Movie Millisecond and The Way They Were: William and Audrey edition

William Holden and Audrey Hepburn as David Larrabee and Sabrina Fair(child).

Isn’t that always the way of it? Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954).

William Holden and Audrey Hepburn fell in love on this set and began a very passionate affair.

“Before I even met her, I had a crush on her, and after I met her, just a day later, I felt as if we were old friends, and I was rather fiercely protective of her though not in a possessive way.

(William Holden, qtd. in William Holden: A Biography. Michelangelo Capua. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010. p. 79.)

“She was the love of my life. Sometimes at night, I’d get a portable record player and drive out to the country to a little clearing we’d found. We’d put on ballet music. Some of our most magic moments were there.”

(Ibid. p. 81)

Audrey and William on location in Lower Manhattan for Sabrina, 1953.

Supposedly Holden wanted to officially leave his wife Ardis, from whom he was separated for the majority of his marriage, and be with Audrey, but she turned him down because he’d had a vasectomy and being a mother was essential to her. I’ve never really seen that 100% substantiated. In any case, Audrey allegedly announced her engagement to Mel Ferrer at a party the Holdens were hosting. And you thought you’d been through bad break-ups.

Audrey married Mel Ferrer in 1954, Holden became an alcoholic who grew difficult to insure on pictures, and they did not see each other for a decade, until they were paired again in 1963 to film Paris When It Sizzles.

“I remember the day I arrived at Orly Airport for Paris When It Sizzles. I could hear my footsteps echoing against the walls of the transit corridor, just like a condemned man walking the last mile. I realized that I had to face Audrey and I had to deal with my drinking. And I didn’t think I could handle either situation.”

(William Holden.)

He was right in that assessment. Hollywood legend has it that William Holden tried repeatedly, with horrible results, to win back the woman he cited as the love of his life.

According to scriptwriter George Axelrod, Holden often showed up on set drunk and, on one occasion, climbed a tree by a wall leading up to her room. Hepburn leaned out the window to find out where the noise was coming from when Holden grabbed and kissed her. He then slipped out of the tree and landed on a parked car below.

(Martin Gitlin. Audrey Hepburn. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 2009. p. 72.)

Audrey’s interest in men, according to the few who got to know her intimately during her career, though strong, was intermittent. She had affairs when passing through emotionally tense times. She had a preference for men who made the first move, who were bold, … and [who] didn’t appreciate her rare nature. Observers were surprised at Audrey’s tolerance of her lovers’ habits, their bluntness and sometimes crude languge: the opposite of her composed nature. Perhaps that was where their attractiveness lay.

(Alexander Walker. Audrey: her real story. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. p. 90-91.)

Audrey died of cancer January 20, 1993. As for William Holden,

On November 12, 1981, Holden was alone and intoxicated in his apartment in Santa Monica, California, when he slipped on a throw rug, severely lacerated his forehead on a teak bedside table, and bled to death. Evidence suggests he was conscious for at least half an hour after the fall. It is probable that he may not have realized the severity of the injury and did not summon aid, or was unable to call for help. His body was found four days later.

(the wiki.)

R.I.P. to both.

William Blake Month: She who burns with youth and knows no fixed lot; is bound / In spells of law to one she loathes

Some thoughts from Mr. Blake on free love, fidelity, procreative pressure, and the institution of marriage as it functioned (and did not) for ladies during his lifetime:

Jane Birikin and the dread Serge G.

… She who burns with youth and knows no fixed lot;
is bound
In spells of law to one she loathes:
and must she drag the chain
Of life, in weary lust!

Must chilling murderous thoughts obscure
The clear heaven of her eternal spring?
to bear the wintry rage
Of a harsh terror driv’n to madness, bound to hold a rod
Over her shrinking shoulders all the day;

Marilyn and Arthur on their wedding day. Marilyn’s dress was ivory but her veil arrived white, so rather than freak out or buy a new one she soaked it in tea overnight. She was an orphan and imminently practical.

& All the night
To turn the wheel of false desire: and longings
that wake her womb
To the abhorred birth of cherubs in the human form
That live a pestilence & die a meteor & are no more.

(William Blake, excerpt from Visions of the Daughters of Albion. 1793. Shockingly self-published.)

The Graduate (Kubrick, 1967).EDIT: It was directed by Mike Nichols, not Stanley Kubrick. Jesus-christ-bananas. How that got past me is a mystery. Mucho mas mucho thanks to Peteski for the heads-up!

Happy bride month, am I right? Goin’ to the chapel…

In all seriousness, William Blake was a sort of pre-feminist and a great admirer of Mary Wollstonecraft but for all his forward-thinking, he could behave curiously backwardly and contemporarily to the times in his personal life, almost as if his own wife, Catherine, did not count in his reckoning of the equalities of the opposite sex.

