Poll Results: Audrey Hepburn

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.”

~Audrey Hepburn

The May poll results (82 total votes):

Audrey Hepburn- 26 (32%)
Marilyn Monroe- 19 (23%)
Grace Kelly- 18 (22%)
Doris Day- 11 (13%)
Elizabeth Taylor- 8 (9%)


I’ll admit that these polls are merely an excuse for me to ramble on about whoever the winner is. I always hope that someone reading might agree with what I say, or, even better, provide an eye-opening point of view that I hadn’t previously considered. I know very little about these actresses, and what I believe is largely based on my perceptions of them onscreen. So feel free to jump in and share what it is you like about them (or dislike; just be nice) I’m also willing to welcome someone passionate enough about their choice to invite them as a guest blogger here. Okay? Great!

I thought that the May poll question, “Who do you think is the quintessential 1950s actress?” would be handily won by that ever-popular cultural icon, Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn has all the snapshot images: the white dress blowing up, the kiss from the window, entertaining the troops in that slinky black dress in Korea, the bleach-blonde hair and the endless commercialization of said images.

Perhaps Doris Day might have emerged victorious, given her status as the prototypically 1950s “Girl Next Door.” But Day is a polarizing figure and has as many detractors as she does admirers, though she performed respectably in the poll.

Grace Kelly had a stellar year in 1954, even winning an Oscar (and beating out Audrey). But she beat it out of Hollywood in 1956 and married that schlubby prince.

Elizabeth Taylor had the movie star pedigree: the child star that came of age in the 1950s and was also the one with all the Oscar nominations earning consecutive nods in 1957 through 1960.

However, the clear winner is Audrey Hepburn, who, despite trailing early in the voting, emerged as the majority’s choice as the quintessential 1950s actress. I still believe that she won because in the view of many classic movie lovers, Audrey has more substance than Marilyn, even if we know virtually every detail of the latter’s perpetual unhappiness and early death. Marilyn longed to be considered a “serious” actress and an intellectual. That never happened. It would also seem that the Audrey fans out there stuffed the Hollywood Dreamland ballot box! Her fans are legion; just look at the amount of blogger profile pictures that use Hepburn as their avatar.

I have a theory about Audrey’s popularity, and I’ve commented on it before when her role as Princess Ann in Roman Holiday won March’s poll:

Audrey isn’t the sex goddess Marilyn is, she’s not the goody-goody Doris’ public image made her out to be, she didn’t have Grace Kelly’s royal, icy aloofness, and she wasn’t shrill and mean as Liz Taylor could be in her films. Audrey happened to just happened to carry herself like a princess, was beautiful like a porcelain doll, but emotional, sensitive, and above all—accessible. This is speculation, but I think that Audrey, regardless of her beauty and ability, had whatever the heck it was that most any girl out there understood: uncertainty, the feeling of being alone in the world. Marilyn Monroe, who obviously felt that way in her personal life, never conveyed those feelings onscreen. Audrey was able to show happiness tinged with an ever-present sadness. It was often seen in her movies as a moment of joy quickly replaced by her sad knowledge of the world, and of her own condition. This isn't present with any other actress and Audrey used that and made it her—I use this word too much---persona.

Of course, there's not a single, definitive reason that Audrey has become as popular as she has. When I was growing up, Marilyn Monroe was the star that girls idolized. MM’s popularity has dimmed since that time, but clearly a new awareness of Audrey Hepburn’s appeal has made itself known. Whatever it is, there wasn’t anything in the popular culture to catapult Audrey above these other actresses, so I’d be interested in knowing what makes Audrey so special to you. As for those that didn’t win, do chime in on what it was that made you vote the way you did.

