February 7, 2019 • 38 mins
There were other stars as big as Audrey Hepburn, some even bigger. (Ahem, Katharine Hepburn?) So why is it that more than 25 years after her death her image still captivates us and her name trends regularly on social media? Mo explores why the attachment to Audrey is still so personal for so many people.Learn more about the Mobituaries book: http://bit.ly/MobituariesBook
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm on thirty fourth Street in Manhattan, outside Macy's at
Harold Square. I worked here more than twenty five years ago,
and on one faithful day as a twenty three year old,
I came face to face with bona fide old time
Hollywood stardom, sort of face to face. Let's go inside.
(00:26):
Macy's was my first job. When I arrived in New York.
I worked behind the counter as a fragrant specialist for Channel.
I was not a spritzer. Spritzer's were the male models
in front of the counter debait to lure customers so
that I could dazzle them with my knowledge of the
product line. Can I help you, ma'am? H Channel number nineteen.
(00:50):
You do know who wears number twenty two? The Queen Mother.
I hear she smells great. You're a French teacher, Well
you have no choice. You have to wear Chanelle number five,
Coco or the Divarsay looking to get her groove back. Yes,
it's an ou de toilette. No, it's not literally toilet water.
Most people run screaming when they see anybody standing there
(01:10):
with a fragrance bottle, and they didn't when they saw you.
That's my former supervisor Javen Bunch. God, I cannot believe this.
In that man shouting in disbelief is salesman Park Salons
and my former colleague Raymond Ramirez, and I've been wishing
to know since nineteen eighty eight. You were like the
cal Ripken of Chanel at Macy's Baseball Reverence. So one
(01:34):
of the things I remember is that occasionally celebrity stars
would walk through. I got to see Share the opera
diva Jess Norman, before you is Elizabeth Taylor. I got
to see Lena Horn. But for me, the one truly
magical moment took place in April of nineteen ninety two
during the annual Flower Show. I was right behind the counter,
(02:01):
yes right, yes, when when she and by she I
mean Audrey Hepburn walked floated by my counter. Yes, Audrey Hepburn.
I will cherish my visit here in memory as long
(02:21):
as I live. When I say she floated by, I'm
not just talking about her impossibly perfect posture, which indeed
made it seem like she was being pulled by a string.
It was more than that. I've met a lot of stars,
and most of them kind of disappoint She didn't more
than gracefulness. She exuded grace. I do remember that day.
(02:46):
What do you remember, Oh my god, I remember that,
the excitement, I remember the sack excitement. Sure, but the
floor became very quiet when she floated through, like the
world came to a stop. There was this reverence among
everybody on the floor. No one would have tried to
get that right. And that's a difference too. Even if
(03:07):
selfie's existed a smartphones, you never would have thought to
like wrap your arm around her and put your shove
your hand in front of her face. He wouldn't go
near miss Heathburn. And that's who she would have been
more than a quarter century after her passing. Yes, it's
been that long. The image of Hepburn in a black
(03:28):
dress and sunglasses having breakfast outside Tiffany's is as identifiable
as Marilyn Monroe standing above a subway grate or James
Dean in his red jacket. But our attachment to Audrey
feels special, more intimate. Let's find out why. Along the way,
I'll take you to some unusual places and we'll cross
(03:51):
paths or some unexpected people, like say a former president
of the United States. Were you aware that the day
of your inauguration, Audrey Hepburn died. No, you didn't know that. No,
I'm Mo Rocca, and this is mobituaries. This mobid the
(04:17):
timeless Audrey Hepburn January twentieth, nineteen ninety three, Death of
an icon. When I started on this podcast, I kind
(04:45):
of made a promise to myself that I wouldn't get
too gushy or hagiographic about any of the people I
was profiling. But I may have to make an exception
because we're talking about Audrey Hepburn. This episode is going
to be a little unconventional, more a series of vignettes
than a womb to tomb biography. Now, Like I said
at the beginning, the connection to Audrey is personal for people.
(05:09):
One day, not too long ago, I was feeling especially reflective,
and so I tweeted, Because what's the point of reflecting
if you don't let your followers know it. I went
ahead and tweeted, how did we drift so far from
Audrey Hepburn? Can we ever get back? Quite The response?
One person answered, no way, there is no comparison. Another wrote,
(05:33):
she was not of this world wer than an I'm
than you in style she's now been gone twenty five years.
She's become a legend. Sean Hepburn Ferrer is Audrey Hepburn's
older son from her first marriage to actor Melfarrere. Audrey
(05:57):
Hepburn is not the movie star from Hollywood. Audrey Hepburn
is the young girl from across the landing who puts
on a little black dress and goes out into the world.
And she represents us, not them, and we're rooting for her,
and we do root for her. Somehow she manages to
be both aspirational and totally accessible, whether she's the chauffeur's
(06:22):
daughter who dazzles the industry tycoon and his brother in
Sabrina or Sabrina or Sabrina, Where have You've been? On
My Life? Right over the garage? Eliza Doolittle in My
Fair Lady. The difference between a lady and a fogle
is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. Or
my personal favorite, the bohemian bookworm turned fashion model in
(06:45):
Funny Face? How could I be a model? I have
no illusions about my looks. I think my face is funny. No,
she wasn't a bombshell like Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor,
but what may have seemed funny to her was considered
an ideal to many. Oh God, I didn't think I
was ever going to look like anyone in a movie.
(07:06):
But of course when I saw a Funny Face with
Audrey Hepfron, I definitely wished I looked like her. In
twenty eleven, I interviewed the late great wit Nora Ephron.
She wrote, when Harry met Sally and directed Sleepless in Seattle,
and had I known we were going to talk about this,
I would be wearing right now my black turtleneck sweater,
(07:27):
which almost looks like the one she wore in Funny Face.
