Book Review--Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II

Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II
Robert Matzen
GoodKnight Books, 2019

While it is well known among classic film fans that Audrey Hepburn endured many hardships during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, there has been little firm detail about what the actress went through. The only certainty: the troubles she endured colored the rest of her life and affected everything from the way she ate and lived to the work she did. In a new book, Robert Matzen tells that story, revealing all the details that a traumatized Hepburn was reluctant to share in later years.

Dutch Girl is the third of Matzen’s “Hollywood in World War II” trilogy. While I missed the second book of the series, Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe, I found Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3 to be a fascinating, if devastating account of the actress’ death by plane crash and those were were on the flight with her (reviewed here). This final entry is even more haunting than the Lombard book, encapsulating not just the terror that shaped the life of one of Hollywood’s most beloved actresses, but of the Dutch people in general.

Matzen begins with the years directly before the war, when her parent’s divorced and her father essentially disappeared from her life, leaving her with feelings of abandonment that would stay with her forever. Audrey was shuttled off to an English boarding school while her mother, the Baroness Ella Van Heemstra settled in Arnhem. While the young girl was lonely and anxious, she developed a love for dance that nurtured her.

As the inevitability of war grew, the Baroness decided it best to have her daughter with her. Barely making it to Arnhem, Audrey spent the rest of the war with her emotionally cold, but fundamentally supportive mother, dancing as much as she could and sometimes struggling to survive. 

The story that follows is brutal and not for more sensitive tastes, but it is an important document of civilian life in war. Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the story is that the middle class Van Heemstra’s made out relatively well: losing some family, but never starving or suffering assault from German soldiers, and still suffered the fallout from those times for the rest of their lives. It makes you realize how unbearably horrifying it must have been for those with fewer resources.

Dutch Girl is the most revealing account I’ve read of the life of the Baroness Van Heemstra. Matzen details her pre and early wartime devotion to the Nazi party and Hitler, who she met before the war. It’s an admiration that she was later ashamed to have had and which Audrey occasionally feared would become a scandal when she became famous.

Aside from this unfortunate idolatry, Matzen reveals a complicated woman, who, while being emotionally cold with her children, had craved physical affection as a child herself, but never received it or learned how to give it. The Baroness may have had a complicated relationship with her daughter, but she drew upon considerable strength to keep her safe throughout the war, including lifting her spirits by encouraging her interest in dance.

Matzen effectively describes the terror young Audrey must have felt as German soldiers marched into Arnhem, the horror of her beloved uncle and much treasured father figure being held hostage and eventually executed, and the helpless feeling of being forced to cower in a shelter while Allied planes bombed the city above. He captures great detail via interviews with locals who experienced many of the same things Hepburn did during this time. It is easy to envision the environment she lived in, where she could hear prisoners being tortured from the street and there was no guarantee that a loved one wouldn’t be whisked away in the night or that she could even lose her own life.

I was especially interested to learn the extent of Hepburn’s work for the resistance. Via a family friend, she formed an alliance with a group of doctors who provided not only care, but forged documents and sanctuary for citizens in danger. In raising money with dance recitals and bringing food to downed pilots and other resistors hiding in the woods, she put herself at risk, but she was compelled to do everything she could to help.

The book touches lightly on Hepburn's film career, occasionally weaving it into the narrative. I was stunned to realize how close she was to this trauma when she found widespread fame starring as a princess in Roman Holiday (1953). Less than a decade after ducking German soldiers and Allied bombs, she was cradling an Oscar and celebrated by the world. What strength it must have taken to traverse those different worlds and build a life.

Before reading this book, I never fully understood how deeply Hepburn’s wartime experience had impacted her life. She was truly haunted by what she saw and endured. It was fascinating, if difficult to learn about this one story of many in a generation that was permanently altered by World War II.


Many thanks to GoodKnight Books for sending a copy of the book for review.

