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I do not profess to comprehend all the ramifications of human history, emotion and chemistry which account for my enchantment by Audrey Hepburn. Let’s just say it’s because of her up-beat image: that of a child-woman who is sophisticated enough to understand life’s harsher aspects and naive enough to believe uncomplicated, wholehearted love can surmount them. I must add, of course, that Miss Hepburn mastered the art of acting and possessed the kind of beauty that promises more than mere sexuality (though that too).

The image she projected is currently out of fashion, and the young roles which enabled that image to be believable are no longer available to her. These facts, and the fact that her private life seemed to have achieved an equilibrium, account for her four-year absence from the screen.

She was born May 4, ’29, on an estate near Brussels. Her mother, who had been Baroness Ella van Heemstra, and came from a family with land holdings in the Arnhem sector of Holland, had divorced the baron and married J. A. Hepburn-Ruston, of Irish and English descent. At the time of Audrey’s birth he managed the Brussels branch of the English bank which handled the finances and properties of his wife’s family.

The Baroness, as she continued to call herself, had had two sons by her first husband. Audrey was her only child by Hepburn-Ruston, from whom she separated in ’35, and whom she divorced three years later. Their divorce, which is said to have been the result of disagreements over the management of the van Heemstra money, led to disagreements over the custody of their daughter, then a shy and introverted child who spoke four languages fluently. Surprisingly, the divorce decree stipulated that Audrey should attend a girls’ school near London so her father could exercise his visitation privileges.

The Baroness opposed this arrangement at first but was soon reconciled to it. So was Miss Hepburn. Said she some years later: “I was terrified at first about being away from home, but it turned out to be a good lesson in independence.”

It also turned out that she was adept at dancing, and she began to take ballet lessons. This training was the springboard to her film career and stardom.

In the summer of ’39 she was vacationing, with her mother, in the home of one of their relatives near Arnhem. When England declared war on Germany in September the Baroness reasoned that Holland was safer for Audrey than England, and she ignored her ex-husband’s pleas to return Audrey to her English school. She enrolled her in public school in Arnhem and allowed her to continue ballet training at the Arnhem Conservatory.

In retrospect, the Baroness’ decision is odd, for her ancestry was partly Jewish, and, after the German occupation of Holland (spring of ’40), the Heemstra properties were seized and the Baroness’ oldest son was interned in a labor camp. “We went underground after Hitler marched in,” Miss Hepburn has said. “We were often without food for days and I lost so much weight I became anemic.”

It has been said that the Baroness was active in “the underground”, and that the Arnhem Conservatory was used as a center for raising funds and recruiting saboteurs. These subversive activities were conducted under the cover of musical concerts, ballet performances, and other entertainments. Miss Hepburn has been reluctant to be specific about those years.

“Anyone who has lived through a war has marvelous stories,” she has said. “Interviewers try to bring it up so often, but it’s painful to think about. It was a long time ago, and I’m sure other people have been through much worse. I dislike talking about it because I feel it’s not something that should be linked to publicity. The superficial things aren’t interesting – the deeper things are. That’s what it really comes down to. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world – anything that happens to you is valuable. Just the same, mingled in all the nightmares I’ve had are the war, and the cold clutch of human terror. I’ve experienced both.”

After Holland’s liberation the Arnhem Conservatory awarded Miss Hepburn a scholarship to the Marie Rambert School of Ballet in London. To help pay expenses while training with Madame Rambert, Miss Hepburn worked part-time as a model for fashion photographers. Her breeding, and long-legged good looks, gave the photographers things to work on, and made her an ideal fashion model. Being a model made her clothes conscious, and her ability to wear high-fashion clothes contributed not a little to her success in films.

Of couturier Hubert De Givenchy, whom she met when a model, and who designed many of her screen wardrobes as well as most of her off-screen clothes, she says: “He’s my great love. He made the first dresses I ever wore from a good fashion house, and designed that wonderful ball gown I wore in SABRINA, and my clothes for BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S. I consider him one of my best and most important friends.” Cecil Beaton, who won an Academy Award for designing MY FAIR LADY’s remarkable costumes, and who has dressed some of the world’s most celebrated women, said during the filming of that picture: “Who is there better to dress than the impeccable Audrey Hepburn?”

Part-time modeling work was not always to be had and Miss Hepburn registered with the casting offices of Britain’s film studios in the hope of getting work as an “extra”. Her first such job was three days work on ONE WILD OAT, a modest cinemation of Vernon Sylvaine’s stage farce. Miss Hepburn’s footage, not much to begin with, was so reduced in the cutting room she’s barely visible. Nevertheless, ONE WILD OAT led to enough work for her to become financially independent of the Baroness. At that juncture her father, whom she had not contacted after the war, was living in Ireland.

A small role in YOUNG WIVES TALE, which was based on Ronald Jeans’ stage comedy about England’s postwar housing shortage, gained a little attention and Miss Hepburn began thinking that movies, not ballet or high fashion, might be her future. She joined Felix Aylmer’s acting classes. “He taught me to concentrate intelligently on what I was doing,” she said later, “and made me aware that all actors need a ‘method’ of sorts to be even vaguely professional.”

Confident of succeeding as an actress, she rejected an opportunity to tour South America with a government-sponsored ballet troupe recruited from Madame Rambert’s students – in order to work as a chorus girl in “High Button Shoes”. When that musical comedy went on tour she left it – in order to stay in London and dance in the choruses of “Sauce Tartare” and “Sauce Piquante”. The solo dance she did in the latter attracted the eye of Thorold Dickinson, who screen-tested her for a key-supporting role in THE SECRET PEOPLE. The test turned out well but Dickinson was then (October ’50) dickering with Lea Padovani to be the star of that film. Miss Padovani stalled Dickinson, and he Miss Hepburn, for five months.

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