Why Audrey Hepburn's career stalled after 'Wait Until Dark' ?!

She was never that good. I agree with Emma Thompson; she's insufferably twee. Good on her own, without drawing on being winsome and stylish, in only one movie. The Nun's Story. So as she aged past ingenue her age didn't sync up with her type and style as well as when she was younger.

She was around 40 which in Hollywood’s terms especially 50 years ago was like 150. Plus I think she wanted to slow down and be with her children more.

It would have been fun to see her go the gothic horror route like Bette, Joan, and Olivia, playing a badly dressed total psycho for a crowning career comeback.

I'll never forgive her for deciding not to travel to the US to film The Exorcist. She would have been amazing in that film and would experience a huge career resurgence thanks to it. I liked Burstyn as Chris, but she just wasn't believable as some big shot movie star.

I love the setup and location of that movie - 2 blocks aaay from me, 50 years ago, But hate her. Her voice is shrill and she is such a pipsqueak actress. Agree with Capote that she ruined Breakfast at Tiffany’s . A crime.

Flying the friendly skies

Two main reasons: 1) She got too old to be cute, and 2) she couldn't be arsed to keep dealing with Hollywood.

In most of her films she did the twee-charm thing, and in most of the films she made it worked. She was capable of much more, of course, as proved in films like "A Nun's Story", "Two For The Road", and "Wait Until Dark", where she gave excellent dramatic performances. But Hollywood is a snake pit, one which gets worse when an actress passes forty and the good offers stop coming. She could have stayed and fought for the few good roles available to a woman of her age, and let Linda Blair spit pea soup all over her and so on. I respect her for deciding that she had better things to do with her life.

I'm living at the thought of Audrey Hepburn in The Exorcist. That'd probably make it even more shocking to see poor, sweet Audrey have her face shoved in her daughter's bloody crotch. With Burstyn, you kinda get the feeling that she's a sturdy woman who can take care of herself, but Hepburn was different. You really would feel for her even more.

R8, I think "The Exorcist" would have worked better with someone like Burstyn or MacLaine, "sturdy" women who could cope with a lot, but who can't cope with the shitstorm that happens.

A Chris MacNeil who seemed fragile would start falling apart during the doctor visits, and would be a blubbering mess before the possession ever got started. That wouldn't have worked.

Audrey Hepburn's acting was great in the very underrated movie "Robin and Marian" with Sean Connery.

I liked her in Charade.

Her career did fall apart at all. Rather she chose to raise her family and retire (at least semi) from her film career. She devoted her middle age and until she died (relatively young of colon cancer) to UNICEF.

R12 Good for her

I enjoyed her in this movie because she wasn't playing cutesy, and actually had great chemistry with the male lead

Oh stop with her devotion to UNICEF. She was lucky to get the gig which allowed her free travel and top hotels, including all expenses paid for her tag along gigalo.

She was 37 during filming but looked at least 47. The chainsmoking and uneating really took its toll on her appearance.

They realized she really couldn't Act.

At the very least, her style of mannered gamine affection was becoming really passe by the mid 60s. That and her wrinkles and wig (she was also suffering hairloss then) made it impossible for her to continue convincing in ingenue roles.

Wow, who knew so many cunts here are still jealous of Audrey Hepburn? So many bullshit declarations.

OP, she remarried in the late '60s and had another baby. Though the marriage was ultimately unsuccessful, she decided she'd had enough of Hollywood for a while and was going to focus on her family.

Only on DL will trolls go after a woman with as much grace and class as Audrey Hepburn.

I will never understand why people care about an offensively terrible movie like The Exorcist. Thank God Audrey Hepburn had the class and good sense to stay as far away as possible.

she also refused a Hitchcock movie because there was a rape scene in it. She probably knew exactly what a perv sir Alfred was.

She was so beautiful..

Her career didn’t stall. She stopped it deliberately.

Who pissed in Emma Thompson's cornflakes that day?

[quote]r2 She was around 40 which in Hollywood’s terms especially 50 years ago was like 150. Plus I think she wanted to slow down and be with her children more.

Yes. Plus she was very concious about her conservative, ladylike star persona, and wasn't really "with it" as far as where movies were headed in the franker 60s and 70s. (For instance, just getting her into a bikini for TWO FOR THE ROAD required a huge effort on the filmmakers' parts. And when they finally shot it the scene was very unpleasant for her.)

This is why everyone was shocked when, after all that, in 1979 she agreed to star in BLOODLINE, based on a sleazy Harold Robbins bestseller.

[quote]Why Audrey Hepburn's career stalled after 'Wait Until Dark' ?!

It didn't stall....it went STRAIGHT DOWN THE SHITTER!

Crap like Bloodline and They All Laughed probably answered OP's question.

And, like most underweight women past 30, Audrey really did suffer thinning hair. Search Audrey Hepburn trichologist.

Here's what Audrey Hepburn could have done to prolong her career: accept the offer in the early 70s to play the lead in the comedy "40 Carats." Remember "40 Carats?" In the day before the cougar, it was a play about a woman of 40 whose romance with a devoted swain of 24 scandalizes friends and family alike. I believe Julie Harris played it on stage. According to Binnie Barnes who played the mother to the 40-year-old on screen, the producers wanted Audrey but she didn't want to be away from family and young son. I think it would have been a much better comeback vehicle and instead the role went to Liv Ullmann, too young for the part and not a comedienne at all.

Where did she get her money after she stopped acting?

Her career didn't stall - there would have been certainly more roles for her - but she wanted to get away from it all and go live in Switzerland with her husband and family. It takes guts to leave when you're still very popular.

With Sean Connery in Robin and Marion in 1976, almost 10 years after she left Hollywood.

Audrey and Princess Grace were the first choices to play the leads in "The Turning Point."

R6 Another PunchyPlayers gem! I must have watched it 50 times in the last few years.

Audrey Hepburn only made 27 movies.

Love In The Afternoon with Gary Cooper.

R5 - I agree about HER ruining BaT.

I didn't know she was asked to do 40 Carats. That would have been a terrific return rather than the dreary depressing R and M. I worked at Radio City when it played as the Easter movie. Every performance it played to 6,000 empty seats.

She should have stayed off the screen after Wait Until Dark considering how terrible her choices were. She made so much with her 60s movies if she had her money well invested she probably never needed to work again.

I’d heard about Audrey Hepburn turning down “40 Carats” — too bad, she would have been perfect. But she always maintained that she stepped away from films to spend more time with her family.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Anybody who doesn't like Audrey is seriously disturbed.

Skinny Gossip loves her.

Anybody who doesn't like whomever I do is seriously disturbed.

If Audrey was so concerned with her ladylike image, I have hard time imagining her reading the script to The Exorcist and saying "this sounds like a great idea. As long as it shoots in Italy." Was Audrey really like "y'know what my fans would love to see me doing? Getting my head shoved into my daughter's bloody crotch."

In some ways, the casting might have been brilliant, but it could have also backfired. I think Burstyn really was the best choice.

OP, correct style is 'Why did Audrey Hepburn's career go straight down the shitter?'

At 37 her looks had long since faded from undereating and oversmoking. By the 60s her style of acting also appeared mannered in comparison to more successful peers like Bancroft and Maclaine.

Audrey was as likely to do The Exorcist as Doris Day was. Especially when she could have easily done something more appropriate like Forty Carats in Italy.

Didn't Capote want Marilyn Monroe for Breakfast at Tiffany's?

r47 Yes, he did. Though it was obvious both MM and AH were looking too old to play a young call girl by then.

Why didn’t Marilyn do BaT?

r49 Her acting coach said paying a callgirl would ruin her attempt at being taken seriously, or something. Which was retarded. A lot of actresses got awards and nomimations paying prostitutes in those couple years.

Well playing a beautiful married woman stranded on a desert island with a hunky stranger and then returning home to find her husband engaged to another woman was not exactly an audition for Chekov.

Oh lord - here's Sarah Churchill in the British newspaper, The Guardian, explaining why Audrey was so right for BaT and Marilyn so wrong, but I'm not clever enough to really figure out what the fuck she's saying.

Something about Marilyn (and Truman) being fakes - and Audrey isn't - so the story needs to be about an authentic girl, temporarily astray, but then brought back to the wondrous perfect little thing she's always been -- like Cinderella in the fairytale, like Audrey as Eliza Doolittle (another reason it had to be Audrey was the audience had seen her evolve before???)

Oh that's a terrible synopsis but it's a heavy read for me. But if anybody's interested, here's a link to a rather academic look at why it had to be Audrey - and also what utter shits Marilyn and Truman are lol.

And I probably didn't do the article justice at all but I don't want to try again.

Audrey was utterly charming in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Marilyn would've been inferior, even though Capote wrote the novel with her in mind.

The problem with BaT is that Hollywood made it into a RomCom, when it wasn't meant to be.

If a Hollywood movie's a hit it has no problems.

Audrey's career stalled after her swanlike neck became too wrinkled to disguise. When she came back 8 years later with Robin and Marian, she wore a high-collar nun's habit which covered it entirely.

Audrey WOULD'VE been charming in BaT had she done it in her early 20s, back when she could actually convince people she was a young woman. She did not age well because smoking.

r55 The habit hid her neck, but the librarian perm (or was it a wig) in RaM keep her looking at least a full decade older than 45.

By the time the '80s rolled around she was really looking awful.

Nobody wanted to see Audrey dressed in a worn drab dirty monk's cloak with a bad 70's perm killing Sean Connery and then herself with the two of them turning into rotting apples. A what the fuck movie.

You'd be surprise how some AH fans would stan about the supposed greatness of that film, which had lukewarm box office despite AH making it seem like a one time out of retirement thing. And that perm reaally was awful.

And the bad perm dated back to 1971, when she was barely 41.

Audrey ate 3 spinach leaves for lunch.

She was VERY underweight by the late 60s. See her compare legs with Doris Brynner. Being too thin and the smoking made her seriously wrinkled and bonely.

After dinner at Audrey's when I got home I had to make myself a sandwich.

If anything it looked like she was getting thinner as time went on.

Audrey did got thinner and thinner as she aged. I think the chain smoking destroyed her appetite making it impossible for her to eat more even when she really should, even just for aesthetic reasons.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Back in her curvy, round-hipped prime.

I thought she decided to retire after Wait Until Dark and came out of retirement for Robin Marian (PS she shouldn't have bothered). I thought she was at her best in Two for the Road and she had great chemistry with Finney who, sadly, passed on today.

She had osteo the last decade.

She was anorexic. People have reported she barely ate. Very sad, I agree she looked better when she was younger but she was too enamored with being a hanger so she could wear haute couture.

He didn't pass on damn it! He died!

She looks positively fat-assed in the photo on the right. I mean for the time.

Albert Finney (who just died) and Audrey Hepburn in "Two For The Road". He was quite the looker in his day.

You want to slap their faces for having such charisma. Very annoying.

R73 LOL

they remind me of Vivien Leigh and Peter Finch: a much-older woman/much-younger man screen couple having a real life adulterous affair.

Albert Finney was 7 years younger than Audrey Hepburn. He just died at age 82.

At times, he looked like he was on some wacky trip with some aunt being paired with AH.

Two For the Road and BAT made one realize why AH is usually paired with much older actors. Despite the studio propping her up as some youthful game, younger actors will simply make her look older than even her actual age. Especially after hitting 30, she needed to be paired with men decades older like Grant and Harrison so she won't look too out of place playing those ingenue roles.

She was past it by the late 60s because she was out of style, not because she was too old. She was a very limited actress, more so than Kate Hepburn, so what roles could she do? She had got beyond the Rom comm period. Face it she just fizzled out cause she wasn't good enough or charismatic enough. As for her doing The Exorcist , thank God that never happened. She would have ruined the whole movie and undermined it's realistic framing.

I find her painful to watch in MFL.

Agree with r78. In her 30s AH was not too old as an actress. Ann Bancroft who was around the same age was thriving. But AH seemed to be taking largely ingenue roles (which she had outgrown), and played the one or two older woman role like in TFTR and WUD using the same 50s gamine affectations she used in every prior role. You don't really see her playing a realistic by 60s standard middle-aged woman, despite her already looking like one. That made her limited and I think she realized that too, thus why the retirement in 67 . . . until the 70s came along and it was one bad comeback attempt after another.

Lucy was offered The Exorcist before Audrey but turned it down saying, 'Gary's right: My fans wouldn't like to see me in that.'

She went on to do MAME.

MRS MACNEIL!!!

Audrey could have done Dolly.

[quote]Only on DL will trolls go after a woman with as much grace and class as Audrey Hepburn.

[quote]Anybody who doesn't like Audrey is seriously disturbed.

Ugh, I hate shit like this. Some people regard AH as some sort of saintly, flawless angel sent from heaven and no criticisms are allowed. The truth is, AH was a mediocre actress who tended to play the same type in almost every role. She rarely show depth of range in her performances. Yes, I'm sure she was a lovely person but that doesn't make her immune to criticism about her acting career. Having said that, one of the few movies of hers I like quite a lot, as previously mentioned, is Two For The Road. She and Finney had amazing chemistry and she seemed to break free of her usual shtick and was very good in this.

That's 'charlie' -- one of DL's most infamous posters, known for his lack of taste.

I was prepared to hate TWO FOR THE ROAD at the start when she, a woman pushing 40, was playing a choirgirl mooning after Albert Finney. It wasn’t until her way cooler romantic rival Jacqueline Bisset came down with the chicken pox and Audrey clucked like a chicken that I started to like her.

The worst thing about BaT was Mickey Rooney’s offensive and hideous yellowface performance as Holly’s Japanese landlord.

