Beckett

Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Susan

And here's your 30 second summary. Audrey Hepburn transformed from a child of privilege to a child of war. From a star of the silver screen to a shining example of the best of humanity. The world is forever a better place for her having lived in it. The end. Let's talk about Audrey Hepburn.

Beckett

But first let's drop her into history. In 1953, sweet rationing that had begun during World War II in Britain was finally lifted. US President Truman announced the development of the hydrogen bomb. And in a semi related event a few weeks later, Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated as the 34th U.S. president. The polio vaccine was introduced and the chemical structure of a DNA molecule was discovered. TV Guide published its very first issue with baby Desi Arnaz Jr. On the COVID And Playboy published its very first issue with Marilyn Monroe in the centerfold. New in her role as queen, Queen Elizabeth II launched the royal yacht Britannia. She knighted Winston Churchill, and eventually she was crowned. Ernest Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for the Old man and the Sea. And Elvis Presley graduated from Humes High in Memphis, Tennessee. Pat Benatar, Jeb Bush, Rick Moranis, George Brett, Tim Gunn, Kathie Lee Gifford, Cyndi Lauper and Swiss harpist Andreas Wallenweiter were born. No relation. And on September 2, 1953, Audrey Hepburn's first Hollywood movie, Roman Holiday, opened and a superstar career of a fashion icon was launched.

Susan

Audrey Kathleen Rustin was born on May 4, 1929 in Brussels, Belgium, the first and only child of her parents, Joseph Victor Anthony Anthony Rustin and Baroness Ella von Heemstra. The mama had two sons from a previous marriage.

Beckett

Papa Joseph was British. He was 11 years older than his wife Ella. And as far as a career goes, it seems like he did as little work as possible.

Susan

His whole background is shrouded in mystery. He also was the son of a British father and an Austrian mother, which made him British, just like Audrey, but British her official nationality. Even though she was born in Brussels, she was an English woman. It's very complicated. But did he fight in World War I as he said he did? Did he go to Trinity College, Cambridge as he said he did? No one seems to be able to verify or disprove either thing. No.

Beckett

And even his careers, there's sources vary, like the jobs that he did, they're, they're different. So it's yes, he is a very man of mystery, but he was very handsome and he had a little thin mustache, as you know, was fashionable at

Susan

the time, he reminds me of the most interesting man in the world. And I think that's like kind of his Persona, too. It's like, hey, I've done things. I've wrestled bears. I've. You know, I think he's like that guy. I think, yeah.

Beckett

Personality wise. But his pocketbook wasn't. And there's a lot of speculation that he hitched his wagon to Ella because of her financial situation and her title. And he loved her title. He used the word baroness, but I don't think you know exactly what it meant for Dutch nobility. It was not like British nobility. First off, there was a heck of a lot more of them. It's like everywhere you turn, there was a baroness or something right around the corner. And they were very down to earth. It was kind of almost their motto, you know, just be unassuming. Help out as much as possible. Be very down to earth. Don't fly, flaunt anything. And here comes Joe and he wants to be like, woohoo. I married a baroness.

Susan

Well, that's old money versus new money. I've said it before. Old money comes to the store and paints battered clothes with big dogs in the car. New money has to put on their high heels. That's all I'm saying about that. Yeah. She was nobility. Mama. Baroness Ella von Heemstra. She's the daughter of Baron Arnold von Heemstra and Baroness Elbrich von Ospeck. Now, what on earth is. Here's what happens in the Dutch nobility. Every child of a baron becomes a baron or baroness. Baronesses. That's a dead end. Your children don't get any titles. But barons get to pass down titles to all their children. So if you have 12 children, there's 12 new barons and baronesses for the world to enjoy. That is why, during the Gilded Age, when all those heiresses were going across to Europe, they were warned against, quote, continental titles because they don't mean what you think they mean.

Beckett

Mm.

Susan

You could end up marrying a no count, you know. Whereas if you married in the British aristocracy, you could tell what was what just by the guy's title. It was very important distinction.

Beckett

The family's vast wealth had come from generations of trade, although more recent generations. As we got closer to Ella, they were more statesmen than import export men. For instance, her father would go on to become the governor of Dutch Guiana. That level of statesmanship. And she had eight siblings. Wow.

Susan

All barons and baronesses. That's right.

Beckett

Big, big baron and baroness party.

Susan

Well, I do want to say her Family got their titles in 1528. These are not newcomers at all. They did. Mama and Papa run in the same social circles out in the Dutch East Indies, which we now call, of course, Indonesia. Papa had been married and divorced. He's sitting out here in what is now Bhutan. If you look at India, it's up and to the right. I'm working on my Asia geography quizzes, and that is really difficult for me. I mastered Africa, but, oh, Asia's hard. Anyway, so they met out there. Mama got divorced from her husband after some infidelity and some arguments and, you know, she's like Coco Chanel. I guess so, if he's the most interesting man. She's fashionable, she's social, People are drawn to her. They were a very magnetic couple. Once they got together, it was almost inevitable, I think, just because they had a lot in common. And so who knows if it was true love on either side, really. I don't know. I think he might have been security, like the security of having a husband in a cruel, cruel world. And she was the money, maybe.

Beckett

I found it so interesting, the personality of Audrey's mother. She was described when she was younger as a born actress. Very dramatic, highly emotional, with a great sense of fun. But as a mother, that doesn't really sound like her.

Susan

I almost think the proprieties compress you, maybe as you grow a little older.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

And hardship or whatever. Well, though Papa's outsides were, of course, perfectly acceptable to everyone. Worldly, handsome, outgoing. His name was not acceptable.

Beckett

So he dug down deep into genealogy and lo, he. He may have been, if you like, squint your eyes and twist your head, a distant relation to James Hepburn, the third husband of Mary Queen of Scots.

Susan

So we talked about him in episode 58, though I think we referred to him by his title, the Earl of Bothwell, the guy that blew up Mary's second husband. Anyway, it's 300 years after that. We are grabbing at straws for nobility. Also, there is talk out there that, in fact, he's descending from that guy's second wife, who had no Hepburn in her name at all. So the straws are even thinner. Fair enough as well, as long as people are accepting it. I don't know. The Baroness had her husband start using the hyphenated last name Hepburn Rustin. Why is that fancier?

Beckett

Because it's hyphenated. I mean, you didn't see a whole lot of hyphenated names back then, did you?

Susan

Well, it still is, evidently. I just watched this comedy skit uh huh. Where all the little upper class kids, they're in an egg and spoon race. Do you know what I mean?

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

And so it's like Thomas, Taylor Thomas, Chloe Taylor Thomas and blah blah, blah. And then they find out the eggs aren't organic and everybody screams and runs for their Range Rovers and drives off. We'll link you to that video. So maybe a hyphenated name indicates that you're of those two bloodlines. Like people should A know and B, care about those things.

Beckett

Well, clearly they didn't have only 16 spaces to put their name in on forms. Because you start putting all those letters in, it gets really difficult from experience.

Susan

4, 5, 11, 12. I think they're doing okay.

Beckett

Plus their first name. Oh, and the hyphen.

Susan

Okay.

Beckett

Yeah, it gets kind of cramped.

Susan

Trust me, I feel bad for you guys in kindergarten. Like how come he gets to say fox F O X? That's funny.

Beckett

Well, that wasn't my maiden name, so it was a little shorter.

Susan

So the two did get married. It was a meeting of the minds if not a meeting of the hearts. Fair enough. Throughout history that has been a perfectly reasonable reason to get married. They moved out of the Dutch East Indies and back to London and then on to Brussels where Papa had, I don't know what it is, some kind of high flying corporate banking VP job that was or was not a real job.

Beckett

Or depending on another source, he could have been an executive in an insurance company. Question mark. This is what I was saying. Nobody knows his resume. Nobody knows what it looks like.

Susan

Well, and also, I think some of these VP jobs are like being a producer on a movie. Like that's the title you get given when it's not really a job. They just want your connections to be affiliated with the company. The number of executive producers that are honorifics is probably high.

Beckett

Yes, I would agree.

Susan

So their daughter Audrey was born here in Brussels at home at 48 Rue Kiefelt, which is still there by the way, if you want to go see it. But I have to tell you, there's a plaque but you can't go in and it's not fancy and there it is. If you, I mean if you're there anyway and happen to turn down the right road, you can take a picture of yourself in front of the plaque if that's what you would like to do.

Beckett

Well, if you're there. I took a picture of myself in front of Emily Post Cottage.

Susan

Oh yes.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

So I took a picture of Mary Cassatt's house without me in Front of it.

Beckett

Well, I also took some. Without me? Yes, because it looked just like the pictures.

Susan

Imagine that. Well, Mama wanted a place in the country, so by the time little Audrey was only 2, the family moved again to a village just outside of the city. The same way people these days moved, have a child, and move to the suburbs. It's Rue des Etre now, H E t r e s 129 in a village called Linkebeek. And that is also still there. And this house seems to have inserted its way into Audrey's heart. It was full of gardens and orchards and animals and fresh air. And I think this went into her heart for her life in a way that no other place did. So the house, the environment, the brothers, the playing outside, you know, the having of pets. Awesome. But Audrey's parents, I have to say, were kind of tempestuous. They were pretty much arguing all the time. And Audrey remembers hiding under tables and feeling very upset about it. It's a vivid enough memory from being a small child that it still upset her when she used to remember it.

Beckett

Yeah, it sounds like when dad was away on business, whatever that was, the house was fairly calm. You know, Audrey was being taught by her tutor, and she's being with her nanny. And then dad would come home and the whole dynamic blew up, which it usually does, but it calms down in most houses, and it didn't in this one.

Susan

So when the family was all home, little Audrey did spend most of her time outside playing with her older brother, Ian, who is five years older. I'm good for him hanging out with his little sister. Older brothers don't always do that. But he liked having her around to climb up trees and build tree houses and digging in the mud. You bring in that. I love the outdoor little kids stink

Beckett

that they had, but they would bring

Susan

it to the nannies. I mean, they were the only ones who gave them affection, I have to say, pretty normal for their class and their time. You'd see Mama and Papa after you'd been cleaned up and put into your nicer clothes. You know, you might go for a nice walk in town with your mother, but she's not coming outside to see you build a snowman or whatnot.

Beckett

Both of her brothers modeled something else that Audrey loved for the rest of her life, and that was reading. You know, if Alex was into Kipling, Audrey was into Kipling. And she loved the Secret Garden. I love that book.

Susan

I do, too. I remember being very offended, though, that everyone was like, mary, it's too bad you're so ugly the whole time. I'm like, can you not keep that to yourself? Everyone from the kitchen maid on up, it's like, it's too bad you're so horrible looking.

Beckett

That's nice.

Susan

I was like, no wonder she hates all of you. Anyway, back to reading Small Child Anger at the Secret Garden.

Beckett

Well, here, this will probably describe you because it certainly describes me when I was a kid. One time on a train trip to Italy, her mother gave her a copy of Heidi and Audrey was so wrapped up in it that she missed seeing all of Switzerland. It's like going out past the window and she's so wrapped up in her book.

Susan

But she's in Switzerland in her head.

Beckett

I know if she could just look up, she could see like the edelweiss and stuff.

Susan

Well, that's cute. That is cute.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

That's another book. I really like Heidi. Uh huh.

Beckett

I don't think I read Heidi well.

Susan

And there's problematic things about Heidi too. She gets like left with some old mean relative and then when it suits people, she's just fetched and sent to live in another town with strangers. I'm like, you guys, I don't know.

Beckett

I did see the Shirley Temple movie.

Susan

Shirley Temple does not look like Heidi. The end. Heidi looks like baby Snow White. That's what she looks like. Not like Shirley Temple. I stand firm.

Beckett

Really? Not the Swiss Miss. Blonde braids. Huh?

Susan

No.

Beckett

Oh, wow. I have to do a whole mind switch in my head.

Susan

Oh, sorry. No, keep it. Keep whatever you want in your head.

Beckett

Now that I think about it, it is the Swiss Miss. When I read Heidi the name, I was like, oh, that's the Swiss Miss. I can see the picture in my head.

Susan

So we have no idea if Audrey was offended or alarmed. And she probably was not by anything found in her books. So moving on to actual Audrey, she did start dancing class when she was about 4. She started piano lessons at about 4. Just like me, where your hands don't reach. Which is sort of frustrating, but whatever. She was also very fond of art. Loved babies, but not baby dolls. She's just a regular little girl. Though she was far more well traveled than your average preschooler. The brothers had to stay home and go to school, but Audrey was taken with off to Paris or England with her parents. And as a result, she spoke English and French quite fluently. But we need to talk about this. What exactly her parents were doing, especially while they were in England. This is not good. They had fallen under the spell of a politician named Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists. The buf.

Beckett

Oh.

Susan

Oh, dear. And I'm sorry to say, Sir Oswald Mosley's first wife was the daughter of Mary Leiter. We talked about her in the Gilded Age Heiress episode way back in 2011. Like one of our first series. Not that it mattered. I mean, he was sleeping with his wife's younger sister at the same time. He's real quality. So he does have a connection to a previous episode, but the British Union of Fascists.

Beckett

Hmm.

Susan

Where to start? You know, by the very name that it's not a let's hold hands and skip society. They wanted an isolated Britain. They wanted the, and I quote, cleansing of British society of undesirable elements. What does that mean? Not Jewish citizens specifically. And named. Not yet. But they were very interested in other. Izing a significant portion of society.

Beckett

Oh.

Susan

They wanted to hearken back to the good old days when everyone knew their place and were happy in it. For the common good. Of course, that benefits the upper classes. They wanted to crystallize that social hierarchy that Britain had lost after World War I. We saw that at Downton Abbey. Suddenly, maids were all uppity and wanted to work for a telephone company or chauffeurs had more options. Like, dang it, the upper class is really suffering now.

Beckett

Yeah. They had a model in Germany at the time with Hitler. He was doing exactly what the British wanted to do in Germany.

Susan

So, of course, all of this hearkening back to the idealized past really appealed to a certain section of the British aristocracy. We've talked about that during the Wallis Simpson podcast. Audrey's parents were involved. Their circles were the same. This movement had some heavy hitters in it. Now, lest you think this is just a British problem, America, too had its own Nazi rallies happening at the same time in 1939. There is a movie short called A Night at the Garden, which is up for an Oscar this year. It refers to a night at Madison Square GARDEN when over 20,000American Nazis held a rally in New York City. So this is going on all over the world. Mama wrote some articles for the BUF publication called the Black Shirt, which is the violent military wing of the buf all about how great it would be. Basically, the group knows best. Individual freedoms are messy. They're overrated. They were very involved in fundraising, promotion, member recruitment. They gave Mosley so much money that he took Mama and Papa on a special tour of Hitler's Germany with no

Beckett

other than the Mitchford sisters, who we have not covered, but they are on the list. It sounds an awful lot like the Disneyland tour that Wallis Simpson and David got where they were shown all the glossy parts. You know, the factory, the improvements, the schools, the improvements. They got their picture taken with Hitler. It's all great.

Susan

They framed that picture in silver and put it on the mantelpiece.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

At Audrey's house. I'm just telling you, this is not. Oh, I guess we're going because our friends tell us to. No, this is like, can't wait. I'm buying new clothes for this trip. No, of course. Audrey, age 6, had literally no idea about any of this. No, of course not. Here's what she knew. She was at preschool one day, and her father left the family. Audrey remembered this as the most traumatic moment in her life, and that is saying something, given what is about to come.

