LATE IN 1971, CAPUCINE HAD SOME INTERESTING NEWS TO report about Bill. Her romance with him was over, but they had remained friends. She learned that he had finally divorced Ardis, after thirty years of marriage, and the about-to-be ex–Mrs. Holden would be receiving half of his $8-million fortune. Audrey wasn’t surprised about the divorce—not after the vehicular manslaughter accident, and the death of Bill’s younger brother and, in 1967, his father. What was surprising was that Ardis apparently blamed Bill’s mother, Mary, who lived in an upscale retirement community not far from Bill’s California home, for encouraging her son to take that final step.
Columns predicted that Pat Stauffer would be Holden’s next wife, but Bill countered that he did not want to get married again. He commented that his divorce “cost me a small fortune . . . I had my independence, but the divorce was necessary to my way of thinking.” And how was his relationship with Ardis, now they were divorced? “Marvelous.”
She had nothing to say, then or later.
That year, Holden’s good friend Marty Rackin, who’d been head of production at Paramount at the time of Paris When It Sizzles, offered him the starring role in The Revengers, a Western that Rackin hoped would follow in the successful footsteps of The Wild Bunch. Rackin suffered a heart attack while preparing the picture, and the studio wanted to replace him. Bill stood by his good friend: “No Rackin, no Holden.” Bill prevailed.
Bill’s co-star was another Rackin favorite, Susan Hayward (born Edythe Marrenner in Brooklyn, New York). A year older than Holden, she’d known Bill since they were both young contract players at Paramount. Since then both had scaled the heights and won Oscars. For Hayward, it had been a long, hard climb. “As an actor, Bill is generous,” she noted. “He has enough ego that you respect him and he does his level best; and enough so he has room left over to care about the actor standing next to him.”
One of those actors was Bill’s twenty-six-year-old son Scott, who made his screen debut in a bit part as a cavalry lieutenant. Bill coached him, but he wasn’t happy that Scott was pursuing what would be a short-lived career as an actor. The young man had received a degree in business administration, and businessman was a profession Holden thoroughly approved of.
It was a busy year for Bill. He was sober again, and he made the most of it. He starred in a film for Universal directed by Clint Eastwood. Eastwood had begun a hugely successful career as a director, and it was Jennings Lang who had signed him to the studio. Breezy, written by Eastwood’s pal Jo Heims, was the story of a young hippie, played by upcoming young actress Kay Lenz, who has an affair with a conservative older man.
It was a venture dear to Eastwood’s heart, the budget was low, and it had been conceived as a vehicle for Clint, who decided that Holden, at fifty-three, a dozen years older, would be better casting. Holden’s salary wasn’t $750,000-plus-a-percentage—not even close. In order to work with Eastwood, he agreed to do the role for nothing. Breezy wasn’t expected to be a big moneymaker. Eastwood, candid as always, said up front that he did not expect it to make any money at all. It was a film he wanted to make because he loved Heims’s script.
Scott Holden had a small role, playing a veterinarian. Production went smoothly. Discussing the finished product with Universal’s New York publicity people, always an off-the-record, brainstorming-type get-together, Eastwood had only glowing things to say about Bill. He’d felt that he had delivered so many outstanding performances over the years that when they started shooting Breezy, Eastwood had been reluctant to give Bill any direction at all. But Bill told him early on not to hold back. “Every actor needs direction, Clint,” he said.
Breezy was a positive experience for all concerned. As predicted, the film wasn’t commercially successful. There was an amusing footnote: at a later point, Universal was contacted by the Screen Actors Guild. It was necessary that SAG member Holden be paid the scale salary of $4,000 for the six weeks he worked on the movie.
“It’s wonderful, but I simply can’t do it,” Audrey told her agent, and turned down Sam Spiegel’s offer to star in his epic production of Nicholas and Alexandra, based on the best-selling book by Robert K. Massie. Hepburn as the doomed czarina of Russia, in love with her husband, desperate about the poor health of their young son, enthralled by the spellbinding but evil Rasputin—this was indeed an enticing prospect and she would be perfectly cast. Location filming, however, would take her far away from home for a year, so it was out of the question: “I couldn’t take the stress of being away from the children.”
