Audrey Hepburn: A Biography

Rating:
Summary: I think it is very vague
Review: I didn't apprecite it. As I haven't had any information of Audrey's life, I enjoyed knowing facts of her life. But the biography misses her personal experience at all! She goes through four abortions and the writer doens't give any importance at all to those facts! He has very detals of her years in Holland and the importance of her mother, but when she becomes famous, the mother is suddently out of the picture. As I said, her personal evolution is suddently forgot. It seens as there was two Audreys, the one that grewn up in nazist Holland and the one that made fame on movies. The pictures are very poor and of low quality. I brought the book knowing nothing about Audrey, and I finish reading it knowing less. Don't bother to get that book, there are betters of her.

Rating:
Summary: Hmm. A tedious biography by Warren G. Harris
Review: One and ½ stars.

Tedious. Not recommended. Gossipy, but full of "facts", that do not flow. Each paragraph of this biography stops and starts alone. Though it seems well researched, it drips with small, but unmistakable unknowable ideas presented, again, as (gossipy) facts by the author. It was a pain to get through the initial pages. Page 13 - "Ella picked "Hepburn" because it wash the only noble name... [OK] That he may have also murdered Mary's second husband, Lord Darnley [she actually knew this? hmm. unsubstantiated], didn't seem to bother the Baroness when she borrowed the name". Well, she may have 'shamelessly' borrowed the name, but the author clearly begins filling in supposed knowledge of the character and continues to do so with other ideas throughout the work. Page 14 - "Ruston and Ella made a strikingly and highly volatile couple.": [OK]. "Tall and handsome, he'd grown a mustache to compensate for his receding hairline." What? Is the author struggling with same? Back then a mustache was worn prominently for the display of its own sake, regardless of receding hairline - you've seen the photos. Clearly a 90's cynical filter on earlier facts gets in the way in these simple examples as it gets in the way throughout the text. The work is littered with the 90's addiction of showing us supposed belly-button lint as somehow interesting fact. This is not biography. Sadly, selection of photos here seems the real strength. Wonderful photos. But this historical reader would rather turn back to reading about settlers taking bloody hatchets, as long as truth is presented. A thought; should I reward this 2 stars for effort? No. In this day and age, anyone can muster forth the so-called facts of anyone famous. Don't let the titles, the initial script of the opening pages, and the prior works of Harris fool you, this kind of fact/gossip intertwined crud can't be polished. Sadly, there may not be an Audrey Hepburn biography that flows and captures all the interesting facts and heart of her life until the end. But there is hope

Rating:
Summary: Hmm. A tedious biography by Warren G. Harris
Review: One and ½ stars.

Tedious. Not recommended. Gossipy, but full of "facts", that do not flow. Each paragraph of this biography stops and starts alone. Though it seems well researched, it drips with small, but unmistakable unknowable ideas presented, again, as (gossipy) facts by the author. It was a pain to get through the initial pages. Page 13 - "Ella picked "Hepburn" because it wash the only noble name... [OK] That he may have also murdered Mary's second husband, Lord Darnley [she actually knew this? hmm. unsubstantiated], didn't seem to bother the Baroness when she borrowed the name". Well, she may have `shamelessly' borrowed the name, but the author clearly begins filling in supposed knowledge of the character and continues to do so with other ideas throughout the work. Page 14 - "Ruston and Ella made a strikingly and highly volatile couple.": [OK]. "Tall and handsome, he'd grown a mustache to compensate for his receding hairline." What? Is the author struggling with same? Back then a mustache was worn prominently for the display of its own sake, regardless of receding hairline - you've seen the photos. Clearly a 90's cynical filter on earlier facts gets in the way in these simple examples as it gets in the way throughout the text. The work is littered with the 90's addiction of showing us supposed belly-button lint as somehow interesting fact. This is not biography. Sadly, selection of photos here seems the real strength. Wonderful photos. But this historical reader would rather turn back to reading about settlers taking bloody hatchets, as long as truth is presented. A thought; should I reward this 2 stars for effort? No. In this day and age, anyone can muster forth the so-called facts of anyone famous. Don't let the titles, the initial script of the opening pages, and the prior works of Harris fool you, this kind of fact/gossip intertwined crud can't be polished. Sadly, there may not be an Audrey Hepburn biography that flows and captures all the interesting facts and heart of her life until the end. But there is hope

Rating:
Summary: Why many grew so accustomed to her face
Review: Warren G. Harris's biography on Audrey Hepburn is an unbiased, straight-ahead account that details her ups and downs, from her childhood in the war-torn Netherlands, her first starts at stardom in England, her breakthrough in Roman Holiday, marriages to Mel Ferrer and Andrea Dotti, to her declining movie career from the late 1970's onward, and to her work as UNICEF spokesperson.