Nora went on to tell me this terrific story. When
she was sixteen, she visited Edith Head, the great costume
designer of Hollywood's Golden Age, and Edith Head then took
me to see her famous dressing room, which had thirty
(07:50):
six panels of mirror for every ten degrees. It was
a completely circular room, and she said that there was
only one person who can stand in that room and
look good in all thirty six mirrors. Then it was
Audrey Hepburn. That is great. If I were a geometry teacher.
I would use that. Yes, there was no one like
(08:13):
her ever. The charm was who she was. I've never
seen anything like it. It's striking that Nora Ephron, who
had perfectly articulated opinions about pretty much everything, had trouble
describing what it was about Audrey hepburn that was so captivating.
Ditto the normally unflappable Johnny Carson. Audrey appeared on the
(08:37):
Tonight Show in nineteen seventy six, and it's kind of
wild watching Carson in his sidekick. Ed McMahon reduced to
anxious schoolboys as they get ready to welcome her onto
the show the first time she's been on the show.
And would you believe I'm a little nervous really what
I had not to put you now all? I mean,
I would believe that because I would feel the sandwich.
She's kind of very, very special, special. She's delicate, thank you. Yes,
(09:03):
that's the word I was going to use, delicate, delicate?
Would you walk in place, miss Audrey Hepburnie? And as
I always like to say, I never really saw anyone
truly misbehave in front of her. How do you think
she felt about being called delicate and She must have
smirked because she knew that she was not because of
what she lived through. And Audrey Hepburn lived through a lot.
(09:31):
Maybe the reason she pulled off all those Cinderella rolls
so beautifully was that her own early life was something
of a fairy tale. And I don't mean the Disney kind.
I'm talking grim. I never led what people sink is
this glamorous life. I've always been me. I've always been
aware of what goes on in the world. And I
(09:52):
suddenly grew up in a war ravaged country, and I've
always known, you know that I was privileged and NATO
always seeing suffering, known about it. And that hasn't changed.
So it's still the same old old. Audrey Hepburn was
(10:18):
born in Brussels, Belgium, on May fourth, nineteen twenty nine.
Her father was a banker and her mother a Dutch aristocrat.
She spent some of her youth in the UK, where
she trained as a dancer and where her parents were
supporters of the Fascist movement. After her father abandoned the
family and as war loomed, Audrey moved with her mother
(10:39):
to neutral Holland. Soon after the Nazis invaded this is
the Columbia Broadcasting System. Hipler added another to his bag
of small nations today, the fifth and fourteen months, when
the Dutch Army laid down its arms everywhere except in
the extreme southwestern part of the country. In spite of
(11:00):
her parents pre war politics, Audrey, as a young teenager,
did what she could to help the resistance, like raising
funds through secret dance performances. The war was a lasting
trauma for her, as her hometown of Arnham became a battlefield.
As reported here by Walter Cronkite, the tragedy a resupply
(11:23):
now bassets Arnham brigades protecting landing zones are under withering
German attack. Hepburn talked about her wartime experience during her
American television debut in nineteen fifty one on a show
called We the People. She was twenty two years old,
Ladies and gentlemen, telling you her own story. Broadway's latest star,
(11:44):
Audrey Hepburn. It's her first time on Broadway. She's starring
in a play called Gigi, the precursor to the musical,
and she's understandably excited. This is a wonderful Christmas for me.
Irreculusly I'm in New York a Broadway. But then the
own shifts as Hepburn begins to reenact what happened to
her during the war. The Christmas I want to tell
(12:06):
you about is the one that took place here Arnum Holland,
seven years ago. It's pretty surreal. Hepburn is basically playing
herself as a fifteen year old. She talks about how
her uncle was executed by the Nazis and how her
family nearly starved. And there was the morning of December
(12:26):
twenty fourth when finally my aunt told us there wasn't
a scrap of food left in the house. Well, I'd
heard one could sleep and forget hunger. Perhaps I could
see ball through Christmas. I try, But there's a Christmas
miracle when the Resistance sends a delivery ten potatoes, the
most wonderful and most beautiful thing I ever saw. It
(12:50):
may sound a bit melodramatic to you, but ten potatoes
would have been a prize. Hepburn suffered severe malnourishment during
what was known as the Dutch Famine. Under German occupation.
Much of the populace had reached the starvation level. The
Nazis blocked the food supply to over four million civilians.
More than twenty thousand died the lack of fulgum's day
(13:13):
after day after day, and it's a long torture. Luca
Dotty is Hepburn's younger son from her second marriage to
Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti. He says that during the war,
Audrey and her family were so desperate for food they
had to make flower out of tulip bulbs. By the
time Holland was liberated, she weighed only eighty eight pounds.
(13:37):
Did that stress stay with her for the rest of
her life? Obviously yes, but she he did very well.
All her life was a search of stability. That's why
home it was very important. Luca wrote a book a
few years back about their home life and her favorite recipes,
a surprise best seller times and times over. People were
(13:58):
surprised that my mother who actually they were surprised by
the fact that she actually atees. I think Luca's half
choking here a nod to the speculation that his mother,
who was very thin, may have had an eating disorder.