Warner Bros. offered her the starring role as the mother in The Exorcist, based on the best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty, a terrifying horror story based on the true story of a woman, a successful actress, whose young teenage daughter becomes possessed by a demon.
Audrey was now being offered mother-of-a-teenager roles? Playing a mother had been a bonanza for Joan Crawford, who was close to Audrey’s current age when she made Mildred Pierce, and for Lana Turner, who was younger than Audrey was now when she made Peyton Place and Imitation of Life. On Warners’ books, Audrey was box-office gold, with three huge winners: The Nun’s Story, My Fair Lady, and Wait Until Dark. The director of The Exorcist would be William Friedkin, one of the best of the new breed. Her agents begged her to do it, and she agreed: if the picture were made in Rome. That ended that. The movie, which starred Ellen Burstyn, went on to become one of the biggest box-office hits of all time (Nicholas and Alexandra was far less successful). Audrey would have made millions—and perhaps would have won that second Oscar.
She didn’t turn down all offers. She said yes to a request to appear in a TV special about the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). It was fascinating to watch how the children were captivated by her, and it was obvious she returned the affection. The program was seen all over the world.
For a $1 million fee, she said yes to a TV commercial for a Japanese wig manufacturer. The commercial would air only in Japan, where Audrey was an icon. Other top stars, including Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, were doing commercials for Japanese companies, for the same $1 million fee. Filming took only four to five hours; $250,000 per hour wasn’t bad for less than a day’s work.
Dotti’s family had obviously applied pressure on him to settle down and become a proper father and husband, and for the next several years the couple seemed to lead a traditional married life. Divorce was not an option for Audrey—she was going to be certain that Luca had the benefit of a mother and a father at home. Andrea’s work fascinated her; his profession dealt with the workings of the mind. She wasn’t a frivolous soul. She was a great fan of the films of Ingmar Bergman, whose dark excursions into the human psyche were hardly Neil Simon laugh riots.
Audrey felt complete—for a while. Baby Luca was a joy, and Sean was developing into a fine young man (by the age of fifteen, he would stand six feet three). She had stopped being an actress and had gotten her wish. She would become “an Italian housewife,” an “ordinary” woman who would be home if her husband came home from work unexpectedly. Some Italian men expected that. She seemed content to go about her wifely, and motherly, chores, often unrecognized in the crowded streets of Rome. For the time being, one of the most famous women of the era was anonymous. She loved to shop in the many high-end Roman boutiques that had popped up; she didn’t have the time or inclination anymore to spend endless hours being fitted for Givenchy couture. At home, there was a household staff, but Audrey was in charge. Then, once again, there were rumblings about her husband’s wandering ways.
In Italy in the mid-1970s, there was political turmoil and life for the wealthy suddenly took on ominous, dangerous overtones. There was a rash of kidnap threats. A member of the prominent Bulgari family was successfully abducted. In Milan, potential victims were shot in the kneecaps. In Rome, when an attempt was made to kidnap Dotti, Audrey was terrified. It was all a chilling reminder of her World War II days. Bodyguards suddenly became essential employees; Audrey and Mel agreed that it was best for Sean, now fourteen, to be sent to a Swiss boarding school. Audrey and four-year-old Luca relocated to her beautiful Swiss home, where Dotti visited frequently. Her mother came to live with her for a while, supervising the domicile. But the baroness was growing older, and physical problems were taking their toll. Audrey wanted her close by, even though they didn’t always get along. And she needed her for moral support—at the age of forty-five, she discovered she was pregnant again.
Audrey suffered another miscarriage that summer of 1974. In the midst of her sadness and depression, producer Ray Stark made her an offer to return to the screen. This time, encouraged by her husband, she expressed interest.
The vehicle appealed to her—it wasn’t the typical sex-and-violence story that she abhorred. She’d turned down an opportunity, years earlier, to star in a Hitchcock film because of certain scenes in the script, especially one in which her character was being strangled. But sex, violence, and immorality summarized current film fare. Interestingly, Bill Holden shared Audrey’s view of sex-on-screen: “In general, I don’t care for scenes of copulation,” he said. “Certain functions of the human body are private.” He’d refused to do such a scene, back in 1969, for The Christmas Tree, a film directed by Audrey’s great friend Terence Young. It took a visit to the Paris location from Pat Stauffer to convince Bill to cooperate, at least to an extent, as Young felt the scene essential to the story.