I once was able to ask Stanley Donen at a showing of clips of his films what the favorite of his non musical films was(SITR from the way he talked about it seemed to be his favorite musical) and he said Two for the Road.

Mickey Rooney's isn't big enough a role to ruin BaT. AH with her age and gamine affectations is.

Outside of Monroe A. Hepburn is the only star of old Hollywood who is still an icon for the general public today. All the others no matter how big they were are now in differing levels of obscurity.

R90. That's the tragedy. The public worships imagery and visual style more than talent. Monroe and Hepburn are loved and remembered mainly for their iconic visages more than their movies. The average teenage girl has probably never seen one of their movies, but will have one if them postered on her wall etc. Most of Monroe's films are period pieces that are beyond dated.

The average teenaged girl will have a postcard of Audrey Hepburn on her wall?

I would have figured she'd be forgotten. For the average person, I'd think Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, probably Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn... but Audrey?

I agree about Marilyn - she was more of a "brand"

R92 you are clueless. Audrey Hepburn is still known among young girls and women, mainly because if BATiffanys. Davis , Crawford Hepburn at al are not known by youngsters at all however.

I've never seen girls with postcards of AH or MM on their walls back when I was living on university campus in the late 90s. Back when I was in an all-boys high school, everyone knew MM (as a famous whore), and Taylor (as a rich hag), but nobody but a geriatric teacher knew who AH was. And that was like months after AH's death it the news.

On a sidenote, both AH and Taylor appear a bit more revered in young Chinese circles. AH is idolized for her thinness and Taylor her beauty. In fact Taiwanese singer Yoga Lin had this enduring hit citing Taylor for her beautiful eyes and her iconic Cleo performance that's a KTV favorite even today - "眼色" (Color of Your Eyes)

Davis and Crawford are unknown to most kids

AH was not a great actress by any mean, she was good in the right roles. She is still relevant today and known amongst younger generations because she is a style icon above all else. Whereas MM's films look terribly dated or contrived in regards to both plot lines and MM's appearance (hair, mannerisms), AH managed to not look as dated even though they were from the same period.

I don't think she deserves the number three spot on AFI's Greatest Hollywood Actresses list. They should've bumped Ingrid Bergman to number three and AH to number 4.

Who should be number one?

R99 I should be #1.

Kate Hepburn being number one is fine by me, even though I'm more of a Bette Davis fan. However, since the KH has four Best Actress Oscars, her ranking is justified.

Davis should be number one.

And would be if that list was being compiled today.

R102. I don't think Davis is that popular anymore, except with queens and movie buffs. No Kate Hepburn is number one.

[quote]I don't think Davis is that popular anymore

No, but nor is Hepburn. In fact Davis is certainly *more* popular than Hepburn nowadays.

[quote]No Kate Hepburn is number one.

From the late '60s till her death the distance between the two was tighter, but not now, no.

Thanks to the hugely successful "Feud" miniseries, Bette Davis is probably more popular with younger audience now than Hepburn. And honestly, she should have as many Oscars as Hepburn.

Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn were both awful actresses especially Taylor who ruined many movies with her shitty acting.

Davis' two are widely considered deserved and AAE and WEHTBJ are both held to Oscar-level regard (though most people also note the strong years).

Hepburn's second and fourth are the other way around: few regard them as deserved.

Don't kid yourselves. Kate us still loved. She's an icon to young women for her feminist and modern sensibility

[quote]Don't kid yourselves. Kate us still loved.

[quote]I don't think Davis is that popular anymore

Don't kid yourself, honey, you don't get to claim K Hepburn is still loved yet Davis is irrelevant.

LOL!

r97 "Whereas MM's films look terribly dated or contrived in regards to both plot lines and MM's appearance (hair, mannerisms), AH managed to not look as dated even though they were from the same period. "

AH looks fairly dated in Wait Until Dark, along with all her movies in the 60s. The Beehive wig with the side fringe is far more passe than anything MM ever did with her hair.

Bette Davis's first Oscar is famous for not being deserved and she said so herself.

R111. Well I agree. She only deserved the one for Jezebel.

I think Monroe's and Hepburn's films aged well unlike Elizabeth Taylor's for example.

We all have personal opinions, but Taylor's Giant is still being much discussed and subject of recent documentaries. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof's significance as female-fronted #1 Box Office is also recently discussed in the media.

Ironically, thanks to Mommie Dearest, Joan Crawford is the most well-known star today from Hollywood's Golden Age.

This era, 1930-50, predates both Monroe and Audrey.

[quote]r29 Here's what Audrey Hepburn could have done to prolong her career: accept the offer in the early 70s to play the lead in the comedy "40 Carats."

Did that film do particularly well at the box office? I don't think it's guaranteed Hepburn would have made it a hit.

From the annoying article r52 dislikes:

[quote]it was Hepburn who turned the LBD into the wardrobe staple it remains today

That actually would have been Chanel ... in the 1920s

[quote]r67 Back in her curvy, round-hipped prime.

She had a great ass, but it couldn't last forever.

[quote]r86 It wasn’t until her way cooler romantic rival Jacqueline Bisset came down with the chicken pox and Audrey clucked like a chicken that I started to like her.

Bisset is so beautiful - - and in such a fundamentally different way than Hepburn.

She was always flesh and blood.

[quote]r93 Davis, Crawford, Hepburn at al are not known by youngsters at all

[italic]"Well, you're a VILE, SORRY LITTLE BITCH!"

[quote]r110 AH looks fairly dated in Wait Until Dark, along with all her movies in the 60s. The beehive wig with the side fringe is far more passe than anything MM ever did with her hair.

MM looks somewhat contemporary in a lot of shots because she favored nudity ... and while she was definitely into peroxide and a ton of makeup, she kind of "spiritually" favored a more relaxed style, offscreen, which somewhat shines through.

Marilyn was said to smell in her daily life. She became a depressed sloth. I have seen lovely relaxed photos of her, especially during her time in NYC. Later than that and she looks like her ankles are probably dirty.

Marilyn and Audrey were both fading physically in their mid 30s. AH was to be commended for nailing a meaty script like WUD at 37, which allowed her to play a blind woman aka challenging role. But she obviously knew her moviequeen heydays were ending. Young talented new stars were popping up in waves. All variations of old Hollywood style glamour was becoming outdated. AH should not have attempted those subpar comeback attempts in the 70s and 80s. She could've kept her prestige better just disappearing, like Garbo.

[quote]r124 Marilyn and Audrey were both fading physically in their mid 30s.

Remarkably, considering what she'd been through (she must have been 300 years old, inside), MM looked fantastic in the uncompleted SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE. I mean, yes, it took 3 hours to do her makeup and hair and longer than that again to get her onto the set, but she looked [italic]divine[/italic].

Her time was up and she was ready to die, but I don't think it was her looks that were the problem.

Marilyn was lovely and she would have remained that way for another decade if she kept her weight down. This idea that booze alone destroys looks is funny. Because most every beautiful and successful person drinks too much. Good looks (like good health) are mostly about genetics. Marilyn's mother was batshit and had no luxuries in life, but remained good looking long after MM was dead.

Audrey Hepburn was a beautiful young woman and the most elegant and stylish older woman. She just couldn't get down on screen like Anne Bancroft. She knew it and came to understand it. Her voice gets annoying, she couldn't play sexy or villainous and didn't want to play OLD. But. All great stars are very distinct. Audrey Hepburn was a great star.

This print is ubiquitous across Australia - it's the go-to Ikea print for first-time renters and owners wanting to be 'classy'.

Elizabeth Taylor people, was she any good in the film 'Identikit' which is based on one of my favourite novels, Muriel Spark's "The Driver's Seat'.

Even if she had not gone into semi retirement wouldn’t Hepburn have had trouble transitioning into the 70s style of film and possibly been considered to be a part of the golden age group of studio stars that were rapidly becoming passé by the end of the 60s.

Bancrofts choices in the 70s-80s were spotty and very inconsistent.

I always enjoy the Monroe response when execs told her she was not a star and that's why she was only paid 1/10 the salary of Jane Russell for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Whatever I am, I am the blonde.

[quote]r128 Elizabeth Taylor people, was she any good in the film 'Identikit' which is based on one of my favourite novels, Muriel Spark's "The Driver's Seat'.

Not really. It's not a very sharply defined film character, and Taylor was only good when she had something big and broad to play (or shriek)

PS: Have you read Spark's [italic]The Girls of Slender Means?[/italic] I love it.

Apart from Some like it Hot do any MM films actually hold up? Are any of them still enjoyable? I sae Gentleman Prefer Blondes a while back and thought it was awful.

BUS STOP is good. And her performance in THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL is lovely (even if Laurence Olivier is deadweight.)

You might also look at CLASH BY NIGHT (1952), which she has a nice, natural supporting role in. And NIAGRA is a satisfyingly tawdry melodrama.

But basically, she IS the most interesting thing in almost all her films. It's not like Hollywood really saw her in very demanding material - she was just a cash cow to them.

It might have been fun to see Monroe and Hepburn in THE CHILDREN'S HOUR - with Marilyn as the conventionally desirable Karen and Audrey as that pent-up, shrewish dyke, Martha.

But Hepburn would never have taken a risk like that.

I find her "acting" a chore. Her scenes in The Asphalt Jungle are cringey, and it's a great film too, but when she comes on screen I want to switch off. I guess I'm the only one on here who just doesn't see the great acting and dynamic presence often described.

Yes. It must be lonely.

Her performance in Some like it Hot is one of the great performances in film. You don't have to wrestle a role to the mat for it to be a great one.

I bet there a posters on here who actually think she was a better actress than Kate Hepburn. The hate for Kate is so strong on DL. Go on tell me how superior Monroe is to Hepburn, you know you want to.

I don't even think she was that beautiful.

[quote] I bet there a posters on here who actually think she was a better actress than Kate Hepburn

Everyone is a better actress than her.

What’s wrong with you people ? O you think call girls are 20 year old super models? Audrey was completely charming in Breakfast in Tiffany’s.

Katherine Hepburn films with a few exceptions haven’t aged very well.

R143. They look far better than Monroe or Audrey Hepburn movies. Bringing up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, Adams Rib, Desk Set,The African Queen, The Lion In Winter, on Golden pond. Id rather watchbany ofbthem than Niagra or Sabrina.

Roman Holiday was a rip off of It Happened one night. Sabrina is a twee confection that is cloying now. The Nuns Story is long and dull. Funny Face is good fun but she is too awkward in it.

R143. Which of her films do you think have aged well?

I tried and tried to watch My Fair Lady but I cringe every time she uses cockney accent. I loved Audrey in Wait Until Dark ,BIT. And I have Nun’s Story in my DVR.

None of K's films aged well for one primary reason: she was in them, overpowering them with her sole performance which hasn't aged well.

The African Queen , Stage Door , Adam’s Rib the film I self was dated when it was released but I liked her performance in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.

Adams Rib has aged well.

Norma Shearer, “The First Lady Of The Screen” was the only actress (Motion Picture Actress/ Movie Star) that Anne Frank had on her wall in the attic. She also had Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.

I thought it was Deanna Durbin.

Two great Kate movies are Alice Adams and Summertime. If you don't think she's wonderful in both of those I don't know what to say.

"Robin and Marian" is a great film, both for Hepburn and Connery

The guy in the background of R60's picture looks like Tommy Lee Jones.

Hard to believe she was only 41. Yikes.

R151, she also had Deanna Durbin and Sonia Henie.

R5

Yeah, my friend Mark lives on that street. The house used for the Cosby Show is 2, 3 doors away from the one used for WAIT UNTIL DARK.

Hepburn is particularly bad in ALICE ADAMS. Who's idea was it for her to play someone working class? She was usually much more careful in choosing roles to try to hide her considerable limitations, so, though she's awful in everything, that one does stick out.

[quote]r156 she also had Deanna Durbin and Sonia Henie.

I don't know if she had their clippings up, but Anne Frank liked the Lane Sisters, too. She wrote a little fantasy piece about running off and being their guest in Hollywood.

If she hadn't been so choosy, Audrey might have scored a big box office success with [italic]Emannuelle.

[quote]r153 Two great Kate movies are Alice Adams and Summertime. If you don't think she's wonderful in both of those I don't know what to say.

Can you imagine Kate and Marilyn working together? I wonder on what day Hepburn would SNAP. And over what.

Audrey Hepburn was too old and refined for the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady which should have gone to Julie Andrews but was too unknown at the time and not box office - Julie would have been more down-to-earth and believable in the plum role.

Hepburn is not awful in everything. She was one of the most charismatic and watchable stars of her day....even this day.

Kate gave her best performance ever in SUMMERTIME. She allowed herself to be vulnerable and imperfect. Free from all her tics and mannerisms. And she was even a little bit sexy.

[quote]Free from all her tics and mannerisms.

No, unfortunately.

When Katharine Hepburn appeared in a play on Broadway, 'tis said that Dorothy Parker cracked: “Miss Hepburn ran the whole gamut of emotions—from A to B.”

R166. That was in her early years. She developed on screen ad a good actress able in comedy and drama. But she's at her best in light comedy. She is very likable in many movies.

[quote]She is very likable in many movies.

She always wanted to be the hero in films.

R168. Why not?

MM looked every bit as wrinkled and rough in Something's Gotta Give as AH was in WUD. Just because one isn't fat doesn't mean they haven't decay physically, or Madonna would've still been considered beautiful and not the joke she is today. Hair loss and wrinkles and shrunken in eyelids are all signs of decaying looks.

Audrey and Kate Hepburn. They have a kind of brittle sexlessness in common. I like Audrey in Charade and Roman Holiday. She actually was an overnight success (kinda) very rare and unusual in Hollywood. She started at the top, basically. And she got to screw William Holden.