Beckett

Audrey would say that her mother's hair actually turned white overnight from the stress of the whole thing. But he was gone, and I just want to, like, wrap him up in a bow and throw him aside. Can we do that? Or do you need to talk about him again later? I mean, later. Later we will, but just for now. Do you mind? Sure. Joseph left and joined a much more radical fascist group. And in the not too distant future, he's gonna be rounded up, found guilty. The amount of evidence is questioned, but comes down to the same thing. The British House of Commons put him in jail for the duration of World War II. So he's done. He's out of the picture as far as I'm concerned.

Susan

So Audrey Small. Audrey, is convinced that he just abandoned them. And he did. But it seems that Grandpa von Heemstra, Ella's father, may be under orders from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands herself.

Beckett

Mm.

Susan

He has a daughter who is a lady in waiting of the Crown Princess. These are a connected family, so it's not, like, as random as it seems.

Beckett

No.

Susan

Queen Wilhelmina knew the family. Maybe she called and said, ixnay on the UN in law. Say, you know, you have to stop, because his actions are reflecting bad on our country, and people are starting to take it. Like, the Netherlands might actually be sympathetic to the cause of Hitler, and we are not. So you need to call that. Give him some money or whatever it is and tell him to go away. Well, he left his daughter out of the negotiations, and so she had no idea it came out of the blue. Divorce was suddenly in the works. And so I can see how that would be a total shock. Not only your husband has left you, but your dad and possibly the queen told him to Go.

Beckett

Well, they had. I want to say that maybe there was a little bit of a relief for her, for Ella, because they had been fighting so much. You know, I mean, as far as that goes, like one little golden nugget in there, if that's what happened.

Susan

Well, Papa objected after this divorce to Audrey being taken out of England at all. So as a compromise, she was enrolled in a boarding school in Kent, where there was easy access from both parents. At 6. 6 years old, her parents got divorced. She got dumped at boarding school. That is absolutely traumatic. Her brothers are gone, her mom's gone, her dad's gone. I'm in a school in a foreign country. She became very withdrawn and says that she spent her time eating either chocolate or her fingernails. She was a mess. She was a mess. She got so bad, the school had actually told her parents, try to stay away for half a year. Let's see if she gets better and adjusts. Everybody adjusts. Nope, nope, nope. She got worse and worse. Finally, Mama had to rent rooms in a cottage in the town just to spend time with her and go to visit her sons instead of the reverse.

Beckett

She also made arrangements for Audrey on vacations, holidays, to go spend time living with a coal miner's family in the country. It was like immersion British everyman culture, I guess is what it was. And she ended up really adoring this family and staying in contact with them for many, many years. So she came out of her shell a little bit at the coal miner's house.

Susan

No, that's good. That's good. She did stabilize. She made friends. She did well in her studies. She found a passion and a talent for ballet. Mama did not take up her British Union of Fascist stuff again. I don't know. But maybe she was told why her marriage had been broken up. Like, you better not.

Beckett

Yeah. And maybe part of it is that she went along with him. I don't want to give her a pass here at all, but, you know, it was a thing they could do as a couple, and if they had already had a strained marriage, it could have brought them back together again. I don't know.

Susan

Nope. I'm not giving her any credit. She's the one that wrote those articles for the black shirts.

Beckett

Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm just trying to figure out why she would have gotten involved in the first place. I can easily understand how she could have gotten brainwashed to think that this was the right path.

Susan

Well, because the upper classes wanted the good old days back, and this seemed like the way to get the good old days back. I will tell you, there is a screen cap. I'll have to send it to you to put in the show notes. Maybe there's a screen cap in that movie, the King's Speech. That is kind of amazing. There's a little boy on the street, and behind him, this is right when David has just abdicated the throne and his brother the King, who's trying to make the speech throughout this whole movie, is trying to go to the speech therapist. There's a poster that said the black shirt to support the King, meaning David. Oh, yeah. It says the black shirts support the King. And so that to me means the Nazis are all about the King who has just abdicated.

Beckett

Interesting.

Susan

And there's also speculation, as we talked about during the Wallis Simpson podcast, that that Papa was forced to leave his marriage because of his Nazi activities. There's speculation that the King was forced to abdicate not because of Wallis Simpson, but because of his Nazi activities. So turmoil at home was one thing. Turmoil in Europe was another thing. There is a more sinister dark force gathering in the land. Hitler has annexed Austria and then invaded Poland. Poland took giant hits. Poland was a mess. Poland was horrible.

Beckett

So while those things were happening in Europe, Audrey was still a little girl going to school.

Susan

When Audrey was 10, England and France officially declared war on Germany. And Mama was far away in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Transportation between England and Europe was shutting down. You can almost hear those big gates that people put in front of their stores in big cities, just metaphorically. Wham, wham, clang. Doors are shutting. Imagine your fear if you're a Mother, your 10 year old is trapped in a country that has just declared war. It's very scary. And Holland had stayed neutral for most of World War I. Mama wanted to bring Audrey from England, a country boarding school in England, back to Holland. And now we know, looking back, this was the exact opposite of what the best plan was. But looking at the information Mama had, you know, you'd probably do the same thing. My country was neutral. Let's bring her back here. England is a powder keg and I can't handle it. You know, Audrey actually had to be taken to a small airport because the bigger ones had already closed to all but military traffic. And she got put on one of the last planes out of England. So we'll leave Audrey there for just a moment and take a little break. She is starting a new life in her childhood home. And when we come back, we will find out how that worked out for her. As summer is coming and travel season is upon us. I have started carefully choosing pieces that could be used in multiple ways on my trip. Things that make me feel put together but not fussy. Things I can just throw on and go out or hang around the house in. And Quince has been my go to for this. They use elevated fabrics and the fits are flattering without being fussy. Everything just works without having to get into a swivet when I get dressed right.

Beckett

And I love that their pieces because they are basics. You can layer them. I had just gotten a purple washable stretch silk T shirt. I was able to wear it casually with jeans and then a little more elevated with a cardigan. I could probably even dress it up farther. I just haven't tried.

Susan

I had this organic cotton gauze dress. It's a smocked maxi dress. And so on this last trip I wore it with clogs and a leather jacket to go on a brewery tour. And then later in the trip I wore it with fancy shoes and a little teeny tiny flower de cardigan.

Beckett

Lovely. I love that dress on you.

Susan

It's comfortable enough to sleep in.

Beckett

And this is a good time to be getting some new linen pieces. Lightweight linen pants or dresses tops. They're all starting at about 30 doll. Effortless, breathable, perfect for summer resort wear or home, not resort staycation wear.

Susan

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Beckett

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Susan

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Beckett

Foreign.

Susan

And we're back. Audrey has taken one of the very last bright orange planes from England to the Netherlands and she is about to start a new chapter in her life. Audrey started at a new school held of course in Dutch. She was not that good in Dutch. She spent every day lost in panicking, frankly, every night dreading the next day. She had to dig in and get used to her whole world being upended again and kind of found relief only in her dance classes. We talked about this during the Anne Frank episode, which is happening in the same place and at the same timetable. Germany's been like, oh, our Dutch brothers and sisters. We're family. Don't worry. We have such history Our bloodlines are all the same, etc. I mean, Audrey's family let Kaiser Wilhelm live in one of their castles. So I'm just saying, yes, the ties are very tight when all of a sudden, wham. We talked about this during the Anne Frank episode. There was a German bombing raid. Rotterdam is leveled. It's a surprise. There's parachutists all over Holland. It's war. Brought to their Cousin's house, uncool 11 year old Audrey and family heard the Germans marching through their town, heard the heavy vehicles rolling by, but were warned if the Germans saw anyone peeking through the curtains, they would shoot them. So much for family loyalty.

Beckett

No kidding. Well, I mean, as far as Germany goes, that's the best plan, right? Don't tell them.

Susan

Don't show your cards, I guess. Well, there were five days of unexpected fighting as far as the Germans were concerned. Whoa. We didn't know our little friends were going to be so feisty. Finally, the Germans just threatened to level Amsterdam too. How about it? And the Dutch kind of had to roll over. They had managed to evacuate the royal family though during those five days out to England. But otherwise it was thorough, thorough German occupation. Her older brother Alexander had to go into hiding because he was in the Dutch army and had fought against the Germans. And if he'd been caught, he could have been killed. Mama, Audrey and her brother Ian had to move into his smaller apartments because the Germans had seized most of Grandpa's property. German officers were now living in his big house. Grandpa had been the breadwinner or the bread haver. I don't think he won any bread, he just had it for a while. But for a couple of years for Audrey anyway, life sort of snapped back into place. We did talk about that the Germans were nicer than usual for a while in the Netherlands for that same reason. Like maybe we can just get them to be a part of Germany. Calmly so, in a gingerly way. Anyone who was not Jewish could pick up their lives and sort of just go on. So Audrey just went back to her ballet, went back to school, noticed that there were no Jewish children at her school anymore. Jewish teachers had been dismissed, books had changed a little bit. But she's 11. None of this is going to sink in too heavily, I don't think.

Beckett

No, because her life hasn't really changed all that much.

Susan

Notably though, there is one thing Mama had to do to keep Audrey safe.

Beckett

She trained her daughter to give her name not as Audrey Kathleen, but as Etta van Heebstra, which is kind of a Play on her own name. It doesn't scream, I'm a British citizen.

Susan

Because Audrey was a citizen of an enemy country at this point and don't speak English outside the house. Also, more sinisterly, Audrey was an unusual name. And the average German soldier is going to equate unusual name to Jewish, so better not risk it. Even though Audrey was too young to be required to have an ID card. Kids grow, you know, let's start. Now. The theory is that Etta Edda was chosen because Mama had an ID card. Of course. E, L, L, A. And you can adapt those L's easily to D's, Right? They were handwritten anyway. But that seemed like an easy change if as Audrey grew, she needed an ID card, that would be easy to change. So they, like Anne Frank and her family, listened to Queen Wilhelmina on Radio Orange from England. Audrey was actually trained, this was her job, to change back to the regular music only radio station so that if there was ever a German raid, nobody would get in trouble. You'll remember Anne Frank was tasked with the very same thing in her hiding place. Everyone would go down to listen to Queen Wilhelmina and the resistance radio. And then they had to change it back before they went back upstairs.

Beckett

The parallels between Audrey's story and Anne's story are just heartbreaking. You know, I know there's. They're in the same country, they're not that far away from each other. They're undergoing the same. So much of the same things. They're exactly the same age, they were born the same year. Yeah, heartbreaking.

Susan

So when Audrey was 13 in 1942, the same year that Anne Frank and her family had to go into hiding, the Germans took their gloves off. As far as the Dutch were concerned. There was widespread and dawning knowledge among the Dutch people as to what started to happen to their Jewish neighbors. There was public dismay and general strikes, rebellions. And the Nazis decided they weren't going to have it and they started to crack down. The Dutch resistance blew up a train, and in retaliation, the Germans selected five prominent Dutch men from different cities and had them publicly executed.

Beckett

They weren't even involved in blowing up the train. They were just an example. And it was the first time that a group was shot in public. And the Germans are saying, hey, we're not messing around. This is what's going to happen to you if, you know, you do any of this resistance stuff.

Susan

And one of those five men was Audrey's uncle Otto. The war had suddenly become personal to Mama and a lot of other Dutch People, I think there was a little bit of blinders. It's all fine as long as it's not happening to me or my family. But now it has reached its dirty finger into my household. Not only that, brother Ian was considered old enough to be sent to labor service. He'd been anxious about leaving his mother and sister alone. And so he hadn't gone into hiding, even though he was of age. And he paid the price by being sent away to work as slave labor in a factory in Berlin. Tactics thin out the able bodied population. This very same dragnet was sent out for Margot Frank, Anne's sister, which is why they'd gone into hiding in the first place. But Ian didn't go into hiding, and so he was sent away.

Beckett

The war has finally hit their family. Audrey is beginning to see things around her that she hadn't been noticing before. It has touched her. And she as well as her mother were seeing the kind of trouble they were in. What was going on in community after the war. This is a story that she told about that time more than once. I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing those faces over the top of the wagon. I remember very sharply one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blonde, wearing a coat that was much too big for him. And he stepped on the train. I was a child observing a child.

Susan

There's a problem. The resistance that they want to help is not that into trusting Mama. I wonder why your reputation has preceded you. So she did facilitate some secret fundraisers. At different points, Audrey and friends did little dance performances to Swan Lake, or they'd have social evenings to raise funds for the Dutch resistance. But it was the kids that transported things like counterfeit ration cards, including Audrey. The things that kept the hidden Jews alive during the rest of the war were carried in the lunch boxes of middle schoolers right under the Germans noses. The resistance would put these things in the kids lunchboxes or the backpacks so that they would have plausible deniability if, say, they had them in a pocket or in their sock or something. Well, come on, you're gonna be in trouble. But if you're just carrying a lunchbox and there's something in there, you could be like, I don't know, I set it on a shelf and just picked it up at school. But remember how how the workers in Anne Frank's factory used fake ration cards to get them enough food to live? What if Audrey brought those ration cards? I mean, she brought some to Some hidden Jewish people. Well, since Audrey spoke English and looked so innocent, she was often the one literally sent to meet British infiltrators and give them directions to their safe houses. You guys, this is a middle schooler. One time she was on her way to meet a British, I guess you'd call him a spy. He was just kind of coming to work with the Resistance. She was on her way to this place in the forest where she was supposed to meet this guy, and along come some Germans. And she quickly gathered up a bunch of wildflowers and presented them with little bouquets and, like, curtsied and was super friendly. And they went away saying, I just wish every Dutch child would be this friendly and nice. See, this is how it should be among friends. And the second they were out of sight, she went and undermined them.

Beckett

You gotta really applaud her intellect here.

Susan

I mean, that was actually kind of her first acting job, if you think about it.

Beckett

Oh, definitely, definitely.

Susan

I'm just gathering wildflowers. La la la. But then later, when people would praise her for her bravery, she would say that she hadn't done anything out of the ordinary. There was large popular support for undermining Germans in any way possible, but still very, very risky. And here's the beginning of Audrey's lifelong habit of downplaying her excellence in every field, from bravery to compassion to acting to dancing to looks to fashion. I mean, every single thing, she's like, oh, now I'm not anything. The Germans are getting increasingly pissed. Can I say pissed? You can all of this subterfuge. And they began punishing the Dutch people as a whole. All of them gone were the benevolent brethren of years gone by. The food supply got smaller and smaller. The Nazi occupiers vacuumed a lot of it into their own gullets, of course. And then they sent the rest, or most of the rest back to Germany. And even if you happen to have chickens or a cow, you know, I'm fine. I'm in the country. Nope, requisitioned mine. Even the black market was hopelessly lacking in merchandise. Audrey and her mother lived on lettuce and bread cakes made out of green peas mostly. So Audrey and Mama and the entire population of the Netherlands got sicker and thinner. And Audrey was too weak to take ballet. Everyone was too weak to take ballet. I mean, it. It's over.

Beckett

Well, you don't stay healthy eating tulip bulbs. They took the tulip bulbs and they ground them into a flour, and she said it was a very fine flour. I'M assuming that's the texture, not the actual taste. But there's no nutritional value in it. Regardless, she's 5 7. At this point, her weight dropped to 90 pounds. That's scary. Malnourished. And she became jaundiced, too. She's not doing well at all.

Susan

So right about now, this is the time when Audrey and Anne Frank are 15, that Anne Frank and her family were discovered in their hiding place and sent away. While trying to get hold of some bridges, the British bombed the living crap out of parts of Arnhem, the village that they lived in, you know, and the citizens were determined that they were going to help the British. And so they were very into hiding the British paratroopers who had come as part of the invasion. In fact, Mama gave a hidden British soldier her last bottle of champagne, which seems very much like Mama.

Beckett

It does.

