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Paramount’s hunch paid off. FUNNY FACE provided audiences with two happy hours, and Miss Hepburn with Givenchy clothes, the opportunity to dance with Fred Astaire, and the chance to sing. Her vocal of “How Long Has This Been Going On?” is still a delight. FUNNY FACE has other cinematic assets, including interesting color-photography by Richard Avedon. Much of it was filmed in Hollywood, but it was completed in France.

Because Ferrer was involved in two European-made productions THE VINTAGE and THE SUN ALSO RISES – Miss Hepburn agreed to do a film with Billy Wilder in France. This turned out to be the third screen version of Claude Arnet’s ARIANE which Wilder, after collaborating with I. A. L. Diamond on the script, directed in a style reminiscent of Ernst Lubitsch. Called LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, it co-starred with Miss Hepburn a miscast Gary Cooper and a perfectly cast Maurice Chevalier. While it was in production Miss Hepburn and Ferrer visited each other on weekends.

They also got together in February ’57 to co-star on a tv-ersion of MAYERLING which NBC presented as one of its “Producer’s Showcase” specials. Anatole Litvak, who had been successful with a French film version two decades earlier, directed in a style as lumbering as the sterile script and performances. Although it was one of the most expensive and ambitious television presentations up to that time, and ultimately was released theatrically in Europe, most viewers agreed with tv-critic John Crosby’s comment that “The lovers seemed more fated to bore each other to death than to end their illicit alliance in a murder-suicide pact.”

Paramount also agreed with that assessment and declined three other projects Miss Hepburn was willing to undertake with her husband under its auspices: co-starring with him in Thomas Wolfe’s LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL and Jean Anouilh’s THE LARK, and being directed by him in L’AIGLON. As a consequence Warners got to do her best film.

This was Fred Zinnemann’s THE NUN’S STORY, which had a 132-day shooting schedule. The interiors were shot at Rome’s Cinecitta studios at the same time BEN-HUR’s interiors were being done on adjacent sound stages. It’s been rumored, but never officially substantiated, that while visiting William Wyler’s production of BEN-HUR, Miss Hepburn became one of the extras in a crowd sequence as a gag. Exteriors for THE NUN’S STORY were filmed in the Belgian Congo. While she was busy in Africa, Ferrer was in South America getting background footage for GREEN MANSIONS.

Before filming on THE NUN’S STORY got underway Zinnemann thought it might be a good idea to have Miss Hepburn meet the Belgian woman whose life story is the basis of the Kathryn Hulme book. “Miss Hepburn didn’t really want to,” the woman said sometime later. “She felt the story was too much of my private life. She just sat there and looked at me, and didn’t ask any questions.” But two years later, after being thrown from a horse and having four small vertebrae fractured while on location in Mexico for THE UNFORGIVEN, Miss Hepburn accepted the comfort of this anonymous woman’s nursing during part of her convalescence.

THE NUN’S STORY is one of the great films, despite the fact that its essence is negativistic. Said FILMS IN REVIEW when it first came out (’59): “Miss Hepburn reveals the kind of acting talent that can project inner feelings, of both depth and complexity, so skillfully you must scrutinize her intently on a second and third viewing of THE NUN’S STORY to perceive how she does it. Her portrayal of Sister Luke is one of the great performances of the screen.”

The cinemation of GREEN MANSIONS has a curious history. That W. H. Hudson novel, long admired for its romantic fantasy, had been a challenge to filmakers since ’31, when RKO purchased the 1904 novel as a potential enterprise for David 0. Selznick to produce, King Vidor to direct, and Dolores Del Rio to act. But efforts to get a satisfactory script were in vain, and the enterprise was abandoned (the Selznick-Vidor-Del Rio trio involved themselves in a loose re-make of BIRD OF PARADISE instead). In ’35 RKO talked of filming GREEN MANSIONS with Dorothy Jordan, and in ’38 of doing it with Anne Shirley, but didn’t get beyond the planning stage either time. In ’43 RKO sold the film rights to producer James Cassidy for a fraction of what they had cost.