R171 totally disagree. Kate could be sensual in The Philadelphia Story, Woman of the Year, and even The Lion In Winter. Must be ages since you actually saw one of these. Your prejudice against her is clouding your recollections.

MM was not beautiful plus she had a ton of plastic surgery, one of the first celebs to have so much work done on her face. She had surgery on her chin plus eye surgery to achieve "bedroom eyes" (it's like anti-ptosis surgery). Her very high eyebrows and eyelid ptosis make for a very old/ old-fashioned look today, so no even MM's looks has not aged well along with her films.

So the cunt that made two Nanny McPhee movies calls someone else twee? That's fucking rich.

Kuntharine always looked as though she reeked of fish.

More evidence that MM was a physical wreck/ mess by the time she died at age 36. Infections in her breast due to silicone injections, false teeth, and dissolving chin implants, these problems probably worsened her mental illness and substance abuse.

The one performance of Kate Hepburn that I love is Suddenly, Last Summer. I felt she was great in that and I liked that Liz Taylor at least attempted to act!

Kate’s style was perfect for the dramatics of that film.

Love this scene!

Whatever we think of her, KHepburn was willing and capable of taking on older women roles as she aged. Unlike AH. Which was why KH's acting career lasted longer than AH despite being so much older.

AH's peer Elizabeth Taylor was also aware that once you sail past 30, you have to take on older roles to keep working. That was why she did Virgina Woolf in her mid 30s. Many said it was her last good film, but it also led to Taming of the Shrew, which was Shakespear and was also big box office hit and a classic. ET's subsequent movies were no longer hits, but she was still getting acting wins and nominations late as 1972-74, when she was in her 40s.

Between 67-74

1967

Academy Award, Best Actress: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) BAFTA Award, Best British Actress: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1966) (UK) Golden Laurel Award, Female Dramatic Performance: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) David di Donatello Award, Best Foreign Actress for: The Taming of the Shrew (1967)

1968

BAFTA Award Nomination, Best British Actress: The Taming of the Shrew (1967) (UK) Bambi Awards, Bambi

1972

Silver Bear for Best Actress, 22nd Berlin International Film Festival: Hammersmith Is Out (Germany)[1] David Di Donatello Award, Best Foreign Actress: Zee and Co. (Italy)

1974

Golden Globe Award Nomination, Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Drama): Ash Wednesday Golden Globe Award, Henrietta Award World Film Favorite - Female

Marilyn was always lovely. Yes she had the bulbous tip of her nose slightly refined and some cartilage added to her jawline, not her chin. Her eyes and widows peak and were her trademarks and not a result of surgery. Her breasts were natural and aged as such. Some idiot always shows up with yahoo claims about Monroe whenever her name is mentioned. There are many young photos of her to disprove his/her lies. No one ever said Marilyn was a classic beauty. The whole world finds her beautiful though. So there's that.

In the 60s film stars salaries started to soar. A Hepburn was a part of that and I'm sure she didn't need to work for the rest of her life. When she returned to the screen she played a middle aged maid Miriam. She was not hiding her age.

It looks as well as if she never had any plastic surgery. If she did it was very subtle. If she hadn't smoked and become anorexic she would have held onto her looks longer.

But her film choices when she returned to the screen were terrible.

So pretty and just a bit sad.

r180 That would depend on how much she was spending. She didn't make that many movie in the 60s. And she went on record saying she's had "minor surgeries" to remove wrinkles, that she did not think constituted plastic surgeries.

Her nose had obviously been fiddled with since RHoliday. She looked fairly differently in 1951's Secret People. And I think she pulled some teeth ala Crawford to shrunk her cheeks in Sabrina.

i think Marilyn Monroe was the best movie star of all time and I say all her films are still entertaining today. Maybe with the exception of Seven Year Itch a film have trouble watching. I don’t know why. Too much Tom Ewell or that it loooks like a filmed stage play.

MM was good in Seven Year Itch. She was the best thing about it.

SYI is a bore from beginning to end. Some Like It Hot is entertaining but all the best scenes are Jack Lemmon's and not MM or Tony Curtis'.

I don't like any Marilyn Monroe movies. They are very rooted in the 50s and her breathy dumb blonde shtick gets annoying.

I used to love “How To Marry a Millionaire”

Bacall's style and persona was timeless and chic in HTMaM. MM and BettyG were both mannered and dated.

MM was very good in SLIH. Shame Shame Shame on those who think otherwise. She may had dad plastic surgery whoever did it created a masterpiece. Sad if it caused her health problems.

R131 Read that too, tis a very smart read as well. Muriel was able to achieve a lot in such little books.

Marilyn Monroe was fascinating because there was most often something going on beneath the surface ... or at least we perceive there is, knowing what we do about her unhappy life.

Her persona has a personal texture to it that can make other performers from that era -- like Audrey and Liz -- seem one note.

Tom Ewell is horrible to watch in anything. He sinks 7 Year Inch today. Very odd in the 50s he was considered a funny everyman. I can only watch the Monroe excerpts. Too bad Matthau who auditioned didn't get the role. Slight as it may be it still could have been entertaining and the interplay of those two would have been priceless.

The article at R176 doesn't say any of those things, and the article linked within saying MM was unrecognizable at death only says she had hairy legs and blotches on her face. Well, yeah, death causes blotches, and how can you fail to recognize someone just because of hairy legs?

Why is "Bloodline" never shown on TMC or other paid movie channels? Not a very good movie, but high production values and a worthy cast. Audrey chain smokes throughout the film.

She had a romantic fling with Ben Gazzara, who also co-starred in "They All Laughed".

R183, In the documentary based on his book, Scotty Bowers claims Cole Porter and Tom Ewell were his most prolific clients, both always wanting Scotty to send multiple boys over together.

I read MM had padded bras not silicone.

If I had been a cute twink in the 50s you couldn't pay me enough to get into bed with Ewell.

She had naturally big boobs from the beginning, when she was discovered working in a factory by a photographer.

That's what initially got her attention.

Marilyn used padded bras. Her breasts weren’t fake.

^^ for r196

[quote]I read MM had padded bras not silicone.

MM's career stalled after Some Like It Hot. All her subsequent films flopped at the box office.

No wonder her career stalled. From the link, an article about the making of Some Like It Hot:

"The delays and absences that had always characterized her professional life now became even more frequent, and inevitably the tension on-set became unbearable. Even when Marilyn did show, she was in such a bad state she could not remember even the simplest dialogue; it famously took her over 40 takes to deliver the line “where’s the bourbon” correctly. Soon, Wilder was resorting to writing Monroe’s lines on cards…

The gifted Lemmon was more patient, but Curtis was furious, as he knew his performance was suffering from seemingly endless retakes, which ultimately meant less screen time for him. When asked later how he enjoyed doing love scenes with the world’s top sex symbol, he bluntly replied that it was “like kissing Hitler.”

Isn't 'where's the bourbon dubbed'? If I remember she has her back to the camera. I don't think even after 40 takes she got it.

Yeah that 40 take nonsense is Notorious. She always kept an acting coach with her also and would nail it on rehearsals then when they started filming she would fall apart.

I think all actresses will face stalling careers if they don't take on older-women roles-mothers, aunts etc-after age 30. Katherine Hepburn had such longevity because she excelled in playing all manner of older women as she aged.

But they were still starring parts no matter what the age except at the very end.

"For actresses in Hollywood there are only three ages: babe, district attorney and Driving Miss Daisy."

Tom Ewell who has been mentioned a number of times.

AH had plenty of opportunities to work as the scripts never stopped coming in, but she didn't want to spend extended time away from her young boys and her home in Switzerland.

I don't think she was opposed to older women roles. Its just that the scripts and pay didn't move her enough to act on them.

The famous scene.

By the time AH attempt comeback in her 40s, she could no longer find any good roles, young or old. As mentioned above by some non stans, RaM and Bloodline etc were all awful.

I was shocked that Audrey did a movie that had male full frontal nudity ! Shocked !

She always had a stack of new scripts sent to her out on the table Like I said nothing interested her enough and at this point she only worked for the money.

She had lousy taste in husbands. Mel Ferrer was the epitome of bland and Dr. Dotti cheated on her openly. At least she found some happiness with Merle Oberon's widower, Robert Wolders.

she was the same dumb broad face deer in the headlights in ev thing she did, pity she ruined so many great movies. nice to see her legacy is zero.

What did Audrey Hepburn ever do to you R215? Her legacy is hardly zero. She is the most beloved and widely known Hollywood Golden Age actress to most straight men and women, all hipsters and fashionistas, people under 40 and some true romantics everywhere. She is also #3 on AFI's list of all time greatest female stars and #6 on the mixed list of Hollywood's Greatest Screen Legends. She places above Monroe, Garland, Stanwick, Crawford and many others.

If you are on Instagram or Twitter, AH is still a reference for many points of style and loveliness. She was beloved by everyone who ever worked with her and didn't beat or pimp out her children. She was in three or more classic films and was never more than modest and grateful for her success. She worked hard and wanted to do better. She loved clothes, took great photos and always presented herself with both great style and reticence - she was lovely. She was girlish, then ladylike. She probably doesn't appeal to campy old men or drag queens.

She loved clothes, yes, but she was frequently at home in her casual and garden clothes. Her home was modestly furnished as well. She really did have la vie belle. that last decade and her popularity has stayed strong even after death .

She looked awful in the mod clothing in TWO FOR THE ROAD. Albert Finney looked like her nephew.

R218, Finney was 7 years younger than Hepburn.

The tricks they used to make Hepburn look younger in Two for the Road actually made her look older. They used Sophia Loren eyeliner and gave her that short wig that looked like a teased pixie cut with sideburns, plus the mod styles meant for young girls which she was 15 years too old to pull off.

Honestly, she looks like she should be playing the Ingrid Bergman role in Cactus Flower, she looks so old.

Audrey seems to have killed the first born of several DL posters.

She was by most accounts, a sweet natured woman who was scarred emotionally by her parents divorce and her experiences living under Nazi rule during the war. She suffered from depression and picked the wrong men. But she was well loved by just about all who met her. Her acting was fine to me, save for her role in BLOODLINE. That movie was trash.

Loved her in "How To Steal a Million," with Peter O'Toole. Iconic scene with her wearing a lace mask/veil while meeting him for a drink.

Well, Capucine was better, more arch - but Audrey was good, for her type. Skinny Euro ex-money, that French knows how to tie scarves thing they got going on - Yeah, I know, it was Belgium, not France, thank you Hercule...

Capucine was bipolar and killed herself though, so Audrey held together better with her evening scotch and ciggies.

I think they might have been friends? Well, they should have been.

r220 speaks the truth!

Let Audrey stans be triggered by well-documented facts. An actress' looks and acting ability are not above objective criticism. The way they go around attacking anyone who criticize their idol show the media-brainwashed sheeple they are.

Yes, AH was pretty between Sabrina and Funny Face. But she hit the wall around The Unforgiven and became wrinkled and hard and grossly underweight thereafter. Anyone who think 60s Audrey looked good is ProAna, and blind to wrinkles and hairloss from underweight.

And I love how even the stan-iest of AH stans can only pick out that one scene in Million where she is masked as a sign of her still looking good. HELLO her face was obscured in that scene for crying out loud! That says something about the state of her looks at 35.

And yes, they need to cast someone who looked young enough to couple with Finney in Two For the Road. As it is the result is Too Frau the Role. Sadly, you can be matronly while thin, as AH so perfectly demo-ed in her 60s films.

Audrey looks sensational in Breakfast, Charade and MFL. Her looks in those films are some of the most iconic in film history.

You don't know this? Are you deranged?

You don't agree with me? Are you deranged? - Basic Audrey Hepburn Stan

Audrey is commonly thought to be too old for her role in MFL. It's even listed on Imdb's MFL page. Have a reality check, stan.

From imdb MFL trivia page:

Audrey Hepburn was generally felt to be too old for her character.

Nah - it would have been even creepier if Audrey'd been younger, with lecherous Rex Harrison. (see Funny Face with pedo Grandpa Fred)

Really her looks in those films are not among the most iconic in film history?

What is there to agree with? You are out and out wrong. It is not a matter of agreement.

And there are those who think Harrison was too old to play Higgins. I happen to think they are both wonderful. Could they have been a bit younger? OK. But neither are they too old. They both give tremendous incandescent performances.

Good then r229. It’s called Pygmalion for a reason - it is a creepy, subversive relationship.

The sculptor falls in love with his statue. And his statue was a ripe young flower girl, not a 35-year-old anorexic who started her songs with her mouth wide open.

Still say she looks good for Rex. A kid would've been too boring for the old prof - not enough layers. Have you been around a 20-something? egads.

He was in love with her because she was mouldable not because she was a fascinating woman of the world.

Jack Warner's first choice for Higgins was Cary Grant who declined. He was 4 years older than Harrison. But honestly there are many people who love Charade and you don't hear of them going around complaining about the age difference.

Also I've read many contemporary reviews of MFL and while a number had problems with the film I don't remember any having a problem with Hepburn's age.

Where are you quoting from? When the film was restored and played at the Ziegfeld The Times said in hindsight Hepburn gives a wonderful performance and people were tripping over each other saying what a revelation it was. I went 3 times and each performance was a sell out.

What the hell do you mean, R17? She was always devoted to charity. People who worked with her genuinely liked her. And she loved meeting the children. Save your cracks for Emma Thompson, who is a lot less talented than she thinks she is-

Look up the ages of the first Eliza and the one currently playing her on Broadway. And Hepburn was too old? She was a dewy eyed sprite in comparison.

