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Synopsis
Beginning with her harsh childhood in Nazi-occupied Holland, Warren Harris chronicles Audrey Hepburn's meteoric rise to Hollywood stardom: her chance encounter with Colette that led to the lead role in the Broadway version of Gigi, and her first starring role in Roman Holiday, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.Hepburn played opposite the top leading men, worked for the best directors, and picked from a wide range of roles. She memorably embodied Truman Capote's Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's and went from rags to Technicolor Victorian beauty in My Fair Lady. Warren Harris also traces Hepburn's affairs and unhappy marriages, as well as her later work as goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Throughout the book he illuminates her special ability to exude grace and style, both on screen and off.
Publishers Weekly
Harris ( Lucy & Desi ) has uncovered new material about Hepburn's background, including her intensely close relationship with her mother, a Dutch baroness, and her attempts at reuniting with her father, whose pro-fascist activities landed him in a British prison in WW II. Harris documents her earliest employment as a model, work as a bit player in British movies and fateful casting in Gigi in 1951, which turned her into the proverbial overnight Broadway star and led to her first movie-starring role in Roman Holiday. This glitzy tribute not only chronicles Hepburn's stage, film and TV roles and her marriages, affairs and friendships but also her partnership with her longtime agent, Kurt Frings. Harris delves into her dealings with Hubert de Givenchy, who designed her wardrobe for several films (Hepburn's impact on women's fashion was enormous), details her reclusive life in Switzerland and covers her emergence as UNESCO's goodwill ambassador to Third World countries. Hepburn died in 1993 at the age of 64. Photos. (Aug.)