FROM THE MOMENT AUDREY ARRIVED IN HOLLYWOOD TO prepare for Sabrina, before she had even met Bill, one thing was certain—she knew her life was never going to be the same. Expectations were sky-high, and she felt the pressure, personally and professionally. “Don’t fuss, dear, just get on with it,” was what her mother always told her. But still—in this film, she’d be “on” from Scene 1, when Sabrina’s voice begins the picture: “Once upon a time, on the North Shore of Long Island, some thirty miles from New York, there lived a small girl on a large estate. . . .”
There was no shortage of large estates in Beverly Hills, but Audrey was living modestly in what screenwriter Ernest Lehman described as “a nondescript apartment in Westwood.” It was a neighborhood bordered by three posh enclaves: Brentwood, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills. Los Angeles gave Audrey culture shock. She was accustomed to cosmopolitan European cities and their way of life. But Hollywood was a small, provincial town devoted to a single obsession—movies, and the people who made them; in addition, it was a goldfish bowl as far as its inhabitants’ private lives were concerned. Having the biggest house, the most dazzling jewels, earning the highest salary—these were the governing tenets. Becoming a California resident was never Audrey’s plan.
Tinseltown’s power hostesses zoned in on Audrey like heat-seeking missiles. Her social pedigree set her apart—in a town full of phonies, Audrey Hepburn was the real thing, a genuine aristocrat by birth, entitled to call herself a baroness, which she never did, then or later. In an unheard-of gesture to a newcomer, the formidable Doris and Jules Stein (he was founder of MCA) hosted a “Welcome to Hollywood” gala in Audrey’s honor at their breathtaking, treasure-filled home. “You had to be a star simply to be a waiter at that party,” recalled Jennings Lang. “If you weren’t on the guest list, you had to crawl out of town.” Mr. and Mrs. Bill Holden, of course, had been on the list, but the couple was away at the time. Hepburn had been forewarned about many things, including Holden—too good-looking, he loves and leaves his leading ladies, then goes back home to his wife.
Audrey would not permit herself to fall into that trap. There would hardly be a shortage of men eager to catch Audrey’s eye. She enjoyed socializing and was a seasoned pro at protocol. As she was no stranger to the homes of European aristocrats, the grandeur of Beverly Hills royalty seemed to pale a bit by comparison. Nouveau riche didn’t exactly exude the same aura. She became a prized guest at the sprawling ten-acre estate of Jack and Ann Warner. If one hoped to win an Oscar, socializing was essential, and Audrey wanted to win. She was a refreshing new face and, amazingly, was neither affected nor arrogant. She actually seemed grateful for the interest in her. She had a sense of humor, too—when a waiter edged a tray past nearby Peter Lawford’s head, she playfully cautioned: “Look out for your head, Mr. Lawford!”
“Is she for real?” wondered observers. “Isn’t she a duchess or something?” Her Roman Holiday co-star, Gregory Peck, described her not as regal, but “spunky . . . a very lovable girl who would make faces and clown.”
The utter simplicity of her look was in stark contrast to the ultra-bejeweled, sequined, elaborately coiffed female denizens occupying the highest levels of Hollywood society. She shook a lot of hands, smiled brightly, and spoke quietly and modestly. Everyone seemed to know each other, exchanging anecdotes and laughing heartily at them; sometimes Audrey was completely bewildered, with no idea what they were talking about, but she laughed, too. Everyone seemed to want to overwhelm her with their charm.
Columnist Doris Lilly, thirty-one-year-old California-born author of the best-seller How to Marry a Millionaire, was a tall, sexy blonde who took note of new arrivals on the New York and Hollywood scenes. (Ms. Lilly was the inspiration for Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.) “It’s always the sweet, innocent-looking, ethereal types, the Audrey Hepburns, who are the real potential threats to Hollywood wives,” noted Lilly.
The start date for Sabrina was approaching, and Audrey concentrated on all the things she must do; she felt conscious of herself as “Audrey Hepburn,” an illusion in the public eye, created out of her own work, publicity photographs, ever-present currents of gossip, the whole Cinderella myth. There had been A Star Is Born–type layouts in Life and Look magazines. There had been speculation, before Sabrina was set, that she’d be Brando’s leading lady in Désirée; Joseph L. Mankiewicz wanted her to star in his proposed film of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
But Audrey was unusual in that she didn’t fall into the trap of believing her own publicity, which had ensnared many actors. Her broad perspective was no doubt a legacy of her horrendous World War II experiences. She wouldn’t discuss those years but suffered from anemia as a result of them and had seen one of her half-brothers sent to a labor camp. None of it was something she felt should be linked to publicity.
