Audrey Hepburn (47 page)

Authors: Barry Paris

BOOK: Audrey Hepburn

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It's O'Toole, of course, and it's one of the film's funniest scenes: She catches and holds him at gunpoint. The gun goes off accidentally, and they both faint as a result of
his
flesh wound. “I'm a society burglar,” he complains when revived. “I don't expect people to rush about shooting me.” He talks her out of calling the police and into driving him back to his hotel. She puts her go-go boots over her negligee and gripes, “This is crazyâyou should be in jail, and I should be in bed.” But she is smitten, inevitably, after his first bold kiss.

Hepburn is stunningly dressed by Givenchy in every scene, most notably in a black voile dinner dress and lace “mask” midway. Wyler's pace is leisurelyâthe film is two hours and seven minutes long. He gives the audience its money's worth of Audrey. She and OâToole are as good as the script, which is not as Hitchcockian as it wants to be. In
Charade,
Hepburn was really a foil to Grant; in
Million,
O'Toole is the foil to Hepburn.

“Take off your clothes,” he orders after they're locked inside the closet, handing her a scrubwoman's outfit.

“Are we planning the same sort of crime?” she enquires.

The closet scene was photographed with masterful irony by Charles Langâjust a narrow strip of lighted space in the middle of the huge, wide and otherwise pitch black Panavision frame. Such was their proximity and for so long, said O'Toole, that he had a hard time restraining himself. Romantic as well as funny, that sequence fueled press rumors of an affair, encouraged as usual by the film's publicists and, as usual, false.

Wyler had been pleased to make a comedy in the wake of his depressing previous picture,
The Collector.
But when it was released in July 1966, the critics were less pleased. “They have her repeat her characterization of the
jeune fille
undergoing romantic awakening, a role in which she is now expert to the point of ennuiâa kind of upper-class Debbie Reynolds,” wrote Richard Schickel in
Life.
Crowther in the
New York Times
called both the movie and the Givenchy wardrobe “preposterous.” To look at it, one would never suspect that the glossy, lumbering How to
Steal a
Million was made in the raging middle of the Vietnam war. Wyler made only two more films before retiring in 1970.

Hepburn and O'Toole did not work together again, and in later years Audrey often expressed regret about it. Eli Wallach thinks the film never got proper credit for the fact that she was finally paired with a handsome lover her own age, instead of the older men with whom she was usually saddled.

The problem with
How to Steal a Million
was McLuhanesque: Its message was its medium, and its medium was entirely Audrey. There is a point in any star's career, says Caroline Latham, at which the real-life personality begins to dwarf or dominate the characters he or she plays. One solution is to mock the legend, playing on audience memories of the star's previous roles. In this case, Wyler played on her persona as a fashion statementâ“High Audrey” all the way. “The absorption with Hepburn's looks and mannerisms,” says Latham, “teeters on the edge of parody.”
¹⁸

When O'Toole surveys her in the shabby cleaning woman's disguise, he says, “That does it!”

“Does what?” she asks.

“Well, for one thing,” he replies, “it gives Givenchy a night off.”

BULLETIN, widely published: “Audrey Hepburn and Richard Burton will star in the MGM musical remake of
Goodbye, Mr.
Chips, each to receive a salary of $1 million against 10 percent of the gross.”

False bulletin. Her pal Peter O'Toole and singer Petula Clark would eventually take the roles, instead.

The role Audrey much preferred at the moment was that of gardener in Tolochenazâand expectant mother. She was ecstatic about both, but in January 1966, her joy ended in a Lausanne clinic with another miscarriage. Once again, she was overcome by sorrow. The mediocre reception of
How to Steal a Million
did nothing to pull her out of it, but Mel was determined not to let her wallow in depression. His antidote, as always, was the therapeutic activity of a new project. For psychological and professional reasons alike, he thought she should update her film image to suit the timesâwhich were a-changin'.

