Audrey Hepburn: A Biography

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's 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.

Library Journal

Harris interviewed many of Hepburn's close friends and relatives and scoured materials already written to come up with this flattering but interesting factual account of Hepburn's life-the first full-scale biography since her untimely death. Hepburn's luminous beauty and angular elegance lit up the motion picture screen for over 30 years, yet she kept her private life private. Here, Harris chronicles Hepburn's dream of becoming a ballerina and her entry into the theater. Colette herself wanted Hepburn for the title role in the stage play of Gigi on Broadway, and with her first starring film role in Roman Holiday Hepburn won an Oscar. Harris also details Hepburn's less gratifying personal life, from her early years in Nazi-occupied Holland and the loss of her mother to two failed marriages and fewer children than she had hoped for. This engrossing biography is rich in details about the making of Hepburn's films at a time in Hollywood-and the world-we may never know again. Recommended for public libraries.-Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Bay Area Cooperative Lib. System, Cal.

Ilene Cooper

This is nowhere near as fully developed as Diana Maychick's Audrey Hepburn , which was written with the assistance of its subject, but libraries wanting more than one look at Hepburn's life will find it a serviceable second choice. Most of the information in both books is the same: Hepburn's frightening childhood in Nazi-occupied Holland, her quick ascent to movie stardom, her unsatisfactory marriages, and the happiness she finally achieved in raising her long-awaited sons. Veteran stargazer Harris does have a slightly different take on Hepburn's mother, who is usually remembered as a resistance fighter; Harris doesn't dispute her resistance activities late in the war but presents evidence showing that she was a Nazi sympathizer early in the conflict. Recommended for larger collections. To be illustrated with 16 pages of black-and-white photographs.