A YOUNG WOMAN FELL IN LOVE WITH A MARRIED MAN AT their workplace.
Because of her youth, she was romantic and thought she knew more than she did. She had to be romantic, because she’d already had too much reality in her life. Her entire adolescence had been one of deprivation and danger. During those years, her dream was to become a ballerina. She didn’t just dream, though. She worked hard at it. But in spite of her discipline and diligence, her much-respected teacher told her that she simply did not have the gift necessary to become a great dancer.
In appearance, she exuded an air of extreme fragility. Her slim frame, huge, almond-shaped hazel eyes, her infectious laugh and genial disposition, her lilting, soft voice, and her impeccable manners gave the impression that, more than anything else in the world, she wanted to please. Yet behind all this was a steely resolve that surfaced in the face of any disappointment.
The workplace that had brought the lovers together was hardly “fun”; in fact, it could be described as hostile, with a tough boss and one particularly irascible, unfriendly, and unsympathetic coworker. Working with such intense individuals proved exhausting, and she was beset by uncertainty, anxiety, and fear. Compounding the situation was the fact that she’d had no formal training for the job she was hired to do. She needed a protector, and there he was; he was a godsend, in a way.
The young woman was Audrey Hepburn, the man was William Holden. And events were on the fast track for both of them.
Audrey’s twice-divorced mother, the formidable Baroness Ella van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston, was upset that her daughter was in a serious relationship with anyone, least of all American film star Holden. He wanted to marry her? For God’s sake, he was a married man with three children, although Bill was not the first married man Audrey had been involved with (nor was she the first young actress who had captured his heart).
Powerhouse gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, a woman who could wreck careers, was onto the scent; nothing pleased Hedda more than puncturing the romantic illusions of Hollywood’s chosen. Anybody who was “sleeping around” aroused her wrath and her ire, and if Hedda was instrumental in destroying them in the process, “the sons-of-bitches asked for it.” Powerful forces at Paramount, and her agents, were protecting Audrey—and Bill—but could only keep the lid on so long. “America’s New Sweetheart” (who was not American at all, but European) was tempting fate.
Hepburn and Holden—along with Humphrey Bogart, who disliked them both and didn’t hesitate to voice his complaints—were deep into production on the troubled Billy Wilder film Sabrina, which had brought the lovers together in the first place. Things were not proceeding smoothly. “Warm up the ice cubes!” Holden would exclaim at the end of a shooting day on most of his films. But, on occasion, there were liquid lunches. Dry martinis were his favorite. As far as director Joshua Logan’s experience with Bill was concerned, “He never drank before the end of the shooting day. But once we had reached that part of the day, the gin industry began to prosper. Yet somehow it never seemed to affect him. It did not alter his speech, his wit, or his warmth. He was simply a red-blooded American boy who wanted to have a good time, and believe me, he did.”
Audrey liked a good time, too; she had not been in Hollywood very long (Sabrina was only her second starring role), and she did not like the place very much. But Holden’s outgoing manner and charm were infectious, and she was not accustomed to red-blooded American men. She wasn’t an innocent, in fact she was flirtatious and adventurous, and could tell a ribald joke (in a most ladylike fashion, of course).
Bill radiated vitality and virility. He was a gentleman, but there was an edge to him: “I don’t know why,” he once said, “but danger has always been an important thing in my life—to see how far I could lean without falling, how fast I could go without cracking up.”
Holden, his dark hair bleached blond for the film, was just under six feet tall, with a dazzling smile—“His smile could charm the birds out of the trees,” noted actress Martha Hyer—and eyes “that were like cornflower-blue sapphires with lights behind them!” Those eyes were constantly focused on Audrey. The sound of his voice was comforting, and his touch seductive. Making movies, especially romantic ones, was about attractive actors gazing at each other, touching each other, day after day, week after week, making intimate relationships almost inevitable. “My God, Audrey and Bill were the most beautiful-to-look-at couple you ever saw!” remarked designer Edith Head. But the Holden situation was poison for Audrey’s image—and Bill’s. In spite of recent hard-edged roles, he was the idealized All-American Man, in every way: handsome, forthright, sincere, honest, patriotic. And the Ideal Husband, Lover, and Father. But he was wild about Audrey; he had never been happier and didn’t seem to care that he was breaking the rules. As he once said, “For me, acting is not an all-consuming thing, except for the moment when I’m actually doing it. There is a point beyond acting, a point where living becomes important.”