By the way Robert Harris who restored MFL in the 90s was able to find better elements and restored it again for the 50th anniversary on bluray. It comes in a glossy black and silver box. Watch it on a very large TV. It's use of Super Panavision70 is jaw-dropping.

R223, Agreed. She looked stunning.

Yeah R234 and R235 - I don't see any problem with Audrey's age whatsoever. The first film version (I think the first anyway) was Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, a 19 year age difference. Wendy was 26 when she played Eliza.

With Rex and Audrey, 21 years (she was 35). But as producer Jack Warner probably correctly believed - only Audrey Hepburn or Elizabeth Taylor had the box office standing at the time to make a smash of it (so no to Julie Andrews, though supposedly at first Audrey tried to insist Julie get the role.)

In Funny Face, she was with Fred Astaire who was 30 years older - now that was pretty strange but I can't remember the storyline and what kind of romance it was. One of film's oddest pairings though imo. I think it just shows how sexist/ageist people are, thinking Audrey was too old for MFL.

And you can be a rube at 15, at 25, at 35, at 45 - Professor Higgins could have taken any common woman off the street and made a lady out of her, if she had it in her - I don't see why Eliza had to be young. Maybe in the written play she was - but the story could be tweaked to make a better film because you need a star - and it was - and it worked. Rex with a 20 something would have been offputting to more modern sensibilities imo -- and as it was, there was a bigger age difference between Harrison/Hepburn than between Howard/Hiller - and imo Howard always had a kind of pretty babyface and gentle demeanor and seemed younger than he was, which Rex decidedly, did not.

Everybody loathed Rex so what does it matter?

How would Audrey have been as Desiree in A Little Night Music on Broadway?

R240, Then how did he win the Oscar for MFL?

Va fongool r242, ya yellow piece of shit

[quote]And you can be a rube at 15, at 25, at 35, at 45 - Professor Higgins could have taken any common woman off the street and made a lady out of her, if she had it in her - I don't see why Eliza had to be young.

Me neither. Who doesn’t think he can take a 35 or 45 or even 55 year old off the street and bend her to his will as easily as he can an unripe 20 year old?

I think Ethel Mermen would have been a believable Eliza, or perhaps Anna Magnani!

R243. And I.

So a yet to be married-off flower girl in Edwardian London does not need to be young because Audrey!

If that's the case I want Ginger Rogars circa 1964 as Eliza. She could actually sing and dance, after all. And was not a lesser know like Julie Andrews.

Hepburn was way too old for the part. What were those casting directors thinking?

Jack Warner had this idea that Audrey Hepburn's movies will never lose money. He seemed blissfully unaware of the existences of War and Peace, Green Mansions, Unforgiven, Paris When it Sizzles etc etc.

Whoever it was had to look smashing after the big transformation. That would not have been Julie Andrews. Audrey was well-cast.

So any good-looking, non vocally-trained actress will do?

Obviously not, r250. It took Audrey.

Five years later she was still the epitome of dewy youth and showbiz sparkle, r246!

The Medusa-like Julie Andrews could not possibly have played Eliza Doolittle!

Was it imperative that the flower girl be beautiful above all other qualities? If so Elizabeth "most beautiful woman in the world" Taylor was the better choice. She even looked good wearing elaborate hats.

Taylor also looked good in those 1960s/Edwardian fusion updos, which is important for MFL's ballroom scene, no?

No it’s not important for the ballroom scene. Eliza just has to look posh and regal.

Julie would have been a marvel.

Julie was 29 at the time of MFL when Audrey was a doddering old fool of 35 GASP!!

So according to some people's logic, 29 year old female = young, dewy, exquisite. 35 year old female = old, haggard, over-the-hill.

Never mind that Audrey was prettier and more naturally delicate and refined. And better able to knock 'em all dead when dolled up (unlike Liz's fat arm suggests in R254 - maybe 20 lbs off and she'd have been ok, but still, didn't have the innate sense of nobility that Audrey didn't need to "act" for it to shine out.

Just to look at Audrey, more of a diamond in the rough than Julie or Liz, in the dowdy clothes - jmho.

* nobility was a poor word choice -- Audrey seemed to be higher class than Julie or Liz. So when presented at the ball, she seemed to be in her authentic element. There's always a coarseness to Liz, if not even a slatternly quality - and a plain Jane-ness middle class school-marmishness to Julie.

r257 "unlike Liz's fat arm suggests in [R254] - maybe 20 lbs off and she'd have been ok"

Perfect case in point of Audrey stans being ProAna. They like only shapeless stick arms. Liz's concave waistline in R254 is something long torso-ed Audrey can only dream of having.

[quote]Julie was 29 at the time of MFL when Audrey was a doddering old fool of 35 GASP!!

[quote]So according to some people's logic, 29 year old female = young, dewy, exquisite. 35 year old female = old, haggard, over-the-hill.

Don’t blame us that she weighed the same as a 10 year old and looked it.

Audrey's stick arm in 1965 is a pro ana's dream, I'm sure. Soooooo superior to Liz's.

Well I stepped in it now and deserve the flak for it - but I'm the one upthread who couldn't believe Audrey was still known by the average person - and I said I thought Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor and Kate Hepburn would be more likely remembered. Not that I was right about that, but I'm hardly an Audrey stan. Yes, she was too skinny - but for MFL, her mein/carriage and body seemed more suited to the grand ball where she was revealed as a now upper class type person than Liz Taylor. And compared to Julie, she was prettier and again, had more of an upper class type vibe. JMHO !!!!!!!

God yes she was too skinny and set a very bad example for all who followed. Shame on you Auds! I was reading some biography of her once and as a young (I mean REALLY young woman, of 18 or 20 or whatever), she was chubby and it was a problem - I don't know if it was pointed out to her by others or she just thought it herself - I can't remember - but she set about doing something about her "problem". I can't even remember where to go look for that interview/article, but it really stuck out because of what an issue it became later - her anorexia. Like with so many, it started out as her thinking she was too fat (or being told that.)

Julie was fresh-faced and looked much younger than 29. Wrinkled underweight Audrey looked almost old enough to play her mother. Here's them together at Oscars.

* I mean "mien". That'll teach me to use a hoity-toity word above my station... where's my Higgins?

And I guess I'm crazy, I thought Audrey was gorgeous in MFL.

Here's a good picture of the old hag in the film. (you know they can do wonders with cinematography, right?)

r262 "for MFL, her mein/carriage and body seemed more suited to the grand ball where she was revealed as a now upper class type person than Liz Taylor."

But if we looked at ACTUAL Edwardian Ladies they are closer to Liz's actually curvy figure than famine-shaped Audrey.

Good point - but in the 1960s, I thought Twiggy was all the craze - well, and Audrey herself - so I think it's what people would THINK would be more appropriate.

And anyway, Liz would have looked fine - probably prettier, in fact. But I'm not sure she could have acted it as well (or carried herself as well, as I think Audrey naturally did - sort of a upper class way of appearing - and god I have beat this into the ground like a dog with a bone.)

Some of us think Audrey was a great choice. Some think Julie or Liz... I'll will say one thing - Julie could sing the other two under the table.

The 60s had a drug culture and was very pro thin, yes.

Say, if they're gonna dub the singing anyway then Twiggy should've been top choice to play MFL. Her model's training would give her perfect ladylike posture.

[quote]If that's the case I want Ginger Rogars circa 1964 as Eliza.

With that peach fuzz? There wasn't that much Max Factor available to cover her coarse featured mug and in WIDESCREEN too? LOL.

Yes! Twiggy should have done it! And she was actually a BRIT and twenty years younger than oldster Auds.

Twiggy would have sung the shit out of it....

her hubby wouldn't let her share her puss with producers like she had for 30 yrs....even tho it was dry as shit.

"I'll never forgive her for deciding not to travel to the US to film The Exorcist."

If she'd played Chris MacNeil the movie would have been a comedy. Not only was she a ludicrous choice for the role, no moviegoer would have wanted to see Audrey Hepburn in a red wig spewing four letter words and getting her face shoved in the daughter's bloody crotch. Apparently Hollywood tends to be REALLY stupid when it comes to casting. William Friedkin said of the making of the film:

" The studio wanted Audrey Hepburn, Jane Fonda or Anne Bancroft -- all very good actresses -- to play the actress whose daughter becomes possessed in the film. I would have loved to have any of them. But Audrey wanted to shoot the film in Italy, where she was living with her husband, an Italian doctor. Although I was a great admirer of the Italian filmmaking industry, that didn't feel like a good idea. Anne Bancroft was in the early stages of pregnancy and wanted to do it, but we would have had to wait a year. Jane Fonda, frankly, turned us down. She sent us a note saying, "Why would I want to appear in a piece of capitalist, ripoff bullshit?" A few months ago, I had dinner with her and I reminded her of that, and she said: "Wow, did I say that? It feels like another person." I had also met Carol Burnett at a party and thought she was a very intelligent person, not the silly dingbat she played so well on TV. I proposed her. Blatty thought it was a great idea, but the studio hated it and dismissed it."

Audrey Hepburn? Totally wrong for the role. Same with Anne Bancroft and Jane Fonda; neither one were the right type at all. And a COMEDIC actress, Carol Burnett, playing a woman who is going crazy because her daughter is possessed by a demon? Jolly Carol Burnett using filthy language and getting her face shoved in her little girl's crotch? I think the audience would have been rolling in the aisles laughing at that. Friedkin and Blatty must have been nuts. Thank God Ellen Burstyn did it. She was a better choice than any of them.

aging and being an one dementional actress

It’s hard to find work for a blind actress.

[quote]Yes, she was too skinny - but for MFL, her mein/carriage and body seemed more suited to the grand ball where she was revealed as a now upper class type person than Liz Taylor. And compared to Julie, she was prettier and again, had more of an upper class type vibe.

She pulled off mooing “hhhhow do you doooo” and looking “pretty” in the ball scene at best as an ESL society matron pushing 40. Maybe if she looked like she did 10 years previously she’d be more convincing cause she sure couldn’t look it or act it convincingly as Andrews did.

Julie Andrews was an ugly charmless woman who couldn't' act. She was better suited for dubbing the singing of the truly pretty and talented actresses of the sixties, Audrey among them.

Audrey stopped givin the best god dam blow jobs in town.

dammit

bitch please audrey had class

Julie Andrews was born a man. Zanuck wanted nothing to do with "her."

OMG SO PRETTY AND BOT DATED AT ALL!?!!!

Julie Andrews so FUG AND MASC AMIRITE?!!!?!!

Eliza had to make a stunning entrance at Ascot which she does. That beautiful very funny costume would wear anybody else. Audrey wears it. That moment where she's walking toward the camera and Pickering puts his hand on hers says everything. It's a beautiful moment. It is one of the most famous dresses in movie history and Andrews never could have worn it. Look at Andrews in the original production. It is lovely but undistinguished.

Then Eliza has to top it with the entrance down the staircase in Higgin's home before the ball which she does. While it seems the costumes here are a bit more similar Andrews is a bit stockier and would not have been able to be as elegantly regal. Though I have to admit she pulls off wearing that gossamer wedding dress in SOM beautifully. The ending of that scene is magnificent where Eliza waits for Higgins to take her arm. Is that in the original play or did Hart come up with it in the musical? I haven't seen the film Pygmalion in so long.

Beaton did not seem to like Andrews very much as she's has recounted a number of times. God knows why. He absolutely loathed Taylor famously saying she looked like a Peruvian peasant suckling her young. And Beaton was going to do the movie no matter what. Paley had it in the contract as a stipulation of obtaining the rights. I don't believe he demanded anything else. Robert Aldrich could have filmed it for all he cared.

And I'm one of those who feels Andrews should not have gotten the Oscar for MP but for SOM. She's a force of nature in it as overwhelming as the stunning scenery.

Beaton adored Audrey and it shows. She claims it was the only time in her life she felt beautiful. Nobody at the time claimed Audrey was too old. And as people have noted a younger person would have made the age difference too glaring. Hepburn holds her own. And Harrison gives a great performance in the film. The only naysayer I can remember is Kael saying he was stale. He had played the role too many times. The end of the scene where she comes to his home and he is deciding if he wants to take her on as a pupil ending with him on the stairs with him terrorizing her is worth the Oscar alone. And the tea party at Ascot where Eliza recounts her story of the gin and the straw hat is genuinely hilarious and should have got Hepburn a nomination. And boy is Brett a knockout effortlessly and warmly laughing at her new small talk..

Eliza should be the personification of femininity and dewy youth!

[quote]r236 Look up the ages of [bold]the first Eliza[/bold] and the one currently playing her on Broadway. And Hepburn was too old? She was a dewy eyed sprite in comparison.

She was the first choice of the playwright, who had a lifelong obsession with her talent and allure.

You can't argue with that.

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

[quote]r283 Beaton adored Audrey and it shows. She claims it was the only time in her life she felt beautiful.

I hate bullshit, self-effacing claims like this. She was a former model, for god's sake.

When Hepburn was asked what her worst physical feature was, she'd always say her feet were too big.

The [italic]horror - - .

Audrey Hepburn criticized the broadness of her own face, the shape of her eyes, her "duckbill" nose and her skinny frame many times. She was deeply insecure because her body development was more nutritionally malformed than eating disordered. The only chubby faze of her life was just after the war, when she finally had enough to eat. She pigged out and actually had some meat on her legs and ass. But skeleton didn't change. So yes she didn't eat much once she became famous because she disliked her broad face when it was fuller. I remember an interview she did with that spider Barbara Walters, when Audrey was promoting her book on gardens. Hepburn must have been 60, was deeply involved with Unicef and hadn't much longer before she got sick. Walters asked her if she was anorexic and Audrey said she didn't eat too much due to the war years (or something like that). BW said "but don't you get hungry" and the saddest smile crossed Hepburn's face. She looked down and said, "I've often been hungry, but for other things." She was a most brave and lovely woman, deeply scarred.