She could appreciate the irony that while she’d spent years studying ballet and never became a dancer, she hadn’t spent any time studying acting and was becoming a movie and stage star.
The intrusiveness of the press made her uncomfortable. Reporters had insinuated, incorrectly, that she had been the cause of the breakup of Roman Holiday co-star Gregory Peck’s marriage. From then on, her byword regarding the media was caution. Her attitude gave her an aura of reserve, which had the effect of making the press even more curious: what was she really like?
Bill could not wait to meet Audrey. She’d captivated him in Roman Holiday. He saw a radiance in her that he knew couldn’t have been faked by even the most gifted director and cameraman. He was actually nervous at the prospect of working with her—what if there was no chemistry between them? And what if that quality she had on-screen only came through on-screen? Experience had taught him that that was not uncommon. He would trust his instincts—he was older and felt that he was wiser than she.
As Audrey would discover, Bill’s background—like hers—was intriguing, not standard Hollywood stuff. He was not a street kid who’d had to claw his way to respectability. His reasonably well-to-do family’s roots traced back to George Washington’s mother, and he was always proud of the fact that he was distantly related to “one of the founders of our country.” Bill was Irish-English-German, “mixed in an American shaker,” as he liked to say. His maternal grandfather was a cousin of Warren G. Harding, twenty-ninth president of the United States.
Bill had been born William Franklin Beedle Jr. in O’Fallon, Illinois, on April 17, 1918. When he was three, the family moved to Pasadena, California. His father, William, was an industrial chemist; his mother, Mary, a teacher. He had two younger brothers, Robert (Bob) Westfield Beedle, and Richard (Dick Porter) Beedle.
It would come as no surprise to Audrey to learn that Bill had been a rebellious kid, a restless spirit. He was driven to prove himself to his father, who never told Bill that he loved him (Audrey was convinced that her own father had never loved her). Beedle Sr. was a tall, good-looking man with a knockout smile, a former amateur gymnast who’d taught his sons how to tumble, box, and keep physically fit.
Young Bill had been fearless—wire walking on telephone lines; racing his motorcycle—he once even did a handstand on top of the Aurora Bridge in Pasadena. There was nothing of that nature he wouldn’t try, either in his youth or as an adult. Terrified onlookers, including current pals from the movie business, didn’t realize that he actually knew what he was doing, and his expertise would come in handy for a crucial confrontation scene between him and Bogart in Sabrina.
Moss Hart once described the theater as “the inevitable refuge for the unhappy child.” In 1937, a Paramount talent scout had spotted nineteen-year-old Bill portraying an eighty-year-old in a Pasadena Playhouse production; the studio signed him to a contract. Even after that, his father still wanted him to become a chemist, like him. Beedle Sr. never forgave his son, and in years to come, when Bill was in his thirties, he would sadly describe his parents’ relationship with him as “detached.”
While young Bill was learning the ropes at Paramount, his brother Bob enlisted as a pilot in the naval air corps. Inspired by his younger brother, Bill too wanted to join the service; Paramount wouldn’t release him from his contract. But after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, Bill was the first married star to enlist. One night, sound asleep in the barracks, Bill awoke from a nightmare, overwhelmed by a feeling that something horrible had happened. The feeling lingered for days, and on January 4, 1944, he learned that his brother’s plane had been shot down. Bob was dead. It was a heart-wrenching time for Bill, his surviving brother, and their parents. Bill, as always, kept his sorrow to himself.
To the world at large, Bill seemed forthright and uncomplicated, but his striking good looks and personal charm were deceiving. They masked a very complex nature, although actor Cliff Robertson, a close friend in later years, had another opinion: “Bill didn’t seem that complex to me. I think he simply felt out-of-sync with a complicated environment.”
Audrey was accustomed to complicated environments, and she seemed to be coping well enough with the current one. Even before they met, Bill empathized with her predicament—sudden stardom, and the pressures it brought, which were not at all what people thought. He was curious to find out how Audrey was handling it all with such aplomb. Or was she? The young Bill in 1937, like the young Audrey who had just arrived in Hollywood, had virtually no acting experience. As Paul Newman once said about the actor’s art, “It’s like being stark naked, in front of an audience, and having to turn around very, very slowly. . . .”