Poll Results: Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday

The poll results are in! The majority of you say that your favorite 1950s Audrey Hepburn performance is her Oscar-winning role in Roman Holiday. The vote tally:

Roman Holiday- 19
Sabrina- 10
Funny Face- 3
Love in the Afternoon- 3
Nun's Story- 1

It's not surprising, because her turn as Princess Ann is the template that Hepburn (1929-1993) would use in some variation in virtually every role in her career: the sweet, lovely, awkward woman who is uncomfortable and often painfully unhappy with her lot in life, whether it be as a princess, the daughter of a chauffeur (Sabrina), the party girl (Breakfast at Tiffany's), or the unhappily married woman (Two for the Road). It is Hepburn's most frequent onscreen personality. Audrey Hepburn was a solid actress but was really a movie star--and one of the best of her era. She honed that persona in the aforementioned films, which are her most popular. She has an appeal to many women, particularly young women who can no doubt relate to her. She also benefits by being one of the fashion icons of the 20th century. But it is her magnetic charm, radiant beauty and vulnerability about to bubble over as first seen in films like Roman Holiday that earns her new fans some fifty years later.

All Aglow: 1953 Best Actress Audrey Hepburn with her prize.

TIME Will Tell

I'm surprised at how many movie stars graced TIME magazine's cover during the 1930s-50s. Considering that many who appeared on it over the years were supposed to be important yet are totally forgotten today (men of industry, government, business, etc.) makes me wonder just how "important" people in those fields actually are. They may have been essential folk back in their day, but we're still talking about the movie stars. Sorry, Clarence K. Streit...you should have preserved your life's work on film.

Ginger Rogers April 10, 1939

Bette Davis March 28, 1938

Audrey Hepburn Sep 7, 1953



Elizabeth Taylor August 22, 1949



Katharine Hepburn September 1, 1952



Ava Gardner September 3, 1951

The timing of these cover shots is interesting. Ginger and Bette were at their career peak when they made the cover. Audrey, Ava, and Liz were at the beginning of theirs; Audrey had just made her film debut in Roman Holiday and Taylor was just beginning her career as an adult after a successful run as a child actress. Kate Hepburn was still going strong-- and yes, her cover sketch is far from the most flattering I've seen of her, (it's during her Pat and Mike period, a film I've never liked all that much--considering the director, George Cukor, is revered here at Hollywood Dreamland as are the movie's stars, Spencer Tracy and Kate Hepburn).

I haven't read these issues to determine the substance of the articles, but I'll guess that they were "state of the cinema" pieces, reviews, or personal profiles. In the case of the Ginger Rogers cover, it's about Astaire & Rogers' final 1930s film, The Story of Vernon & Irene Castle and includes a Ginger profile. If a performer made the cover because of their onscreen work rather than any charitable or offscreen accomplishments, but it has gotten me interested enough in TIME's journalistic history to take a closer look at how movie stars were covered in the national, non-movie mag press.

I guess appearing on TIME isn't the immortalization they'd like us to think it is. Maybe popularity is the pocket change of history, I don't know. At least not as far as these movie stars are concerned. Anyway, take a look through TIME's cover archive and see how many people you recognize-- and how many you don't.

Henry Mancini: An Appreciation

When I think of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, two things come to mind: Audrey’s Holly Golightly character eating (a cruller? bear claw?) and drinking coffee outside early in the a.m., and Henry Mancini’s beautiful, immortal score. The film is remembered more for "Moon River" than for almost anything else, though for me Audrey Hepburn's reputation as a top-notch actress was also cemented in this film. She expressed her appreciation for Mancini’s score in a note to him:

Dear Henry,

I have just seen our picture- BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S- this time with your score.

A movie without music is a little bit like an aeroplane without fuel. However beautifully the job is done, we are still on the ground and in a world of reality. Your music has lifted us all up and sent us soaring. Everything we cannot say with words or show with action you have expressed for us. You have done this with so much imagination, fun, and beauty.

You are the hippest of cats—and most sensitive of composers!

Thank you, dear Hank.

Lots of love,

Audrey

Henry Mancini (1924-1994) owned the early 1960s, musically speaking. While the baby boomers were scalding the air with rock music, the "Greatest Generation" needed something that they could enjoy and Mancini was their man. The composer was popular with the public and beloved by his peers. Mancini won three Oscars in 1961-62: Best Song (“Moon River”) and Score for Breakfast at Tiffany’s in addition to a nod for the song "Bachelor in Paradise." He was awarded Best Song again in ‘62 for Days of Wine and Roses. Mancini compositions would receive Oscar nominations in 1963 ("Charade"), '64 ("Dear Heart"), and '65 ("The Sweetheart Tree"). His memorable melodies played continually on the radio and would continue to do so for the next forty years. Mancini’s reputation was never much with the terminally “hip” baby boom generation and he became known as an Easy Listening lightweight, due to his popularity among the older generation and his "heavy rotation" on “Beautiful Music” stations in the 1970s. Mancini’s arrangement of Nino Rota’s Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet made that composition his own.