She did have ENORMOUS feet.

*her skeleton

R288. AH's story about being thin because of the war years is utter BS. She was anorexic.

Your lies are bullshit R290. Hepburn was 5 foot 6 inches and 88 lbs. at the end of the war. And nearly dead.

I don't know if it's been posted up thread, but her marriage was falling apart at that time. It was one of those marriages, like Burt Reynolds, where the wife's career was more successful than the husband's, and maybe the husband wasn't handling that well....

Plenty of people starved during the war. It doesn't mean they went on to only eat a hard boiled egg for lunch the rest of their lives, like Audrey. Or whine and complain and fret when asked to nibble a pastry onscreen, like she did on the set of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S.

You had an [italic]eating disorder,[/italic] bitch! Stop trying to make it sound noble.

That's not how eating disorders work. And she had pasta or chicken for lunch. She lost weight in times of stress and she was an actress. Lots of people who grow up starving have lifelong medical problems, as did Hepburn. Anorexia was not one of them.

AH may not suffer actual anorexia, as she remained able-bodied until near her death at (just) 63. That said, she was undereating for her frame. It showed in her shapeless stick limbs cracked skin and thinned hair - all signs of damage from undereating and also the smoking. Anyone who THINKS that state of obvious ill health is a good look is ProAna. And yes, most of the 60s 70s people were pro ana AND pro drug. Thus why Aud lasted for a while until the wrinkles became impossible to disguise even with the blurry diffusion lens used for her films. Faye Dunnaway carried a scale to restaurants and we all knew what happened to Karen Carpentar.

Hepburn was lucky to live to 63 considering her body frame and how much she smoked starting with her teen years.

My mother was about her size, smoked 2-3 packs a day and barely made it 60 till cancer got her.

[quote]r294 she had pasta or chicken for lunch.

Not according to Shirley MacLaine.

And Patricia Neal said a baked fish was wheeled into the room when she was invited to Hepburns'd for dinner, and that was it.

Those are examples of an eating disorder. Sorry.

R287 So she was lying to Beaton to flatter him? Possibly.

She probably wasn't lying, exactly. She was just another deluded anorexic, never happy with their appearance because they see it through a warped lense.

Answer: exquisite.

I think AH was the type of woman other females found attractive - but especially as she aged, I don't think many actual MEN dreamed of bagging her.

Humphrey Bogart said, "She's okay, if you don't mind 20 takes."

There's something rather grotesque about this image - we're supposed to feel sympathy for the starving child's plight ... but he's being "saved" by a western woman who's actively chosen to starve herself??

WTF

I would have liked her to have done Turning Point.

Gertie's Eliza.....

The only actresses who won Oscars for playing prostitutes were those who played radically against type , like Donna Reed and Shirley Jones. And please note. they were in the Supporting category.

No one was gonna give MM an Oscar for playing Holly Golightly no matter how good she might have been.

The Most Memorable Actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Here you go:

1. Katharine Hepburn

2. Bette Davis

3. Marilyn Monroe

4. Audrey Hepburn

5. Ingrid Bergman

6. Joan Crawford

7. Elizabeth Taylor

8. Judy Garland

9. Marlene Dietrich

10. Greta Garbo

Hepburn was less than 4 months away from her own death from cancer in that photo R302. You're vile and of course insanely fixated on Julie Andrews too. AH was obviously unwell. Not anorexic. She made real use of her stardom in the last 15 years of her life. Back when it gained a celebrity nothing, but took a lot of bravery and heart. Audrey was a beautiful and loving spirit, who remembered Unicef from her own starving and persecuted years under the Nazis. Why you reduce Audrey Hepburn to an eating disorder is psychologically troubling in itself.

"Audrey's last journey was to war-torn Somalia, in September 1992. "I walked into a nightmare," she said. "I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this - so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn't prepared for this. It's so hard to talk about because it's unspeakable." Between the worst drought in history and a horrifying civil war that had destroyed the country; most of the population was starving to death. "There's nothing left," Audrey said. "The cattle are dead, the crops are gone, whatever there was has been looted. Anarchy. It's a country without a government." It was the first time in history that a country had been held together purely by relief workers, from organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children, and Care. But there were too few of them.

At the feeding camp in Baidoa, "One of the first sights I saw" Audrey said, "was that they were loading the bodies of that night onto a truck, and most of them were very small. Just one night's dead. Around a hundred. Children were sitting around waiting to be fed, but they were beyond wanting food. Some of them had to be more or less force-fed with tiny spoonfuls. They are just totally spent." Her son Sean says:

She came back and said 'I've been to hell.' And every time she spoke about it, she had to relive it. Nothing ever prepared her for going to a camp and meeting a little kid and coming back the next day and he wasn't there anymore. You're supposed to go back to your hotel room and drink bottled water? Get on a plane and go back to your regular life? It throws your whole world out of balance.

The mission was followed by press conferences in London, Geneva, and Paris and numerous television appearances in the United States. Not least of her skills was that she could speak with reporters in a variety of languages. More than any other, this round of interviews generated an unprecedented amount of international coverage and captivated the world. In all of them, she looks a bit tired but otherwise healthy, betraying no hint of the fact that she had just fifteen weeks to live.

When Audrey returned from Somalia, she discovered she had developed cancer in her appendix, which spread to her colon and then to her stomach. Speaking in New York after her trip, she said, "I'm filled with a rage at ourselves. I don't believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility."

[quote]r305 The only actresses who won Oscars for playing prostitutes were those who played radically against type , like Donna Reed and Shirley Jones.

Oh really?

[quote]r307 Audrey was a beautiful and loving spirit, who remembered Unicef from her own starving and persecuted years under the Nazis. Why you reduce her to an eating disorder is psychologically troubling in itself.

I don't reduce AH to anything.

She's the one who reduced herself ... to skin and bones. Long before she was ill.

"The Nun's Story" is on TCM now. She's wonderful in it.

AH's career was already stalling since BEFORE Wait Unit Dark.

The crap-scripted How to Steal a Million lost money according to Wiki :"the film needed to earn $12,000,000 in rentals to break even and made $10,450,000, meaning it made a loss." Likewise, Two For the Road (which some DL-ers make like a classic) also flopped at the box office "According to Fox records, the film needed to earn $8,950,000 in rentals to break even and made $7,200,000, meaning it made a loss."

From Cinema '67 Revisited. The story—Arkin is a vicious drug dealer trying to retrieve a shipment of heroin hidden in a doll that is in Hepburn’s possession, through no fault of her own—is, as Time magazine noted, “as full of holes as a kitchen colander.”

So while Wait Until Dark get Hepburn an Oscar nom because of the blind character, the script was considered subpar by legit critics of the time. Again, more evidence pointing to a stalling career. She was lucky it ended up making money, and was smart to announce retirement on a semi-high note coming after a few flops.

Audrey Hepburn is a film and fashion legend. Never to be forgotten. With one look, she gains new fans.

Who is the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism who keeps trying to cut Audrey Hepburn down? You don't have to love her, but what kind of damage do you have to have to devote so much time and energy to criticizing her, so much you have to look up ancient box office receipts? Hepburn was a beautiful movie star loved by millions. And you're a pathetic loser on an anonymous gossip board.

Oh look, another Audrey stan triggered by well-documented facts! And one posting on an anonymous gossip board it obviously disdains too...

So basically Audrey's career stalled after My Fair Lady, with Million and Road both flopping at the box office. The pattern is very similar to Marilyn's movies flopping after Some Like It Hot. Where Audrey somewhat redeemed herself with Wait Until Dark, Monroe died leaving Something's Gotta Give unfinished. Talk about diverging fates.

Audrey was so chic, beautiful and beloved to make the cover of Vogue in her lifetime AND at the time of her passing. Common as dirt now, but unheard of for a film star then. Her movies live on, her style continues to delight and her legend never dies.

[quote] I want Ginger Rogars circa 1964 as Eliza. She could actually sing and dance, after all.

Ginger Rogers sing? Barely. She had a tiny, barely passable “character” voice. There’s no way she would have the range to sing Eliza. Plus, Ginger was one of those people who aged beyond her years. She was 51 when Fair Lady filmed in 1963, and looked every second of it and then some.

Picture is Ginger at the Coconut Grove in 1964.

[quote]Who is the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism who keeps trying to cut Audrey Hepburn down? You don't have to love her...

... You obviously do want us to love her. Some people don’t. Get over it.

Why do you keep harping on hating her? You’ve told us over and over and over what you think.

I’m Audrey-neutral. I hated My Fair Lady and didn't care all that much for her performance. Loved her in Sabrina and Funny Face and Charade, and especially Wait Until Dark. Never seen Tiffany’s. Don’t care much one way or another about her film legacy.

Audrey spent 4 days in Somalia and you'd think she discovered and successfully treated famine there according to r307.

She wasn't very educated and she knew next to nothing about international relations or development. However when she was called upon for fund raisers she showed up so I give her credit for this.

Her legacy is as a Hollywood Star. Maybe not the finest actress of all time but its a bit odd that some would challenge the fact that she was beloved and that she had a unique style that radiated from the screen .

[quote]Why do you keep harping on hating her?

Probably because people who don’t think she pissed champagne and shat chocolate in My Fair Lady are tired of being accused of clubbing baby seals on the head.

Criticizing Audrey is far worse than clubbing baby seals to death.

If Julie Andrews was denied the role of Eliza in MFL because Jack Warner didn't think she was known enough as a film actress, then who would have been viable candidates in 1963 when it was filmed? Forget about finding an established film actress who still looked very young (since Eliza was supposed to be only 19), appear as a knockout beauty when the character is transformed, and actually sing? And they clearly didn't care about the ability to sing, which is why Elizabeth Taylor was considered. Did anyone at that time meet all three criteria? Maybe Ann-Margret?

Connie Stevens was under contract to Warner Bros at the time and was desperate to get an audition, as per a Photoplay interview, c.1963.

Somehow, Jack didn't bite.

^^ I think that is about the funniest thing I've ever read about in Hollywood history! Supposedly, Connie Stevens also campaigned heavily for the role of Honey in the SEARING DRAMA [italic]Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?[/italic]

Had she ever even taking an acting or voice class in her life??

Did she dream of doing a bio pic of Sarah Bernhardt next???

How many drugs was she on in the 60s????

R322 Liz, fresh from her triumph in Cleopatra could have been reunited with Sexy Rex Harrison! Actually I thought Liz was pretty good in Cleo, better than Richard Burton, maybe Burton could have played Freddie instead of Jeremy Brett? All three stars together again, by popular demand....

Had ET gotten the role, you just know Roddy would've been the first choice to play Freddy. That and the Prof Higgings role would go to either her husband Richard Burton, or the original choice Peter O'Toole who was her close friend.

[R322]

Other than your suggestion of AM, the only actress I can think of is Samantha Eggar. She was a couple of years older and had a slightly longer resume than AM, and had a passable singing voice.

Audrey Hepburn is what she is. It is the toxic Audrey Stans who go around attacking people for stating plain facts that is truly hateful and hate-incurring.

R301 Aged 500 times better than Piggy Taylor

There were few bankable actresses in the early 1960s who truly represented CLASS (especially to Hollywood thugs like Jack Warner) like Audrey did. Ingrid Bergman is the only other one I can think of and, of course, she was all wrong in every way for Eliza.

If only I'd been a few years younger ...

And Ingrid was 14 years older than Audrey.

r329 "Aged 500 times better than Piggy Taylor"

Through ProAna glasses, which diffuses away all wrinkles and even hair loss, then I guess.

One from 1976, where they're in a group shot together.

One from 1991.

one more from 91

R334 R335 Audrey looks like a skeleton with barely any flesh on it. And it makes her look old.

Doris Day and Audrey Hepburn were 2 movies icons who were not allowed to age on screen. Day finished up her career making a TV series that her husband had signed her to make and then left Hollywood altogether. After Hepburn came out of retirement she made a few ill fated movies and then died from cancer at only age 63.

They'll always be remembered as youthful which is maybe what they wanted.

I dunno about Doris, but Audrey had never picked a role where she is the mom or even the aunt of an adult actor/actress. Looks like it is she herself who refused to allow herself to "age" on screen via mature characters befitting her physical maturity.

R319, read the comments about Somalia again. It was a shock for her to see, like it would have been for most compassionate 1st world people. She never said she did anything but show up.

She was shocked about Somalia because she knew little about international affairs. Most Europeans knew what was happening in Somalia.

When crossing on the Queen Mary en route to Hollywood, Audrey gained fifteen pounds during voyage because she was so excited about her prospects.

R340, reading about something and experiencing it for yourself are 2 different things. You can't get PTSD reading about war but you can by living it and seeing the deaths. Watching little children die and seeing the magnitude of the disaster would be overwhelming, particularly as there is very little one person can do about it.

R335 looks old but still better than Taylor who looked like an scary monster for most of her life.

Perfect example of pro anas aesthetics at r343.

Taylor’s body still looked surprisingly good in that picture considering she frequently was much chunkier. Nice high tits.

Taylor lost weight successfully in the early 80s and remained beautiful up till the mid 90s. Then her backbone collapsed and a serious brain tumor developed. She never recovered since, and lived in great physical deterioration on a wheelchair until her death.