Susan

Oh, hi. You haven't had food in a week. Have a bottle of champagne. She was saving it for the day. Queen Wilhelmina came back. But this was a better cause, she thought definitely.

Beckett

We call it the Battle of Arnhem. There was more deaths at this battle than there were in Normandy. That's how big and how catastrophic it was.

Susan

Well, all the residents of Arnhem were told to get out. At least the Nazis told them to get out. They didn't have a whole lot of time. And the Nazis blew up the town. They blew it up. They burnt what didn't blow up. It was devastated. It was leveled. So anyone hidden was gone. Audrey and Mama had to walk out to a house that Grandpa had owned out in the country miles outside of town, and saw people literally collapsing and dying from hunger. On the way, all trains were stopped, so there was no food and there was no heat. And there was really no hope to the point where you couldn't even have a coffin. You could borrow a coffin for the procession to bury your loved one, but then you had to dump the body and bring the coffin back for reuse. That's how many people were dying. So it was necessary to go out and scrounge so you wouldn't die. But the Nazis were roaming the streets looking for people to haul in for slave labor. If you were over about the age of 12, you were vulnerable. Audrey turned a corner one day while she was scrounging right into one lone German soldier who had a few girls lined up and had radioed for a truck to come get them. And I'm sure young girls were even more vulnerable to certain kinds of soldiers than their male counterparts. That's All I'm saying about that, and here's where the story diverges just a little bit. So either the truck didn't come, which is what we'll tell you first, or there's a whole other mythology that involves her already being loaded onto the truck. So we'll tell you that one, too. Story number one. Audrey saw that she only had one chance. Because once the soldiers, the backup got there, you know, she didn't have a chance to run. Audrey took off. He had a choice. Was he gonna lose the five he already had or take off after the one that was running. Well, that's pretty numerically easy since his compatriots didn't know about her, you know, he wasn't going to lose any face. She ran away and either hid in a bombed out building or in the forest. I think the story is told different ways.

Beckett

It definitely is. You'll find some sources that say that she was actually put on the truck to be taken away to be used as slave labor. And the truck stopped and she jumped off, rolled underneath it, and fled into the woods. Regardless of what exactly happened, the result was the same.

Susan

She was gone for days. Mama had no idea where she'd been. And then she snuck back home using every back way a local would ever know.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

Unrecognizable in the dark. Poor Mama. Can you imagine her feelings when she saw her daughter? She already lost one son to the unknown labor camps. She lost another son to. He's in hiding. Have you ever seen. This whole thing? Reminds me of. Have you ever seen the, you know, Mutual of Omaha nature show where the wildebeests are trying to cross a river full of crocodiles? Like, if you're a wildebeest, you have to get out to survive, but then the crocodiles are lurking and do you take the chance? I mean, she's put in that position. Every day everyone has to go out and scrounge for food. Every day the Nazis are out trolling for slave labor. It's horrifying. Think about that. I mean, if you don't leave, you die. If you do leave, you die.

Beckett

Yeah. There's no choice.

Susan

The family took to filling their stomachs with water and staying in bed to conserve their energy. I don't know if that was a reaction to the kidnapping or potential kidnapping or not. All this deprivation did a number on Audrey's metabolism. Just like Carrie Ingalls from the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories. If you recall, she was about 10 or 11 during the long winter when nobody had enough to eat and never Ever was able to gain weight for the rest of her life. I wonder if there's a developmental period where if you don't get nutrition, you just. That's it. I don't know. I was really struck by that similarity. Well, anyway, she and all the other residents of the Netherlands were walking skin and bones by the time Holland was liberated on her 16th birthday.

Beckett

I'd love that.

Susan

That's a happy birthday.

Beckett

It is, it is.

Susan

Audrey summed up the war in this. The war left me with a deep knowledge of human suffering, which I expect many young people of later generations never know about. The things I saw during the occupation made me very realistic about life. I've been that way ever since. Do not ever discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It's worse than you can ever imagine. I came out of the war thankful to be alive, aware that human relationships are the most important thing of all, far more than wealth, food, luxury, careers, or anything you can mention.

Beckett

How can I follow that with a story about candy bars? So the English soldiers, the British army, had arrived in Arnhem. One of those soldiers gave Audrey five candy bars. Now, if you're starving, literally, and you're given five candy bars, you're gonna snarf them all down, which is what she did. And then she brought them back up again because you can't eat like that after you haven't eaten at all. But she was so touched by the generosity and the kindness shown to her by these British soldiers. They were coming to liberate them. I mean, it was such joy, no

Susan

matter what she had been through. She made a point of going to the wounded British soldiers in the hospital and talking to them and helping out at the hospital. So she volunteered her time to help the people who had come to help her country. I think that is just a perfect example of Audrey's character, how the Baroness had raised her daughter to think of others before herself. The only super bad thing that came out of her experience with the British soldiers is not only did they give her candy bars, which ultimately she learned to tolerate. She said, I got very tubby. Yeah, no, you didn't. But they gave her extra cigarettes, packs and packs of them. And she started chain smoking. I mean, one from the other. A habit that kind of lasted her whole life. And this is where it started is free gifts from the British soldiery.

Beckett

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration came in. They brought food, milk, coffee, canned foods. They brought blankets, first aid supplies. The schools in the town became relief centers. And Audrey and her family worked in those centers handing out these things to their neighbors. Later on, that particular organization becomes unicef. This is another example of what you just said that she wants to give back to people who helped her. Only this one's going to take a lot more time.

Susan

You're going to want to put a pin in the name of unicef, because it is going to come up later. Care packages started to arrive. And how about another acronym from the past? Fun fact. Did you know that CARE Packages stands for the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe?

Beckett

I did not.

Susan

CARE is just an acronym now. We think of CARE packages as being like little thingies you send to your kid in college or at camp.

Beckett

Right.

Susan

I am going to give you a link to fall down this particular rabbit hole. The ingredients of each care package, what was included, basically what had happened is all of these rations called 10 in ones that are 10 men's rations for a day. They were supposed to have gone to Japan, but they didn't because of Hiroshima. That horrific event did bring the war to a close earlier than everyone expected. And so there were a lot of extra rations left over that did not now need to go to American soldiers in Asia. Americans could sponsor a package for $10 and send it to Europe. The sheer riches of these parcels after years of deprivation were just unimaginable. Part of the box, her favorite part are cans of evaporated milk. She would drink the whole thing and then, like, stagger around feeling so bad, trying to keep it down, but she couldn't stop herself. It may as well have been Thanksgiving dinner. And in fact, it kind of was Thanksgiving dinner. Another thing she liked to do was bootleg the jars of jam out of the house and get a spoon and jam and just sit on a rock and shove it all into her head. She has a thing for sweets, I think.

Beckett

I think so. Yeah. Yeah. That follows her for her whole life. The war is over. So one in 50 Dutch citizens had died during the war. That's a huge number. You don't really think about that, but 1 in 50. Wow.

Susan

I'm actually surprised more didn't die. It was a horrific, horrific time.

Beckett

Oh, really?

Susan

With the no food and bombs falling. Yeah.

Beckett

And their neighbors getting sent off to concentration camps. I saw it somewhere and I was like, wow, that seems high. I guess it isn't as high as you would have thought.

Susan

Any is too many. So you're right. After the war, both of Audrey's brothers made it home safely. So Alexander's back. Hooray. With a wife who is pregnant. So the few future is already set. And Ian came back too, although he had to walk home from Berlin, so it took him longer.

Beckett

It's like 360 miles from Berlin to Arnhem.

Susan

And he walked. That's no joke.

Beckett

No joke at all. He walked most of the way.

Susan

So there was a brief, brief family reunion. The brothers decided to take their chances in the Dutch East Indies where they had both been born. Of course, they are frying pan into the fire because the war for Indonesian independence happened right after that.

Beckett

But.

Susan

But we're going to leave that to the side. As far as we know, they're off to a bright new life. Hooray. So Audrey and Mama could not move back to Arnhem because it had been leveled. So they moved to Amsterdam, where Audrey was able to stay with her ballet teacher.

Beckett

Ella got a job as a cook. As a cook.

Susan

You know, she was not a good employee.

Beckett

No.

Susan

In addition to being a cook, I think she was a housekeeper. Yeah, Maid for a while. I cannot imagine that going well. So she eventually moved on to a makeup artist and she worked in a flower shop. That's fine. Those things seemed a little more high class. But I think she had a very steep learning curve on how to earn a living.

Beckett

She's doing whatever she has to do to support her and her daughter. Audrey was able to begin her dance lessons again. She's 17. The horrors of the war are still with her, but she's back in real ballet shoes. During the war, she was sewing them from felt or anything that she could get her hands on. And she's finally back in the real ones. That must have felt. Can you imagine putting on your first pair of real ballet shoes after all

Susan

those years of real anything, like going to the store and buying a dress. The most glorious luxury. Small things mean so, so much. For hours a day. Even though her strength was really shot, she was so passionate about ballet that she worked and worked and didn't mind the effort and didn't mind the days spent on fundamentals. And she paid for her less by modifying hats out of a store. Hello, Coco Chanel. Doing the same thing. And she resold them at stores and salons. So she's enterprising and she's determined to make this ballet thing work. She had her first movie role at only 18 as a flight attendant. I found this on YouTube.

Beckett

Yes, I will put it in the show notes. The movie was called Dutch in Seven Lessons. And. And contrary to what you might read elsewhere, it was not a documentary. It was a short comedy about A cameraman who's sent to make a documentary in the Netherlands, but he keeps getting distracted by the beautiful women.

Susan

But you know what, the fact that you read that it's a documentary is sort of half true.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

Because what had happened is that an organization had hired this photographer to make a travel documentary. And then they punked on his contract and they didn't pay him and he had all this footage that he'd already taken. And he's like, really? With this, he decided if he added some footage and made it into a story, maybe he could get paid.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

The opening scene of the movie where the guy sort of cat calls her, that was actually her screen test. And they liked it so much that they opened their movie with it.

Beckett

So.

Susan

However, it didn't make her a superstar, but it did get her a modeling gig at a high end fashion house. So the more money for ballet. Through an old friend from her boarding school days in the way back, she applied for and was granted a partial scholarship to a prestigious ballet school in London. Audrey, of course, is a British citizen, so she could just go. I mean, assuming you had the money, you could go. But Mama's exit was blocked, so the paperwork made this all drag out. Maybe it was her buf activities that made her have to be scrutinized more. But it was at least a year before they could get permission for Mama to leave. And Audrey's getting older and taller.

Beckett

The school that she went to was run by Marie Rambert. Marie had worked with some of the biggest names in dance. Nijinsky, Stravinsky and isadora Duncan. Agnes DeMille had been one of her students and she called her Madame Wasp. She was tiny, teeny tiny. And she also had an ability to make people cry.

Susan

Oh, every ballet teacher can make people cry. Has anyone taken ballet? They are the meanest. You think football coaches are mean? Nah. And they will get to your personal weaknesses faster than anyone I could ever. So when Audrey got to England, there was sort of a heartbreaking and realistic assessment of her capabilities. I'm sorry to say the war years had robbed her of her momentum and technique. She was graceful, she looked beautiful. That could get you pretty far. But the hard facts were, Charlie, you're years behind your contemporaries. At least five years. And at five foot seven, as far as many companies were concerned, you're too tall, Audrey. Ballet's ruthless. I myself was kicked out of a ballet school early for my height, which of course is too short, not too tall. The top ballerina in England, Margaret Fantine, was 5 foot 4. So everybody seemed to think, there's your goal, 5 4. There's a bigger range now. I mean, there's Misty Copeland is only 5:2, and then there's a Russian ballerina that's, I want to say almost 5 8, but. But also I want to point out that this might have just been an excuse because there's a famous dancer, British, named Allegra Kent, who was 5 7. She had a giant career.

Beckett

Did she have giant feet? Audrey's feet were size 10, which is kind of large for women's feet. I don't think they had anything to do with this particular assessment of her body. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Susan

Well, so if it was just kindness to say it's your height, you can't help it. If that's, like, the easy road to go down, to let someone down. She was let down. She started to realize she was never, not ever, going to be a success in her chosen field. And I just hate that this was

Beckett

actually a plotline on the TV show this Is Us, like, just last week.

Susan

I don't watch that show.

Beckett

Oh, you cry. I cry every single episode. I know I'm being manipulated and I don't care, but this, it was a flashback scene to one of the characters, and she was so into ballet. She wanted to be a ballerina, and she was faced with the harsh realities that she wasn't cut out for it.

Susan

Did it have anything to do with, like, the shape of her thighs? Because a lot of times that.

Beckett

Yes, actually, yes, that was part of it. And she was the only black student in the school, so at first she was, you know, special because of that. But then more black students who were more talented came in, and she kind of face facts and went to plan B, which made all the difference in

Susan

the world, as it did for Audrey. I know.

Beckett

I'm wondering if the writers of this Is Us kind of modeled it after this story.

Susan

Well, so she's already modeling. You know, she was the face of lacto calamine lotion, the foundation of beauty, which is still sold in stores. But she was in vogue. She was in other highfalutin publications also. And in a fake it till you make it hail Mary. That really served her well as a technique through her whole life. She started going to auditions with some friends for musical theater. Maybe the dancing would help. And sure enough, she beat the odds, I think, due to her looks and charm, and made it on to the London production of a musical called High Button Shoes.

Beckett

I read that there was 3,000 candidates for 40 openings and that she was given the last one. Now, I don't know if this is just told this way to be dramatic, but even if it wasn't 3,000 and it was was 200, that's still a lot of people going for this one position.

Susan

That's the whole premise of A Chorus Line. There's so many people for so few parts. Yeah, I love. Okay, so I'm not familiar with high button shoes. I am familiar with the Chorus Line. I highly recommend it if you get a chance to go see that. And that deals with more modern versions of dance. So anyway, I. I'm not familiar with this. My parents always got comps for playing in the pit. I've never seen this one, though. I think their company never did this one. It's not very popular. Her looks and her, I guess you'd call it, silent movie acting. During the Keystone Cop, like big number in the middle got her spotted for her next projects. Two very extravagant musical reviews. People kept talking about her eyes. They would even ask her, how do you get them to do that? And she would look at people. They're just on my face. I dono.

Beckett

Well, she had that ability to attract everybody's eye. One of the dancers that she had performed with at some point said, and I'm paraphrasing, the dancer said, I have the biggest bosom on stage, but everyone looks at the girl who has none at all. She didn't say bosom.

Susan

She said the T word. Well, her air of innocence, I don't know if that's what it was. People felt like Audrey could be their friend. She was speaking directly to them no matter where they were sitting in the theater. She had it. As we talked about during the Clara Bow episode, she had magnetismo star quality, that unfathomable thing that you can't quantify. She had it well. A stint in a nightclub with a kind of a stripped down version of one of these musical reviews led to her second movie opportunity as a cigarette girl with two lines. Lots of small roles followed, but most importantly, she was networking with her peer group. I think even more than now, the movie community is a small one. News gets around. You always want to work with someone that your friend worked with. You'd always call a friend over, putting an ad out in the paper, you know, and she was getting a name for herself. She was impressing people who remembered her and recommended her. And she started to make it onto, let's call it past the velvet rope lists. You're in a room with stars, so. And So's having a party do drop by. You know, she met a man named James Hansen in one of these parties who was a man about town. Rich, rich British man wanting to settle down, evidently. And then they got serious.

Beckett

He was a playboy. I had a hard time wrapping myself around the fact that he wanted to settle down with her. He was known for, you know, dating a lot of women, including Joan Collins and Ava Gardner.

Susan

Oh, that's. That's a problematic.

Beckett

I know he had quite the little black book. It was probably a big black book and Audrey's name was in it.