Bill had experienced that feeling firsthand, at twenty-one, when, after making a couple of minor movies, he landed the title role in the film version of Clifford Odets’s highly lauded play, Golden Boy, in which he would portray a young man torn between becoming a violinist or a boxer. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of the film’s star, Barbara Stanwyck, he would have been fired, but instead he succeeded and for years Golden Boy, released in 1939, typed Holden as the screen’s “All-American Boy.” Stanwyck was fourteen years older than Bill, had been a star for almost a dozen years, and became, in effect, Bill’s protector and confidante. He was forever grateful; every year thereafter he sent her dozens of roses on her birthday.
Almost forty years after Golden Boy, at the 1978 broadcast of the Oscars, Holden appeared onstage with Stanwyck and emotionally paid tribute to her, describing her as “a lovely human being” and explaining how “her interest, and understanding, and professional integrity, and her encouragement, and above all her generosity” had enabled him to succeed. She was overcome. “Oh, Bill,” she said, hugging him.
After being discharged from the service, the Golden Boy faced tough times professionally. He was no longer a “boy,” and he had a family to support. Son Peter was born in 1943, and Scott in 1946. His wife, Ardis, had been an actress under contract to Warner Bros. The studio tried making her a star and renamed her Brenda Marshall, but she gave up her career to become a full-time wife and mother. Of these years, when Bill couldn’t afford to buy his growing family a larger house, Holden said, “If I hadn’t had a family, I would not have found the strength to go on.” But cracks had begun appearing in their marriage, and Ardis told friends that giving up her career might not have been such a great idea.
It was not until 1950, five years after being discharged from the service, that Bill played Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard and thus reached A-list stardom. Bill was nominated for an Oscar for his performance but lost to José Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac. Stalag 17, Holden’s next film directed by Wilder, would change all that.
The year 1954 was extraordinarily good for Bill. Fifteen years after Golden Boy, Holden starred with none other than his darling “Missy” Stanwyck and his childhood idol, Fredric March, in MGM’s all-star production of Executive Suite. Working with Stanwyck again brought him the kind of satisfaction that was usually lacking in his professional life. He was deeply moved to see her so proud of him. “I told you!” she said.
As for Fredric March—he was pleasant enough, and, surprisingly, had a playful sense of humor. He got a kick out of the fact that Holden had been a young fan of his, and in later years would offer Bill valuable career advice. A longtime Holden girlfriend, blonde bombshell Shelley Winters, also had a starring role in the film. Even though Bill’s good looks were hard to ignore, “By this time, our relationship was history,” recalled Winters.
The extent of Audrey’s success, after only one screen vehicle, was reflected in the fact that for Sabrina, she was to receive billing above the experienced Holden. Billing was at the discretion of their studio, Paramount. Holden wasn’t thrilled with this—he felt that Paramount, after a dozen years, was still treating him as new kid on the block.
There were actors who actually counted the number of lines they had in a script, judging their importance to the project accordingly. Bill Holden was hardly in this group, yet he was acutely aware that a studio could sabotage any player if and when it wanted to. Warner Bros., for example, was notorious for breaking expensive star contracts by delivering inferior scripts it knew the actor would have to turn down, if he or she hoped to maintain status. Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart were stellar examples of this practice.
Happy-go-lucky attitude aside, Bill cared. He was on a roll, but never for a moment did he doubt that his, or any star’s, future, was at best uncertain. “Bill was certain he’d wake up one day and discover the whole thing was one big joke,” said his pal, actor Robert Mitchum.
It was no joke to Audrey—star billing and the star treatment were the least of her concerns at this moment. She was still adjusting to having ended her relationship with fiancé James Hanson, a British baron. It had been unpleasant. He was handsome, wealthy (the family owned a trucking firm); he had said he loved her and had made frequent trips to be by her side. He once flew to New York when she was appearing on Broadway in Gigi, and the couple was photographed all over town, including enjoying the sights at Rockefeller Center. But, obviously, Hanson did not understand what drove her. He expected Audrey to retire and be content as his wife. If his intention was to make her jealous by being seen and photographed in European nightclubs and at top restaurants with various beauties, he miscalculated. The baroness had urged her daughter to move on, although she would later admit that at least Hanson did not have the complication of a wife and children that Holden had.
On top of everything else, Audrey had to contend with the fact that she was the envy of her peers. It had taken Bill over a dozen years to reach that level; but what exactly had young Audrey done to deserve such sudden, extravagant success? Many of Hollywood’s veterans resented her; they felt she had not paid any dues. First, Gregory Peck as a leading man; now, for Sabrina, Cary Grant and Bill Holden had been announced as her co-stars. (It should be noted, Audrey’s salary, meanwhile, was not remotely in the league of her co-stars, who were earning more than twenty times what she was, but her agents would soon rectify this.) And to have Billy Wilder as her next director! First the celebrated William Wyler, on Roman Holiday, now Wilder.