Book Review--Living Like Audrey: Life Lessons From the Fairest Lady of All

Living Like Audrey: Life Lessons From the Fairest Lady of All
Victoria Loustalot
Rowman & Littlefield, 2017

Victoria Loustalot's new lifestyle guide for Audrey Hepburn fans is a pleasant compilation of photos, quotes, biography and insights into the life of the beloved actress. While there is not much new here for fans of the Oscar-winning actress, there is some interesting analysis and appreciation of her most admirable traits.

It's a lovely turquoise-hued volume, and while the book has an appealing look, I found it difficult to navigate. Every few pages the text is broken up by block quotes and multiple pages of images. While these are enjoyable and will likely draw many fans, it turns reading the text into a sort of dance, where you get to the unfinished sentence at the bottom of the page and have to decide whether to flip forward a few pages to finish the thought or hope you can remember where you left off after admiring a photo or two and reading a quote. Ending pages before photos and quotes with completed sentences would have done much to improve the design.

Photos are presented full page at a minimum, with some spilling partly over to the adjacent page. I recognized many from movie stills and magazines in this attractive collection. The quotes about Hepburn are also familiar; I recognized many from the 1997 A&E Biography special Audrey Hepburn: The Fairest Lady (I am pretty sure I have that program memorized. I actually heard the voice of Richard Dreyfuss in my head praising Audrey exactly as he did in his interview). In this respect, the book was in many ways a pleasant repackaging of familiar material.

What I found most interesting about Living Like Audrey was Loustalot's thorough examination of Hepburn's greatest qualities. While classic movie fans are familiar with the kind, gentle and giving aspects of the actresses' personality, she is not as often celebrated for her wit and wisdom. Here I found a satisfying tribute to her sense of humor, and the dark wit behind it.

Hepburn is also given credit for the profound way she spoke about humanity. When she told an interviewer speaking to her about her work with UNICEF that she didn't "believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility," in one non-judgmental, but emphatic statement she demonstrated strength, intelligence and a firm call to action. This is the best of Audrey. Instead of letting the starvation and fear she suffered in occupied Belgium during World War II make her cynical, she became a steely fighter for the vulnerable. Loustalot nicely emphasizes this side of the actress and her activism.

Living Like Audrey isn't required reading for Audrey fans, but it offers many delights and interesting insights.

Many thanks to Rowman & Littlefield for providing access to the book for review.

On Blu-ray: Alan Arkin Terrorizes Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark (1967)

Though I will never get over the trauma of my first viewing of Wait Until Dark (1967), I have returned to it several times over the years. Even once you know its secrets, it retains its stomach churning power to chill. It is also a showcase for some of the best performances of its stars, Audrey Hepburn, Richard Crenna, Jack Weston and the utterly terrifying Alan Arkin. The horrors are intensified by Henry Mancini's most twisted soundtrack, full of off-kilter, discordant piano and the menacing grumble of cellos. Now the film is available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive.

Audrey Hepburn is Susy, recently blinded in an accident, and struggling to adjust to her new reality. She is married to Sam (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) a photographer who is on his way home from a business trip as the film begins. A model-gorgeous blonde in a fur coat flirts with him on the plane. When they disembark, she gives him a doll and asks him to hold onto it for her. As he walks away in confusion, she is grabbed by a shady-looking man in sunglasses and led out of the airport.

Sam makes no mention of the doll when he returns to Susy. Instead he gently scolds her about her lack of initiative in adjusting to blindness. He means well, but comes off as a bit patronizing and insensitive, especially when he must leave her almost right away to return to his studio.

Left alone, Susy is subject to the mild tortures of Gloria, the slightly bratty, but essentially good-hearted girl who lives upstairs. Already unsettled by their interaction, she is subjected to further anxiety when a pair of criminals (the excellent Richard Crenna and Jack Weston) play a charade with her in order to find the doll, which it turns out is stuffed with heroin.

The men play on Susy's fears, but only to get the job done. They don't care about her, but they don't wish to cause her unnecessary trouble either. That all changes when their associate Groat (Alan Arkin) enters the picture. He is even more interested in getting what they came for, but if he takes pleasure in any chaos he can cause along the way.

