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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why many grew so accustomed to her face, April 9, 2004
Warren G. Harris's biography on Audrey Hepburn is an unbiased, straight-ahead account that details her ups and downs, from her childhood in the war-torn Netherlands, her first starts at stardom in England, her breakthrough in Roman Holiday, marriages to Mel Ferrer and Andrea Dotti, to her declining movie career from the late 1970's onward, and to her work as UNICEF spokesperson. The initial quotes from Billy Wilder, Cecil Beaton, Hubert Givenchy, and Stanley Donen give what made Hepburn a star. Wilder says that God kissed her with that gift of stardom. True enough: that 5'7" height, slender birdlike figure, prominent eyebrows, squared off chin, princess-like elegance and beauty that continued in her fifties, a wistful fragility, and soft voice that spoke perfect English and ended a sentence in a girlish query. And that European sophistication she exuded no doubt came from a multinational heritage that included British, Dutch, Austrian, Hungarian, French, Scotch, and Irish. And she is very distantly related to Katherine Hepburn, as both traced their lineage to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, the third husband of Mary Queen of Scots. And she was a professional actress, someone striving for perfection and a trooper when it came to her work. She took time studying her background material, whether it be reading Tolstoy's War And Peace, where she played Natasha Rostova, Kathryn Hulme's biography on her experiences as a nun, and even going to see Hulme, resulting in The Nun's Story, and her going to a college for the blind for her part as Susy Hendrix in Wait Until Dark. That's not to say Audrey was perfect. Her one vice, smoking, came from the cigarettes she saw American soldiers smoking when her homeland was liberated. She became addicted to life on them. Hepburn's wartime hardships in occupied Netherlands is given quite some coverage because the experiences affected her later in life. One was the closeness to her mother and brothers, one of whom, Alexander, became a "diver," people who avoided conscription by the Axis army by hiding. Second, being malnourished in the final years of war led to a metabolism that prevented her from significantly gaining weight. And finally, the suffering she went through made her empathize with the starving children in Africa when she joined up as a UNICEF spokesperson during the last years of her life. Her generosity extended to Givenchy, whom she fought to get him credit for his designs, and to William Wyler, to whom she felt indebted for Roman Holiday and thus agreed to star in The Children's Hour, which wasn't among her best movies. All of Hepburn's movies, from her bits parts beginning with 1948's Dutch In 7 Easy Lessons through her final performance in Always, depending on how significant the movie, is given 5 to 7 pages coverage, from a brief synopsis, recollections by Hepburn herself, the directors, and co-stars. So far, the only person who hated Hepburn was her Sabrina co-star Humphrey Bogart, who thought Audrey, Billy Wilder, and others were conspiring against him. Others, such as her Roman Holiday co-star Gregory Peck, were gentlemanly. Harris hits early on that actor Mel Ferrer, husband #1, was constantly being overshadowed by his wife, as he never got into the star tier and that led to a simmering resentment that finally ended their marriage. Harris's coverage on her career is unbiased. He gives what the critics thought of her performances and movies, even bad ones like Paris When It Sizzles and Always, where she was clearly the best thing in the film. But through it all, he makes it clear why many, myself included, grew accustomed to her face.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
You Have to Love This Dame, Even If You Don't Love This Book, August 30, 2010
Warren G. Harris's biography of Audrey Hepburn is essentially boilerplate stuff, compiling all the well-known information about her life (up to 1994, shortly after her death), and adding some surprises for those who always thought that Audrey was Hollywood's answer to Mother Theresa. Knowing that she had several hot and heavy affairs with actors like William Holden and Ben Gazzara humanizes her yet never threatens to truly besmirch her virginal image, since the men she married were--as husbands--rather unfortunate choices, and she always rose above their infidelities and other shortcomings by being a wonderful mother and human being.
Harris's prose sometimes tries to engage the reader with rhetorical questions and other gossipy techniques, but these are intrusive in what is always an engaging and fascinating story. Hepburn had many interesting experiences, especially her well-known life in war-torn Holland, the fascist leanings of her parents, her rise to fame on stage and screen, her lovers and husbands, her family life, her career difficulties in her later years, and her remarkable work for UNICEF. These are all dutifully chronicled with many quotes from those who knew and or worked with her, but Harris falls down seriously in offering only a rather limited two and a quarter page bibliography and not a single attribution of any of his quotes. I don't like biographies of celebrities that sound like doctoral theses and come burdened with excessive notes and citations, but a happy medium has to be struck and readers have to know where particular quotes come from. Often, I'd read something that took me by surprise and demanded that the source be unveiled beyond a he said or she said comment in the text.
Unlike the best biographies of movie stars, this one doesn't try to offer deep (or even moderately incisive) analyses of either its subject's acting or films, and generally is content to report the general critical response to a particular performance or movie. You get the basic plot, the basic facts about success or failure, and then it's on to the next movie. I was disturbed to read about how much effort had been put into making the artificial jungle in Green Mansions, when director Mel Ferrer chose not to film on location, but not a word about how phony the eventual film looked despite all the hard work. I sometimes had the feeling that Harris had not even viewed the movies again in preparation for the book, but simply depended on whatever he'd read about them; judging by the relative sparsity of his bibliography, this couldn't have been that much.
Still, the book is never boring and is a good choice for reading on the beach. You'll get a decent overview of this wonderful actress's life and achievements, and, if you really love her, will want to move on to something more substantial, and far better illustrated, like Hepburn's son Sean Ferrer's tribute to his mother.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A MEMORABLE MOVIE STAR, July 3, 2005
She looked like a princess; she deported herself regally. Her life followed the fairy tale plot of rags to riches. Regrettably, it did not often have the requisite happy ending.
Sent to boarding school in England, Audrey Hepburn rejoined her family in Holland prior to the German occupation in World War II. Along with her fellow countrymen, she suffered greatly. Virtual starvation permanently affected her health.
How impossible it would have seemed to her during those war torn years that she would some day become a sought after movie star, sharing the screen with Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, and William Holden. A lucky break - she was seen by Colette in a hotel lobby - took her to the Broadway stage as "Gigi." Another lucky break won her the lead in "Roman Holiday."
Although family was more important than career to Miss Hepburn, her two marriages failed. She found solace in motherhood, her friends and, in later life, through her untiring labors for UNICEF.
Audrey Hepburn forever changed America's view of glamour. As a New York Times reporter wrote at the time of her death: "What a burden she lifted from women! Here was proof that looking good need not be synonymous with looking bimbo."
This biography offers a wide-screen view of one of our favorite actresses.
- Gail Cooke
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