But Luca swears by her love of pasta and chocolate,
which she associated with the Allied liberation of Holland. My
(14:20):
mother was then a survivor, and when you are you
always have this duality. You know, you're happy you're alive,
but then you have this sense of guilts because the
person next door didn't make it. And for Hepburn, one
of those people, while not a literal next door neighbor,
was another Dutch girl. Audrey Hepburn felt a special connection
(14:47):
to someone you wouldn't necessarily expect. Are you speaking of
An Frank. I'm speaking of An Frank. You have an
affinity for that story, don't you. I do in a
way because we both lived through the same war, exactly
the same age. I was born, the same year Anne
Frank was born. That's Audrey Hepburn speaking to CBS in
(15:08):
nineteen eighty nine. But she became acquainted with the story
of Anne Frank far earlier, earlier than almost anyone. I
read the diary in Dutch in galiform when it was
still being edited, and it was one of the most
devastating experiences I've ever had, because more than just reading
(15:29):
a book, it was like having the whole war played
back to me. She obviously was locked up inside. I
was outside, and here was somebody who had been able
to put on paper everything I'd felt during those years,
and was it destroyed me. I must saying it has
(15:49):
stayed an extremely emotional experience for me. Luca calls mother
and Anne Frank soul sisters. And I had no idea
that Otto Frank, Anne's father actually wanted Hepburn to play
his daughter on screen. He even visited her home in
(16:10):
Switzerland to try to persuade her. There's this striking photo
of Hepburn, Otto Frank and his second wife posing outside
Hepburn's home. But she said no to the role. Why
did she turn it down because it was much too
close to what she lived through. She thought he would
kill her. She actually believed that it would somehow, you know,
(16:33):
kill her to do it, because she felt so close
to her and she was crushed that she made it
and Frank didn't. Both her sons talked to me about
the lifelong impact of the war on their mother. My
mother once said, you know, if I get through this alive,
I will never ever complain anymore. And this is something
she actually did. My mother was never complaining, even in
(16:54):
the worst situations, and I think that this is one
of the reasons why she wanted to do then, is
that she remembered so vividly herself and her emotions as
a little girl and living through the war, and so's
there's this empathy thing going on. Long before Angelina, there
was Audrey, traveling the globe in the nineteen eighties and
(17:16):
nineties raising awareness about the world's poorest, actively lobbying governments
to help children in need. While she appeared in a
few films here and there, it was her charitable work
that defined her later years as a good will ambassador
for Uni Seth. She really was one of the world's
most prominent celebrity humanitarians. She never forgot the relief that
(17:39):
came at the end of the war. Is there a
point at which our well of compassion might run dry?
Do you think never? I don't think that's It's not
in human nature. Giving is and giving is life living.
I mean, if you stopped wanting to give, I think
it's nothing more to live for. The darkness of her
(18:06):
wartime experience may seem like the polar opposite of the
light she emits on screen. And yet I'm wondering if
this combination of yearning and gratitude is what still draws
us today, because those things really seem to show up
on screen, and it did show. It did show through
(18:27):
her eyes, it did show in her genuinity and simplicity,
and people realize it's true. So it's very hard to define,
but you define it very well. After talking with Luca
and Sean and learning what her mother went through, I
went back and rewatched some of her movies and now
(18:49):
I see her story in those performances as the wound,
did Holly go lightly looking for a better life? I mean,
that's horrible. Suddenly you're afraid, you don't know what you're
Freda as Princess Anne, who feels a genuine joy on
her Roman holiday and decide caffine looking shop windows, look
(19:11):
in the rain. It's no coincidence that in the screen
test that launched her. You can watch it yourself, it's
on YouTube, she's talking about the war, the world, the bed,
and then we weren't going to leave this out. There's
wait until Dark. Audrey Hepburn the role you're going to
(19:35):
remember whenever you're alone. Hepburn plays a blind woman who
is terrorized inside her home. Co star Alan Arkin plays
her tormentor and supposedly hated doing the tormenting I mean,
who wants it to be mean to Audrey Eppburn. The
scenes were intense, and Audrey, quite possibly channeling her wartime experience,
(19:55):
endures the struggle and survives. Listen. There were plenty of
other talented actresses in the nineteen fifties and sixties, and
they were beautiful too. Some of them were supposed to
be the next Audrey Hepburn, Millie Perkins, Maggie McNamara, Susan Strasburg,
but they hadn't lived through what Audrey lived through. Peter Bogdanovitch,
(20:18):
who directed Hepburn, summed up perfectly when he called her
an iron butterfly. All this may go some way towards
explaining Audrey Hepburn's hold on us, but I think there's
more to the story. For that, we'll head to where else, Japan.
(20:39):
But first we've made clear there were no other Audrey Hepburn's,
but there was one other, very famous Hepburn. So let's
take a moment to settle something. Audrey Hepburn is not
Katherine Hepburn. It reminds me of that disambiguation alert that
you get on Wikipedia or Google. You know, did you
(20:59):
mean now if you are one of those people who
confuses Katherine with Audrey, you probably stopped listening to me
ten minutes ago. Otherwise, it's never too late to disambiguate.
Oh we're going to talk about me. Good. Are they related? No,
(21:21):
they are not sisters. They are not even third cousins.
Who was older Katherine by twenty two years? But who
wore the pants? Well they both did, and quite well,
I should add. Then there are the very distinctive Hepburn's
speech patterns. Guess who's coming to dinner. If you've never
heard Katherine's mid Atlantic affect, you've probably heard Martin Short
(21:44):
doing Katherine Hepburn's mid Atlantic affect. Well, that kind of
talk will get you. No, I missed out. Now, Audrey's
accent was always a little harder to place. Did I
tell you how divinely and utterly happy I am? I
guess it was a British, Dutch, American bland. You know,
I'd just like to hear her say things. Why didn't
(22:05):
you say something, Sarah dipity right? Suddenly, not only would
they not be playing scrabble, it would also not be
playing by cheesy chicken stock plugs. The Journey of Nattigan
I'm having much too much fun. We hope you are
to stay tuned for more Audrey after this. Just before
(22:35):
my stint working at Macy's, I was living in Japan,
where I studied kabuki. Yes really, I taught English on
the side. Because it was the early nineties, I had
no other income, and a cup of coffee in Tokyo
costs about twelve dollars. One of my students, a very
nice woman named Ritzko, asked me out to a movie.
It may have been a date, I still don't know.
(22:56):
We ended up going to an Audrey Hepburn film festival.
We saw How to Steal a Million co starring Peter O'Toole.
You went us in a big time paper heist. A
life sized cardboard cut out of Audrey greeted us at
the festival Entrance. Fans post for pictures next to it.
(23:16):
Now we've talked about the personal attachment a lot of
fans have for her. Well, in Japan, the Audrey love
is deep. There's this famous all female theater troupe there
called Takaraska. They staged a musical version of Roman Holidays.
(23:39):
And get this, Hepburn was ranked above Gandhi in a
Japanese poll on the most well liked historical figures. What
is the deal with your mother and Japan? The connection?