Would people use "pro-ana" hateful shit to describe people with cancer? Cancer doesn't happen overnight, my mom lost weight about 6 months before she was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma. Audrey became thinner in the year prior to her diagnosis and death. She was always thin from malnutrition as a child to adulthood. Usually with eating disorders like anorexia the focus isn't on thinness as it is about control and really it's a slow form of suicide. As for the "pro-ana" crowd that hateful posters keep bringing up, those poor girls/ women were usually normal weight or even slightly overweight before slide into dysmorphia, OCD, and depression which are the 3 common diagnoses for those suffering from severe anorexia nervosa. I'm not saying AH was not too thin for her height especially in her 30s and onward, but to wantonly tag her as anorexic really demonstrates ignorance about what anorexia nervosa is.

Thank you R347. I totally agree. It's only one disgruntled loon posting that nonsense and his motive is both hilarious and sick. Pay it no mind.

As in my other posts I never said Audrey as anorexic , though she obviously under eat and was seriously, unhealthily underweight n her 30s and onward. The 2 AH Stans who held up 30+ Audrey as being beautiful - all the while bashing Taylor being fat even in her non-fat stages - are DEFINITELY Pro Ana. Oh yes, and as per the topic of this thread: AH's career defintely stalled since after MFL, as Million and Road both flopped at the box office losing money. Don't like the facts? Go scream at Wiki.

Honestly R349 is irrefutably insane if he thinks in her early 60s movies when she was over 30 she was not an iconic beauty.

Sophia Loren stated that she had lunch with Audrey Hepburn and that she (Hepburn) ate so little that it was alarming. Afterwards Audrey got up from the table and said that she had overeaten. Sophia went home and made a sandwich for herself. So yes, it appears that Audrey had some sort of eating disorder.

Just saw My Fair Lady yesterday at a Fathom event and both the picture and the peformers looked sensational. The costumes, the scenery, the script, the music, the acting were all top-drawer.

Audrey looked lovely and delivered a very convincing performance, both before and after her transformation. The fact that she was the only one not nominated for an Oscar is a puzzlement.

I'm still singing the Lerner and Loewe songs today -- "Show Me" is especially running through my head.

Yes because Sophia Loren is an expert on eating disorders just from having lunch with AH. What part of wartime malnutrition do you not understand? It damaged her health badly in her formative teen years, maybe she had lingering GI issues from that or maybe she viewed food in very different way from having lived through starvation. Who knows?

[quote]r353 Yes because Sophia Loren is an expert on eating disorders just from having lunch with AH. What part of wartime malnutrition do you not understand?

Actually, I believe Loren went through wartime starvation, as well as a child and pre-teen. She was from a poor, single parent home in Italy during WWII, and things got bad there. Maybe not as bad as in Holland, but still bad.

She had perfect 1950s style. In the 1970s and in the late 1960s she didn’t translate.

R352 What is a Fathom event and was it shown in 70mm?

Audrey was very aware of her limitations and some of her charms. She rediscovered her beauty in her fifties. Simplicity. She made only 26 films and by then it was a fondly remembered period of her life that defined her in the mind of the public, but not her own. Others were more beautiful and some were more talented, but Audrey Hepburn was a rare and gentle person on and off screen. Modest, kind, stylish, grateful and sensitive. She used the public's lasting affection and interest in her movie stardom to raise awareness and help poor and hungry children all over the world. She aged beautifully because she she knew who she was. She was deeply loved by her boys and Robert, her close friends. The world.

I'll give her two more iconic moments after My Fair Lady. The black outfit in HTSAM as discussed above, the best and funniest scene in the film, but also when she first appears in that film looking like one of the stewardesses in 2001. It is a disappointing film that had so much potential but she and O'Toole have great chemistry and you want to tour Paris with them. Why Wyler didn't demand a better script I don't know. It wasn't that he was old because he was back in top form for Funny Girl his only musical. To do a musical at that age for the first time...It should have been another Annie.

I wonder if she had some initial tightening but then said I'm getting old and I'm sick and have other concerns so it's idiotic.

She is very funny as the flower girl but then when they return from the ball and she is fully able through language to articulate her feelings very powerful in expressing her loneliness, sense of failure and complete rage in being so blatantly used.

r355 is right on the mark regarding her style. Givenchy's been failing her starting in the mid 60s or so. The styling in Million and TFTRoad were at odds with her age and appearance. No wonder those films lost money.

Two For the Road is not Givenchy but she wears some very trendy designers of the mid 60s which are pretty interesting. Definitely not for the youth market of the time but for wealthy women in their 30s and 40s who wanted to be stylish.

I have to disagree, r362.

In TWO FOR THE ROAD’s early scenes she is in clothes of the style we have seen her in during her earliest roles - shorts and a man’s button down, a striped t-shirt, jeans and a red sweater and a Burberry trench - and she looks fine.

However in the contemporary late 1960s scenes she wears Paco Rabanne, Mary Quant and Andre Courrèges and really she’s a bit of a mess. And fashionable women of their 30s and 40s wouldn’t wear this stuff, women in their 20s would. It’s not a slight on the designs, it’s just that they are not her.

Like this rugby shirt minidress.

Two For the Road's charm was deeply enhanced by that haunting score. Shame that it was not Oscar nominated.

"Raphael received an Academy Awardnomination for Best Original Screenplay, Hepburn received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, and Henry Mancini received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score. The film's theme song, "Two for the Road", was composed by Mancini, who wrote many notable theme songs for films, including "Moon River" for Breakfast at Tiffany's. He considered "Two for the Road" his favourite of all the songs he wrote."

I happen to like her in that minidress as well as the Pucci and that metal workshop thing. I think she carries them off.

The wistful score is hampered by the atrocious visuals brought on by the frau wardrobe and styling. It never seems to connect with Hepburn's character. That probably affected its chance of being Oscar nominated.

So Road wasn't styled by Givenchy. No wonder Hepburn looked like that (see r363).

But even Givenchy was getting out of touch as to what would suit the aging Hepburn by the mid 1960s. He designed for Million, and with exception of the eye-mask dark dress, Hepburn went through a lot of frau mod gear that made her looked even older and more dated.

They are clothes for a different sort of woman.

Those are clothes for young thin girls like Twiggy, who is like twenty years younger and a professional print model. Also, Twiggy's hairstyle and makeup are far more simple and chic than Million and Road's Hepburn.

The late 60s mod style with big lapels and harsh cutting with cluttered details was very youth-oriented. It is not for females who look older than 21, or the effect will be frau.

Definitely not for Hepburn or any of the 1950s bunch.

Some of those outfits are for 12/13 yr olds. We're talking fashions by Polanski.

[quote]Two For the Road is not Givenchy but she wears some very trendy designers of the mid 60s which are pretty interesting. Definitely not for the youth market of the time but for wealthy women in their 30s and 40s who wanted to be stylish.

Oh, hell no. The hair, accessories and makeup is a huge problem in her later scenes in TFTR. To a lesser extent the clothing is too, because she's dressing . No stylish woman in her 30s/40s would be could dead in this pastel shift.

And the PVC suit (!) is just too funky and British-mod for her.

And the metallic dress is too young for her and should be best left to Tina Turner or Verushka.

Whereas this simple jeans and sweater from the start of the film? Gorgeous, simple and chic and proves overall that TFTR was a styling failure.

No one looked as bad in late 60s & 70s fashion as that bloated bouncy castle fat kneed sloth, Elizabeth Taylor. Head to toe hilarious. Julie Andrews - no one can remember a thing she wore, ever. Not even once. She was born looking 68 years old.

Audrey didn't dress herself in Two For The Road. She wanted Givenchy of course. I've read she was very insecure wearing the fashions that Stanley Donen insisted on. Show me an A list 38 year old film actress that could carry off those clothes at that time? Yes R374, the FILM was a styling failure. Not AH.

Stanley Donen wanted her to look like she got her clothes from a store, not from a designer. And the clothes show how the character evolves over the 12 years of the marriage, from the happy beginning to the rather tense unhappy 1967 present.

Frau Evolution, where the older a woman get, the younger and more colorfully she dressed.

[quote]She was a couple of years older and had a slightly longer resume than AM, and had a passable singing voice.

Where did you hear Samantha Eggar’s singing voice? She was dubbed in “Doctor Dolittle.”

[quote] And the clothes show how the character evolves over the 12 years of the marriage, from the happy beginning to the rather tense unhappy 1967 present.

Oh wow, that never occurred to me.

Audrey's funeral . . .

The frau hair and makeup that sank AH in Two For the Road was already present back in How to Steal a Million a year earlier. And she was supposed to be playing some young unmarried girl too. No surprise that Million, like Road, also flopped at the box office.

Givenchy also had her wearing some loose waist-ed skirt that made her looked like she forgot her lady pants.

Arriving at Orly Airport in 1965. The frau hair and makeup appeared to be Audrey's own personal style.

She looks great at R383. Audrey was not a whorish sexy bomb. She was simple and stylish. Chic. That's a fantastic dress. There is nothing frau-ish about her. This is not my era, but one of the few film stars who looked good in the late sixties seems to be Sophia Loren. She was 5 years younger than Audrey and obviously a whole different vibe. Loren looked tacky and overdone later in life, but the simple clothes, wild prints, short skirts and weird eye makeup of the sixties just kinda worked on her large features and slim but voluptuous frame. Natalie Wood looked good back then too. Who knows why. The hairstyles were either overly elaborate or very severe. Everyone from Jane Fonda to Julie Christie to Dusty Springfield look "frau-ish" or unattractive NOW - back in those MOD times.

Audrey's face could rock a Sasson style haircut but she was a bit too concerned with looking pristine. The sixties fashions are mostly hideous. Jackie Kennedy was born the same year as AH. Jackie's classic simple suits, clean line dresses and stiffly modern formal hairstyles were considered the height of chic, but her casual style moments are much easier to appreciate. Hepburn was like Fred Astaire. No one gave her style. Her body and features and movement dictated her look. Sometimes she got it wrong, Jesus, since when is talent all about your clothes?

That insane poster who worships Julia Andrews and hates jews is working overtime to parse any bad photo of Hepburn he can find. Audrey remains a current fashion icon and hallmark of loveliness more than 25 years after her death. Her position as a screen legend and singular actress was never in question.

Which actress mentioned in this thread isn't an icon in her own right and loved by millions? Audrey is no more popular or loved than Julie or Liz , yet the 2 AH Stans are still keen on bashing the others to elevate their goddess. Are they TRYING to make fans of the other two hate Audrey because of their stupidity?

Like r375, again bashing Liz for being fat while talking about how much better-dressed AH supposedly was.

Well duh, Liz was commonly know for her vulgar style. Being better-dressed than Liz don't mean one is stylish. And anyway, being vulgar didn't stop Liz from being the highest paid actress in the 1960s at 1.5 million since marrying Richard Burton. Why? She had the face and the personality and the notoriety to draw media attention and maintain that A-List status. That and much of her jewelry are legendary and have media interest even today.

Audrey, on the other hand, banked on her being perceived as outstandingly stylish. Fashion mishaps wouldn't shake Liz's status back in 1967 but it would affect Audrey's. The way How to Steal a Million and Two For the Road both flopped proves that. She was lucky she got to play blind in Wait Until Dark and regain some lost footing before her well-timed retirement announcement.

Pic of Liz in 1967.

One more from same event with Richard and Mia

Liz and Julie together just to trigger the 2 AH Stans.

Liz looks like Richard's mother in law in that photo. You are mentally ill and will argue non points to death R386, so I rest my case. There are no Audrey stans here. There are people who call your craziness and inaccuracies to task. Your posts are no threat to Audrey Hepburn's legacy. You are a liar, but your pathology runs deeper. Your arguments are always so off topic, obsessive and besides the point. I can smell you from here, fucking freakwad. Go on, get off.

R383, That's not a wig?

I remember this 1976 issue, in conjunction with the release of "Robin and Marian", and thought she looked stunning, albeit heavily airbrushed.

R390 She is too tanned in that photo and look like Sophia Loren.

Doris Day and Audrey Hepburn were fashion plates in their movies and expected to wear beautiful clothes, especially if they made them look younger.

Actually, Doris Day is someone else who looked good in the 1960s.

[quote]R241 How would Audrey have been as Desiree in A Little Night Music on Broadway?

Boring. She’s not flirty enough for that role. I can’t really see her as a mistress juggling two men.

Desiree should be fun, and a tiny bit coarse.

Who today is fun, sophisticated(I know I'm adding that but it's important) and a tiny bit coarse.

No one.

r388/etc screams on while Julie is still considered a great singer for the ages and Liz a glamour Icon still loved by millions worldwide.

r389 "Wig?" Audrey's hair looked so stiff in the 1965 pic that it probably is a partial wig of sorts, like a crown volumizer teased together with real hair then hairsprayed for miles. The effect is the short hair beehive with sidebangs like what we see in Million, Road and Dark. Their box office results show just how well-received that style was back in 1966-1967.

Small correction: Wait Until Dark escaped being a flop like How to Steal a Million and Two for the Road because Audrey played a blind woman

R383, Hideous hair and makeup. Of everything available in the late 60s she chose that?!

I didn't know Wait Until Dark was her last hit. It's pretty much the only Audrey movie I like. She finally makes herself accessible to all audiences, and then does nothing afterwards.

I'm sure she made a fortune in 60s money for Charade, MFL and WUD and could afford to take it easy and be with her family. I don't believe she officially retired at that time. She just simply didn't need to work and didn't.

Cinematically, she didn’t fit in the mid-60s British mod world (though one would think she would) or the encroaching American counterculture or the glitzy world of new wave Eurotrash (which she did actually live in). The actors of her generation who were able to keep working were a lot more intense and varied in style and able to play supporting character roles - Rod Steiger, Shelley Winters, Marlon Brando, etc.