Of dozens of proposed scripts, the winning candidate was
Two for the Road,
to be directed by Stanley Donen. If she was going to do a real “makeover,” it would be under the guidance of an old and trusted friend. The offbeat story concept, on the other hand, was quite new and untested. Writer Frederic Raphael and his wife, from the time they were childhood sweethearts, always went on holiday to the south of France. Going to the same places over and over, he sometimes had the sensation of passing a former version of himself along the same road. He asked Donen if a movie about the relationship of a man and womanâtold in five different time bands as they traveled their holiday roadâsounded interesting. Donen said it sounded wonderful.
¹⁹

Two for
the Road chronicled a faltering twelve-year marriage, not unlike the length and condition of Hepburn's own. It would be her daring departure, once and for all, from the fifties to the swinging sixties (now that they were half over).
²⁰Paul Newman was the director's first choice for her leading man. When he turned down the role, Donen offered it to Albert Finney.

The Angriest Young Man of the British new wave and one of its hottest properties was Finney, who had given brilliant performances in
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
(1960) and
Tom Jones
(1963). Hepburn heard much about him from Peter OâToole, his fellow student at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. O'Toole had taken the lead in
Lawrence of Arabia
when Finney rejected it in favor of stage work in
Billy Liar
and
Luther.
At thirty, Finney was seven years younger than Hepburn, and she was the first real film superstar with whom he'd been teamed.

“Audrey Hepburn Swings? You're Kidding,” said the incredulous Ladies' Home
Journal
headline, while shocking talk of miniskirts and nude scenes peppered the text beneath it. Audrey didn't need “a look,” said the magazine. “She already is one.” She would alter her style about as readily as Charles de Gaulle. “Why change?” she once said. “Everyone has his own style. When you have found it, you should stick to it.” But that was then. Now, of her metamorphosis in
Two for the Road,
she was saying, “All convention is rigidifying. I think we should try to avoid being rigidâthat does age one.”
²¹

Her revisionist declaration was a little stiff, but she was trying hard. Indeed, she would have to: Raphael's script called for adultery, a bathing-suit appearance, and a steamy bedroom scene in which she wore nothing at all. “It is inconceivable that it could have been submitted to me ten years ago,” she said, “or even five,” and her qualms were many. But when Mel read it, his advice was, “Take it right away.”
²²

When we first meet the Hepburn and Finney characters, Joanna and Mark, their relationship is set: They're rampantly unfaithful to each another, but no time is wasted on background explanation. The issue is marital game-playing, and this marriage seems doomed at the outsetâor maybe not, depending on the time frame.

Two for the Road's
structure was revolutionary: The couple's shifting attachments unfold in episodic, non-sequential fashion. Donen cuts back and forth over a twelve-year period, with only the cars, clothes and hairdos to help us figure out the chronology.

Beyond that are the metaphysical implicationsâ“the past's intrusion upon the present,” says Donen biographer Joseph Casper, who calls the film “a pas de deux on wheels.” Mark and Joanna sometimes even pass themselves surrealistically on the road. It was a “deconstructivist” narrative that helped introduce New Wave techniques to Hollywood, but the shooting was mostly in France. Audrey was introduced to Finney there in the summer of 1966 and was instantly struck by his muscular good looks and his sharp, unpredictable mind. Her impact on him was potent, too:

Audrey and I met in a seductive ambience [in] a very sensual time in the Mediterranean. We got on immediately. After the first day's rehearsals, I could tell that the relationship would work out wonderfully. Either the chemistry is there, or it isn't.... That happened with Audrey. During a scene with her, my mind knew I was acting but my heart didnât, and my body certainly didn't! Performing with Audrey was quite disturbing, actually.... With a woman as sexy as Audrey, you sometimes get to the edge where make-believe and reality are blurred. All that staring into each other's eyes.... People are always asking me when I'm going to marry her.... I won't discuss it more because of the degree of intimacy involved. The time spent with Audrey is one of the closest I've ever had.
²³

The usual reports of a romance between costars were quick in coming, with one significant difference: This time, it was true. When production moved to the French Riviera, Hepburn cut loose even more, frugging away with Finney in the local discotheques and otherwise cavorting with him in their off-hours.