Susan

Well, think about this though. He was the son of a rich landowner from Yorkshire. So think Downton Abbey. And at a certain point, the men folk get a little pressure. Well, the women too, frankly. But it's a lot later for the men folk. They get pressured to marry and continue the respectable family line. The daughter of a baroness, perfectly respectable. So I think Mama was actually relieved, like, okay, Audrey, this career thing is just crazy. Do whatever, but a rich fiance, that's insurance.

Beckett

Oh, yeah. Ella loved this guy. I heard a report. Now, I'm not gonna. I don't. I only heard in one source that when he would stay overnight, she'd bring them breakfast in bed. Mama did. Again, this might be like National Enquirer

Susan

level source, but I love the story, man.

Beckett

I mean, she did love him that she was a. This was a perfect match as far as Mama Ella was concerned.

Susan

So she was sort of like that lady who has recently been spotted wandering the campus of a university trying to get girls to marry her son. Did you see that?

Beckett

I did. I did.

Susan

Red flag. Mom's cornering people. So funny. Okay, so Audrey's next minor part turned out to be the turning point. Okay, so right on the cusp of greatness, we are going to leave Ms. Audrey and take a little break. And when we come back, let us embark on her career. As summer is coming and travel season is upon us, I have started carefully choosing pieces that could be used in multiple ways on my trip. Things that make me feel put together but not fussy. Things I can just throw on and go out or hang around the house in. And Quint has been my go to for this. They use elevated fabrics and the fits are flattering without being fussy. Everything just works without having to get into a swivet when I get dressed.

Beckett

Right. And I love that their pieces because they are basics. You can layer them. I had just gotten a purple washable stretch silk T shirt. I was able to wear it casually with jeans and Then a little more elevated with a cardigan. I could probably even dress it up farther. I just haven't tried.

Susan

I have this organic cotton gauze dress. It's a smocked maxi dress. And so on this last trip I wore it with clogs and a leather jacket to go on a brewery tour. And then later in the trip, I wore it with fancy shoes and a little teeny, tiny flower de cardigan.

Beckett

Lovely. I love that dress on you.

Susan

It's comfortable enough to sleep in.

Beckett

And this is a good time to be getting some new linen pieces. Lightweight linen pants or dresses, tops. They're all starting at about $30. Effortless, breathable, perfect for summer resort wear or home, not resort staycation wear.

Susan

Everything at Quinn's is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands, and they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality and craftsmanship, not brand markup.

Beckett

Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quince.com/chicks for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

Susan

Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com chicks for free shipping and 365 day returns.

Beckett

Quints.com chicks.

Susan

And we're back. Audrey is teetering, although she does not know it yet, on the edge of celebrity. Always an exciting moment. So she received a small part in a movie called Monte Carlo Baby, which was filmed actually in Monte Carlo.

Beckett

And it was a movie role she didn't really want to take. She thought, maybe if I stay in London, I'll get a better role than this one. And I don't really want to leave Jimmy. Jimmy James. She called him Jimmy. I can't. So she really thought about it long and hard of whether she was going to take it or not, but ended up doing so. And it's changed everything.

Susan

During filming, in the lobby of a hotel, the famous French author Colette wanted a meeting. I just saw her grave, by the way, at Pere Lachaise. People are still putting flowers on it.

Beckett

She is on the list.

Susan

Yes. Anyway, Colette was absolutely insistent that Audrey was the absolute personification of one of her book characters called Gigi. And she. She'd done this before. There was a character she had written in her youth named Claudine. And man did they search for far and wide to come up with the actress to play the Clawdeen, who embodied the personification of Clawdeen. So she's doing the same thing with Gigi, which seems Very in character. You'll know it when you see it. You know, she saw Audrey during filming and was so into the fact that this was finally her person that she called back to New York and said, stop the casting. I've got her.

Beckett

Well, she had veto rights. Anybody that they cast in the role in New York, now we're in Monaco, she had to give approval to and. And she felt that Audrey was her Gigi. They got along so well, too, at first. Colette's like, I'm gonna put you on the stage for this play. And Audrey's like, oh, no, I don't do that. I don't act like that. Oh, you'll be fabulous. And then the next thing they know, they're just talking about stuff. So much so that at the end of their first meeting, Colette gave Audrey a photo and signed it and said, to Audrey Hepburn, the treasure I found on the beach.

Susan

It should be noted for you Harry Potter fans that the same thing happened to J.K. rowling and Robbie Coltrane. I mean, it was a little different. Robbie Coltrane was not an unknown. In fact, I think that she'd had him in her head for this part all along. So it's a little different. But he walked into the room, she grabbed a hold of the hand of the person next to her and said, hagrid has walked into the room.

Beckett

Nice.

Susan

There you go. He was the first one cast, as far as I know from anyone. So Colette knew it when she saw it. And soon everyone else started to also. It took Colette, I think, to open their eyes. They were amazed by Audrey's gracefulness and gentleness and simplicity. Everyone commented on her sort of unearthly looks. Simultaneously to these negotiations, the director of a movie called Roman Holiday asked for a short list of actresses to screen test, and Audrey was one of the five candidates. And here's what I love about this whole thing. I love that she was so naive. She's just, okay, sounds good. She doesn't comprehend the importance of the people she's about to see. And I think that's part of her charm. You know, people are people. I'll just go do this thing. She has no conception of how important they are. So she walks in friendly and not that nervous. And that could be what got her the part, possibly.

Beckett

Now, then, a role was originally they had planned on Elizabeth Taylor, who looks, you know, not even the same type as Audrey Hepburn.

Susan

They were actually going to make this movie about five years before now with Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant, and that fell through and Then when this edition came up, they were going to re approach Elizabeth Taylor again. And then they really settled on an actress named Gene Simmons, not the one from Kiss. J E A N And I'm really sorry to say that the person that wrecked that gig for her is Howard Hughes. He was in love with her and she insisted on being in love with someone else. And he was so angry that he would not loan her out from his studio for this picture. So by such machinations, Audrey Hepburn rose to the top of the heap. She was brought in for a screen test.

Beckett

During her screen test, it was the scene in bed where Princess Anne throws herself on the bed. And that's what she acted out for her screen test. And the cameras kept rolling when it was over and she just sat up demurely and stretched and hugged her knees and said, how was I? Was I any good? And just kind of batted her eyes. But not in a way that was affected. It was just totally natural. And anyone who saw that footage was like, oh my goodness, yes, her.

Susan

So she got both gigs. Ruh roh. It's an embarrassment of riches. But luckily, due to her co star schedule, Roman Holiday got pushed back a year. So she didn't have to choose between them. Off to Broadway to star in Gigi. And although she had the best coaches New York could provide for her, Audrey was fired over and over. Rehired, fired, rehired, fired like every other week. Even after the out of town trials. I have to say, war gave her grit. She persisted and her charm must have won them over. Gigi was ultimately a hit. Audrey's performance carried it as far as many critics were concerned. It's about a girl brought up by, I guess I have to call them courtesans who basically failed her in her upbringing because she ended up marrying her protector instead of using him for his money. Oh, you know, how dare you.

Beckett

It was such a hit and she was so good in the role that a week after the first performances they put her name over the title on the marquee.

Susan

That is something for somebody who got

Beckett

fired that many times and didn't think she could do the job. Amazing.

Susan

That year Audrey was in consideration for a Tony Award for her role in Gigi. How's that for 0 to 100? She did 217 performances.

Beckett

Also running concurrent to all of this is she and James got engaged. So she's planning her wedding, she's flying up to Toronto on the weekends to see him on Sundays when she didn't have a show and flying back in time for her Monday evening show. So she has this whole relationship going on. She has Gigi going on. And she's got Roman Holiday now just waiting for her to finish up Gigi so they can start production.

Susan

So on to filming Roman Holiday on location. Has everyone seen this movie? I guess. I'll give you a little synopsis. Princess Anne from the Kingdom of Ido Noica. Because it's always these, you know, principalities in the middle of Europe. It's just like they do in the Princess Diaries.

Beckett

Genovia.

Susan

Yeah, it's not Genova, but it's like Genovia.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

She is on a state visit to Rome to represent her country. There's so much protocol call. There's so much scheduling. Thank you. No, thank you. Princess Anne wants more. She wants freedom. She has a breakdown, I think, and a nervous breakdown and her staff slips her a mickey. But before it takes effect, Princess Anne has escaped out of the gates of lacksecurity.com and into the streets of Rome. And she meets a journalist. And it is Montage City from then on. That's a good way to put it. The director evidently was a tyrant and the weather was sweltering. But Audrey didn't know any different. So everyone else is all, what a professional. She's not even talking back to this guy. And Audrey just thinks this is how a movie set just is, you know, I don't know. You know, it's just so much of her naivete serves her well. I love the fact that it was filmed on location with basically the non obedient citizens of Rome as extras, let's call them hecklers. Like they'd get done with the shoot and the director would be like, print that, I think that's good. And everyone would be like, one more take, you know, and then they, you know, would blow kisses to her and this and that one 14 year old boy ran into a shot, shook her hand and then ran home to tell his mom he'd met the most beautiful woman in the world. He'll come into the story later. Let's leave him there.

Beckett

There's this one scene where Princess Anne sticks her hand into the mouth of truth, this statue. And apparently I was talking about it with a friend of mine named Sarah. And she has a picture of herself doing that when she was in Rome. And when she went, there was this huge line to do exactly the same thing. That's how this movie has crept into our, you know, our contemporary pop culture.

Susan

It is so much in our pop culture that people are sort of afraid to do it because of a prank that he played on her in the movie where he set this up ahead of time, that he was gonna do this and surprised the living crap out of her. He stuck his hand in and then screamed. And when he pulled it back, he'd been taught, like, sleight of hand, and he pulled it back and his hand pulled it up into his sleeve. And he looked at his hand with his look of horror. And it. She, like, laughed so hard she almost peed.

Beckett

When they do that scene, that's really her reacting to him pulling that prank on her. I love that.

Susan

So another thing they had to face was terrorist activity, believe it or not, because Italy was still in turmoil after World War II. Evidently, a whole bunch of explosives were removed from under a bridge that was scheduled to be used the next day for a scene that's something you don't typically have to worry about. The best thing she got out of this was advice from her director where he said, don't act. Just be her co star. Gregory Peck, an actual movie powerhouse at this time, called the studio to get Audrey top billing over him. What? He has given her the gift of his wagon to hitch her star to. He was so intent about it. He said, look, this is gonna come out. She's gonna be a star. And then I look like a schmuck because her name is so small. Nope, you need to. You need to pull her out. This is for real. And he being such a powerful guy, they did it. And that was a great gift. He didn't have to do that.

Beckett

No, he didn't. And I am. I'm sitting here with my eyes kind of wide open because I had read a different twist on it, that when the director went back and looked at the first film from the movie, he could see the star power she had. And he went to Gregory Pack and would you mind sharing billing? And then Gregory graciously agreed.

Susan

Yeah.

Beckett

So, yeah, I mean, Gregory agrees regardless. So that it's how it got started, though, is, I guess, up for debate.

Susan

At some point, while Roman Holiday was in post production and she was on tour with Gigi, Audrey and James Hansen broke off their engagement.

Beckett

James had actually been writing to the producers of the movie, trying to get. Get filming to wrap up. As it was going long, he had to marry Audrey. At a certain day, he's going behind her, back over her head to the production company in Paramount and saying, you know, let her go. Let her out of her contract. Audrey got wind of it, and by sheer coincidence, probably not. The engagement was canceled and she said that it just wasn't the right time in her career to get married. I'm going to say that wasn't the right guy to get married to.

Susan

Yeah, I think if he's going to do that before the wedding act that controlling, that is a red flag.

Beckett

That and all the women that he seemed to find on his arm. He never really stopped his tomcatting.

Susan

Interesting. Well, that'll be a pattern.

Beckett

Yep.

Susan

Hold on for that ride. Well, at her costar Gregory Peck's welcome back to London party, Audrey met and was really attracted to his actor friend Mel Ferreira, who was married, by the way. Sparks flu, but did not yet ignite. What did ignite was Audrey Hepburn's career, though pressure was put on her, by the way, right before the movie came out to drop the Hepburn out of her name. Wasn't this too confusing? Because of Katherine Hepburn, you really need to change your last name. What are the chances? That's a really weird name. And she's said, no, you take me, you take my name. And what could they do? Because the footage is already in the can. That's right. Well, Roman Holiday came out and Audrey became the with capital TH&E Fashion icon of America. The critics praised her, and I quote, she sparkles and glows like a finely cut diamond. Men were attracted to her. Women wanted to be her. I am not sure we can absolutely blame her for the fashion for Braille thinness, but I'm just saying.

Beckett

Well, you know what, here's the thing. At the time, the voluptuous woman was the ideal. And here comes Audrey, just rail thin, you know, straight lines. She was actually unusual looking. Like, we look at her and we're like, oh, she's such a classic beauty. But at the time, they're like, wow, here's a woman whose body I might be able to obtain. She doesn't look all curvy.

Susan

Her contemporary, Elizabeth Taylor, shall we say, is bodacious.

Beckett

Yeah, yes, exactly. Elizabeth Taylor in your head. Audrey Hepburn right next to her. Audrey was the exception to the rule.

Susan

She was seen as accessible. Even more so after her next movie. I just. I don't necessarily think Rael Finn is any more attainable than pneumatic.

Beckett

No, I don't think so either.

Susan

But at least she opened up fashion, I think, for perhaps a larger segment of the population. Well, she started filming her next movie, Sabrina, about a chauffeur's daughter who goes to Paris and returns a different, more alluring creature. And she was asked to go to France for the. I guess, let's Call it the makeover Fancy Clothes for when Sabrina comes back to America. She went to the studio of a new designer named Hubert de Givenchy that the director's wife had discovered.

Beckett

Her mission was to dress herself because she was so much Sabrina in the eyes of the production people behind the movie that they wanted her to dress herself. And she came in and was announced. They said, miss Hepburn is here to see you. And Givenchy is like, oh, sweet. And then he realized it wasn't Katharine Hepburn. So this is probably one of the only times that the Katharine Hepburn thing happened, you know, the mistake. He didn't know who Audrey was, so he said, well, I don't have time for you right now, but you can go over to my rack and see if you can pick something out over there.

Susan

I think it's funny. He'd cleared his whole day for Katharine Hepburn. But then this person comes in. He goes, well, I'm working on my collection. There's the rack. Borrow whatever you want.

Beckett

But you know what? She's like, okay, think of this haute couture style house. And here comes Audrey. She's wearing pants, ballet flats, a T shirt, a straw gondolier hat. You know, that's her look. You can get it in your head right away. And he's probably like, oh, no. Oh, no.

Susan

Very well. She said, smiling sweetly in the you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar department. She just went over to the racks and started helping herself. It took her all day. And I can only imagine these sidelong glances from the designer to this woman in his studio. Increasingly more impressed as the hours wore

Beckett

on, Audrey ended up picking the perfect pieces for her body. She knew how to dress her body. She knew what looked good on her. She knew her style, and she picked everything out that was perfect. Her and Givenchy struck up a friendship, a very close friendship that would last the rest of Audrey's life.

Susan

So there's a.

Beckett

How's that for a cute meet greet? What's it called? Is that what it's called? Is that what it's called?

Susan

Nope. Meet cute.

Beckett

Oh, yeah. How's that for a meet cute?

Susan

I have the biggest smile on my face right now. I think I just want to squeeze you. Anyway, back to Audrey. Her style plus his style became the fashion ideal of the new decade. No less than Cecil Beaton, who we covered in the Crown Photographer to the Stars, wrote the following in Vogue magazine. It is always a dramatic moment when the phoenix rises anew from its ashes for a if queens have died young and fair, they are also Reborn. Even while the pessimists were predicting that no new feminine ideal could emerge from the aftermath of war, an authentic Galatea was being forged in the person of Ms. Audrey Hepburn.