Audrey and Mel. She looks terribly unhappy and trapped. I do not believe this was their wedding day but rather shortly before their breakup in an ad for Givenchy’s L’Interdit, the first celebrity fragrance. I wear Givenchy Amarige when I am Really Me. But that is very rare. So often it is best to be Other Me-s, so I roll with Michael by Michael Kors.

As an example, when they had trouble conceiving, Blake openly advocated bringing another, younger woman into their marriage and relegating Catherine to second-class status in a different bedroom. My guess is he backed up his proposal by citing the timeless, good ol’ Rachel/Leah biblical argument, which reminds me that I get to hit Handmaid’s Tale next month.

Humbert and Lo’s toes. Lolita (Kubrick, 1962).

Okay, I went in to more insomnia-fueled bookfoolery and this entry is now uncomfortably longer than I’d prefer a Blake one to be. I’m going to split it up. Meet me in the next post. More Kubrick, even (I didn’t intend for that to happen but now that it has I’m on board). (edit: again, The Graduate is directed by Mike Nichols. Not Stanley Kubrick.)

Per mi amico: Husbandoh, “‘Congradulations’ on your birthday” edition

Happy birthday, HRH.

I know it’s weird with us all in estrangement and the like, but the important thing I want you to remember is the time we went to Lucy’s Table and that one waitress who later opened a meditative health center with her husband dropped the champagne as she popped the cork and it spun in the air as it fell and it hosed down THE ENTIRE RESTAURANT in a ten foot radius and the windows and tables and all those third-wave anorexic hipster yippies were dripping with wine. We did that.

Then we went to sit outside with our dessert and that very nice but drunk as shit first-wave yippie lady told us about walking around naked in front of her son when he was young, and then she apologized to us at great length for her generation being poor stewards of the earth and they misspelled “Congratulations” in some kind of very expensive alcohol-and-caramel-dulce-de-leche reduction sauce on your flourless chocolate cake plate.

Sometimes I forget that through no deliberate actions of your own you are somehow elected by the forces in this universe to be a one-man wrecking-crew of every situation you enter. Thank you for being a genial agent of chaos akin to Pigpen, because the anxious uptight energy of my yin at that time deserved and needed that yang to grow and see that what we must always try to do in this world is to stop time and bring back what’s died and it is not a thing we can do alone.

Thank you for trying with me. Happy birthday.

Flashback Friday — Audrey Hepburn half-day, Can I still call you “deer?”

On and frequently off the set of 1958’s bomb Green Mansions, helmed by her then-husband director Mel Ferrer and co-starring the unhappily closeted fag of our fathers Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame, Audrey had near her often a deer named Pippin.

She called him “Ip,” rather than “Pip.” I don’t know why. I have never read an explanation. You would have to ask her. Anyway, in order for the deer to convincingly follow her character around during principal photography, she spent a great deal of time bonding with the animal and training it to stay with her. Here she is with Ip, shopping at Jax’s grocery.



And this shot shows them in her dressing room. She was very nervous about the film because from its inception it was receiving slander due to her casting (neopotism, capitalizing on her popularity, selling out the book’s character, etc). The movie Green Mansions called for Audrey to star as Rima, a wild girl raised in a Venezuelan jungle. Audiences believed her to be a refined born lady of style (they wrongly judged her to be British as well) and did not buy her classy self in the role, despite the attempts to muss her up. This is actually slightly unfair, as she at one time tried to make a grass pie for her (still living) family to live off of during World War II.

She had roughed it plenty, but I guess people looked at her trim little figure and her eloquent speech and assumed plenty of things which were unwarranted and ultimately detrimental to her confidence and career, until she found the courage to ditch that punk Ferrer (sorry Mel Ferrer fans) and began to strike out on her own two narrow feet.

Those were candids: here is a publicity still done before the film’s release.


Brain-asplodin’ cuteness.


All these pictures came from photographer Bob Willoughby’s flickr photostream. He moved recently and was going through old stuff and he realized he was sitting on a pile of rare Audrey candids and stills. Cool beans, huh.

Flashback Friday — Audrey Hepburn Half-Day; “Famous love”

Audrey Hepburn really loved her dog, Mr. Famous.

“I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.”

She first acquired the Yorkie during the shooting of Funny Face. Here she is with Mr. Famous, getting reassuring doggie kisses on the set of the ill-fated Green Mansions (more on that folklore later).


I think it is interesting that that quote came from the middle of her career; I believe by the end of her times on earth, she trended entirely toward the giving rather than even the barest needing of affection. I think that is really admirable, and maybe even one of the best examples we can hope to follow. To love contact with any and all people, and being involved positively with them so well, that you eventually evolve beyond your need to have your ego stroked in the slightest by these encounters: all your joy is bound up in helping others out. That is damned special indeedy, I do believe.

