audrey as the cool, unruffled Reggie in
Charade
thought otherwise. “You know what's wrong with you?” she asks Grant as their romance builds, and answers herself: “Nothing.” Both of their performances were facilitated by Stone's fine script, bubbling over with ironic twists and diabolical turns. Everyone in
Charade
lies constantly to everyone else and says “Trust me” all the while, right up to the suspenseful finale—a nighttime chase of Hepburn by Grant and Matthau in the shadowy colonnades of the Palais Royale. Trapped there, she'll win or lose the game—and her life—by deciding which of two armed and dangerous liars might possibly be telling the truth.

 

 

HOLLYWOOD PUBLICIST-TO-THE-STARS Herb Sterne has a little light to shed, and a little cold water to throw, on the subject of Grant's and Hepburn's professional bliss during
Charade:

“Cary wasn't so particular about how he looked in a still, but he didn't want Audrey to look as good as he did. Audrey didn't want Cary to look as good as she did. So I said, ‘Let us have two sheets, so each star can kill a still and the other will not know which still they have killed.' This went great until my secretary, who was busy kissing Audrey's ass, sneaked out a print which Cary had killed and made sure it was published.”
¹²³

But aside from that minor bit of sabotage, there was hardly a ripple of discontent between the two stars, evidenced by the fact that Grant wanted to be reteamed with Audrey immediately in
Father Goose,
his next picture for which Peter Stone again wrote the script (and won an Oscar). Audrey demurred, and the part went to Leslie Caron, because her sights were now set on something much bigger. But for the rest of their lives, Grant and Hepburn traded valentines of mutual affection.

“Working with Cary is so easy,” said Audrey. “He does all the acting, and I just react.”
¹²⁴
Grant had touched her even more as a person than as a performer. Twenty-five years later, shortly after his death, she exhaled a long, dreamy sigh when asked about him and disclosed the kind of intimate details about their personal dynamic that she rarely shared in public:

“Cary—such a lovely souvenir in my life. Unlike some people might think, he was really a very reserved, very sensitive, very quiet person, very philosophical, rather mystic in some ways. And had enormous empathy for other people. He had me down flat the minute he met me. I mean, he knew what I was all about and whatever I was uptight about and was extremely helpful. Terribly helpful because I was quite inexperienced, really, when I worked with him.”
¹²⁵

The last part of the statement was quite untrue. She had made seventeen films before Charade and enjoyed major star status for a decade by then. But that's how it—and Cary Grant—seemed in her mind. Later, she elaborated on his psychological insight:

James Coburn agrees with Hepburn's assessment but adds that Grant had one advantage over Audrey and all other vulnerable people in the world: “He had ‘Cary Grant' to protect him!”
¹²⁷

Though he rarely saw Audrey thereafter, Coburn happily admits being “wild about her” and coming away from their association with a distinct perception about her sexuality.

“Audrey was something else,” Coburn reflects, “—a real lady, and there are so few of them. It had to do with her upbringing and those negative experiences in the war, which I think made her become rather secretive. On the film just before, Paris
When It Si
les,
Bill Holden was having a strong romance with Capucine, who was also close to Audrey. But Audrey and Bill had a thing, too.... Underneath, Audrey was a very sexual creature, always secretive and goddesslike. It would take some kind of a godlike creature to bring her down—but she didn't seem to be too unwilling. She was the gamine goddess.”
¹²⁸

 

 

ALL
CHARADE
had going for it was an exciting story, witty dialogue, the ideal cast, a top director, Parisian chic, and yet another Mancini-Mercer hit. Donen held his breath, hoping for a good reception, but
Charade's
ecstatic reviews went beyond all his expectations.

“A Technicolored merry-go-round in which Grant, Hepburn and Paris never looked better,” raved
Look.
“An absolute delight,” said
Newsweek.
Pauline Kael in
The New Yorker
called it “probably the best American film” of the year.

Charade
was popular with all segments of the public, but especially with that much-mocked subgroup known as philatelists, since a rare stamp figures as the key to its plot. The glorious and sorrowful mysteries of philately may seem absurd to those who don't share the compulsion. But in 1963,
Charade
exalted and elevated stamp-collecting to the peak of its vogue.

It is arguably Stanley Donen's best non-musical film but, ironically, many remember it most for its smooth, sexy title song. Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer had just won two best-song Oscars in a row, for “Moon River” and “The Days of Wine and Roses,” but the third time wasn't a charm. “Charade” lost to “Call Me Irresponsible” from
Papa's Delicate Condition.

That minor disappointment was offset by its surprise bonanza at the box-office :
Charade
was Audrey's biggest hit yet—and Donen's biggest hit ever—breaking all records at Radio City in New York. It was the year's fifth most profitable film, grossing $6.15 million and inspiring a flock of comic-thriller imitations with similar titles—
Mirage, Caprice, Masquerade, Kaleidoscope, Blindfold
—all of which lacked the charm of the original.

Among those who tried to imitate Donen's magic formula was Donen himself in
Arabesque
(1966): “Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren asked me to find a movie for them,” he said. But that humorless duo turned out to be, in Donen biographer Joseph Caspar's words, about “as exciting as Friday night in a Benedictine abbey.”
¹²⁹

Back in Hollywood, Grant's delight with
Charade
was expressed in his comment to a reporter, “All I want for Christmas is another movie with Audrey Hepburn.“
¹³⁰
He didn't really need anything else: His share of
Operation Petticoat
(1959) had netted him about $3 million, and he would earn $4 million in percentages from his previous hit,
That Touch of Mink
(1962). With no pressing need to rush immediately into
Father Goose
production, Grant the good liberal took time off for some volunteerism in Washington, lending his name and support to Attorney General Robert Kennedy's campaign to curb high school dropouts.

He was not the only one with New Frontier connections. More than once, President John F. Kennedy had phoned Audrey Hepburn to compliment her on a film and to say she was his favorite actress. On May 29, 1963, she reciprocated at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York by singing “Happy Birthday, dear Jack” at the President's forty-sixth-and last—birthday party. Audrey's pretty little rendition caused much less stir than that of the previous year's serenader, Marilyn Monroe.

CHAPTER 6

“Did Rex Harrison want Julie Andrews instead of Hepburn? No. He didn't want
anybody.
He felt whatever fuss was made about Audrey or Julie was pointless, because nobody was interested in the girl. They were only interested in
him.”

—ANDRÉ PREVIN

 

 

 

I
T WAS THE BEST OF ROLES, IT WAS THE WORST OF ROLES.... “You've got
My Fair Lady!”
shouted Kurt Frings triumphantly to Audrey Hepburn via long-distance telephone in Bürgenstock, where she had returned for some rest after
Charade.
¹

It was the call she had been awaiting for months—or years or perhaps her whole life. “I had to share the magnificent news with somebody close to me,” she said. “Mel was away. But there was Mother upstairs, taking a shower. I banged on the bathroom door and screamed something unintelligible about the movie I was to star in and Mother came out soaking wet, wrapped in a towel, thinking the house was on fire.”
²