Audrey’s mother, a great beauty in her own right, had spent a lifetime bringing her daughter to this fairy-tale point as a Hollywood princess. During her childhood, Audrey had had to contend not only with the Nazi horror but with a father, a banker, who was a Nazi sympathizer (a fact Audrey’s publicity people had so far successfully obscured). But the baroness, with infectious vigor, saw to it that her children’s spirits (Audrey had two half-brothers, Alexander and Jan) remained unbroken.
Audrey had recently ended the most serious relationship of her young life, with a dashing British millionaire who wanted to marry her. For many young women, it would have been an easy choice to opt for comfort and security. Audrey chose to pursue her career. “I always wanted to make something of myself,” she later declared emphatically.
The road to Sabrina—and Bill—hadn’t been easy, despite what people thought. Audrey had been a chorus girl, model, film extra, and bit player. One day the French author Colette (Gigi) saw her in a hotel, in the south of France working on a British film, and cried out: “There’s my ‘Gigi’!” The girl was not only smilingly pretty and fresh; she had a velvety voice that was pure as a child’s. For Colette, Audrey was a revelation, enchanting, a delicious pleasure. Virtually overnight, she became a star on Broadway in Colette’s play, based on the novel.
In contrast, Bill’s path to true stardom, which one wag compared to “a salmon swimming upstream,” had taken over a decade. His breakthrough to major leading-man status had been relatively recent. When director Billy Wilder cast him, only four years earlier, as the leading man in Sunset Boulevard, the industry—and the movie-going public—rediscovered him. In the new era of Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, Holden emerged as no longer the boy next door, but a tough contemporary screen presence “guilty of not being innocent.” He proved he had the ability to play a cynical, disillusioned character, while remaining vulnerable and likable. In a changing cinema landscape, Holden now fit right in.
In 1954, Audrey and Bill were both in contention for Academy Awards: Audrey, first time out in a major role, as Best Actress for Roman Holiday, Bill as Best Actor for Stalag 17. It was a well-kept secret that for a key scene in her film, calling for Audrey to cry, it had been necessary to blow menthol into her eyes to produce the required tears. So far, grosses of the film in America were below expectations, but overseas it was a blockbuster. Bill’s film was a hit everywhere.
Twenty-four-year-old Audrey had become an instantaneous trendsetter in the fashion world. Her short haircut and doe-eyed makeup were the new rage among women of all ages. Ironically, she not only had serious misgivings about her looks, but, to the consternation of her studio, she voiced them: she thought her nose was too big and did not like her smile. Almost five feet seven without heels, rail-thin at 110 pounds, she had a twenty-inch waist and had redefined the requirement that screen goddesses be petite, curvy, and voluptuous (Marilyn Monroe was at her peak). Director Billy Wilder was quoted: “She might single-handedly make bazooms a thing of the past.”
Thanks to Audrey, a boyish silhouette was “in.” Even her low-heeled shoes, in an era of high heels, started a trend. She wore them “because I wanted to feel smaller.” And there was another reason: the years of ballet had wreaked havoc on her feet—high heels were too painful. She projected a strong sense of self on-screen—she was likable and warm, and exuded an image of manners and attitudes that reflected inner taste and what was then referred to as “breeding.”
Now Bill Holden was going to spoil all this? Audrey was the new icon of screen romance. The “romance” designation was fine with her, but the halo of ladylike goodness the press pinned on her both confused and amused her. The designation of home wrecker, however, would be no laughing matter and could potentially annihilate the Cinderella story of the decade. The disapproval of those around her failed to deter Audrey; she was determined and eager to marry Bill Holden, who was wild about her. No matter that he had serious issues of his own; his feelings for Audrey were what they were, and he could hardly be pushed around by the studio. Paramount had a fortune invested in both actors. Holden and Hepburn could very well turn out to be Oscar’s Best Actor and Actress of 1953, and teaming them in Sabrina was a potential gold mine.
It was the Eisenhower era—Doris Day’s bouncy rendition of “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby” was topping the Billboard charts—and the illusion of propriety was essential in maintaining the careers of Hollywood gods and goddesses. In addition to Hedda Hopper, and her archrivals Louella Parsons and Sheilah Graham, a new predator was sniffing around: the dreaded Confidential magazine, a wildly successful tabloid that paid big bucks to learn “the secret lives of the stars,” and damn the consequences. Certain stars’ steamy private lives actually helped the box office grosses of their films. “Neither Audrey Hepburn nor Bill Holden were in that group,” recalled powerful MCA honcho Jennings Lang. “The public had placed both of them on pedestals, and that was a precarious place to be.”
But neither Audrey nor Bill had made it this far by playing it safe.