It's intense, It's very intense. Little by little I understood
there was a sincere devotion. There's no other word for it,
and Luca would know. He told me that it was
(24:01):
through Japanese fan mail and small tokens like origami that
he first began to grasp his mother's fame. During his
childhood in Rome, he would watch Japanese tourists trying to
follow in his mother's film star footsteps. Audrey Hepburn now
welcomes you to Rome as the captive princess who goes
out on the town to have some fun. And they
(24:23):
came to Rome to retrace the Roman Holiday, every scene
you know, and the vise by and the ice great
and the fountain and this sent deats in case you
haven't seen Roman Holiday, it's the movie that won Hepburn
her oscar. She plays Princess Anne, who's visiting Rome on
a royal tour and ends up playing hooky for the
(24:43):
day while pretending to be a commoner. She falls in
love with an American journalist played by Gregory Peck I
could do some things. I've always wanted to blake what oh,
you can't imagine. I like to just whatever. I like.
Holiday long. When the Japanese saw Roman Holiday, it was
(25:05):
love at first sight. It was nineteen fifty three, the
war was still a recent memory, and American culture was
really just starting to take root in Japan. The Japanese
connection to the film may have something to do with
the importance of duty. You see spoiler alert, Princess Anne
tearfully leaves her true love to return to her royal world,
(25:28):
not a Hollywood ending. I have to leave you now.
I'm going to that corner. That done. You stay in
the gun drive away. It was very understandable for Japanese.
Taki Kato lives in Japan and was a young girl
(25:49):
when Roman Holiday premiered, But Order Helper we could identify
with how they say so charming, so natural for us,
was so cute, and the Japanese tend to like someone
who's cute. And apparently the Japanese found Hepburn's pixie haircut
(26:09):
cuter than Hello Kitty. Hepburn talked about it in a
Dutch TV interview in nineteen eighty eight, and actually it
caused a bit of a fjor, especially in Japan, with
the film was an enormous success, still is today, because
they're all girls have very long hair and it was
part of the tradition and they'll cut off their hair,
(26:30):
and I was held responsible. Yes, that's very true. Taki
went on to become a show business coordinator in Tokyo.
She worked with a lot of big names, Frank Snatche,
Harry Barafonte, Ringosta, and as you may have guessed, miss
Ldre Hepburn. In a surprise move, Hepburn left Hollywood when
she was still very much in demand in the late
(26:52):
nineteen sixties to live abroad and focus on motherhood. But
in nineteen seventy one, Taki helped negotiate to get her
back in of the camera, this time for Japanese commercials.
It's that lost in translation thing where Americans appeared in
ads that were never broadcast in the US, which was
very very sensational Hinchapan, of course, and the commercials was
(27:15):
very fashionable. Incidentally, she was advertising high end wigs. But
it wasn't until nineteen eighty three that Audrey Hepburn actually
went to Japan. The occasion a fashion show for her
dear friend and designer Hubert de Givanshi. Quick side note,
The Givanschi fashion show in funny Face is a magical sequence.
(27:40):
When Hepburn landed in Tokyo, it was like Princess Anne
from Roman Holiday had finally arrived. Hepburn was naturally exhausted
after a very long flight, and she worried that she
might disappoint fans who were accustomed to seeing her as
a young woman on screen. So she said to me, Taki,
I am very sad. If the Japanese fans look at
(28:02):
me in that tired face, they may not like me anymore.
Talkie told her friend not to worry, that Japanese fans
would always love her, and she said, I still remember
her big smile. Taki. Okay, you're right. Taki and Audrey
remained friends for years. I have about thirty letters from her.
(28:24):
This must be in nineteen eighty three, after she left Japan.
I think I have now almost recovered from my jet lag,
but will never get over Japan. Never, she underlines, none
of us will ever be the same again. Exclamation mark
(28:48):
three of them. She told me, Taki, perhaps in the
past years in the in my ancestor era. I might
have in a Japanese Hepburn may have been joking here,
but she understood that there was a bond. So to
test this notion of devotion, we sent a producer to
(29:08):
this Audrey Hepburn photo exhibition happening in a department store
just outside Tokyo, and one of the women waiting in
line likened Hepburn to a goddess. Another lady talked about
a sense of elegance and her quote straight spine that
goes like tis a day and you'll remember. That's what
(29:33):
I remembered from that day at Macy's when I caught
a glimpse of Audrey Hepburn back in nineteen ninety two.
I had no way of knowing how little time she
had left. In September, she was diagnosed with cancer of
(29:53):
the appendix, and she died on January twentieth, nineteen ninety three.
I would have thought it would have been front page news.
I did front page, even above the fold, yes, I
still think in newspaper terms. But someone else was front
and center that day. I William Jefferson Clinton, who solemnly
(30:15):
swear that I will faithfully execute the office President of
the United States. Yep, Bill Clinton kind of stole her spotlight.
Were you aware that the day of your inauguration, Audrey
Hepburn died. No, you didn't know that. No, it didn't
(30:35):
look I didn't. It was a fairly busy time. I
didn't sleep for two days. Understandably, he'd been a little distracted.
So to jog his memory, I brought along an old
copy of The New York Times. She was only sixty three. Yeah,
I remember then. I remember how young I thought she was.
I didn't think about it being my inaugural. They yeah,
she's like she they put her back here. But it's
(30:55):
a nice spread. She was amazing. I loved her. I
love Roman Holiday, I love Funny Face, I love Sabrina.