Then by the early 70s Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn got the roles she would have had 10 years earlier.

The thing is Audrey specialized in playing child-like gamines/urchin type of characters. Such characters are meant for actresses who look no older than their early twenties. Any older-looking and the gamine mannerism is gonna look mighty affected and mannered on screen. So it is only natural how Audrey became increasingly difficult to cast in her 30s.

Her peers who were willing and capable of playing characters their age were the ones who managed to keep getting good offers in the late 60s/ early 70s.

DL can be so brutal

When she married the Italian doctor Andrea Dotti she is quoted as saying "I am getting ready for my greatest role as wife/mother..."

I took that to mean she moved to italy with the socialite hubby and left acting behind for a while. Some hollywood people do this,its quite common. Even though Dotti was a notorious cheater,rich but famously unfaithful.

Here's Audrey graciously accepting a special BAFTA Award in 1992, the year before she died.

It was presented by Princess Anne, who sat there stone faced while Audrey addressed her twice during her acceptance speech.

The Queen is practically Judith Anderson in showing emotion compared to her daughter who seems to be always sucking on lemons. Like Princess Margaret hating royal protocol and responsibilities but liking the money. Nothing but welfare queens.

Men grow cold as girls grow old And we all lose our charms in the end

Poor Audrey. The BAFTA acceptance speech flopped. It rattled her.

Princess Anne is awesome. There is a story of her attending a dinner and, deadpan, asking her seatmate Ringo Starr is he is a footballer. This is the Princess Anne who was 14 when A Hard Day's Night was released. You have to amuse yourself in various ways when you have to justify your existence by doing hundreds of charity events a year.

The royals are such shits. When Princess Margaret was introduced to a man and his male partner by Tony Blair's wife the Princess asked, 'partner in what?'

The royals can be very snobbish. When Dusty Springfield (who was gay herself) was giving a concert at which Princess Margaret was present, she called out to the gays in the audience in an act of kindness and called then the real royals that night. Princess Margaret was so incensed that she made Dusty apologize to her in private.

her lack of talent and beauty finally caught up with her skinny vapid ass

She didn't have no tits to show as the 70s rolled in, so they rolled on without 'er.

I've never liked Audrey find her dull. And Roman Holiday is a mediocre copy of It Happened one night. Sabrina is a snoozefest and my fair lady is weird.

Wait until Dark isnt scary. Also her performance in it is kind of laughable. I cannot bear her oscar speech from 1954, so mannered and self conscious "I'm....terribly happy" fuck off you twee little tramp.

I never understand why people apologize when they shouldn't have to. If Dusty didn't would the Princess have used her clout to terminate singing engagements? Everyone knew Margaret was a royal bitch with a huge chip on her shoulder. Her husband came to dislike her intensely. Even her mother and sister knew this. And the Queen mother's closest friends and courtiers were gay and I don't know if this is apocryphal but she would refer to them as queens. As in 'you queens get this old queen some gin.' I'd like to believe it's true.

She didn’t call them queens cause she was down with gay rights

She called them queens cause she could.

Was Holly in the original novel actually decked under that much jewelry while having breakfast at Tiffany's? And wearing that elaborate beehive of a sprayed hairstyle - complete with hair bling? At THAT hour in the early morning? How was such an excessive overglamm-ed look ever considered elegant back in the 60s? Sure Audrey looked elegant and understated in Sabrina and Funny Face, but in BAT? Audrey's Holly looked every bit as tacky as a generic Hollywood Wife at some formal televised gala. Givenchy certain knew what the fraus liked.

4 oscars and you all characterize that as stalled career

Are you all 10 year old jokesters?

Maybe WUD isn't scary today but I saw it in the theater as a boy and the whole audience was pretty tense and collectively jumped out of our skins at the climax.

WUD is one of those 60s hagploitation films that aged badly like Lady in a Cage.

Oscars or not, when an actress' movies began to flop one after another at the box office, that is sign of a stalling career.

Audrey's been having consecutive flops since way earlier than WUD - as early as right after MFL, with Million and Road both losing money (see wiki). And she hadn't earn any acting nominations for her 70s films, had she?

Career stalling confirmed.

And even though I love it MFL I believe it was not the hit Jack Warner expected it to be. He was expecting a Sound of Music sized blockbuster and then 4 months later The Sound of Music comes along and becomes the event film of its time grabbing a lot of the potential MFL audience. Why see it again when you can see Julie, children and the alps again and again?

The SOM's original release lasted about 5 years. MFL's lasted about two.

My Fair Lady does not age well - it's something from another era. I just watched some clips of it and I don't think I could sit through the whole movie.

Wait Until Dark was much better on stage than film. Same can be said for Deathtrap. Loudest screams I've ever heard in a Broadway theatre were during Deathtrap's climactic scene.

I was a teen when it came out, R420, and I thought it was scary.

[quote]r416 I never understand why people apologize when they shouldn't have to. If Dusty didn't would the Princess have used her clout to terminate singing engagements?

Margaret was an accomplished and pungent "squirter," with a deadly aim. Everyone knew they damn well better kow tow and apologize, or they'd be drenched with a sneak attack at their next court appearance.

It was no laughing matter. (Especially if in Givenchy originals.)

[quote]r418 Was Holly in the original novel actually decked under that much jewelry while having breakfast at Tiffany's? And wearing that elaborate beehive of a sprayed hairstyle - complete with hair bling? At THAT hour in the early morning?

She's been out all night, and is coming home at dawn.

You can read it HERE - all 25 pages:

such a vanilla dullard, god she ruined so many films. that treacly voice....how in the world did she get to the top for a while?

What a life. Husband 1 abused her, husband 2 cheated quite publicly on her, finally she finds stability and happiness then gets sick and dies. Life's a bitch then you die.

Isn’t the guy she got “stability and happiness” with a major gigolo?

Yes, but he performed nicely and took good direction.

A niece worked as a shop girl at one of the tony shops in Lausanne which Audrey frequented. She was very fond of Audrey and found it amusing that A had no need for a bra Instead she wore bandaids over her nipples.

I wonder how much of Audrey's estate did that supposedly perfect gigolo made off with? Both her sons obviously thought they weren't getting left enough, thus why the in-fighting and court battle.

The major/perfect gigolo died last July.

great thread!

Princess Anne isn't being rude in the above video. Not licking Audrey's pussy everytime she makes a joke isn't a hanging offense.

Of course it is.

R436, Audrey addressed her twice during her remarks. The least PA could have done was smile or nod her head in acknowledgement.

Dear god, royals don't nod to the great unwashed.

I wonder if Audrey felt slighted being presented her BAFTA Award by such a second rate royal.

As of September of 2018:

Princess Anne is the second child — and only daughter — of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. But while her older brother, Prince Charles, will ascend to the throne when the queen dies, Princess Anne is thirteenth in the line of succession.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Could Audrey's hedonistic gigolo-keeping lifestyle possibly be related to Princess Anne not smiling at BAFTA?

Right, like Princess Anne is a saint.

PA is a royal though. Her public smiles are reserved only for the truly outstanding in the way of accomplishment and conduct.

R445, She has been known to smile.

There was a horse involved, r446

Smile though you think she's boring Smile even though it's faking Smile at her jokes falling flat, you'll get by If you smile at her scrawny torso Smile and maybe tomorrow You'll see the press come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness Smile, or they'll say you're jealous Although a yawn may be ever so near That's the time you must keep on trying Smile, as she keep on yapping You'll find her act is worth your while If you just smile

Slap a short blond wind on her and Princess Anne looked exactly like Zara.

Blow me, Anne.

Now that I read the entire thread I find it somewhat disappointing.

The shallow bitches focusing on Audrey's costumes in TWO FOR THE ROAD seem to have overlooked the fact that the film and its performances have greatly risen in stature. The near-simultaneous deaths of Donen and Finney only magnified this appreciation for the film and its nuanced fepiction of a marriage.

Much more should have been written about the sons, and their odd battle over her possessions 20+ years after her death.

There is a new book coming out next month regarding Audrey and the war years. Did you know both of her parents were Nazi's?

I knew her mother was, and that there has been no real evidence that Audrey was a member of the resistance.

Two for the Road flopped and lost money according to wiki, so it's only natural it gets mentioned in a thread about Audrey's stalling career. It started stalling as early as right after My Fair Lady.

Audrey would have been disappointed by the stupidity and pettiness of her sons to not discreetly split her possessions.

Here' s how you do t, boys. You lay it all out. Elder son chooses first item. Second son goes next. Back to first son etc etc until there are no moe items. Its a long and tiresome process, but its easy and fair. I

Instead these two asked the court o decide who get what. Insipid twits.

Audrey knew she was dying. She didn't settle all of this with her sons and husband before she died. Or did they all find it unbearable and nobody wanted to discuss it feeling that it would hasten her death if everything were settled?

Sorry. Just looked it up. She wasn't married when she died.

No. She had a live-in gigolo who was no doubt responsible for her sons not being left enough of her green.

Her estate was in fine order. She did everything right. She couldn't be expected to designate every last poster, photo, etc for either son. It was the boys who stumbled, not she.

Had the parents did their job and raised the sons right, they would not have stumbled in such an unbecoming manner.

Let's be realistic.

Had any of our moms been one of the most iconic stars of all time, whose image generated great wealth even post mortem, I'm sure we'd end up in court across from our siblings, dividing up her very valuable property.

It happens with families who don't even have a lot of money, and here the stakes are very high.

Or, one could be the only child of an iconic public figure and wind up flat broke.

Elizabeth Taylor's estate is far larger and far more complicated than Audrey Hepburn's, that with her perfume empire and all. She had three kids by birth and one by adoption and none of her children are in-fighting for assets to this day. Obviously mothering matters.

Hepburn was good in "The Children's Hour". She showed a quiet strength in her character.

TCH showcased how Shirley MacLaine's acting style was far more contempory than Hepburn's. Hepburn appeared mannered and stagey when contrasted against MacLaine, who just seemed far more natural and sincere. Which was probably why MacLaine's career did not stall in the mid 60s, unlike Hepburn's.

Funny how THE CHILDREN’S HOUR was not (as) censored, but the rewritten THESE THREE was a better film overall and more successfully presented the themes.

Are you saying Audrey was a lousy mother? And that spending years drinking and fighting with Burton was a good example?

R450's American mindset illustrate's the primary issue surrounding friction between Audrey's sons. The older son, Sean, is very American, ie a greedy cunt, whereas Luca is European. He lives in Europe and maintains strong relations with his Italian family and his mother's European friends. Luca was not the problem in this story.

R462, Several of Elizabeth's charities and businesses are now being maintained by her grandchildren.

r466 "Are you saying Audrey was a lousy mother? And that spending years drinking and fighting with Burton was a good example?"

Results speaks. Elizabeth's four children and fifteen grandchildren are not suing each other over bits of the estate, unlike Audrey's two sons.

Audrey didn't WANT to make films during that period. Certainly scripts were offered to her.

She had plenty of money, and a family. She did a lot of jet set gallivanting with fancy people. She did fine.

Sure she didn’t want to make films, otherwise she would not have mounted multiple failed comebacks.

Taylor didn't survive the collapse of the studio system either.

Sean didn't inherit a drop of his parents appeal or charisma yet he definitely looks like their son.

How does this happen?

She wanted the lead in "Bloody Mama," but Roger Corman unwisely cast Shelley Winters instead.

Audrey was also passed over for "Scorchy".

Audrey could not stand "Robin and Marian" director Richard Lester, who very often would shoot and print one take. Audrey was accustomed to multiple takes.

r473 "Sean didn't inherit a drop of his parents appeal or charisma yet he definitely looks like their son. "

Sean inherited both Audrey's man jaws and Mel's long face. And since the couple both got washed out features...

Hepburn in the Secret People 1952. Sean takes after her a lot.

r472 "Taylor didn't survive the collapse of the studio system either."

Sure her career also stalled. But Taylor was still getting acting nods up to 1974. And she was still a very high paid star in the 70s despite her flops, easily earning 20 times Michael Caine's salary (by his own admission) in Zee and Co.

From WIKI: 1972 Silver Bear for Best Actress, 22nd Berlin International Film Festival: Hammersmith Is Out (Germany)[1] David Di Donatello Award, Best Foreign Actress: Zee and Co. (Italy)

1974 Golden Globe Award Nomination, Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Drama): Ash Wednesday Golden Globe Award, Henrietta Award World Film Favorite - Female

R452, Audrey was 10 when the war started in Europe. Not exactly an adult and, as a child, she starved, so not sure where the Nazi advantage came in. More rewriting of history?

"... the daughter of a Dutch baroness and a British father who left the family when she was just 6-years-old, struggled to survive in Holland when Germany occupied the country, which began when she was 11. “By the end of the war, she was very close to death,” explained Dotti. “She survived by eating nettles and tulip bulbs and drinking water to fill her stomach. She was almost 5’6” and weighed 88 pounds. She had jaundice and edema. She suffered from anemia the rest of her life, possibly as a consequence… She was the same age as Anne Frank and [later] said: ‘That was the girl who didn’t make it and I did.’ Her voice would crack, and her eyes would fill with tears."

Doesn't sound like she was a very active Nazi, if one at all. I'm not sure I'd blame an 11 year old, in any case.

The point is that Audrey claimed to be a Resistance courier during her Roman Holiday audition, and no one could recall her involvement either in person or on paper. She was starved and sickly, and I am sure she was too unwell to do much of anything in the latter stages of the war.