Beckett

I would like to nominate Cecil Beaton for the rooster list.

Susan

Oh yeah, because if you listen to

Beckett

the recaprie, he came up quite often because he was the photographer to the royal family.

Susan

He went on to say nobody ever looked like her before World War II. It's doubtful if anybody ever did. Unless it be those wild children of the French Revolution who stride in the foreground of romantic canvases like dang. All right, we get it. She is the hot thing for the new millennium. So she had an affair with her married co star William Holden. So much for that innocence. Who introduced her to his wife? Wife? I don't like this. Anyway, the whirlwind romance did not survive the filming of Sabrina. So the chips fell where they may, I guess.

Beckett

Well, Audrey wanted to have a family. And when she found out that Bill Holden had had a vasectomy, maybe that was his wife. You know, they had reportedly a semi open marriage. But you know, a woman is one thing, a woman and a child is another. So once Audrey found out that he couldn't have children and she cooled on him quite a bit.

Susan

It wasn't the meeting his wife?

Beckett

No, no, no, not at all. Or the fact that she was dating a married man. No.

Susan

So old Mel Ferrer, the lightning striker from long before set her up in another stage play with him as her co star. She is constantly working during these days and set her up in an apartment. He had divorced his wife and remarried the same wife. But when this Audrey thing started, they actually got divorced again. What is it with married men? I don't know. While this play was knocking people's socks off, Audrey got the Oscar for best actress for Roman Holiday, her very first starring role. She gets the top prize. And she reminds me during the ceremony of Jennifer Lawrence. Do you remember for the Hunger Games? I think that's what she went at for how she's sort of beautiful but dorky and she fell on the way up the stairs. Well, Audrey did something very similar. She was surprised and excited and ran up and turned the wrong way and went behind the curtain for a second like in every movie where they that's the closet, that's not the exit. And so she had to come out all embarrassed. And then during the after party she lost her Oscar somewhere. She does not have it together. But three days later she also got a Tony Award. Yes, people, her first movie and her second play, she wins the top honors. Check.

Beckett

Foreign.

Susan

Has won an Oscar, Audrey has won a Tony. Audrey is making 3, 500 a week. $33,000 a week in today's money, which is a long way from starving. Ten years ago, her star was on the rise and she and her co star Mel were married in Switzerland. It was true love on her part. I'm reserving judgment about her husband though.

Beckett

Yeah, at some point, at some point, Mama Ella would describe him as, quote, a frog faced delinquent with spindly legs.

Susan

So I'm guessing she wasn't a fan despite his shortcomings personal appearance wise, which I don't really think he looks like

Beckett

a frog, but I didn't, I didn't see frog either. But maybe she was projecting how she felt about him. You know, like you can meet somebody and they just look average and then you get to know their personality and you're like, oh my God, you're the most gorgeous person on this planet. How did I not recognize that at the beginning? The mean people, they're not that attractive.

Susan

Well, and I don't know that she would have liked anybody that her daughter married. Mother and daughter were so close and had been a team for so long. Here's. He's the interloper, no matter what. Well, his mother was Newport people, you know, fancy people. His father had been a doctor, Mel had been to Princeton. You know, what's not to like? He had an okay acting career. He was never going to be a superstar. He had all the right contacts though his resume looks amazing. He was missing whatever element that is that most people don't have. Luck, I guess. So I worry and Audrey's friends worried that he was coattail riding. Mama of course, agreed with me, thinking that was his motive. But Audrey didn't listen to either of us. So there her, her father did not give her away because he was mia, but she did wear a Givenchy dress. So she did have a friend with her on the way down the aisle. She is so funny though, I have to say all the time. She keeps saying, oh, I'm no actress, I'm a horrible dancer. My collarbone is horrible. Like, I have not once thought about my collarbone, by the way. Oh, not once.

Beckett

Well, if you lose a lot of weight, you think about your collarbone because you don't see it until you lose it. And then you're like, oh my gosh, I've got a collarbone. So I think about my collarbone quite a bit.

Susan

My point is not so much the collarbone, but the fact that Here she is like self deprecating, but also simultaneously traveled with half of her possessions and then got to a hotel and had people jumping around to satisfy her every whim. Where's that table that was in this room last time? Somebody else has it in the room. Well, then they're gonna have to do without it. Go knock on their door and get me my table. Oh, Lord. Is it like rebound from the war? My depression era grandparents washed out baggies. But what would have happened if someone gave them $33,000 a week? I don't know. I wish someone had. Maybe this. I don't know what is happening to her personality. She has become like a caricature of Baroness Van Heemstra before the war, kind of.

Beckett

That's interesting that you say that because the whole time I'm just reading her as like a sister in imposter syndrome. Her whole career it's like, no, I wasn't very good. I know that. I know that line. I've said that line. I don't deserve to be here.

Susan

Oh, interesting. I think if you don't feel Imposter syndrome, that is a problem. I think it's called Dunning Kruger syndrome. Whereas if you're in a position of power and you think you deserve to be there, you probably don't.

Beckett

Oh.

Susan

When you get there and you think that you're the most capable person who could ever hold whatever job it is. Probably not.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

Because only people who are willing to grow and change and therefore be more quality at whatever job it is know they have a lot to learn and are willing to learn.

Beckett

Interesting. I'm wondering why I never ran across that.

Susan

So Audrey needn't have had imposter syndrome because it was old home week, The Netherlands invited her to come back to dedicate some war memorials to raise money for charity. She participated in the UNICEF Christmas card campaign, donated time to people who had helped her during the war, both just in the Netherlands as a whole and for unicef. So she was just now realizing the power that her fame could bring, the good it could do for others, I think.

Beckett

Yeah. And when she was there on that, on that particular trip, at one point she was signing autographs and the crowd got so massive they wanted to get to her, they wanted to see her. She was such big star that things started to break in the building and people were getting pushed and she scampered out of there and she decided at that point she was never going to do any of these public appearances again without a lot of security around her. That's has to be scary. You know, she's just coming up in fame to actually see it right in front of her in the same room. And seeing, yes, she had the power to affect people, but the power that they had as a mobile, this had to be frightening.

Susan

Well, it doesn't matter if you get crushed to death by people that love you or people that hate you. That's right. You know, you end up the same flat pancake of a cartoon. So I could totally see that now. I'm sorry to say on a personal note that Audrey suffered a miscarriage right about now. It wouldn't be her last. And I don't think I need to go into it too much. Also, something else we can't go into in great detail. Every single movie she ever did with a fine tooth comb. She did War and Peace, which I think the studio was going to try to make into another Gone with the Wind. But just marketing wise, it never made its money back. Although she had good reviews in it. Her husband did not have good reviews. That's a theme that goes on. He's trying to use her fame to make himself famous. But he was always like, thumbs down, man. Everyone's like, oh, God, we got to take that guy. I know, it's kind of a bummer. So anyway, Funny Face, which I hate. Hate.

Beckett

Thank you. Oh, my gosh, thank you. Because I always feel bad for hating it. Because it's got Audrey Hepburn, it's got Fred Astaire. What? It's in Paris. What's not for me to love? And I don't like it.

Susan

This was very loosely based on a actual Broadway musical from 1927, which originally had starred Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. Although the plot is completely different, they managed to save four of the songs. Which one would you know? You'd probably know that. Swanderful, Smarvelous. You know, that's probably the most famous song from Funny Face. So you have to be warned that it is very like a Broadway show. There's an opening number, Think Pink, that just goes on for way too long. Blur. I'm so sorry. Lots of people like it. In fact, fact, Fred Astaire himself was delighted to work with this one. He said, I love this one. And it turns out Audrey Hepburn had specially requested Fred Astaire and he felt so flattered, had a great time, etc. So they liked it. It's the favorite movie of her son Sean, so lots of people like it. Not me. The black capri pants and black turtleneck, though, are a winner. I Have to tell you, I was so embarrassed by her dance at the nightclub. I think I've turned it off at that point probably seven times.

Beckett

Oh my gosh.

Susan

I got so embarrassed, like for her. I'm just like, bye, bye, bye, bye. And my feet just walked me out of the room. I eventually made it through and it does get better toward the end. But I. There you go. There's funny face. I don't know about that.

Beckett

I wonder if it's the age difference between Astaire and Audrey.

Susan

No. At the time that I get despairing and turn it off. Most of the time she hasn't even met him yet.

Beckett

Oh, no. I mean. I mean for me, I'm trying to. Because I'm trying to figure out why I don't like it. And maybe that's part of it, but I just. I don't know. He seemed ageless to me. Yeah, he was in his upper 50s.

Susan

For most of her career, she was paired with significantly older actors. I don't know what the deal was with that.

Beckett

Audrey and Mel set up house. You know, she really, really wants to stay home and raise children. He really, really, really wants her to be a bigger star. They were at the right from the very beginning. They were working at cross purposes. That can't be a good sign for things to come.

Susan

That seems to make his motivations very suspect. Here she is. I love to make a home with you and you know, whatever it is, raise chickens and provide big meals for a family of children. And he's like, but you have to go to work.

Beckett

She was self proclaimed introvert. She actually says, I don't want to be alone. I want to be left alone. When I read this, I just think of you, Beckett.

Susan

I was like, preach, sister, preach. I know.

Beckett

Here's another one. Here's another one. It says I have to be alone very often. That's how I refuel. I wish people would realize that because people think introverts are just quiet and shy, which isn't the case at all. I mean, case in point, you. It's just how you get your energy, you know, I take it from introverts and introverts are pissed off that I'm taking their energy and they need to go off by themselves.

Susan

Extroverts needn't think that we're going off to hide. We're just getting away from you. So we're not. Maybe I could have put that a little better. Not you, Susan, you.

Beckett

But you.

Susan

Extroverts, you. You extroverts. You. Anyway, back to Audrey. The next movie she did was based on a real person. It's called a nun's Story, and it does have a weirdly prophetic through line of Audrey's future life. Actually, it's the story of someone that fought in the Belgian resistance who became a humanitarian. She took it very seriously with, I think, maybe her only bout of method acting. She ate hardly any food. She lived in a place with no heat. She made sure not to look in any mirrors, which that order of nuns prohibited. She went to learn both the mechanics of nursing, how to do prop work with medical, you know, props. And also I wrote Nanning. That's wrong. Convent life. Why did I write nunning?

Beckett

I don't know.

Susan

I'm surprised. I can't even read my writing. Well, so she also filmed in a leper colony, which my hair stood on end because I still don't think there's a, quote, cure for leprosy.

Beckett

They filmed in the Belgian Congo. This is in the jungles. It's hot and sticky and disease everywhere. And they're filming this movie. So you're like, oh, she's such a. Not an actress, you know, not a diva. Well, she did ask for one thing, and that was an air conditioner. And so they sent away for it. It arrived, they plugged it in, and it didn't really do anything. It might have worked better if they had actually sent an air conditioner and not a humidifier.

Susan

I'm so sorry. That's what you get when you diva it up.

Beckett

I know, right?

Susan

You get karma reversal of what you wanted. Well, the leper colony thing freaked me out because right as they left, the guy said, by the way, the incubation period for leprosy is 17 years. So call me if you develop symptoms like dirt bag. They took lots of precautions, but still, it was very terrifying. Yeah, the next movie, Green Mansions. Not good. Here's the good part about Green Mansions. You've seen pictures of Audrey at the grocery store with her pet deer. Audrey on the couch with her pet deer. Well, it's not really her pet deer. It was a co star for this movie. And in order to make it follow her character around like a little dog, the baby deer had to be very familiar with her. So it was thought that it would be best if she just lived with it for a while and took it everywhere and got it to love her. So that's what that was all about. They do the same thing. By the way, anytime you see a production of Annie, chances are the little girl who plays Annie has Taken the little dog that plays Sandy home to hang out with, and no one else is allowed to pet it because the dog causes chaos and if he does not do what he's supposed to do. So typically, a theater company will have the dog only interact with the little actress that plays Annie. And it makes it easier because he gets on stage and goes to the one person he's familiar with.

Beckett

Right. Huh. I did not know that.

Susan

So that was the whole shtick about the deer.

Beckett

Another thing about this movie is it was directed by her husband, so they got to spend a lot of time together. Their marriage wasn't the most stable. Maybe being together, working was a good thing for them. Something really bad happened, though. One day, Audrey was driving herself to the studio and she rear ended another car to avoid somebody else hitting her at the scene. The woman who she hit said she was fine. Two weeks later, the lawyer said, no, she had some injuries. Ms. Hepburn, who makes a lot of money, let's sue you. You know, and you're thinking, oh, my gosh, she's just coming after me because of the money. I mean, all right, sometimes back and neck injuries don't happen at the scene, they happen later. I understand that it took years to get through the court system. So it did go to court. She did have a small percentage of the amount that they sued her for that she had to pay. But more importantly, she never drove herself again.

Susan

I think it was an overreaction, but I actually hadn't thought about that facet where she's not so much worried about hitting people as she's worried about people realizing who she is and suing her.

Beckett

Mm.

Susan

It's a. You rear ended somebody with these big 50s cars. Yeah, I think you're probably going to be able to make it, you know, another day. But she gave it up.

Beckett

So, yeah, there was a lot of trauma in it for her. For some reason.

Susan

Her next movie, Unforgiven, for which she received a quarter million in $1958, was a problematic Western. Audrey plays a grown up, stolen American Indian baby that's already. I'm just like, huh, huh? By today's standards, it's troublesome. I think there is a lot of racism portrayed, and it's not completely clear that it's against it. I don't know, it just seems to me that this is a little bit more of what we're finding troublesome about the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. You know, the only good Indian is a dead Indian and the settlers are on the right, right side. And lots of People on the movie review sites are comparing it unfavorably to another movie called the Searchers, which has the opposite plot point, where a settler girl is kidnapped and raised in a Native American village. So judge for yourself. Audrey herself pretty much dissociated herself with this film ever after, but maybe because of events that happened behind the scenes during filming rather than the plot itself. A big giant accident. She rode a horse named Diabolo. There's your first clue. Who threw her? And she received broken vertebrae and at least a sprained, if not a broken ankle. Later, after production was over, she had another miscarriage and was convinced that it was because of this injury. It didn't happen on set or anything.

Beckett

She was contracted to do her own writing, so there wasn't going to be a stunt woman doing it for her. So I wonder if she, like, doubted agreeing to that. But definitely falling off a horse with injuries like that.

Susan

So they had to film all of her scenes that she wasn't in. And then they hired, basically, a body double to film all the scenes where what you see is her back or you can't see her face clearly. That was another person riding away on the horse. But there was a scene still left where she was coming straight toward the camera, hadn't been filmed, was critical to the plot. And so they were nervous about telling her she had to get back on the horse. She didn't get back in the car, but she got back on the horse. That seems more problematic to me. But they drugged that horse within an inch of its life. And she was brave and did the scene and closed out the movie. They left it to the very last so that nothing else would happen to her. And if she did get injured, that's a wreck trap, you know. So she overcame her fear or her contractual obligation penalty to film that. So she is brave enough to face

Beckett

danger again on a horse, but not with horsepower under the hood. Sorry, I just cracked myself up.

Susan

And I know that we agreed not to talk about Audrey's papa again, but he does come briefly into the story right here. She had regained contact with him, and they'd been exchanging letters and phone calls rather tentatively, but they never again were what you'd consider to be close at all. But she did call and tell him about this accident, and all he said to her was, that's what you get for riding a gray horse. That was all he had.