Audrey knew people associated her with a time when movies were pleasant, when women were beautifully dressed, and even the music was beautiful. Now, she felt, people were frightened by the movies. But she would always view herself as a realistic romantic—it was, she explained, possible to be both—and she still very much believed in love, a belief she shared with the character she was about to portray.
The original title of Robin and Marian had been The Death of Robin Hood, and the script was by James Goldman, who had written The Lion in Winter. Sean Connery would play Robin. When Audrey signed on, the title was changed to Robin and Marian. It was conceived to be a thoughtful, bittersweet, romantic tale, which had the unhappiest of endings—both Robin and Marian die, in a Romeo and Juliet–type plot turn. Only it’s Marian who feeds Robin the poison, and then she drinks it herself, in what turned out to be an awkwardly staged scene.
Audrey was pleased that her role was age-appropriate. Although there were always offers to do so, at this point she would not play some version of Sabrina, the princess in Roman Holiday, or Holly Golightly. (Holden, on the other hand, resented the fact that he could no longer play the young leading man.)
Robin and Marian presented the lovers in troubled middle age. Marian had become a nun. It would not be a protracted shooting schedule—a mere six weeks, for which she’d be paid $1 million. The money would be welcome. Audrey’s lifestyle, never extravagant like Elizabeth Taylor’s (Taylor was “the last of the big splurgers,” according to their mutual friend George Cukor), was nonetheless extremely costly. She was planning on buying more property in Switzerland, but she was wary, and nervous, at the prospect of facing the cameras again after such a long sabbatical. Her inner circle pointed out, and Audrey agreed, that in a worst-case scenario, where things didn’t work out, it was hardly the end of the world.
She felt secure knowing that Richard Shepherd, who had co-produced Breakfast at Tiffany’s, would be on board in the same capacity for Robin and Marian. Ray Stark had met all of her demands. Because shooting would take place in Spain, Audrey would take along Luca and his nanny, her makeup artist, her hairdresser, and an assistant.
A top supporting cast had been signed: Robert Shaw, Nicol Williamson, Denholm Elliott, and Kenneth Haigh. The major mistake was in selecting Richard Lester to direct. A top talent, he was nonetheless the wrong choice. Lester’s films were strictly fast-moving and action-packed—the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and The Three Musketeers were hardly tender love stories, although Connery was a big fan of Lester’s work and wanted him on the film.
The problem wasn’t that there was a generation gap between Hepburn and Lester. Audrey was only three years older. But she required, and was accustomed to, directors who knew how to present her—how to make her feel secure and loved. Wyler, Wilder, Donen, and the like were artists who had the patience, sensitivity, and desire to enable her to bloom into Audrey Hepburn, who, she was the first to admit, was a carefully wrought creation of actress, script, director, cameraman, costume designer, and all the craftsmen necessary to produce a great film.
She had no illusions about her abilities: “I’m no Laurence Olivier, no virtuoso talent.” Some found it hard to believe, but it was true that she thought of herself as somewhat inhibited: “I find it difficult to do things in front of people.” Reentering the moviemaking arena after eight years gave her stomachaches. Especially when it became clear, very early on, that she had made a wrong choice for her comeback. “Comeback” was a term she loathed: she’d never formally announced that she’d retired. How, therefore, could this be a comeback? Nonetheless, a key ad line promoting the film would be: “The Return of a Great Star.”
Audrey had no rapport with Lester; no confidence in him. But she always gave every project her unconditional best, and this would be no exception. She soldiered on, even contending with a bout of dysentery along the way. She’d never made a movie with such a short shooting schedule and was unnerved that Lester was satisfied with one or two takes of a scene. With Wyler, she often repeated a scene dozens of times. She shook with nerves before each take, and, in her polite but incisive way, let Lester know that sacrificing quality for speed was not the way she was used to working. If this was the current way of doing things, she had not been missing much.
She was forty-six, and angles, filters, and lighting were more important than ever. The cameraman was using a lot of natural light, which was unflattering to any actress over forty, especially one with an image to uphold. Audrey was very unhappy with the photography. On Paris When It Sizzles she had been able to have the cameraman replaced. That was not the case on Robin and Marian. No one seemed to care about such details.