Essentially a one set movie, Wait Until Dark keeps these characters in close quarters, the tension between them growing with disturbing intensity. That escalation in emotion is made more wrenching by Mancini's music, which has got to be one of the most horrifying scores ever made for a film. By making his piano-dominated backing discordant and uneven, he emphasizes the dysfunction of these villains and the instability of Susy's situation.

After years of essentially cheerful musicals and comedies, with enough drama to show her chops, Hepburn made an unusual excursion into a truly dark story. As uncomfortable as it can be to see sweet Audrey being terrorized, its wonderful to behold the intensity she was capable of when given the chance. As Susy she is vulnerable, insecure and still adjusting to blindness, but she possesses the determination and resourcefulness of a survivor. She makes you want to help her while proving that she can manage just fine on her own.

According to Arkin, no one had yet attempted to portray a psychopath with the ferocity he did in Wait Until Dark. As the studio era came to a limping end, Roat's sadism and cruelty were an alarming change and a sign of things to come. This was new territory, and the slow burn build of Arkin's performance was puzzling even to the film's crew. When he eventually unleashed his fury, it is possible it was as alarming for his co-workers as it was for audiences.

Arkin's Groat is not all business; he's a gleeful sadist. He'll do the job he's set out to do with ferocious commitment, but indulge in some perversions along the way. Seeming to take delight in the smooth evil of his own voice, he finds sensuality in the process of his torture, sniffing the lingerie in Susy's dresser drawer and approaching his questioning of her like a deviant seduction.

While Crenna and Weston always remain determined career criminals, Arkin and Hepburn descend into an animalistic battle for survival. As she becomes increasingly more frightened, Susy's voice tightens into guttural moans of terror, which seem to arouse Roat, until he realizes she's already survived too much to simply submit.

Just writing about this film makes me feel tense, but I know I will continue to revisit it, because it is worth the torture to see these performances and the perfectly executed suspense.

I've always seen this as an essentially grey-toned film, but the Blu-ray print makes the colors pop a little more, lending it a richness I haven't experienced in previous viewings. Special features include the featurette Look in the Dark, where Arkin admits that he felt horrible pretending to terrorize someone as kind as Audrey Hepburn. There's also a pair of theatrical trailers which tease the intense thrills of the film.

Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.

On Blu-ray: Hepburn and Cooper Share Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Director Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) is an odd little romance. It’s a shade too long, and even though the thought of Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper together has its appeal, the gap in their ages is always a bit unsettling. Still, the film, which is now available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive, offers an interesting perspective on infatuation and how it can pull an admirer out of reality.

Hepburn is Ariane, a college-aged cello player who lives in Paris with her father Claude (Maurice Chevalier), a private detective who specializes in marital infidelity. The young student is fascinated by the sensational aspects of Chevalier's cases, committing the contents of his files to memory on the sly. This is how she learns of wealthy American Frank Flannagan (Cooper), eternal bachelor and serial adulterer.

Ariane learns that an angry husband is on his way to a posh hotel to blast away his unfaithful wife and Frank. The pair are conducting an affair to the strains of Fascination, played by a Gypsy music ensemble hired for the afternoon tryst. She rushes to save him, standing in for the adulterous spouse. Though he is at first baffled by this mysterious girl who would risk her life for a stranger, her youthful charm and clear fascination with him draw him to her.

Hepburn, always prone to a little preening, does so more than usual as Ariane, but only in her scenes alone. When she has someone to play off of, she becomes more engaging. 

She is sweet with Chevalier, who worries that he has corrupted his daughter with the shady aspects of his business, but who understands that she must have the freedom to make her own choices. He nudges her towards moral decisions, and Hepburn subtly balances the childishness in her that requires his intervention and the emerging awareness of adult life she is slowly beginning to engage in herself, rather than simply reading about it in her father's cases.