In the years after his death from cancer in 1994, Henry Mancini's work received newfound popularity and his melodies earned a kitschy, yet hip reputation. It's a pity he wasn't around to appreciate the wave of adulation the mid-1990s "Lounge Music" revival brought, as it made believers out of the baby boomers who had previously thought of Mancini as "Schmaltzy" or "Old-Fashioned." His music became the epitome of Rat Pack-era cool. I never saw him or his music that way, because even when his music is swinging, there’s an undeniable pathos to Mancini, and it’s in most everything he composed. With that in mind, his music doesn't seem so ideal for alcohol consumption, even if those RCA albums were supposed to be for happy cocktail parties. People also seem to think that Breakfast at Tiffany’s was just a comedy, but it wasn’t (have these people seen the movie?) and Henry Mancini's work was never strictly loungey pop music. It could be enjoyed as such, there's always something more there. He was a quiet, self-effacing man, and guarded his emotions, yet that sensitive personality was often present in his music.

Speaking at a tribute for composer Jerry Goldsmith, Mancini was quoted as saying, “Frankly, he [meaning Goldsmith’s talent] scares the hell out of us.” That compliment could also be applied to Mancini. He was a singular combination of classy sophistication and tasteful melodicism, sort of a George Cukor of Composition. Mancini’s melodies could break your heart (Soldier in the Rain), scare the hell out of you (the ominously hip “Experiment in Terror”), or make for fun party music ("It Had Better Be Tonight"; "A Shot in the Dark"). His session men were the best West Coast Jazz musicians, he had a great "white bread" chorus which gave Ray Conniff's gaggle of better-known warblers a run for its money, and he sold millions of excellent easy listening/soundtrack albums. Mancini could also claim that film music legend John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars) was a Mancini acolyte. But we didn't really know how good this guy was until his better film scores were issued on CD, not the easy listening re-records from the 1960s-70s, but the actual tracks as heard in the films, like A Touch of Evil and Wait Until Dark, and yes, even Breakfast at Tiffany's. (the music heard on the LP is markedly different from what is heard in the film; a release of the actual underscore is unlikely because Paramount shows no interest in releasing or liscensing releases of their film score library). These works are a step towards revising Mancini's legacy and removing the undeserved, idiotic appellation, "lightweight tunesmith." Time has proven him to be fine dramatic composer and the absence of melody in today's film scores only make those of us who loved Mancini's music adore his work all the more, because no one has replaced him.

And that’s the truth, my huckleberry friend…

The Maestro, Henry Mancini

Backstage Beauties: 1956?

This striking image taken backstage at the 28th Academy Awards says it all: Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly were, as the song goes: "lovely to look at." The two Oscar-winning beauties were presenters that evening: Grace for Best Actor (Ernest Borgnine won), and Audrey handed out the big prize, Best Picture for 1955, Marty. The two actresses are so charismatic that it took me awhile to realize that there were actually other people in the room with them. That's star power.

UPDATE: After doing some additional fact checking last night in Mason Wiley and Damien Bona's Inside Oscar, I have to conclude that the LIFE magazine photo archive got the photo's date wrong...possibly. Their archive dates this photo March 21, 1956 but it's most likely March 30, 1955 when both women were up for Best Actress. Audrey Hepburn for Sabrina and Grace Kelly for The Country Girl. It also makes sense that the two women would be backstage together, as both were presenters in 1955: Kelly presented the Documentary awards and Hepburn the Story & Screenplay award. Both were presenters the next year at the 1956 Oscars-- Kelly was on hand to give the Best Actor award--but Audrey Hepburn appeared only on film, reading off the Best Picture nominees from London, according to Inside Oscar. If any Audrey Hepburn experts out there can confirm her whereabouts during that period, please chime in, as Hollywood Dreamland prides itself on getting its facts straight!