I like the remake because I like the first one
so much. That may be pushing it. Oh that is yeah,
(31:17):
that's definitely a stretch. That's Karen James. She's a culture
critic and on January twentieth, nineteen ninety three, she was
working for The New York Times when she was assigned
Audrey Hepburn's obituary. So I'm going to show you it's
been a long time since you've seen it. I haven't
read this obituary in years. I glanced at it. What
(31:38):
did I say? I think? I said she was elegant
and graceful. You do use those words. Audiences were enchanted
by her combination of grace, elegance, and high spirits, and
she won an Academy Award as Best Actress. You were
talking about Roman Holiday. There. In a string of films
that followed, she continued to play the lie, the young
thing with stars in her eyes and the ability to
make Cinderella transformations. I stand by that. But there's a
(32:01):
whole story behind this obituary. So Karen's in the news
the day of the inauguration, and at about five in
the afternoon, when all the top editors were in the
Page one meeting putting together the front page, the deputy
Culture editor came running over to my desk and said,
thank goodness you're here. Katherine Hepburn is dead and we
(32:24):
have a ten year old obituary. Can you rewrite it?
And they were tearing apart in page one because they
thought Katherine Hepburn was dead. So we walk over to
the Culture news desk. You're looking very mystified for a
good reason. I really am. We went to the news
desk and said, how do we know she's dead? And
someone said, oh, the Uwen called to tell us, and
(32:45):
it was like one of those cartoon moments where you
saw the lightbulbs go on over everyone's head and we
realized it was Audrey, not Katherine. Before the world to
knew the word disambiguation, you experienced it, That's right, I
(33:05):
did firsthand. Did you mean Audrey Hepburn or Katherine Hepburn.
That's right. They were so relieved that they did not
have to tear apart page one for Audrey Hepburn's obituary
that Katherine Hepburn would have warranted tearing apart a page one,
even though that page one was about a presidential inauguration exactly.
(33:26):
They would have found room for her on page one,
and they were doing it. But when I heard it
was Audrey, immediately what they said to me was, oh,
can you write Audrey's obituary? I feel like this is
the kind of mistake that Audrey Hepburn would have been
really gracious about. Katherine Hepburn would not have been pleased about,
(33:46):
because Katherine Hepburn did not suffer fools. No, she didn't
well it's a lovely oh bit, so it does. It
doesn't seem like a rush job. I mean, really, thank you.
I'm glad to hear that, because I felt bad after
that I didn't have time to give her, you know,
the atention I would have if I'd known. And it's
kind of remarkable when you read your oh bed that
her career was basically fourteen years long. I mean nineteen
(34:10):
fifty three to nineteen sixty seven. There was a little
stuff before, a little stuff afterward. I just have the
impression she wasn't one of those people who had to act.
There are people who really feel like they have to
do it no matter what. And she had other things
to do. She had a family, she had her un work.
She really didn't feel as driven to do things that
(34:30):
she wasn't really passionately interested in doing. I remember how
special it felt to watch the Oscars, and you know,
in those days, right, and it was an event that
Audrey Hepburn would show up and float across the stage
to deliver best costume or whatever, right, partly because she
wasn't on screen all the time, so when she appeared,
it really did seem like an event. Why do you
(34:51):
think people still remember her so fondly. I think there
was great affection for her at the time, and I
think there's but no one like her, since there are
maybe Audrey Hepburn types there in there, but she was
so special and so graceful and so elegant in a
way that was distinctly hers. You know, Karen's story is
(35:16):
so great, and she's not even an obituary writer. In fact,
she's only written two obits in her life, Audrey Hepburn
and Katherine Hepburn. Maybe it's weird to feel nostalgic for
a time you didn't live through. I wasn't around during
Audrey Hepburn's heyday. And yet on those days when the
(35:37):
news is particularly dreary and people are being especially awful,
and I'm flipping through the channels and I land on
one of her movies, I can't help but wonder how
did we drift so far from Audrey Hepburn. Can we
ever get back? One can only hope marcle Ary friend
(36:10):
and me next time on mobituaries. He did it all,
Sammy Davis Junior. He was everything. I mean, he could
play any instrument, he could sing, he could dance like
(36:30):
a maniac. You were lovers, you were boyfriend's friends. What
was that like? It was fabulous. He's as talented in
that area as he wasn't he was otherwise. I certainly
hope you enjoyed this mobid be sure to rate and
review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook
and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca.
(36:53):
For more great content about Audrey Hepburn, you can visit
mobituaries dot com. You can subscribe to Mobituaries wherever you
get your podcasts. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by
Megan Marcus. Our team of producers also includes Gideon Evans,
Kate mccauliffe, Meghan Dietree, and me Mo Rocca. It was
edited by Ashley Cleek and engineered by Dan Dzula. Indispensable
(37:18):
support from Genius Daneski, Alison Stanley, David Fox, Richard Roreer,
everyone at CBS News Radio, and special thanks to Macy's
Young and Rubicam and the Paley Center for Media. Our
theme music is written by Daniel Hart and as always,
on Dying thanks to Rand Morrison and John Carp without
(37:39):
whom Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo if you're enjoying
Mobituary Reads the podcast. May I invite you to check
(38:02):
out Mobituaries the book. It's chock full of stories not
in the podcast. Celebrities who put their butts on the line,
sports teams that threw in the towel for good, forgotten fashions,
defunct diagnoses, presidential candidacies that cratered, whole countries that went caput.
And dragons, Yes, dragons, you see. People used to believe
(38:25):
that dragons will reel until just get the book. You
can order Mobituaries the Book from any online bookseller, or
stop by your local bookstore and look for me when
I come to your city. Tour information and lots more
at mobituaries dot com
I'm on thirty fourth Street in Manhattan, outside Macy's at
Harold Square. I worked here more than twenty five years ago,
and on one faithful day as a twenty three year old,
I came face to face with bona fide old time
Hollywood stardom, sort of face to face. Let's go inside.
(00:26):
Macy's was my first job. When I arrived in New York.
I worked behind the counter as a fragrant specialist for Channel.
I was not a spritzer. Spritzer's were the male models
in front of the counter debait to lure customers so
that I could dazzle them with my knowledge of the
product line. Can I help you, ma'am? H Channel number nineteen.
(00:50):
You do know who wears number twenty two? The Queen Mother.