It is possible that Wilder was aware of the jarring difference in Cooper and Hepburn's ages. In the early scenes the actor is kept in the shadows, remaining a romantic, mysterious figure. Only Ariane is fully lit in her close-ups. It is when a connection has been made between the two that you finally see Frank's weathered face, and by then you are charmed by the idea of them as a pair. The young cellist's attraction to this older man is summed up in a perfect line: "He's got such an American face. Like a cowboy or Abraham Lincoln."

There are many little frustrations in Love in the Afternoon. Scenes that go on longer than they need to, explanations can drag on, but the film also has perfect moments of romantic suspense, like a scene at the opera where Ariane observes Frank from afar, on pins and needles, wondering if she will be able to attract his attention.

Cooper is odd as a ladies' man. His sexuality is so much more potent when he is shy and passive, a bit of hunky catnip for the Dietrichs and Oberons of the world. Hepburn is perfect for her role though. Ariane doesn't seem engaged with reality, she'll do foolish, dangerous things to pursue her romantic fantasies, and the actress seems to have an innate understanding of the tension and desire of infatuation that drives her.

The Blu-ray picture is nicely executed, clean, but with an appealing shimmer to it. The disc includes a trailer for the film.

Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.

In Theaters: Fandango and TCM Present Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)

I had a lovely time at the multi-plex this afternoon, where I had the rare opportunity to watch a classic film in the kind of theater that is usually home to the latest big screen blockbuster. Because of this, it always feels like a triumph to me to attend movies presented by TCM Big Screen Classics and Fathom Events. In the past I have fulfilled the dream of seeing Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and The Wizard of Oz (1939) in a theater through these screenings. Today I saw a film I have loved since I was a teenager, but never had the chance to see on the big screen: Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).

The screening included an intro and outro by TCM host Tiffany Vasquez. This is one of my favorite parts of the series, because it always makes the event feel intimate and special. While I thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about Breakfast at Tiffany's, Vasquez did share a few tidbits after the film that were new to me.

Seeing a film that has been a part of your life for many years in a theater is always an interesting experience. You end up laughing at jokes that would never inspire a giggle at home and some audience reactions can be shocking and even cringe worthy. In this case I was a bit stunned by the laughter that Mickey Rooney's racist portrayal of the photographer Mr. Yunioshi inspired; a performance that the actor and director Blake Edwards themselves would later regret.

I was also amused to hear snoring from near the front of the theater, starting  less than an hour into the film and lasting until the end. Maybe someone was trying to humor their significant other and failed?

Over the decades I've been watching Breakfast at Tiffany's, my feelings about it have gone through many changes. As a teenager, I was impatient with the developments of the plot, and more interested in Hepburn, her gorgeous fashions and the rhythm of the dialogue and Henry Mancini score. In later years, I paid more attention to the relationships, and eventually fully understood the lonely aimlessness of Holly Golightly (Hepburn) and her upstairs neighbor Paul Varjack's (George Peppard)  lives and of those who tried to control them.

While I still adored the fashion, music and amusing script, this time around I felt more indignation than I had before about the way people treated Holly Golightly. Just about everyone she meets feels the need to tell her how to be and even what to feel. From the men she meets in nightclubs, to her ex-husband and even Paul himself, she is treated like their possession.

Oddly enough, I also felt more sympathy for those people than I had before too. I teared up when Doc Golightly opened those blue eyes and showed he knew he was going to get on a bus broken hearted. It made me crumble a bit when Paul thought Holly was married and realized how disappointed he was to lose the possibility of her love. It isn't just Holly's suitors that tugged at me either, as 2E, the glamorous society lady keeping Paul, Patricia Neal made me feel her need to have some control, over a man, over the decoration of his apartment and in the kind of attention he paid her.

While Breakfast at Tiffany's has its flaws, it is deservedly a classic. Beneath its glossy exterior is a cast of desperate characters; their heartache, and the skill of the actors who play them, keeps the production from becoming insubstantial fluff. As if to soften the edges, this film is also devoted to romance, making a dramatic change from the ending of the Truman Capote novella upon which it was based to claim that Hollywood happy ending in a way that has rarely, if ever, been matched.


There are still showings of this film across the country this week! Tickets for the 2:00pm and 7:00pm shows on Wednesday, 11/30, can be purchased at Fathom Events.