Beckett

I kept wondering how much of a myth, father figure she had in her head for her life until she actually got to sit face to face with him. Again, I mean, Mel had actually hunted him down through the Red Cross, which I'm going to give Mel lots of points for that. But sitting down, she realized what kind of man he was. And I wonder if it just dashed any idea that she had this ideal father that was floating in her head. She had decided that he was not the father she would have needed. That's nice. Closure.

Susan

Yeah, I guess it's closure. And she did provide for him financially, which reminds me a lot of Drew Barrymore. Same thing. She had an estranged father and she supported him financially while not being that close to him for the rest of his life, too. There's something about duty or family loyalty, I don't know. So they're both in that same situation. But when Audrey was 31, two amazing things happened in quick succession. Her son Sean was born. The first book I ever picked up and read about Audrey Hepburn was by her son Sean, incidentally, which prejudiced me greatly in Audrey's favor. Not that we need it, because I think she's quality person, unlike some people we've covered. But I have to say that gave me a very good introduction to her inner life that I really appreciated.

Beckett

That's so funny, because the first book I read was written by her other son.

Susan

Yes, that's the second book I read

Beckett

that's funny.

Susan

Okay, so the second good thing that happened was a movie called Breakfast at Tiffany's. Probably her most famous movie. Whole books have been written about how this unlikely movie came to be in the first place. So we'll just give you the highlights. Audrey is playing a lady of negotiable affection. There is no way around that. But her innocence sort of made it possible, I think. Or palatable to society. I mean, Marilyn Monroe was asked first. That's the author Truman Capote's ideal, Holly Golightly. Can you imagine?

Beckett

Yes, actually, I can. Having read the novella, I can imagine Marilyn as her. I mean, that's who he had in mind when he wrote it.

Susan

But I'm just thinking, as we know, the movie now, retrofitting the lushness of Marilyn Monroe into that part would make it into a whole other movie. It would have elements in it that Audrey Hepburn didn't bring to the table.

Beckett

Oh, I agree completely. The story had to be modified, you know, to make that switch from Marilyn to Audrey. And I'm so glad they did.

Susan

Givenchy made that little black dress the most famous of all little black dresses in the world. But I think she's wearing a knockoff in the movie because the director hated the Long slit.

Beckett

Isn't that something? This one movie that makes her this. You know, really when you think of Audrey Hepburn as a style icon, you think about her in that dress and huh.

Susan

Well, Natalie Portman is actually wearing one of the real Givenchy dresses with the Slit in a 2006 issue of Vogue magazine. So we can put up the picture. I mean, it is an homage to Audrey. She's got the hair up, she's got the tiara. It is clearly Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. It is her most iconic look, I think that she has ever had. I just think it's funny that it is an imposter.

Beckett

Yes, it's very funny.

Susan

Word is that either Audrey or the costume designer took the movie dresses, the stand ins apart after filming to prevent embarrassment to the studio or her friend Givenchy. But it doesn't really matter. That dress, its concept, made Audrey even more of a style icon than she had been ever since the filming of Sabrina. So not only Audrey's fashion, fashion, there was also a fashion for orange cats after that movie. There was a run on the pound for orange cats. One element from the movie that we also need to talk about is the song Moon river, which was inspired by, as the composer said, Audrey's wistfulness.

Beckett

Well, she took vocal lessons and guitar lessons so that she could do that singing on the fire escape. She put a lot of effort into that song. So when the first screening happened and a Paramount executive said that effing song has got to go, Mel had to hold her back because she's screaming over my my dead body.

Susan

Can you just like see this movie theater?

Beckett

And then Audrey Hepburn trying to fly over the seats.

Susan

Well, they left it in and it won the best original song in a movie Oscar that year. So hooray. There were 11 movies in all, one right after the other. She was constantly working. And I'm sorry to say that in addition to 11 movies, she had two more miscarriages. And that brings her total up to four. All she really wanted, she was longing, just longing for the domestic bliss of a large family during a period of inactivity, a rare period. She said to a friend, I feel like a real wife. I'm waiting for my husband to get home from work. I'm making dinner, I'm spending time with my child. So she has this idea in her head of what a quote, real wife should be. She actually asked another actress how she possibly combined work and family. And she was finding it very impossible. That is not an uncommon 50s and 60s perspective from a Working woman, too. It's not that uncommon today. No. But she really felt like she had to choose one or the other, and it was kind of tearing her up a little.

Beckett

Even though Sean and a nanny went with her from one movie to the next, I think she had a lot of mommy guilt about not being able to spend all that time with him when he was so little.

Susan

So then comes my favorite movie. Sean, the baby in question, loved Funny Face, but I love My Fair lady as Miss Eliza Doolittle. You know the one, the Rhine and Spine. My aunt died of influenza, so they said. But it's my opinion that they done the old woman in one of my favorites. Julie Andrews, for a thousand performances, did a very good job on Broadway in this role. And when it came time to do the movie, the studio executives were like, nah. Can you believe that?

Beckett

No.

Susan

I have to tell you, though, we benefited from this decision because it gave us the right Mary Poppins. So perhaps the universe knew. So I don't know if everyone knows the story of My Fair Lady. It's based on a play called Pygmalion. But in My Fair Lady, a dialect coach bats his friend that he can pass off a cockney flower girl as a lady by the end of the season. More importantly, Audrey was now earning $1 million for this movie, which is $8.5 million in today's money.

Beckett

That's amazing. Good for her.

Susan

So Rex Harrison, who played the professor in question, Professor Higgins, who had been with Julie Andrews for those thousand performances, came into filming with a giant chip on his shoulder. He was not going to like her. She was not going to show her favoritism or, like, be her friend or anything, because he was being loyal to his co worker. But even he was absolutely won over. He couldn't resist. His walls came crumbling down.

Beckett

I love that about her. I wish I had that ability. I mean, they just liked her as a person.

Susan

Yeah, I think she was just very honest and straightforward and interested in people and just gentle. Everyone says gentle. She was just gentle, which makes it sad. Although it's just business, it's not personal. Audrey was heartbroken and frankly, very embarrassed that they dubbed in her singing voice. I'm sorry if that ruined everything about it. It's a classic movie actually made about this whole thing called Singing in the Rain, and a singer named Marnie Nixon sang all the tracks.

Beckett

Marnie had also sang for Deborah Kerr in the King and I and for Natalie Wood in West side Story. So Audrey was in very good company.

Susan

Actually, this fact may have cost her the Oscar that year, which went to. Drum roll please. Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins. Karma. I know.

Beckett

She wasn't even nominated, but she did get to present the Best Actor award to Rex Harrison.

Susan

And everyone's just waiting. They're waiting for the jets and the Sharks to fight. Julie Andrews v. Audrey Hepburn. Burn. Burn. Nope. Never happened.

Beckett

Nope.

Susan

The press was super disappointed, but everyone was a lady and got over it and was very professional.

Beckett

So maybe it was that British thing they had going on.

Susan

Well, Mel and Audrey divorced after a 13 year marriage.

Beckett

Blame can't actually be put on either one of them because during their marriage they both had little dalliances. So it can't be said, oh, he did this or she did that. They split up fairly amicably. Someone called it an avalanche of good manners. The whole divorce proceedings of the two of them. So I am applauding them for being able to do that. They have their son who's, you know, what, eight? And they were on their best behavior, I think.

Susan

But I think once they got divorced, she told him that she was not going to speak to him again. Except for about the child. Not in a mean way, just you go your way, I'll go my way. Let's not try to be friends because it's not gonna be comfortable, Right? So up until her son's wedding, I don't think they ever spoke again.

Beckett

Well, you know, when you break up with someone, you have to think that they're gone, out of your life. They're dead. They're dead to me. But he was her kid's father, so there had to be some interaction.

Susan

Well, and of course, the marriage was always tense because the fact that she wanted to let up, to take a break, stay with Shawn, stay with her mother who lived with them. And he was always angry that his coattail was taking a break. So there's that operating in the background too. And it was never very awesome to be Mr. Hepburn holding her purse while she signed autographs. We saw that with Desi Arnaz, didn't we? I am not Mr. Ball, I am Desi Arnaz. You know, he was always very, very sensitive about that. The next year she met and married Andrea Doty, Italian psychiatrist and professor. No more showbiz on the other side of the family, which is probably for the best. Although he did have the ego, weirdly enough. How about this for It's a Small World after all, Andrea Doty, who she met on a friend's boat, was the 14 year old boy who had run up to her during filming of Roman Holiday and then run home to tell his mother he just met the most beautiful woman in the world.

Beckett

Wow. Even if they didn't have show business in common, they did have something in common. His parents were a count and countess. So that means that Andrea was a

Susan

count, he was nobility, which means if she marries a count, what does she become?

Beckett

A countess.

Susan

They didn't really use the titles, but technically she is now a countess, so. And that's above a baroness, by the way. Just saying. But what Audrey said about this relationship to a reporter, and I quote, I'm in love and happy again. I never believed it could happen to me. I'd almost given up. I don't care if I never make another film. I've worked non stop from my early teens until I was 38. I need to relax. Why should I take up work again? And the life I rejected when I've married a man I love, whose life I want to live.

Beckett

So she kind of did just that. She stopped making movies for a while and she started to stay at home just like she wanted.

Susan

Well, Andrea Doty lived what I'm going to call the cool kid lifestyle, like hipper than the jet set. He had the friends that knew the new restaurants, that knew the new nightclubs that were, were more fashionable than your average rich person. It was really kind of neat for her after being a person that, you know, drank a glass of milk and went to bed at 9, 30 or 10. Now we're out. Oh, the sun's coming up, it's time to go home. So that was a nice little break. She hadn't ever had that as a young teenager. You know, the years that where most people get all crazy. She was working her hiney off to be either a ballet dancer or auditioning for small parts. So I'm glad that she got that little period of her life.

Beckett

For those of you who like to think about what you can do as you mature, she was 40 when she got married, so it wasn't like she was a spring chicken or anything.

Susan

She was youth varsity.

Beckett

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Susan

I'm like sitting here like going, how

Beckett

do I say this without being mean? I love that. Youth varsity.

Susan

I hereby call the years from 40 is. I don't know, let's call it 40 to 65 is youth varsity.

Beckett

Oh my God, I love that. Can we make a T shirt? Yes, we can.

Susan

Okay, guess what else happened? She became pregnant again. After four miscarriages, she decided based on something Sophia Loren said to her. There's some name dropping that she was going to self bed rest herself to make sure that this baby caught as they said. But her husband immediately began tomcatery. I'm not too fond of him for that.

Beckett

No, I was gonna make a joke about. He was bed resting too. Oh, and he wasn't even like discreet enough to avoid the paparazzi. He's just walking into places with some other woman on his arm. And Audrey's like nestled in a bed in Switzerland reading this in the papers. Not cool.

Susan

Well, you never know how a marriage works on the inside. Somehow they patched it up up. And those books I read, written by her children talk about this period of Audrey's life as just tranquil and family. There's pictures of her with these big, ridiculously big bowls of spaghetti with all these friends in the back garden. She had these loyal servants, one named Giovanna in particular, who would kill for her, frankly. Audrey even told this cook, husbands will come and go, but you and I will be together forever. They became like family. Time spent with Shawn and Luca, who was born when Shawn was 10, successfully. Hooray, Luca. Country life, serenity, her garden. It was basically eight years of meditation, I guess is what I would call it.

Beckett

Well, she had been working for so long, one movie after another. I mean, she would finish a movie, start the next one, and that other movie hadn't even opened yet until she was almost done filming the next one and the next one and the next one. She needed this as a human being. She needed this kind of break. So glad she got to take it.

Susan

Yeah, me too. Her colleagues in Hollywood and London did not comprehend it. As a matter of fact, one of her friends, a man named Terrence Young, who directed her several times. You know, while I have Terrence Young at the top of my mind, I would like to name drop him for two other things. Things. The industry at the time seemed to think that when Sean Connery played James Bond for the first time, he was doing nothing more than a Terence Young impression. So now you know what he's like. Ladies man, man about town, Dapper Dan, world's most interesting man, etc. But more importantly, he had a previous connection with Audrey from back in the war. He was a tank commander when the allies took took back the city of Arnhem. And he always used to joke while he was directing Audrey in a film called Wait until Dark, in which she played a blind woman terrorized by a gang trying to find a heroin filled doll in her apartment. Yes, you should check that out. Anyway, he used to joke that had his aim been a little worse, he would be out of a job today because he was shelling the city where she lived. Dark, macabre workplace humor for the win. But he had a lot to say about how hard it was to pry Audrey out of her haven during these years. He kept trying to get her to do these projects. And this is how he described the process of talking to Audrey Hepburn during these meditation years. First of all, you spend a year or so convincing her to accept even the principle that she might ever make another movie in her whole life. Then you have to persuade her to read the script. Then you have to spend time making her understand that it's a good script. Then you have to persuade her she will not be destroying her son's life by leaving to film the movie. After that, if you're really, really lucky, she might start talking to you about the costumes. But more likely she'll say, I have to get back to my family. There's pasta cooking for dinner. Thank you so much for calling and thinking of me.

Beckett

She turned down some seriously big projects. She turned down Goodbye, Mr. Chip, Nicholas and Alexandra, the Exorcist, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, A Bridge Too Far. And the turning point, if anything was made for her, the turning point, it was about ballet.

Susan

She was not having it. She was on a break. Well, it seems to be inevitable. Her vacation from real life came to a sudden end, largely because her husband was cheating again, which is humiliating if you're a civilian. I don't know the other word. A regular old Joe or Audrey horrifying when the whole world knows about it. Also, how about this for sinister? They're in Italy. And there were credible threats of a member of the family being kidnapped for ransom. This is the era of J. Paul Getty's grandson being kidnapped for ransom. You know, they cut off his ear and everything. Andrea Doty was actually attacked by four men trying to get him into a vehicle, but he got away. The kid wouldn't have been so lucky. They would never have been able to break away. So from now on, Audrey would take precautions and travel with bodyguards.

Beckett

And she moved her kids up to Switzerland. She got out of Italy, but her husband wouldn't go with her. I mean, he had a practice. He taught at the university there. So, you know, he'd believe in his life and his women. I'm gonna say it. She just went off with the boys and settled in Switzerland.

Susan

Well, it's not a nice breaking point, but it is, is a breaking point. And when we come back, we will discover how the rest of Audrey's life played out. Once upon a time, when I was pregnant with Jet Graham, one thing I would have enjoyed having taken off my plate when I was growing my family is having to attend or worry about what was going to happen to the litter box and the cat's comfort. Because the cats were, of course, my first babies, the Whisker litter robot could have been a lifesaver. When you're getting ready for a new baby, the last thing you want to do is worry about the cat litter people are always coming over. You don't want people walking in and going, oh, you have a cat, right?

Beckett

The Whisker litter robot takes care of all that.

Susan

You don't have to scoop. There's zero contact and that's especially important during pregnancy. And for you app nerds like myself, you will know if the litter robot needs attention. This litter robot is up to five cats worth of service. It is like the best. It's like Rosie from the Jetsons. It will handle it for you.

Beckett

That's right. And there is a whole line of automatic litter boxes. And it doesn't even have to be a new family. It could be an established family, one that maybe has assigned cleaning the litter box to somebody and has a problem with that. Or even just if you're single and you would like more intel on your cat. The Whisker litter robots are for you.

Susan

Peep and Louise are super excited that they are going to have a 100% clean environment anytime they choose to visit the little cat's room. And that is why we set it up in our house. And the bundles make it easy to set up without even really having to think about it. We love it at our house and we think that you will love it too. It is a four paws up situation.

Beckett

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Susan

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Beckett

That's an additional $50 off bundles with Code Chicks@whisker.com chicks.