So far she had been incredibly lucky, she knew that—but why didn’t people realize she had indeed worked hard to reach this point? She was coming off a workload that would have overwhelmed many of her contemporaries. Marilyn Monroe struggled merely to complete a film shot at her home studio in Hollywood. Hepburn had no sooner finished Roman Holiday in Rome, a very difficult four-month shoot, during stiflingly hot and humid weather, when, immediately afterward, she embarked on an arduous cross-country tour of the United States in Gigi, a contractual commitment she could not break.
Through it all, she often felt unwell and was grateful that her mother was there to watch over her. The Gigi company played major cities from coast to coast, including a two-week run at the Biltmore Theater in Los Angeles. Warm applause from a live audience and signing autographs for admiring fans was hardly unpleasant, but acting was not second nature to her; she was learning her craft while the world watched (as had Holden, who had great respect for the fact that Audrey was successful on the stage).
She took the profession of acting, whether onstage or in front of a camera, very seriously. Bernard Drew, a writer and critic of film and theater, later made an interesting observation: “Audrey was not a great stage actress—she was a presence onstage. In the two roles I saw her do—‘Gigi’ and, later, ‘Ondine,’ she was exactly right in type for those parts, to such an extent that it made up for her lack of technique as a stage actress. Claudette Colbert, for example, was an even better stage actress than she was in films. But movies were the ideal medium for Audrey—she was made for them.” And she preferred them—though circumstances could be unpredictable.
A week before production on Sabrina was to begin, the trade papers announced that Cary Grant might not do the film. Was this how Hollywood worked? Audrey was surprised, disappointed, and worried. Grant was perfect casting for the role of the urbane, serious, workaholic, worldly-wise older brother, Linus Larabee, who ultimately ends up competing with his playboy brother (Holden) for Sabrina’s affections. She was thrilled at the prospect of working with both actors. But Grant had had reservations all along: was he too old to be her leading man? He was fifty. Would neophyte Audrey become the object of most of the director’s efforts? Furthermore, Wilder and Holden had already worked together successfully on two films and knew each other well—where would that leave Cary? Despite Billy Wilder’s impassioned pleas, Grant withdrew.
Enter Humphrey Bogart, whose career had been reborn, big-time, with his Academy Award–winning performance two years earlier in The African Queen. He was in demand at all the studios, and he was the last-minute replacement for Grant. Despite murmurings of miscasting, Bogart was a smart choice. The excitement about the trio of stars for Sabrina was maintained. But with “Bogie” came other problems—he resented the fact that he was second choice; he was wary of playing romantic comedy, which was Cary Grant’s forte, not his (that had been one of the studio’s major concerns); and at fifty-four, he was thirty years older than his inexperienced leading lady (and offscreen he more than looked it) and twenty years older than Bill Holden, his “rival” for Sabrina’s affections.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m rewriting the part for you. You’ll be great! Trust me,” enthused Wilder. Besides rewriting, the director warned cameraman Charles Lang not to backlight Bogart, who tended to “spit” out his lines, literally. But Bogart had reservations about Wilder: they had never worked together before, and he was accustomed to pals like director John Huston, whose laconic style was the antithesis of Wilder’s. And finally, unknown to Wilder and virtually anyone else, other than his wife, Lauren Bacall, Bogart was not in the best of health (he was to die four years later).
Bogart and Bacall had co-starred in hit films, and there were even comments that Bogart felt Bacall should be playing Sabrina. His marriage to Bacall, who was twenty-five years younger, negated any undue attention to the age differential between Bogie and Hepburn. If he could be married in real life to a gorgeous, much younger woman and have two children with her, it made perfect sense that a younger woman would be attracted to him on-screen. Of course, it was unimaginable that a female star Bogart’s age would be cast opposite a leading man Audrey’s age, with the couple getting married and living happily ever after.
Fortunately for Audrey, there was a mutual admiration society between her and Billy Wilder. They had personal history in common: the Nazis had directly affected both their lives. Born in 1906 in Sucha Beskidzka, Austria-Hungary, Wilder, who was Jewish, had fled to America in 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party. At the time he was making Sabrina, Billy was forty-seven, a head shorter than Audrey, and bursting with vitality and enthusiasm. He was one of Paramount’s platinum talents, an Oscar-winning writer-producer-director of extraordinary ability and versatility: his prior successes included several screen classics, including Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, and his two hits with Holden, Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17. Wilder was very much looking forward to working with Bill again—and with Audrey. He even gave Audrey a present that she loved: a bicycle, which had been her major source of transportation back home.