Next up for TCM Big Screen Classics: From Here to Eternity, with showings on December 11 and 14.

Many thanks to Fathom Events for providing tickets to the show.

Image courtesy of Fathom Events.

Quote of the Week

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Audrey [Hepburn] was something entirely different on thescreen than what she was in real life. Not that she was vulgar--she wasn't…But there was so much inside her and she could put the sexiness on a little bit and the effect was really something.

-Billy Wilder

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Her voice is peculiarly personal, with its unaccustomed rhythm and sing-song cadence that develops into a flat drawl that ends in a childlike query. It has a quality of heartbreak.

-Cecil Beaton, About Audrey Hepburn

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Quote of the Week

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same.

-Audrey Hepburn

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Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer Star in Mayerling (1957)

It really happened. Newlyweds Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer played doomed lovers in a lavish production of Mayerling (1957) for the Producer's Showcase anthology series on NBC. The film aired once, on February 4, 1957, and never again. Though it was broadcast in color, it has only been preserved on the black and white kinescopes that were once used for archival purposes. Now it is available on manufactured-on-demand DVD, and if you are a Hepburn fan, you are going to be pleased.

Mayerling is the name of a real Austrian village where the Viennese Archduke Rudolph and his teenaged love Countess Maria Vetsera apparently died in a murder/suicide at a hunting lodge in 1889. The film's story is of their doomed love affair.

The married archduke meets the countess by chance in an amusement park. They begin to see each other frequently, angering his father the Emperor, though his Empress mother is quietly glad that her son has found someone to make him happy. Under pressure from his father, who threatens to send Maria to a convent if he does not end their romance, Rudolph decides he cannot live without his love. She agrees to die with him, though she seems too heartbreakingly young to truly understand what she is doing.

It's a highly romanticized version of a story that in real life was made much more complicated with politics and the events that would eventually lead to World War I. Yes, the country is in turmoil, but there's plenty of time for dancing in the park and dressing for fancy balls.

This version of Mayerling comes between two film versions: a French production directed by Anatole Litvak in 1936 (he also produced and reportedly co-directed this production) and a gorgeous, if less stirring interpretation directed by Terence Young in 1968. The Hepburn/Ferrer production doesn't even come close to the scope of these movies, nor should it be expected to, but it is still surprisingly lush.

The picture quality was much better than I expected. While there are lots of little black spots and scratches, the overall condition of the print is good. The lighting was consistent and the sound mix good enough not to distract from the performances. It is clearly an old television film, but it looks and sounds remarkable given that limitation.

Costumes, set design and music were all executed with the same care and detail you would find in a feature film. This was clearly a pricy production. The main difference is that the camera doesn't move with the performers and it is always clear the actors are working in confined spaces. You think about these things when Hepburn isn't onscreen, even when there are fine supporting performances by Raymond Massey, Diana Wynard and Judith Evelyn to enjoy.

Whenever Hepburn appears though, she sucks up a lot of those details and grabs you into her orbit. In early television, could be difficult to be heard or seen. You needed a big personality to overcome the technical limitations of early television. With her warm charisma Hepburn conquers these hurdles easily.

Newly married and in her late twenties, Hepburn captures the forthright innocence of her seventeen-year-old character. She understands the way a young woman can be simultaneously deeply philosophical and dangerously careless. The actress is best when she is silent, working her eyes for all that devastating, overwhelmed Audreyness. Hepburn always knew how to play a woman in love.

If only she had had an equally passionate actor to play against. But instead there is Mel Ferrer, who says his lines as if he is reading them off a chalkboard. I was able to push aside the other versions of Mayerling well enough when I watched this one, but it was impossible not to be haunted by Charles Boyer in the 1936 Mayerling while watching Ferrer flop around. Where Boyer exploded with frustrated rage and passion, his 1957 counterpart stomps around like a spoiled schoolboy.

 Ferrer never fully commits to his performance. He holds back, as if he's in rehearsal. When Ms. Audrey appears so charmingly in love, you can't believe he's the guy she's fussing over.