Susan

So Audrey's second marriage broke up. Whether from cheating or a geographical impossibility right as she was struggling through what I would call a lackluster comeback season, there's a few movies not of note, I guess is what I should call it. And to make it a little bit worse, to make it a lot worse, the Italian coin courts at this time just usually gave custody to the father. So her younger son Luca often was gone from her too, living with his father.

Beckett

So she really needed those eight years.

Susan

So a movie that never got made that I actually think might have been good for some reason, whoever had a hold of the rights wasn't going to let him go. They were going to film a sequel to Roman Holiday in which Princess Anne was now Queen Anne had been married and had a daughter, I want to say, and then the journalist is now the president of a newspaper or something and has a son who's of marriageable age. And those two meet and ultimately get married. Because Roman Holiday doesn't have your typical happy ending. Princess Anne goes back to her duties and leaves this man behind because she knows it's the right thing to do. So, you know, in modern romantic comedy she'd throw it all away and leave her crown and no know she was more realistic. I don't know what happened. They couldn't get the rights to the original material or something and so they couldn't do it. I thought that would have been a good movie. Well, she's in a weird space. I have to tell you in Hollywood that upper 40s, you can't play a wise old woman. You're not ready for character parts. You can't play an ingenue or a romantic lead, which is, you know, bs maybe less of an issue than it was. I think it's still in force. It's getting better.

Beckett

Yeah, but this is the 1970s, so it wasn't very good at all.

Susan

She met and fell in love with a man named Robert Volders. But get this, he had been a nine year old boy in Holland during the German occupation. They had a lot in common in their personal history. They had both seen the horrors of war. Her friends thought she'd never been happier. Audrey thought she'd never been happier. In contrast to her two husbands who were various levels of controlling and I don't know, I guess I'd almost say out to profit from her fame. Maybe not monetarily, but at least socially.

Beckett

Right.

Susan

This guy seemed like the backup man. He was there for her. It was true love on both sides. He was there because he loved the person that she was and he had

Beckett

a good character resume behind him. He had been married, his wife had recently died when they first met and people were saying, oh, he's going to get, get all of her money. He took her jewels and sold them and gave the money away. So he's like, no, I don't want her Money. I married her because I loved her. And now she's dead. And now I've met Audrey and I'm doing the same thing as how I perceived him. So I just think this guy was really good for her.

Susan

So I love it. Loyalty and security and friendship. They never actually got married, but Audrey viewed them as good as married.

Beckett

And they could speak Dutch together well.

Susan

So if Hollywood was not going to come calling, what was she going to use to fill her days? She was only 58. She didn't need money. She had enough money to last many lifetimes. More. She had had enough fame. She was approached by the UN Children's Fund, otherwise known as unicef. Would she be a goodwill ambassador for them? What. What does that mean? She said, we would like for you to draw the world's attention to the perils of children all over the world. You know, we can hammer out the details of that later, but ultimately that's your role. Get the public motivated to give money and make changes to children's lives all over the world. It was pretty daunting.

Beckett

It was. And, you know, they had celebrity ambassadors before her. They didn't create this position for her, but they were. Were celebrities where she felt that she was a worker, just another UNICEF worker. She had to kind of fill out an application. Even though they came to her, she had to be approved through her application process. It's probably the only application she filled out in her whole life, maybe.

Susan

And they did pay her a dollar. So technically it's not a volunteer. I don't know why. Maybe it was tax reasons. I'm not sure why. Well, so Audrey had never really gotten over her. Her fundamental shyness, I guess. You know, playing a part is one thing, but small talk, public speaking in your own words without someone having written you a script was going to be a hurdle. She'd have to speak from her heart about a tough subject. Not to mention that she was probably going to have her heart broken over and over the whole time she was doing this. Her first trip for UNICEF was to Ethiopia, where she visited villages with her media entourage. Because there's really no point if you're the ambassador trying to bring what's happening to the world. You had to bring pictures and video back. She met people, she listened to people, she learned about their problems and then came back and spoke about them to people in a position to help, to school children, to TV audiences. I literally remember Ethiopia being a big deal. A big deal. And at one point, children in elementary schools, you'd get these boxes around Halloween time. And they were flat and you had to fold them into a box and they were coin boxes and you'd take them around for Halloween in addition to candy. Don't get me wrong, it was those

Beckett

orange boxes and you say trick or treat for UNICEF instead of just trick or treat. I know I did it. Did you do it?

Susan

I read about it in. Are you there? Got it to me. Margaret, I think, oh, okay, okay, that makes sense. Or if not that, then one of those other Judy Blume books had it in there as a pretty prominent thing. So I've known about it for a long time, but I think it was more of an east coast thing.

Beckett

Ah, that would explain it.

Susan

It was blubber. It was blubber about bullying. Oh, that's a painful book to keep reading. But that's the Judy Blume book that had the UNICEF in it so prominently, where I also learned what a Flenser was. Why has that stuck with me all these years?

Beckett

We didn't do too well. We lived in the country, so our trick or treating houses were pretty limited.

Susan

But we did it.

Beckett

We got it rattled. At the end of the night, little

Susan

children would ask after her inspirational speeches, what can I do? And she would say, send your pennies to unicef. It's literally how she would answer it. There's no need to be theoretical about it. This is what you can do. You're five, you have a penny, send it there. And then she would also give the toll free number or have your parents call the toll free number. Blah, blah, blah, blah. See, she knows what she's doing. You just, you know, put the hashtags on. Well, so she. It'd be interesting to know if that's still going on. I would not doubt that it is.

Beckett

Oh, I don't know. It never came up in my kids schooling. I will look into it and put it in the show notes.

Susan

And we cannot stress enough how much Audrey Hepburn was not just a pretty face on the TV screen. She was very determined in her mission and tried to bring attention and solutions to many aspects of what she found going on in the countries she visited. Things like contaminated water, sanitation, sickness, food distribution. And I just want to give a little shout out to Robert Volders here who got involved in the background. He might not have been on camera, but he was arranging travel, he was arranging meetings with world leaders. This is no joke. Security details. Sometimes she was in grave danger. She went to war zones. Often the things she saw caused her to break down, but only in private. And it was only Robert that was privy to that and could help her through those parts. She. He was very valuable to her in public, though. She became the face of compassion. She was the symbol of humans better selves. She was seen as a guardian angel. So ironically then, at 60, her last movie role was as a guardian angel. The guardian angel Hap in Steven Spielberg's Always.

Beckett

It was so cute. He wrote her a letter because he really wanted her for the role. He wrote her a handwritten letter and sent it to her in Switzerland asking if she would be a part of this movie. And she graciously agreed.

Susan

So all these people have done tap dances of doom to try to get her to read their script. And he writes one letter.

Beckett

Mm. Must have been one hell of a letter.

Susan

What else had he done up till then? Was the E.T. jaws. That's a big one. Close encounters of the third kind. Ooh, the Color Purple. I used a song from the Color Purple for auditions for years and years. I had forgotten about that. I'm gonna go watch that. Indiana Jones. Yes. Maybe she liked his work.

Beckett

Yeah, it was 1989. Yeah, maybe, maybe. He was definitely a famous director at the time.

Susan

The movie was about. It's very random, by the way, about a team of forest firefighters.

Beckett

I love this movie. I'm sorry.

Susan

I'm not going to spoil it too much because there's a kind of critical thing that happens near the beginning that makes the rest make sense. And this was panned by critics, but if I ever see it, it. I don't know that anyone under the age of, say, 40 channel surfs anymore. But if. If I do channel surf and I see it up, it's one of those movies that you'll just like, oh, yeah, I'll watch this. You know, you go get your snack and come back and are perfectly happy to sit through it again. She. I mean, man, this is just distilled, Audrey, this role, serene and gentle. And I just think her sense at one point as Hap, the guardian angel, she even says, anything you do for yourself is a waste of spirits. And it's amazing to see her, really. It's amazing to see her. And it was a very good last movie.

Beckett

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I. I did love that movie.

Susan

So although her natural humility would not allow her to go to events or do projects if they were quoted in her honor, organizations quickly learned that if they promised to give all the money to UNICEF or the aspca, she would be in. That's how they got her. Spielberg didn't have to do that, but that's how they got her to do these projects. People quickly organized things like film festivals, galas, orchestra concerts. Moma had a retrospective of her work, TV series, whatever anyone could do to get Audrey Hepburn on their project and therefore raise money and aware for her cause.

Beckett

She had hosted a PBS series called Audrey Hepburn's Gardens of the World where she toured gardens of the world. It's so charming. She's just herself, she's such a gardener. It was a hobby she had and so she really gets into talking about all these different gardens. And it was a three month long road trip for her going from one place to another to film this series. And she also recorded album called these titles are so clever. Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales where she told fairy tales.

Susan

Audrey, bless her, was always blown away that she had any pull. I think she just generally did not understand how much love the public had for her. And I quote, I'm totally surprised by this. I'm surprised people recognize me on the street. I say to myself, well I, I must still look like myself. I just fell into this career. I did work very hard that I'll take credit for, but I don't understand any of this. At the same time, it warms my heart. I am terribly touched by all of this. She's so humble.

Beckett

I know.

Susan

Yeah.

Beckett

Even you read it. It could have been taken as sarcastic a little bit, but not. No, no, no. You heard her saying these things. She totally believed it. That's exactly who she was.

Susan

Was at 61. She did something called the Concert for Life, which is an amazing collaboration. Audrey would read from Anne Frank's diary, backed by a symphony inspired by Anne Frank's life. And we linked to a song from this work during the Anne Frank episode, but did not receive permission in time to put it in that episode. So maybe we can give you a link to that link. Does that make sense?

Beckett

Yes.

Susan

But a whole symphony was written about Anne Frank and given that her life had paralleled Anne Frank's for so long, she felt really compelled to work on this project kind of for the greater good. She had been approached when she was around 25 to play Anne Frank in the movie. And she is like, I can't possibly pull this off. There's no way. I'm too old. So she felt like that was the least she could do for a. A fellow victim of the German occupation. So Audrey continued her work with unicef and she traveled honestly to war torn countries, sometimes under fire. There's pictures of her in a flak jacket and helmet and helicopter. She's she brings supplies. She brings compassion and attention to the conditions of fellow human beings all over the world. And Audrey began to experience severe stomach pain, which, you know, you'd attribute to travelers. Tummy, don't drink the water, etc. You know, it's just part of the picture. If you go places with no sanitation, I'll treat the parasites or whatever when I get back. So she went off to Somalia, which is our traditional depiction of the continent of Africa, is a skull looking to the right. Somalia is the bridge of the nose. Okay, so it's on the right as you look at a map. It's the very, very edge of Africa. And I. I do believe that the pictures of Audrey and the starving children of Somalia, that she was trying to help there are the picture that we all think of. We think of Breakfast at Tiffany's, we might think of My Fair lady and then these pictures.

Beckett

She described it as apocalyptic and that it was the worst famine she had ever seen. Now, this is a woman who's been traveling to countries with famines. This was the worst she'd ever seen in 10 years of traveling for UNICEF stuff.

Susan

She called Somalia a living nightmare. She was not. Even though she was readier than any of us would have ever been, she was not ready for the depths of the despair. Like it had gone past despair into this numb acceptance. She said she will never forget. Her bus came, pulled up, and there are 15,000 starving children just patiently waiting for their fate. Is it going to be death? Am I going to be run over by this bus? You know, they had no energy to even care. It was the most heartbroken she had ever been in her. Her. In her entire life. She met with leaders there at great risk to herself to just try to end the war that was causing this catastrophe in the first place. She always felt like she never did enough, even though she did more than anyone, you know.

Beckett

Oh, yeah, I can't imagine anybody doing this job that well, because when she went on, you can. Maybe we'll put some in the show notes, but you can certainly see them on YouTube interviews with her during this time. When you listen to her talk about what she saw, she so descriptive. She's so honest, she's so caring. You know, she just. Her heart, her eyes are welling up as she's talking about this. And, you know, it's not acting. I can't imagine anyone spurring people to action as much as she did.

Susan

So when she got back after this experience, she was diagnosed with a form of terminal, as it turned out, Abdominal cancer. When she received the notice that they couldn't treat her after a couple of operations, she held her son's hand and said that it was so disappointing. And she did try to stay strong for her sons. My mother did the same thing. I think she was in great amounts of pain. She was on morphine and going downhill fast. She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home to Switzerland, her happy place, her haven to die. But she was too ill for commercial airlines to take her home. And so, Givenchy, she called up a connection of his, a socialite who is super famous named Bunny Mellon, filled her private jet with flowers and flew Audrey Hepburn back to her house in Switzerland.

Beckett

I love their friendship. That's what makes this next part really sad. At Christmas time, she invited her nearest and dearest friends to her home, the one that she shared with Robert in Switzerland, and she gave away her items that she knew that they would like and that they would like to remember her by. She gave Givenchy a coat, a blue one, because she said it was his color. And he wrapped himself in that coat and just cried. On the way home to Paris, he knew that that was the last time he was gonna see her. You know, you don't have friends like that in your life that often. And I think they both valued that friendship so much.

Susan

Even the gardener came up to see her, and he asked her, what are we going to do without you? You know, surely you'll be here to help, help me next year with this garden. And she smiled at him and said, of course, I'll continue to help you, but not in the same way. It's pretty sad.

Beckett

Okay, hold on. I'm crying. I don't know why you're not. Okay, go ahead.

Susan

At 63, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, although it had to be brought to her, but it was brought to her by the US Ambassador with a letter from President H.W. bush. I actually would like to read that letter, if you don't mind.

Beckett

No.

Susan

Dear Audrey, I am delighted to send you the Presidential Medal of Freedom to honor your outstanding contributions to humanity through the arts and through your outstanding service to unicef. As I mentioned in our telephone conversation and during the awards ceremony, I regret that you were unable to be with us here at the White House so that I could personally present this award to you. You. Nevertheless, it was a privilege to celebrate your many contributions to film, as well as your wonderful humanitarian work on behalf of the children around the world. As a gifted actress, you have won the affection of millions of fans as a giving Caring individual. You have won the world's enduring respect as well. Barbara joins me in sending warmest best regards to you. Sincerely, G.W. bush. And underneath, by hand, he wrote, we are very proud of you.

Beckett

Wow.

Susan

So I like, like it when people get their accolades while they're still alive.

Beckett

Yes.

Susan

Because on January 20, 1993, Audrey Hepburn died in her sleep at home, in her bed, although she was alone in her room. And her beloved servant Giovanna was the one that found her. Her funeral was a very simple tribute, filled with people who loved her. And Sean, her son, said later that he was given an estimate that 25,000 people had lined the streets of their small town, paying their respects perfectly silently as his mother's very simple pine coffin went by. The world mourned her loss. Articles in every major newspaper. Who could ask for anything more after we're gone, do you know?

Beckett

I know, like, the way she lived her life. Her grave isn't like this opulent thing. It's very simple with a simple stone cross that just says Audrey Hepburn, 1929-1993. Obviously, people go there and put flowers and pictures and stuff on it.

Susan

She's buried near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Her son Sean had gone to choose her grave site. He felt like plot number 63. Really felt like his mother to him, had the cool breeze, it had the serenity. He went to the office and asked how much it was, and he said, it's Your family's for 500 years, for 274 francs. And the sun looked. This is my. This might get me. I feel it coming. The son looked at the cemetery owner and he said, how much is it for forever? And they locked eyes. And the cemetery owner said, 75 francs. So the price of forever was 75 francs? Yes. Okay, so here, wait, let me just give you. Now, this actually happened during her life, too. I'm gonna bring it up just a tiny bit before we go to media. How about that? Just so they have a chance to recover.