I hear she smells great. You're a French teacher, Well
you have no choice. You have to wear Chanelle number five,
Coco or the Divarsay looking to get her groove back. Yes,
it's an ou de toilette. No, it's not literally toilet water.
Most people run screaming when they see anybody standing there
(01:10):
with a fragrance bottle, and they didn't when they saw you.
That's my former supervisor Javen Bunch. God, I cannot believe this.
In that man shouting in disbelief is salesman Park Salons
and my former colleague Raymond Ramirez, and I've been wishing
to know since nineteen eighty eight. You were like the
cal Ripken of Chanel at Macy's Baseball Reverence. So one
(01:34):
of the things I remember is that occasionally celebrity stars
would walk through. I got to see Share the opera
diva Jess Norman, before you is Elizabeth Taylor. I got
to see Lena Horn. But for me, the one truly
magical moment took place in April of nineteen ninety two
during the annual Flower Show. I was right behind the counter,
(02:01):
yes right, yes, when when she and by she I
mean Audrey Hepburn walked floated by my counter. Yes, Audrey Hepburn.
I will cherish my visit here in memory as long
(02:21):
as I live. When I say she floated by, I'm
not just talking about her impossibly perfect posture, which indeed
made it seem like she was being pulled by a string.
It was more than that. I've met a lot of stars,
and most of them kind of disappoint She didn't more
than gracefulness. She exuded grace. I do remember that day.
(02:46):
What do you remember, Oh my god, I remember that,
the excitement, I remember the sack excitement. Sure, but the
floor became very quiet when she floated through, like the
world came to a stop. There was this reverence among
everybody on the floor. No one would have tried to
get that right. And that's a difference too. Even if
(03:07):
selfie's existed a smartphones, you never would have thought to
like wrap your arm around her and put your shove
your hand in front of her face. He wouldn't go
near miss Heathburn. And that's who she would have been
more than a quarter century after her passing. Yes, it's
been that long. The image of Hepburn in a black
(03:28):
dress and sunglasses having breakfast outside Tiffany's is as identifiable
as Marilyn Monroe standing above a subway grate or James
Dean in his red jacket. But our attachment to Audrey
feels special, more intimate. Let's find out why. Along the way,
I'll take you to some unusual places and we'll cross
(03:51):
paths or some unexpected people, like say a former president
of the United States. Were you aware that the day
of your inauguration, Audrey Hepburn died. No, you didn't know that. No,
I'm Mo Rocca, and this is mobituaries. This mobid the
(04:17):
timeless Audrey Hepburn January twentieth, nineteen ninety three, Death of
an icon. When I started on this podcast, I kind
(04:45):
of made a promise to myself that I wouldn't get
too gushy or hagiographic about any of the people I
was profiling. But I may have to make an exception
because we're talking about Audrey Hepburn. This episode is going
to be a little unconventional, more a series of vignettes
than a womb to tomb biography. Now, Like I said
at the beginning, the connection to Audrey is personal for people.
(05:09):
One day, not too long ago, I was feeling especially reflective,
and so I tweeted, Because what's the point of reflecting
if you don't let your followers know it. I went
ahead and tweeted, how did we drift so far from
Audrey Hepburn? Can we ever get back? Quite The response?
One person answered, no way, there is no comparison. Another wrote,
(05:33):
she was not of this world wer than an I'm
than you in style she's now been gone twenty five years.
She's become a legend. Sean Hepburn Ferrer is Audrey Hepburn's
older son from her first marriage to actor Melfarrere. Audrey
(05:57):
Hepburn is not the movie star from Hollywood. Audrey Hepburn
is the young girl from across the landing who puts
on a little black dress and goes out into the world.
And she represents us, not them, and we're rooting for her,
and we do root for her. Somehow she manages to
be both aspirational and totally accessible, whether she's the chauffeur's
(06:22):
daughter who dazzles the industry tycoon and his brother in
Sabrina or Sabrina or Sabrina, Where have You've been? On
My Life? Right over the garage? Eliza Doolittle in My
Fair Lady. The difference between a lady and a fogle
is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. Or
my personal favorite, the bohemian bookworm turned fashion model in
(06:45):
Funny Face? How could I be a model? I have
no illusions about my looks. I think my face is funny. No,
she wasn't a bombshell like Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor,
but what may have seemed funny to her was considered
an ideal to many. Oh God, I didn't think I
was ever going to look like anyone in a movie.
(07:06):
But of course when I saw a Funny Face with
Audrey Hepfron, I definitely wished I looked like her. In
twenty eleven, I interviewed the late great wit Nora Ephron.
She wrote, when Harry met Sally and directed Sleepless in Seattle,
and had I known we were going to talk about this,
I would be wearing right now my black turtleneck sweater,
(07:27):
which almost looks like the one she wore in Funny Face.
Nora went on to tell me this terrific story. When
she was sixteen, she visited Edith Head, the great costume
designer of Hollywood's Golden Age, and Edith Head then took
me to see her famous dressing room, which had thirty
(07:50):
six panels of mirror for every ten degrees. It was
a completely circular room, and she said that there was
only one person who can stand in that room and
look good in all thirty six mirrors. Then it was
Audrey Hepburn. That is great. If I were a geometry teacher.
I would use that. Yes, there was no one like
(08:13):
her ever. The charm was who she was. I've never
seen anything like it. It's striking that Nora Ephron, who
had perfectly articulated opinions about pretty much everything, had trouble
describing what it was about Audrey hepburn that was so captivating.
Ditto the normally unflappable Johnny Carson. Audrey appeared on the
(08:37):
Tonight Show in nineteen seventy six, and it's kind of
wild watching Carson in his sidekick. Ed McMahon reduced to
anxious schoolboys as they get ready to welcome her onto
the show the first time she's been on the show.
And would you believe I'm a little nervous really what
I had not to put you now all? I mean,
I would believe that because I would feel the sandwich.
She's kind of very, very special, special. She's delicate, thank you. Yes,
(09:03):
that's the word I was going to use, delicate, delicate?