Don't let Mel keep you away though. This is a lovely production, a must-see for Hepburn fans and worthy viewing for anyone fascinated by the history of television. A delightful discovery like this one makes me wonder what other interesting old TV movies are out there, waiting for another moment of glory. I know Producer's Showcase also staged a version of Dodsworth, starring Fredric March, Claire Trevor and Geraldine Fitzgerald. There was a version of Cyrano de Bergerac as well, in which José Ferrer recreated his Academy Award-winning performance with Claire Bloom and Christopher Plummer. I'd love to see these and other potential treasures from the early days of television.

Mayerling can be purchased here.

Many thanks to Films Around the World for providing a copy of the movie for review.

Quote of the Week

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering—because you can't take it all in at once.

-Audrey Hepburn

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What Would Audrey Have Thought About that $4 Million Bid?

Thanks to a link from Clara of Via Margutta 51, I managed to catch part of the Debbie Reynolds movie memorabilia auction last night. It was a fascinating, if sad event and it was interesting to see what collectors where willing to pay for random things like Charlton Heston’s rags from the prison scene in Planet of the Apes (thousands of dollars for what looks like a torn burlap bag?).

I missed most of the really big items, like Marilyn Monroe’s white dress from The Seven Year Itch, but I did see the auction of Audrey Hepburn’s white lace dress from the race scene in My Fair Lady. I expected the gown to make a lot of money, but I was stunned to see the figure rise to nearly four million dollars. At first, I found that high bid exciting. I thought it was nice to see a piece of movie history valued that much. I also felt happy that Debbie Reynolds would be making some much needed money off the piece to pay off her debt. Then I thought of Audrey Hepburn.

What would Audrey have thought about that multi-million dollar bid? She saw so much poverty and suffering in her work as a UNICEF ambassador. Part of the reason the plight of these people touched her so deeply, was that she had suffered herself during World War II, and it was that kind of aid that helped to save her life.

Four million dollars could save a lot of lives. Would it have bothered Audrey that it went towards a bit of fabric and ribbon made valuable simply because she wore it so charmingly?

Here’s more information about the auction:

NBC Philadelphia(via @viam51 on Twitter)
CNN
LA Times

I hope it was a relief for Debbie Reynolds to get some of that weight off her shoulders. I’m grateful to her for going to so much effort to preserve these important pieces of movie history. Despite what I have written about Audrey and her dress, I do appreciate that there are so many who value these pieces, for whatever reason, and who will continue to preserve them.

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Quote of the Week

Mostly, we have manufactured ladies -- with the exception of Ingrid, Grace, Deborah and Audrey.

-Cary Grant

 

 

Image Sources: Audrey, Deborah, Grace, Ingrid

Quote of the Week

When we climbed out of the airplane [in Beijing], to my amazement I saw about two hundred little Chinese Audrey Hepburns waiting at the airport. Roman Holiday was playing in China for the first time - thirty years after we made it - and attracting enormous crowds. Everywhere we went we saw little Audrey Hepburns with the bangs and the long skirts.

-Gregory Peck

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Quote of the Week

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people's minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.


-Audrey Hepburn
 
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TV Tuesday: Audrey Hepburn Stands Her Ground

 

I've heard stories about how tough Audrey Hepburn could be, but I'd never seen that with my own eyes until I watched this clip from 1963. Wow, she's not going to let that reporter push her around!

(via Joan Crawford Deluxe Suite)

Quote of the Week

I had plenty of qualms about Audrey when we met for the first rehearsal, but from then on, working with her was one big kick... Audrey and I decided we'd throw a party for the cast and the crew when the picture was finished. We went all out, had it catered by Romanoff's - nothing but the best. In the middle of the party, Audrey sidled up to me, jabbed me with her elbow, and said, out of the corner of her mouth, "Hey, Shirl-Girl, whattaya think the bruise is gonna be for this bash?"

-Shirley MacLaine [co-star in The Children's Hour(1961)]

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