Beckett

Okay.

Susan

She was given two tributes that were very close to her heart. There is an Audrey Hepburn rose, officially, and an Audrey Hepburn tulip. And when Audrey found out about this and was presented with the very first official Audrey Hepburn tulip bulb, which she had given to her mother, by the way. So that's how close they were. She said with a beaming face to a very loving crowd, this is the most romantic thing that could ever happen to me.

Beckett

Oh, I love that. Well, I mean, tulips, they're a symbol of her country. They, you know, they were part of her life during the war. It's beautiful now. I want a garden. The ground is too frozen. The year that she died, she won an Emmy for her television series on the garden. And she won a Grammy for that album that she made, that last album. These two awards put her in a group of only 15 people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony.

Susan

This group also includes Rita Moreno for the third west side Story reference in one show, Whoopi Goldberg, and most recently, John Legend.

Beckett

I think she would have appreciated the Tulip more than she would have these particular awards, except for the fact that

Susan

those awards mean that your peers have judged you and found you successful or valuable or skilled. I mean, you know, the statuette is one thing. Obviously she doesn't care about the statuette since she lost him in the bathroom within, you know, 30 minutes of getting him. But she did get him back, by the way. So, yes, I don't think it was the award so much as they as the love that she would have appreciated.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

And that'll bring us to the end of our official coverage of Audrey Hepburn. But we still have media. Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummer ahead to learn more. See you this summer. And now it is time for media.

Beckett

As far as biographies go, the two that I liked the best, the first one was the Life of Audrey Hepburn by Donald Spato. It was written in 2006. He wrote a Jackie Kennedy biography that we liked. It is simple reading. It's. There's nothing, a whole lot of details. If you want the details. Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris. And that was written in 96. So I always think it's interesting, the information that's in one that was a little bit older versus the ones that are contemporary, you know, more modern.

Susan

The Barry Paris book. He also wrote a biography of Louise Brooks, I want to say, and also Greta Garbo. So he's got some experience in writing some biographies. Also refers to the book that I think is my favorite. They're both very good, but I think my favorite is Audrey, A biography by the rhyming to Barry Paris, Warren Harris. Barry Paris refers to this book, which is a little smaller than the Barry Paris book in his book.

Beckett

So then of course, you can't forget the other two big books. Audrey Hepburn and Elliot Elegant Spirit by her son Sean. Sean Hepburn Ferrer.

Susan

And then her second son Luca has. It is so interesting to me. It is marketing itself kind of as a cookbook, but it's not. It's a memoir, which also includes recipes and a lot of family photos. It's called Audrey at Memories of My Mother's Kitchen. And right on the front is that ridiculous bowl of pasta.

Beckett

And I love this. She's got this yellow dress pasta. It's so 60s. It's got, like, these mod flowers on it. It's so 60s. She's got the big glasses.

Susan

I like how Giovanna, or I'm assuming that's Giovanna, is in the background with a face on like, how are you serving this pasta, you fool?

Beckett

I loved this book. I would actually contemplate buying this one. I love books that have recipes. I always have. So I thought this was clever. And all those pictures you mentioned, and it's quite something.

Susan

So there's pictures you'll see nowhere else in this book. Yeah. I would say if you buy one by Audrey At Home by Luca Doty.

Beckett

I agree. There is several coffee table books out there. The one that I like the best was Audrey Hepburn A Life in Pictures, edited by Jan Bryce Derbier. I know, I just messed that up. And there's a short introduction at the beginning by Givenchy. And it's, you know, it's a coffee table book. It's really heavy, and there's gorgeous pictures in it. That's the one I like the best

Susan

to go along with that. I have a children's book that I really thought was pretty dang cute. It's called For Audrey With Love, Audrey Hepburn, Ann Givenchy by Philip Hopman. And it tells the story of their friendship. And it's a children's book.

Beckett

Yeah. I love that they had such a special friendship that I think that makes a good friendship model.

Susan

On the back cover, it says in quotes, you bear. Will we be friends forever? Yes, Audrey, forever.

Beckett

Aww.

Susan

It's pretty cute.

Beckett

There was one. I'm gonna give it honorable mention as a kid's book because it's not as cute as that one, but it's still pretty cute. Just Being Audrey by Margaret Cardillo, illustrated by Julia Denos. And it's the illustrations of this book that really sealed the deal for me. It would be really good for a new reader. You know, that's just starting chapter book books. But the illustrations have this mod 60s vibe to them. It was. I loved it. I loved that part.

Susan

There's also a series of books called Little People, Big Dreams. And the Audrey Hepburn book is super cute. Written by Isabel Sanchez Vergara and illustrated by Amaya Arasola. So cute. There's one little two page spread that actually, I mean, Audrey really looks like Audrey in these things. I think Audrey won award after award, but she worried that she didn't deserve. While she was a Hollywood star who seemed to have everything, she never forgot there were children in the world who were hungry just as she had been. I thought that was really cute. So it kind of covered her two halves just in that little two page spread.

Beckett

I really love that there's so many kids books about her. So she's not gonna be forgotten. There's a new generation coming up that's going to be able to use her as a role model. That doesn't give you tingles. I don't know what does.

Susan

All right, well, let's see now. You know what, as to movies, you know what to do. Go find. Let's see in what order? I would say Breakfast at Tiffany's because that's the classic and you're missing some cultural references. If you don't understand Breakfast at Tiffany's and then what? Funny Face. My Fair lady is my favorite. If you like musicals, go to that. I don't know, An End Story is very powerful and won her awards and props as a serious actress.

Beckett

Yeah, there's a lot of her movies that are on, you know, the streaming services. And I binged her movies as soon as we wrapped up Elizabeth Bathory. That's how I scrubbed my brain. And I was so glad I did. I even did a compare and contrast between Audrey's Sabrina and the newer Sabrina that had Harrison Ford in it.

Susan

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Beckett

I'm ready to talk about. Not now. But you know, if you see me on the street, I can talk about that. About a compare and contrast between the two because they both had merit.

Susan

I watched. Oh, well, I mean, I've watched it before, but I watched Roman Holiday on my way back from Paris, sharing a set of earphones needlessly with this guy that looked just like a musketeer that was sitting beside me. And he goes, oh, I would like to watch this. And I'm thinking, but I do not say you have the power as you have a TV set right in front of you. We also simulcast the entirety of Mame, although he fell asleep halfway through. And then on our separate earphones, which we finally got a hold of. It was almost like a breakup, really. He and I watched Colette because I knew that was going to be too saucy for me to be sharing earphones with the perfect stranger. I was like, look, you push the button. Let's get you a set of headphones and get you started there.

Beckett

Oh, that is.

Susan

And then he asked me about whether Fresca was or was not a grapefruit drink. And so it was all over.

Beckett

Oh, of course it is. What country is this man from?

Susan

He is French and he was going to visit a small town in Texas. And I thought, the ladies there are not ready for you. He was probably 22 and he was bringing some European savage hotness that, I mean, I wasn't, you know, I was only like, I don't know. It's hard to explain. I'm probably cutting all this out. But he. It wasn't for me. Me, I wasn't like, woo, you're so hot. I was more like, you're irritating me. But here's the other headphone. That's fine. So he was like just my companion or whatever. But I was like, the ladies of Texas are not gonna understand what is happening.

Beckett

No, not at all.

Susan

I'm like a musketeer with that accent shows up. I don't know what to tell you. Okay, okay. So movies also, you know what you can do if you have a library card. You know how often I talk about Libby or Overdrive. And that's where you can get audiobooks or books, books to play on your phone. Including the players. There is a service called Kanopy K A N O P Y. Also free with your library card. And on Kanopy, there are several quality free documentaries about the life of Audrey Hepburn. So if you have your library card on your key ring or whatever, you can just sign up and watch them right now.

Beckett

Nice. I did not know about that. You taught me about Libby and now you've taught me about this one. Nice. Thank you. I think I'm going to love that one. One.

Susan

It's mostly documentaries. And if that's what you're into, it is like treasure trove. Okay, so to bring you down a little if you want to. And I almost think it's important to. It's nominated for an Oscar. So if you're a completionist and want to watch all the shorts and all the documentaries. A Night at the Garden, which I mentioned in the first episode, which. So you might have forgotten what it was about. It was about the American Nazis holding A rally that filled Madison Square Garden. A documentary about that that is relatively short is actually up on Vimeo in its entirety. So I almost think you should watch that to kind of realize that it wasn't just Audrey's parents that were kind of drawn in to the fascist movement.

Beckett

There is an audrey hepburn.org it's the home of the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund. They have a lot of information, there's a lot of pictures and a lot of ways that you can support the projects that Audrey held so dear. So I will link you up to that.

Susan

Also just unicef.org if you want to go straight to the source. So also you can watch the entirety of Dutch in 7 Lessons on YouTube. Although if you don't speak Dutch, but you can tell she's being catcalled, you can follow it well enough, I think.

Beckett

I thought so. Yeah.

Susan

I watched it and she looks like

Beckett

herself, except a lot younger.

Susan

Imagine that.

Beckett

I know. Isn't that strange? Wow, that may be the stupidest thing I've ever said in my whole life. And that really?

Susan

Not really, because Audrey said the same thing, that she was always surprised when she was recognized and then said, well, I suppose I still look like myself. There you go. So even Audrey was surprised. Don't feel bad.

Beckett

So we know you guys all listen to podcasts.

Susan

I would.

Beckett

This is like a love letter to Audrey Hepburn. Mo Rocca has a new podcast, it's called Mobituaries. And episode four is about Audrey and his. His run ins with her and interviews with people who were friends with her. And it is delightful and biased and a love letter. And I thought it was great. I was smiling the whole time.

Susan

Awesome.

Beckett

And you must remember this, which is on an indefinite hiatus. I was surprised to find out she has an episode, it was 22, it was early on, where she looks at the movies, specifically at Audrey Hepburn movies. So if you want a little more details and gossip and tidbits on the movies, that's one to listen to.

Susan

I think she focuses a lot on Sabrina and the fashions of Sabrina.

Beckett

Yes.

Susan

And how that kind of changed the landscape of society. I think in America, she has a

Beckett

really great discussion with herself about body positivity and what Audrey Hepburn did for that. Yeah. Twisted my thinking around. I was like, yeah, I get it.

Susan

Although she's obsessed with her collarbone.

Beckett

Just saying, well, all right, I am not alone here. I am obsessed with my collarbone because I didn't see it for years and years and years. Then it just popped out.

Susan

I'm like feeling. I'm like well, it's there. I never thought about it. But you know what? There's people that think about their nose every day. And for me, I've never even thought about my nose for one minute. Okay, let's see. Oh, also, a lighter note. This has no bearing on Audrey Hepburn herself. This is just a rabbit hole that I fell down. It's like. Oh, I remember this when I was wondering what the deal was with hyph names. If you guys want to see that very short skit from the Katherine Tate show about the egg race where the children realize that the eggs aren't organic and run screaming away, I'll give you a link to that. It's just on YouTube.

Beckett

Oh, okay, great.

Susan

And also the history of care packages. An article on NPR called how the U.S. won hearts through stomachs after World War II. And that kind of explains the contents of the care packages, how the 10 in 1 rations got distributed, that kind of thing. There is no drunk history about Audrey Hepburn. The closest you can get is Marilyn Monroe, which, as we've mentioned, Marilyn Monroe at least three times in this podcast, is closer than we've got to a lot of other people. But. So there's an open slot.

Beckett

What would you pick? Like, what part of her life? What was the most dramatic? I mean, would you do the war? I wouldn't want to do drug history on. On Nazi invasions. I don't want to laugh.

Susan

Roman Holiday. I think it would be good to have the whole Roman Holiday getting discover by Colette, which is like, oh, yeah, random. The whole fact that she was first out of the gate, won Oscar and a Tony. What? You know, everybody else is laying on the ground like, this is for established people only. And, you know, here she is, the hecklers. The fact that the guy that shook her hand at 14 ended up being her husband later, like, there's a lot right then. That's pretty cheerful.

Beckett

Yes, yes, I agree. Good section of her life. Great, Great picking, Beckett.

Susan

Yeah, but I've never thought about that before. Just, um. Okay. Okay. So the school she went to in the town of Ellam E L H A M. England. Some very, very diligent local historian has gone street by street and told you the history of every single building in that village, including the Five Bells, which used to be the Five Bells Pub that Audrey lived in. Not when it was a pub. Anyway, if you're interested in that, if you live in England or a small town or are even just, I don't know. Up to you. Go see. There is an Ellum Village tour that includes all that information, house by house, historical knowledge, like at a website. Yep. Ellem.co.uk it is the Ellam Historical Society.

Beckett

Okay. I think that's cool.

Susan

I think. Well, I thought it was cool enough to mark down and go through the whole thing.

Beckett

Kind of like the Bowery boys, you know, they do things, buildings you've never seen before. And you find that interesting.

Susan

That's true. That's true. And I, you know, I think it's pretty common for old pubs from previous centuries to be converted into houses.

Beckett

Yes. So I like when schools are converted into, like, senior housing. I love when that happens, although it

Susan

kind of cracks me up because it's like such a metaphor for the whole baby boomer thing. If you think of the baby boomers as like a snake and ate this big egg, and it's like going through my elementary school and almost everybody else's was built to accommodate the sudden influx of children. So it's like really, Jerry built. There's no cafeteria. There's outbuildings that you have to go outside to go to gym class. You're, you know, you have to go outside to go to music class to a little building. As the baby boomers get older, you can see the egg moving through the snake. Until now, all the old 50 schools are now being changed into senior housing. It's very interesting. Sometimes the same building, sometimes they raise the building and use it for a new building on the same site.

Beckett

I always thought the word raise was weird because it means to take down, but it also means it's spelled differently to go up. That's all. I'm in a strange mood.

Susan

Well, okay, here's one for you.

Beckett

Okay.

Susan

Our friend Helen Zaltzman at the Allusionist would appreciate this. Inflammable meaning means can't catch on fire and prone to catch on fire.

Beckett

Oh.

Susan

Inflammable gas means no smoking.

Beckett

Inflammable.

Susan

Okay, there you go. And in closing, I would like to read a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson that one of Audrey's sons used as an homage to his mother to kind of summarize her life and honor her. Coincidentally, it is a poem that we placed on the back cover of my mother's funeral program. Program. So I would like to read that to you because it applies to my mother just as well as it does to Audrey Hepburn. And I would hope it applies to me, too. To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better. Whether by a healthy child, child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived this is to have succeeded. Thanks for listening.

Beckett

Bye.

Susan

If you liked what you heard today, please tell a few friends or leave a review for us on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcatcher. The Audrey Hepburn Pinterest board is super easy to maintain so it is increasing more every single single day. So go check that out and there should be a board there for each and every one of our shows. Special thanks to James Harper of Harper Active for the music he let us use in the middle of the show. And the end song is by Xavier and Ophelia called Maid of Stars used by permission from Musically. Eyes mirrored in the sky

Beckett

There is

Susan

a piece of me inside your mind. Times just a matter of time there's no reason why

Beckett

you and me, me

Susan

and you it too we are what made a start you and me, me and you it's who we are made.

Beckett

Who are you?

Susan

Not today exactly who you are we're glowing endlessly the universe is our. Into the light across the

Beckett

night Just a matter of time oh oh there's no reason why oh you and me,

Susan

me and you it too we all made of stones you and me, me and you it's who we are. Sam.

Beckett

Across the

Susan

night Just a matter of time. Oh you and me, me and you it's who we are we're made of stone Just a matter of time oh, there's no reason oh you and me, me and you it's who we are we made a stars you and me Me and you Is who we are we made a star.

Beckett

It.