Would you walk in place, miss Audrey Hepburnie? And as
I always like to say, I never really saw anyone
truly misbehave in front of her. How do you think
she felt about being called delicate and She must have
smirked because she knew that she was not because of
what she lived through. And Audrey Hepburn lived through a lot.
(09:31):
Maybe the reason she pulled off all those Cinderella rolls
so beautifully was that her own early life was something
of a fairy tale. And I don't mean the Disney kind.
I'm talking grim. I never led what people sink is
this glamorous life. I've always been me. I've always been
aware of what goes on in the world. And I
(09:52):
suddenly grew up in a war ravaged country, and I've
always known, you know that I was privileged and NATO
always seeing suffering, known about it. And that hasn't changed.
So it's still the same old old. Audrey Hepburn was
(10:18):
born in Brussels, Belgium, on May fourth, nineteen twenty nine.
Her father was a banker and her mother a Dutch aristocrat.
She spent some of her youth in the UK, where
she trained as a dancer and where her parents were
supporters of the Fascist movement. After her father abandoned the
family and as war loomed, Audrey moved with her mother
(10:39):
to neutral Holland. Soon after the Nazis invaded this is
the Columbia Broadcasting System. Hipler added another to his bag
of small nations today, the fifth and fourteen months, when
the Dutch Army laid down its arms everywhere except in
the extreme southwestern part of the country. In spite of
(11:00):
her parents pre war politics, Audrey, as a young teenager,
did what she could to help the resistance, like raising
funds through secret dance performances. The war was a lasting
trauma for her, as her hometown of Arnham became a battlefield.
As reported here by Walter Cronkite, the tragedy a resupply
(11:23):
now bassets Arnham brigades protecting landing zones are under withering
German attack. Hepburn talked about her wartime experience during her
American television debut in nineteen fifty one on a show
called We the People. She was twenty two years old,
Ladies and gentlemen, telling you her own story. Broadway's latest star,
(11:44):
Audrey Hepburn. It's her first time on Broadway. She's starring
in a play called Gigi, the precursor to the musical,
and she's understandably excited. This is a wonderful Christmas for me.
Irreculusly I'm in New York a Broadway. But then the
own shifts as Hepburn begins to reenact what happened to
her during the war. The Christmas I want to tell
(12:06):
you about is the one that took place here Arnum Holland,
seven years ago. It's pretty surreal. Hepburn is basically playing
herself as a fifteen year old. She talks about how
her uncle was executed by the Nazis and how her
family nearly starved. And there was the morning of December
(12:26):
twenty fourth when finally my aunt told us there wasn't
a scrap of food left in the house. Well, I'd
heard one could sleep and forget hunger. Perhaps I could
see ball through Christmas. I try, But there's a Christmas
miracle when the Resistance sends a delivery ten potatoes, the
most wonderful and most beautiful thing I ever saw. It
(12:50):
may sound a bit melodramatic to you, but ten potatoes
would have been a prize. Hepburn suffered severe malnourishment during
what was known as the Dutch Famine. Under German occupation.
Much of the populace had reached the starvation level. The
Nazis blocked the food supply to over four million civilians.
More than twenty thousand died the lack of fulgum's day
(13:13):
after day after day, and it's a long torture. Luca
Dotty is Hepburn's younger son from her second marriage to
Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti. He says that during the war,
Audrey and her family were so desperate for food they
had to make flower out of tulip bulbs. By the
time Holland was liberated, she weighed only eighty eight pounds.
(13:37):
Did that stress stay with her for the rest of
her life? Obviously yes, but she he did very well.
All her life was a search of stability. That's why
home it was very important. Luca wrote a book a
few years back about their home life and her favorite recipes,
a surprise best seller times and times over. People were
(13:58):
surprised that my mother who actually they were surprised by
the fact that she actually atees. I think Luca's half
choking here a nod to the speculation that his mother,
who was very thin, may have had an eating disorder.
But Luca swears by her love of pasta and chocolate,
which she associated with the Allied liberation of Holland. My
(14:20):
mother was then a survivor, and when you are you
always have this duality. You know, you're happy you're alive,
but then you have this sense of guilts because the
person next door didn't make it. And for Hepburn, one
of those people, while not a literal next door neighbor,
was another Dutch girl. Audrey Hepburn felt a special connection
(14:47):
to someone you wouldn't necessarily expect. Are you speaking of
An Frank. I'm speaking of An Frank. You have an
affinity for that story, don't you. I do in a
way because we both lived through the same war, exactly
the same age. I was born, the same year Anne
Frank was born. That's Audrey Hepburn speaking to CBS in
(15:08):
nineteen eighty nine. But she became acquainted with the story
of Anne Frank far earlier, earlier than almost anyone. I
read the diary in Dutch in galiform when it was
still being edited, and it was one of the most
devastating experiences I've ever had, because more than just reading
(15:29):
a book, it was like having the whole war played
back to me. She obviously was locked up inside. I
was outside, and here was somebody who had been able
to put on paper everything I'd felt during those years,
and was it destroyed me. I must saying it has
(15:49):
stayed an extremely emotional experience for me. Luca calls mother
and Anne Frank soul sisters. And I had no idea
that Otto Frank, Anne's father actually wanted Hepburn to play
his daughter on screen. He even visited her home in
(16:10):
Switzerland to try to persuade her. There's this striking photo
of Hepburn, Otto Frank and his second wife posing outside
Hepburn's home. But she said no to the role. Why
did she turn it down because it was much too
close to what she lived through. She thought he would
kill her. She actually believed that it would somehow, you know,
(16:33):
kill her to do it, because she felt so close
to her and she was crushed that she made it
and Frank didn't. Both her sons talked to me about
the lifelong impact of the war on their mother. My
mother once said, you know, if I get through this alive,
I will never ever complain anymore. And this is something
she actually did. My mother was never complaining, even in
(16:54):
the worst situations, and I think that this is one
of the reasons why she wanted to do then, is
that she remembered so vividly herself and her emotions as
a little girl and living through the war, and so's
there's this empathy thing going on. Long before Angelina, there
was Audrey, traveling the globe in the nineteen eighties and
(17:16):
nineties raising awareness about the world's poorest, actively lobbying governments
to help children in need. While she appeared in a
few films here and there, it was her charitable work
that defined her later years as a good will ambassador
for Uni Seth. She really was one of the world's
most prominent celebrity humanitarians. She never forgot the relief that
(17:39):
came at the end of the war. Is there a
point at which our well of compassion might run dry?