Advice: Audrey gets it edition

In a cowboy hat on the set of Green Mansions, 1958. It was directed by her husband, Mel Ferrer. They divorced.

“Your heart just breaks, that’s all. But you can’t judge, or point fingers. You just have to be lucky enough to find someone who appreciates you.”

So the same week that the HRH is here, my daughter’s other father has burst back on to the scene, and who can blame him? She is wonderful and there is no right or wrong time to accept a father’s love. The only person who would be hurt in the situation is me, and that’s a selfish reason to hold her apart from him, his wife, and their son. So when they are ready, I imagine we’ll meet up. In fact, I’m actually eager to. That’s my daughter’s flesh and blood, and it’s been a long time since I tucked a fuzzy little baby head under my chin. I am far from made of stone.

I am sad to say I’ve lost the credit for this photo.

“People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.”

On top of that, my husband and I have been hashing over what went wrong in our marriage, with an eye mainly toward how to heal as friends and continue to do our best as my daughter’s parents, and, with cards all out on the table, we’ve drawn some not-so-upbeat conclusions. Knowing the whole truth about things I always half-suspected does not make those things hurt less; however, while it’s not the kind of thing you ever want to be right about, you know that it can’t get worse, and you’ve already survived it without even knowing, so why not keep moving forward? But despite it all, despite the icy gutpunches and sad truths being dealt and faced between us, for some reason I am finally in this really good place, feeling deeply and essentially all right about things — feeling far and away better than I was when I was anxious and wondering all the time what would happen next and putting off thinking about it all, with either of them.

Audrey, second from left, and her mother Ella,far right. During the occupation of Holland during World War II, in the midst of blackouts and starvation, Audrey, Ella, and a small group of others entertained the people of their town by putting on plays. This was taken in 1940, not too long after her Uncle Otto was executed for being part of the Underground.

“I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I’d invented it, because it is very true.”

Now it’s all here and by some strange miracle all that churning through my emotions has paid off and I feel this tremendous sense of peace and rightness: I know that whatever happens, will happen. I am not granted happiness or misery by any given situation, and faith and grace and love are a choice. It’s the sort of thing I have heard all my life and never understood how to make work, so selfishly, turned inward with my thoughts and fears, I assumed that those kinds of phrases and ideas were smarmy cliches, or somehow hollow, inapplicable to real life problems. But they aren’t. That’s a revolutionary idea for me. I mean, I strove, or thought I did, to keep upbeat, to respond to my friends and strangers with as much love as I thought I could muster, but I don’t think I was digging deeply enough.

Lotus eaters! Audrey and James Garner goofing around on the set of The Children’s Hour.

“When the chips are down, you are alone, and loneliness can be terrifying. Fortunately, I’ve always had a chum I could call. And I love to be alone. It doesn’t bother me one bit. I’m my own company.”

I’ve had to live it to understand it. I get it now. All I can do is accept what comes as gracefully as I can, show that I’m coming from a place of love, and hope for more happiness to follow. It’s really my choice. I have my friends, my family, and most of all myself. This place I’m in can be permanent, I just have to work at choosing grace.

Can I still call you “deer?”

On and frequently off the set of 1958’s bomb Green Mansions, helmed by her then-husband director Mel Ferrer and co-starring the unhappily closeted fag of our fathers Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame, Audrey had near her often a deer named Pippin.

She called him “Ip,” rather than “Pip.” I don’t know why. I have never read an explanation. You would have to ask her. Anyway, in order for the deer to convincingly follow her character around during principal photography, she spent a great deal of time bonding with the animal and training it to stay with her. Here she is with Ip, shopping at Jax’s grocery.

And this shot shows them in her dressing room. She was very nervous about the film because from its inception it was receiving slander due to her casting (neopotism, capitalizing on her popularity, selling out the book’s character, etc). The movie Green Mansions called for Audrey to star as Rima, a wild girl raised in a Venezuelan jungle. Audiences believed her to be a refined born lady of style (they wrongly judged her to be entirely British as well) and did not buy her classy self in the role, despite the attempts to muss her up. This is actually slightly unfair, as she at one time tried to make a grass pie for her (still living) family to live off of during World War II.

Famous love

Audrey Hepburn really loved her dog, Mr. Famous.

“I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.”

She first acquired the Yorkie during the shooting of Funny Face. Here she is with Mr. Famous, getting reassuring doggie kisses on the set of the ill-fated Green Mansions (more on that folklore later).


I think it is interesting that that quote came from the middle of her career; I believe by the end of her times on earth, she trended entirely toward the giving rather than even the barest needing of affection. I think that is really admirable, and maybe even one of the best examples we can hope to follow. To love contact with any and all people, and being involved positively with them so well, that you eventually evolve beyond your need to have your ego stroked in the slightest by these encounters: all your joy is bound up in helping others out. That is damned special indeedy, I do believe.