Three years later MGM bought the rights from Cassidy with the idea of turning GREEN MANSIONS into an Yma Sumac vehicle. In ’53 Arthur Freed thought Vincente Minnelli should direct Elizabeth Taylor in a version based on an Alan Lerner script, but when Miss Taylor was lent to Paramount to replace ailing Vivien Leigh in ELEPHANT WALK, that idea was abandoned. Pandro Berman later took the GREEN MANSIONS project over and actually did some pre-production filming with Pier Angeli. Her pregnancy terminated that, and the property remained in limbo until Dorothy Kingsley interested Mel Ferrer in directing his wife in an adaptation which she, Miss Kingsley, had worked up. Miss Hepburn was aware of all this when she and Ferrer decided to do Miss Kingsley’s screenplay and she subsequently said: “Before we began many friends asked me how such an artistically touchy situation would turn out. I answered that I wouldn’t know until the picture was finished. Now I can say it was pleasantly uncomplicated. I found that being directed by Mel was as natural as brushing my teeth.”

After GREEN MANSIONS was released one San Fernando Valley newsman wrote: “If Miss Hepburn won’t change husbands, or directors, she at least owes it to her public to change her brand of toothpaste. Because, in Ferrer’s fiasco, she looks as if she had been given an overdose of chlorophyll. In fact the whole thing, even the authentic background footage, has an appalling greenish patina that makes it look as if it had been filmed in a decaying parsley patch.”

Miss Hepburn was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in THE NUN’S STORY and she and Ferrer were in their Swiss chalet awaiting the birth of their son Sean (July 17, ’60) when they learned that Simone Signoret had won for ROOM AT THE TOP. Miss Hepburn says the prospects of motherhood were so blissful she didn’t mind losing at all. “Success isn’t too important for a woman,” she added recently. “And with the baby I felt I had everything a wife could wish for. But it’s not enough for a man. It was not enough for Mel. He couldn’t live with himself just being Audrey Hepburn’s husband.”

These observations contradict the fact that Sean was only about ten weeks old when Miss Hepburn began playing Holly Golightly in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, which I consider an almost perfect comedy. I also think Miss Hepburn was her most bewitching in it. She says: “I didn’t think I was right for it. I had believed all the publicity that claimed Truman Capote had written it for Marilyn Monroe, and I hesitated to read the script. But once I did, I found it irresistible.” Her performance was nominated for an Oscar.

She certainly wasn’t right for William Wyler’s re-make of THE CHILDREN’S HOUR, or for PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES, Richard Quine’s ridiculous re-make of Julien Duvivier’s HOLIDAY FOR HENRIETTA, which Paramount financed – and shelved. But CHARADE, which she did on location in Paris with Cary Grant, was right for her.

Miss Hepburn was working on MY FAIR LADY on the day President Kennedy was assassinated and a bereft George Cukor asked her to announce the news and dismiss the company for the weekend. Visibly overcome, she managed to do it with simplicity.

During the production of MY FAIR LADY there was almost as much hullabaloo about it as there had been for GONE WITH THE WIND. Jack Warner’s selection of Miss Hepburn for the part of Liza Doolittle still generates heat among supporters and dissenters.

Although her performance wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, she was present at the Award ceremonies and presented Rex Harrison’s well-deserved Oscar. Said N. C. Chambers in FILMS IN REVIEW (May ’65): “Audrey Hepburn presented the Best Actor Award, and, as she read off the list of nominees, clips were shown from the films for which the five actors had been nominated. Miss Hepburn’s joy when she announced that Rex Harrison had won was unfeigned, and when Harrison reached the lectern she kissed him several times. He patted her back, and the mutuality of their affection was the evening’s pleasantest, and least staged, event. Harrison seemed to be pleased more by Miss Hepburn’s pleasure in his victory than by the victory itself, and he murmured that the Oscar should be split in half so he could share it with her.”

Incidentally, on the day after Miss Hepburn had learned she had not been nominated for an Oscar for MY FAIR LADY she received this telegram from Katharine Hepburn (no kin): “Don’t worry about not being nominated. Some day you’ll get another one for a part that doesn’t rate.”

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