I get why she lied about it, though. It’s a good story and you do want people to know you were not a collaborator. The Resistance were very glamorous at that point.

Her mother, though, was quite the little fascist.

[quote]r474 She wanted the lead in "Bloody Mama," but Roger Corman unwisely cast Shelley Winters instead.

After Gary talked Lucy out of doing EMMANUELLE, Auds campaigned heavily for the role. She was relieved it would shoot in Europe, one of her criteria.

Still, by that point they wanted a fresh face (and muff)

I find Audrey Hepburn very overrated. She's known mainly for her image but those elfin looks just arent all that. Also most of her films like Roman Holiday and Sabrina I find dull. She couldn't act well especially in her early movie's. I find her more overrated than the other Hepburn

But Hepburn is one of only two cultural icons of the golden age of Hollywood which died out in the 60s known by young people today. Even Dean and Elvis aren't as ubiquitous as they once were. Maybe Brando is known by the young?

Who's the other cultural icon they know? Marilyn? Clark Gable?

Yes Marilyn.

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR: I wish Audrey had played dikey Martha opposite Marilyn's Karen.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again!

Interesting thread! As someone with a teenage daughter I can say Audrey is known and loved as a style icon among her peers. AH's face graces innumerable pieces of teen wall art and even clothing. They might not have ever seen BAT, but they all know the dress. Marilyn is known, albeit not as loved - she's seen more as a throwback to a different era. Elvis is certainly known, but more for who he was. They can't identify a single song. The likes of Bette David, Joan Crawford, Liz Taylor, Katherine Hepburn, Sophia Loren, etc. are wholly unknown. That's where I do what I can to educate the young 'uns and introduce them to the greats of eras gone by. Heck, even mentioning Princess Diana elicits a puzzled shrug.

Was Robert Wolders really a gigolo?

Liz Taylor has a huge presence on Tumblr so lots of quirky young onliners must know her still. And even today any mention of the name Cleopatra in the press will be followed by her. Liz is still a household name even now.

I think Marilyn is more iconic than Audrey. She's practically mythical. I don't know what that parent upthread meant by her not being relevant or beloved anymore.

I remember Audrey being a virtual unknown among my straight high school classmates back in the 1990s. And that was only months after she died. They all recognize Monroe and Taylor's names back then, of course.

Audrey has had a resurgence since the 1990s - thanks to all that wall art. Whoever started licensing BAT images was genius. Marilyn is a brand, but she doesn't have the same style cachet as AH. And Liz Taylor? Complete unknown to today's average teen. (But thankfully they do know who Cleopatra was. They just don't associate Liz with her.) Yes, we can all feel old now.

Love Audrey Hepburn...

Speaking of diminishing legends, WHET Jame Dean? He was everywhere in the '90s when I was a teen. I remember they spent the entire decade looking for someone to play James Dean in a major biopic. River Phoenix and Leo DiCaprios' name was thrown around, but in the end it ended up being a TV movie with newbie James Franco.

These days he doesn't seem so iconic. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It's odd, isn't it, R496? Maybe so many crazy shenanigans have transpired with celebrities since the 1990s that Dean just doesn't seem so much of a rebel anymore. Being anti establishment just seems so quaint. Given AH's current starring spot on Bed, Bath & Beyond and TJ Maxx canvasses, I wonder who will be next? Who's the icon from the 1970s or 1980s who will take her spot?

I think Elvis and Marilyn are beyond legendary; they're mythic and too entrenched in popular culture. Like Bonnie & Clyde. They're not going away any time soon.

I think Michael Jackson had the potential to join their pantheon, especially after the popularity he regained after death, but his legacy seems shaky right now.

[quote]r492 I think Marilyn is more iconic than Audrey. She's practically mythical.

Sex sells.

She tried to sneak as much suggested nudity into her films as possible, went without underwear, etc. That frank vibe comes through and makes her eternal.

Maybe I'm wrong but it seems like Elvis' legacy is fading a bit - even becoming more of a joke. His weight, dying on the toilet, his addictions, his yes-men, taking that underage girl Priscilla from her parents to live with him for years, then getting sick of her when she got pregnant, etc. And his music hasn't really stood the test of time either - "I'll Have a Blue Christmas Without You" - it's just hokey and square. Reminds me of Cliff Richards. Oh and he really stole from African-American blues artists just as much as the Brits did, or worse, doing it in their own backyard.

Audrey had the biggest bush in Hollywood.

It is known.

R500-I think you're right. He'll forever have a place in history, but the legend isn't what it once was. Marilyn is iconic, but even though the younger generation knows her image, her star isn't as bright as it was even a decade ago. She's not going anywhere, she just isn't as huge as she once was. The celebrity firmament is pretty overcrowded as it is, and younger people have their own idols. Elvis, James Dean, Marilyn - hell, even the Beatles - seem quaint today.

[quote]She's not going anywhere, she just isn't as huge as she once was.

How do you come to that conclusion? Anecdotal evidence? 'Cause in my personal experience (nieces and their friends, co-workers' daughters), Marilyn is still very much beloved, especially by young straight women, to my surprise.

R503-then I wonder if it's geographic, because it sounds like we have similar personal experiences (ha!) with young women, and I don't hear a single one reference Marilyn. Audrey, all the time. Interestingly, about a decade ago, Marilyn was the "It" icon - she's be on posters, canvases t-shirts, etc. I've just seen a gravitational pull toward Hepburn. (And oddly the NASA logo, but that's another thread.)

[quote]then I wonder if it's geographic,

I'm in New England. Massachusetts, to be exact.

R505. Nebraska. Don't tell me for once we're ahead of a trend. That can't be. Interesting difference, though. Sadly, the Kardashians, Hadid chipmunks and their ilk are all popular.

I believe it, R489. AH is truly timeless. Her silhouette looks current today.

Marilyn was just a force of nature. Audrey wasn’t.

Marilyn had that “it” like no one else. She could stand silent and you took notice of her.

Audrey had it as well.

R508-it comes down to personal preference. I caught Charade and Some Like It Hot not that long ago, and I couldn't stop marveling at how stunning Hepburn was. (There's a scene where she's at a ski resort wearing a ridiculous hat and is nonetheless gobsmackingly gorgeous.) Marilyn was fun to watch, but she didn't take my breath away the same way. To each his own. *Shrug* It would be interesting to do a poll of sorts and figure out what the cultural currency currently is for bygone icons among teens and twenty-somethings. From an advertiser's perspective it would be fascinating.

R510 Marilyn would destroy the competition. She’s more iconic than any actress ever probably. She’s a household name even with today’s youth. Young people buy merchandise with her image on it and get her image tatted on their bodies.

R510-the same can be said of Hepburn - yes, down to the tattoos. I wonder, though, if "today's youth" (we sound like we're 70 - "the youth!") has seen either actress's movies or if it's solely about image. Probably, lamentably, the latter.

Yeah, it's definitely the image. I've come across several new Audrey fans who are outraged when they finally watch BREKAFAST AT TIFFANY'S, which is the iconic look she's most famous for and girls today try to emulate.

R512 you’re delusional if you think Hepburn is a bigger star in death than Marilyn.

And, yes, Audrey is also worshipped by some but no one comes close to Marilyn, Elvis, James Dean and a few others.

My friend has a beautiful photo of Audrey on her wall.

R513 yes, the photo of Audrey my friend has on her living room wall is from BAT

R514-I think all those stars of years gone by aren't what they once were, especially Dean and Elvis. Monroe was lightning in a bottle, but that bottle is over half a century old now. Not that she's no longer iconic, just saying the wattage has dimmed a bit.

"And Liz Taylor? Complete unknown to today's average teen. (But thankfully they do know who Cleopatra was. They just don't associate Liz with her.) Yes, we can all feel old now."

Are you sure? Google Cleopatra and the first images are of Taylor as Cleopatra. Liz may not be a style icon but her Cleo role remains iconic. She is still known by many young and old people even today.

Face it. Audrey didn't have the tits to draw the crowds in the late 60s and onwards.

It was a new, permissive age and her stale pancakes couldn't rise.

Audrey had class. What was she going to do? Do what Julie Andrews did and surgically enhance her tits so she could say fuck you to Walt Disney and Rodgers and Hammerstein?

R517-the image of Liz as Cleopatra might come up, but to today's teens, it's just some random actress in heavy eye make-up. Say the name Liz Taylor, and you'll get a shrug off the shoulders. Who?

If she wasn't so skinny, I don't think Audrey would have ever made a comeback either.

[quote]r519 Audrey had class. What was she going to do? Do what Julie Andrews did and surgically enhance her tits so she could say fuck you to Walt Disney and Rodgers and Hammerstein?

Why not? In this town, it's GROW, or DIE.

Roger Vadim did convince her to get implants and screen test for BARBARELLA ... but then cruelly sniggering [italic]"Nous n'avons pas besoin de vos croissants écrasés!"[/italic] for all to hear in the bar of the Hotel Lutetia, hired the naturally endowed Jane Fonda instead.

It was when having the implants removed that Hepburn met future husband Dr. Andrea Dotti.

I'm glad Audrey never shaved. I hate shaved pubes. I bet Julie did with that straight wanna be of a husband.

Part of the reason Hepburn never shaved was because she had no razors in occupied Holland as a teen.

It established a lifelong phobia.

r520 "the image of Liz as Cleopatra might come up, but to today's teens, it's just some random actress in heavy eye make-up. Say the name Liz Taylor, and you'll get a shrug off the shoulders. Who?" How could google users consider her random when Liz's image always show at the top when searching google image for Cleopatra? Any kid searching Cleo for a history class will come across Liz's images and info.

There are also lots of tumblr-heavy teen nerds of both genders at every school, and most of them know who Liz is.

Go approach students at a boy's school today and say the name Audrey Hepburn, however, will invite blank stares from even the nerds.

Gemma Chan was also channeling 1960s-70s Liz right at MET 2019.

And Liz is still very beloved among the Chinese, with her name showing up in ktv pop songs etc

lily collins was also channeling liz there

Lily`s spotting Liz`s Helen of Troy hair and makeup

Gemma Chan looks more like she's channeling Cher.

Nobody ever said about Audrey she looked like a Peruvian peasant woman suckling her young.

I was at the bookstore the other day and in the "Hollywood" section there were a number of Audrey Hepburn style books. I think Audrey is known for her look and her clothes more for her movies these days, whereas Marilyn will be forever known as the tragic sex symbol who died way too young. I think Elizabeth Taylor will always have status as a major movie star of a certain era, much like a Bette Davis or a Joan Crawford, because she was definitely larger than life. It really wasn't about her performance in any particular movie, just that she was outrageous, and for a time, outrageously beautiful.

Does anyone still care about James Dean anymore? I'm 60 and I never really cared about him in the first place. Never interested in the "mystique" or his movies.

Death at 42 is the only reason interest in Elvis picked up. He was yesterday's news the day before he died. If he had hung around another couple of decades, he would have been the biggest has-been in the world.

If Michael Jackson had survived longer, he would be in prison.

For the announcement of Ariana Grande as the new face of Givenchy, Clare Waight Keller put her in the original iconic Givenchy gown worn by Audrey Hepburn during the opening scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Waight Keller wants to bring the classic Audrey Hepburn aesthetic back to Givenchy.

[quote]Death at 42 is the only reason interest in Elvis picked up. He was yesterday's news the day before he died. If he had hung around another couple of decades, he would have been the biggest has-been in the world.

When Elvis died, People Magazine didn't feature him on the cover. It wasn't until 3 weeks later, that they finally mentioned something about his death but with Dan Rather on the cover.

R530 who was that said about?

I never thought Taylor was beautiful. She always looked old and bloated to me, even when she was young and supposedly at her height. There was just always something exceedingly dated about her - like a faded cover of a magazine.

More dated than fake eyebrows, exaggerated lip liner and with false lashes for miles?

And that face's been dry and wrinkled since her twenties.

That’s her hair and makeup from FUNNY FACE, not how she looked IRL.

She looks like a mime.

Audrey used the exact same style of theatrical makeup at her IRL wedding.

Did she marry Mel Ferrer on the rebound from Holden?

Elizabeth Taylor IRL around that age. Her power brows and lashes were more real-looking than Audrey's by comparison.

And Elizabeth in her prime was not fat. Just not as underweight as Audrey.

Hepburn had trouble getting roles as she aged, because she was notorious for fucking producers for parts.

There was always a new generation of fresh young party girls coming up, and there came a point where she just couldn't compete.

Audrey like other ex-Hollywood actresses living in Switzerland at the time took pills to curb her appetite It wasn't a secret nor was it considered a strange or deviant activity There were taught about pills in LA.and how to make them work for you

Incredible style - but with such ease. There's not another Hollywood actress who could have brought this...

[quote] I'll never forgive her for deciding not to travel to the US to film The Exorcist.

Mary!

Find it in your heart!!

R9 Has it right. She might have been pursued for the exorcist because she was a star and it would have had some novelty to see her in a movie like that. But its a better role for someone who projects fierce strength and is still way over her head

Audrey Hepburn is one of those actresses I'm indifferent to. I don't revere her, nor do I dislike her.

I'm trying to think of other female leads she could have reasonably played in other films from the late 60s and early 70s, but it's difficult. One film that popped into my head from the era is The Happy Ending starring Jean Simmons as an unhappy middle aged housewife (ok... I guess that's Two For The Road, now that I think about it?). I wonder if Audrey could have played a role like this? Audrey and Jean Simmons were the same age, so age-wise it would have worked... but I can't imagine Audrey in a role like this!

I remember my first exposure to Jean Simmons when I watched ELMER GANTRY for the first time. I kept thinking she was Audrey Hepburn.