In fact, Audrey looked good in the film, much better than she might have thought. The problems with the movie had nothing to do with her or her appearance. The first ten minutes, before she’s even on-screen, were incredibly talky and boring. The renowned Richard Lester’s talent-for-action scenes was glaringly absent. Attempts at humor were forced. In one of very few romantic moments, not many actresses could have played with such delicacy and strength the scene in which Marian tells Robin how handsome he’d been, what a wonderful body he had—“And it was all mine,” she says wonderingly, her soft voice filled with exactly the right sentiment and emotion.
Critic Roger Ebert would astutely note: “What prevents the movie from really losing its way . . . are the performances of Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. . . . No matter what the director and writer may think, Connery and Hepburn seem to have arrived at a tacit understanding between themselves about their characters. They glow. They really do seem in love.”
While in Spain, Audrey was disheartened and embarrassed when she saw photos of Dotti in the tabloids, posed in nightclubs with young women. “Don’t believe what you see, believe what I tell you” was basically his explanation. Audrey later remarked: “Dotti was not much of an improvement over Ferrer.” Actually, he was no improvement; at least Ferrer had been a partner in her career.
Ray Stark made certain Robin and Marian was launched in spectacular fashion. Although Connery was billed first, Audrey’s name, beside his, was a line above it. The advertising slogan reflected the audience the producers were hoping to reach: “Love Is the Greatest Adventure of All.” The film debuted at Radio City Music Hall in New York, and it was a major event. Columnist Earl Wilson later recalled: “It was one of those Ray Stark specials. I’d always found Audrey of interest, going back to her Bill Holden days. The lengths they’d gone to in order to cover that up! And now she was having big problems with the Italian doctor she’d married, and were doing their best to cover that up.”
What made Audrey different, for Wilson, was the contrast between the women she’d played on-screen and the woman she was offscreen. The sex symbols could not get away with anything for long, “but the Hepburns could play a different game, unless they made a real blunder, like Ingrid Bergman. Today, of course, it doesn’t matter. Look at Vanessa Redgrave!” Wilson had broken the big story, only a few years earlier, that the unmarried Redgrave was pregnant with her lover Franco Nero’s child. Redgrave had casually revealed the fact to Wilson in the course of an interview and couldn’t have cared less when the news broke. Wilson made certain that the publicist present at the interview would confirm the facts, if it became an issue.
There would never be any revelations from Audrey about her private life. Accompanied by Dotti, she had flown in to attend the Radio City opening. They’d momentarily resolved their differences. She was genuinely moved, and surprised, at audience reaction to her in-person appearance—she was truly idolized and loved (was it possible that it had been almost ten years since Wait Until Dark had premiered at this very theater?). She was terrified at the prospect of appearing onstage—there were more than 6,000 people in that audience—and backstage, her nerves almost got the best of her.
But if she’d had any doubts and concerns about the public having a short memory, and apparently she did, they disappeared after her reception. “We love you, Audrey,” chanted many in the audience, and she was deeply moved.
Still, the $6-million movie turned out to be a big financial disappointment. At least Audrey was back on-screen, although she said she didn’t know if she would ever make another film. Rumors were that there was another script she liked, but she wouldn’t comment on it. It’s unlikely she wanted Robin and Marian to be her swan song.
At this time, two women from Audrey’s professional past—Edith Head, now in charge of costume supervision at Universal, and Sheilah Graham, still writing a syndicated gossip column—were brought together for an interview, in the Edwardian Room of the Plaza Hotel, to publicize Head’s affiliation with Universal. They were both dressed in black. It was late afternoon, the room was almost empty, and the two women couldn’t decide where to sit, changing tables and chattering all the while. Finally, to the relief of the nervous maître d’, a table was chosen.
The gossip was nonstop, and at one point the young Universal publicist who had set up the meeting mentioned that it was wonderful, wasn’t it, that Audrey Hepburn was back on the screen? There was dead silence from both women. “Just wonderful!” snapped Head, with Graham telling the publicist: “You’re too young, dear, to know what Edith has been through with Audrey. But you’re right, she’s still a big star.” Graham turned to Head: “—and so are you, Edith!”