The greater test of Audrey Hepburn's new “liberation” lay in those much-ballyhooed scenes in which she had to unveil most of her self-consciously thin body. The beach scene with Finney had her in a stew. She told Donen she didn't think she could do it. It was one thing for the younger, athletic Finney to run around in his swimming trunks; it was another for Audrey, at thirty-seven, to expose herself to the world. But Donen cajoled and talked her out of a body double, and she came through admirably.
²⁴

That left the final challenge of the “nude” bedroom scene, filmed at the Hotel du Golf in Beauvallon near St. Tropez: After all the publicity, it turned out to be much ado about very little, the total nudity consisting of her upper back. The rest of her was demurely covered by a sheet. Finney, for his part, was even more demurely coveredâclad in a T-shirt throughout their postcoital pillow talk in the scene.

Audrey's biggest problem in
Two for the Road
was the reverse of what she originally feared: not what she had to take off but what she had to put on. With Mel's approval, Donen decided to dump Givenchy in favor of Audrey's new, “mod” lookânot too far removed from the one Raphael conceived the previous year for Julie Christie in
Darling.
“The beautiful simplification of her life was gone when Givenchy wasn't to dress her,” said one of Audrey's friends. “Mel was trying to tear away some of the cocoon which had been wrapped around her for too long.”
²⁵

Most of her
Two for the Road
wardrobe would be purchased “off the rack”
pret-Ã -porter
at Parisian boutiques. Ken Scott was brought in as fashion coordinator, and she took a liking to his Ban-Lon prints. But Scott found her “extremely rigid,” even about informal clothes. Red and most other primary colors were taboo. “I want to stay in fashion,” she told an interviewer at the time, “but being young in spirit counts more toward looking young than dressing in a hippie style.”
²⁶There was always a certain defensiveness in her comments on the subject.

Worn-out by arguing over every detail, Scott departed and was replaced by Lady Claire Rendlesham, who got along better with Audrey and worked hard to modify (and pad out) the selections, from miniskirts to swimsuits, according to her demands. Most of the clothes came from London's Mary Quant, supplemented by Paco Rabanne and other top “mod” designers of the day.

In the end, Audrey's new duds enhanced her performance and, in the opinion of costar William Daniels, helped liberate her not only from her inhibitions and from Givenchy, but also from Mel. She seemed relieved to be out from under his supervision and to become a kid againâor at least her own womanâafter years of conforming to his wishes. Daniels recalled her as “constantly laughing, relaxed and joyous,” often taking off with Finney to drink and dance at the bistros.
²⁷Novelist Irwin Shaw, an old friend, described his visit with her on the set:

“She and Albie had this wonderful thing together, like a pair of kids with a perfect understanding and a shorthand of jokes and references that closed out everybody else. It was like a brother-sister in their teens. When Mel was there ..., Audrey and Albie got rather formal and a little awkward, as if now they had to behave like grown-ups.”
²⁸

Stanley Donen said “the Audrey I saw during the making of this film I didn't even know. She overwhelmed me. She was so free, so happy. I never saw her like that. So young! ... I guess it was Albie.” Finney was youthful, frisky, impulsive and excitingâeverything Mel was not.
²⁹

She could not go too far, of course. The attachment with Finney was strong but temporary. It could not be allowed to compromise or endanger her custody of Sean. Though separated, she and Mel were on civilized terms and had decided to give the relationship another try. During one of many phone calls, Mel told her he was taking Sean to a matinee of
My Fair Lady.
The next day, she phoned to ask if he'd had a nice afternoon.

“Yes,” said Sean.

“Did you do anything special?”

“Yes, we had ice cream.”

“Did you see a movie?” she prompted.

“Yes.... Mommy, why did you hate to take a bath?”
³⁰

It was time to go home, hold him in her arms, and explain things like Eliza's bathtub scene in person.