The initial quotes from Billy Wilder, Cecil Beaton, Hubert Givenchy, and Stanley Donen give what made Hepburn a star. Wilder says that God kissed her with that gift of stardom. True enough: that 5'7" height, slender birdlike figure, prominent eyebrows, squared off chin, princess-like elegance and beauty that continued in her fifties, a wistful fragility, and soft voice that spoke perfect English and ended a sentence in a girlish query. And that European sophistication she exuded no doubt came from a multinational heritage that included British, Dutch, Austrian, Hungarian, French, Scotch, and Irish. And she is very distantly related to Katherine Hepburn, as both traced their lineage to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, the third husband of Mary Queen of Scots.

And she was a professional actress, someone striving for perfection and a trooper when it came to her work. She took time studying her background material, whether it be reading Tolstoy's War And Peace, where she played Natasha Rostova, Kathryn Hulme's biography on her experiences as a nun, and even going to see Hulme, resulting in The Nun's Story, and her going to a college for the blind for her part as Susy Hendrix in Wait Until Dark. That's not to say Audrey was perfect. Her one vice, smoking, came from the cigarettes she saw American soldiers smoking when her homeland was liberated. She became addicted to life on them.

Hepburn's wartime hardships in occupied Netherlands is given quite some coverage because the experiences affected her later in life. One was the closeness to her mother and brothers, one of whom, Alexander, became a "diver," people who avoided conscription by the Axis army by hiding. Second, being malnourished in the final years of war led to a metabolism that prevented her from significantly gaining weight. And finally, the suffering she went through made her empathize with the starving children in Africa when she joined up as a UNICEF spokesperson during the last years of her life. Her generosity extended to Givenchy, whom she fought to get him credit for his designs, and to William Wyler, to whom she felt indebted for Roman Holiday and thus agreed to star in The Children's Hour, which wasn't among her best movies.

All of Hepburn's movies, from her bits parts beginning with 1948's Dutch In 7 Easy Lessons through her final performance in Always, depending on how significant the movie, is given 5 to 7 pages coverage, from a brief synopsis, recollections by Hepburn herself, the directors, and co-stars. So far, the only person who hated Hepburn was her Sabrina co-star Humphrey Bogart, who thought Audrey, Billy Wilder, and others were conspiring against him. Others, such as her Roman Holiday co-star Gregory Peck, were gentlemanly.

Harris hits early on that actor Mel Ferrer, husband #1, was constantly being overshadowed by his wife, as he never got into the star tier and that led to a simmering resentment that finally ended their marriage.

Harris's coverage on her career is unbiased. He gives what the critics thought of her performances and movies, even bad ones like Paris When It Sizzles and Always, where she was clearly the best thing in the film. But through it all, he makes it clear why many, myself included, grew accustomed to her face.

Rating:
Summary: A Promise
Review: With a face that still resonates over the McCarthy era of Hollywood, Audrey Hepburn was an elegant image of purity in a corrupt world. Unlike Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey's image never tanished and she a backseat only to Marilyn Monroe as Hollywood's most famous leading lady.

Audrey's life is mostly public facts: she married a second rate actor, Mel Ferrer; won an Academy Award for her first film, Roman Holiday, and a Tony for Ondine; earned five Oscar nominations; had two sons and obsessed over her career and family; and remarried an Italian playboy. But only an Audrey insider like Harris can go beyond the well-known myth making and draw a complete picture.

Previously it has only been the subject of major speculation, but Harris confirms that Hepburn had several affairs with her leading men such as William Holden. The biography isn't all gossip though. Harris covers the later movies and Andrey's work with UNICEF. Although this prjects her Mother Teresa side, what is really interesting about Audrey is not her war experiences, her rise to fame, or her post-Wait Until Dark family life, but the period between 1952 and 1967 when she made fifteen great films including Charade and Two For The Road.

Harris recognizes Hepburn's peak in the 1960s and uses the bulk of the book to detail this period of her life, but his knowledge doesn't protect him from the obvious shortcomings in his own work. He does tend to be repetitive. He's not much of a prose stylist. Beyond that, there is another major gripe to raise: there are only sixteen pages of Audrey photos in this book, and they don't go far beyond the standard postcard set. Obviously, anyone reading a Hepburn biography craves that classic look and an illustration of the movement from film to film.