Do you think never? I don't think that's It's not
in human nature. Giving is and giving is life living.
I mean, if you stopped wanting to give, I think
it's nothing more to live for. The darkness of her
(18:06):
wartime experience may seem like the polar opposite of the
light she emits on screen. And yet I'm wondering if
this combination of yearning and gratitude is what still draws
us today, because those things really seem to show up
on screen, and it did show. It did show through
(18:27):
her eyes, it did show in her genuinity and simplicity,
and people realize it's true. So it's very hard to define,
but you define it very well. After talking with Luca
and Sean and learning what her mother went through, I
went back and rewatched some of her movies and now
(18:49):
I see her story in those performances as the wound,
did Holly go lightly looking for a better life? I mean,
that's horrible. Suddenly you're afraid, you don't know what you're
Freda as Princess Anne, who feels a genuine joy on
her Roman holiday and decide caffine looking shop windows, look
(19:11):
in the rain. It's no coincidence that in the screen
test that launched her. You can watch it yourself, it's
on YouTube, she's talking about the war, the world, the bed,
and then we weren't going to leave this out. There's
wait until Dark. Audrey Hepburn the role you're going to
(19:35):
remember whenever you're alone. Hepburn plays a blind woman who
is terrorized inside her home. Co star Alan Arkin plays
her tormentor and supposedly hated doing the tormenting I mean,
who wants it to be mean to Audrey Eppburn. The
scenes were intense, and Audrey, quite possibly channeling her wartime experience,
(19:55):
endures the struggle and survives. Listen. There were plenty of
other talented actresses in the nineteen fifties and sixties, and
they were beautiful too. Some of them were supposed to
be the next Audrey Hepburn, Millie Perkins, Maggie McNamara, Susan Strasburg,
but they hadn't lived through what Audrey lived through. Peter Bogdanovitch,
(20:18):
who directed Hepburn, summed up perfectly when he called her
an iron butterfly. All this may go some way towards
explaining Audrey Hepburn's hold on us, but I think there's
more to the story. For that, we'll head to where else, Japan.
(20:39):
But first we've made clear there were no other Audrey Hepburn's,
but there was one other, very famous Hepburn. So let's
take a moment to settle something. Audrey Hepburn is not
Katherine Hepburn. It reminds me of that disambiguation alert that
you get on Wikipedia or Google. You know, did you
(20:59):
mean now if you are one of those people who
confuses Katherine with Audrey, you probably stopped listening to me
ten minutes ago. Otherwise, it's never too late to disambiguate.
Oh we're going to talk about me. Good. Are they related? No,
(21:21):
they are not sisters. They are not even third cousins.
Who was older Katherine by twenty two years? But who
wore the pants? Well they both did, and quite well,
I should add. Then there are the very distinctive Hepburn's
speech patterns. Guess who's coming to dinner. If you've never
heard Katherine's mid Atlantic affect, you've probably heard Martin Short
(21:44):
doing Katherine Hepburn's mid Atlantic affect. Well, that kind of
talk will get you. No, I missed out. Now, Audrey's
accent was always a little harder to place. Did I
tell you how divinely and utterly happy I am? I
guess it was a British, Dutch, American bland. You know,
I'd just like to hear her say things. Why didn't
(22:05):
you say something, Sarah dipity right? Suddenly, not only would
they not be playing scrabble, it would also not be
playing by cheesy chicken stock plugs. The Journey of Nattigan
I'm having much too much fun. We hope you are
to stay tuned for more Audrey after this. Just before
(22:35):
my stint working at Macy's, I was living in Japan,
where I studied kabuki. Yes really, I taught English on
the side. Because it was the early nineties, I had
no other income, and a cup of coffee in Tokyo
costs about twelve dollars. One of my students, a very
nice woman named Ritzko, asked me out to a movie.
It may have been a date, I still don't know.
(22:56):
We ended up going to an Audrey Hepburn film festival.
We saw How to Steal a Million co starring Peter O'Toole.
You went us in a big time paper heist. A
life sized cardboard cut out of Audrey greeted us at
the festival Entrance. Fans post for pictures next to it.
(23:16):
Now we've talked about the personal attachment a lot of
fans have for her. Well, in Japan, the Audrey love
is deep. There's this famous all female theater troupe there
called Takaraska. They staged a musical version of Roman Holidays.
(23:39):
And get this, Hepburn was ranked above Gandhi in a
Japanese poll on the most well liked historical figures. What
is the deal with your mother and Japan? The connection?
It's intense, It's very intense. Little by little I understood
there was a sincere devotion. There's no other word for it,
and Luca would know. He told me that it was
(24:01):
through Japanese fan mail and small tokens like origami that
he first began to grasp his mother's fame. During his
childhood in Rome, he would watch Japanese tourists trying to
follow in his mother's film star footsteps. Audrey Hepburn now
welcomes you to Rome as the captive princess who goes
out on the town to have some fun. And they
(24:23):
came to Rome to retrace the Roman Holiday, every scene
you know, and the vise by and the ice great
and the fountain and this sent deats in case you
haven't seen Roman Holiday, it's the movie that won Hepburn
her oscar. She plays Princess Anne, who's visiting Rome on
a royal tour and ends up playing hooky for the
(24:43):
day while pretending to be a commoner. She falls in
love with an American journalist played by Gregory Peck I
could do some things. I've always wanted to blake what oh,
you can't imagine. I like to just whatever. I like.
Holiday long. When the Japanese saw Roman Holiday, it was
(25:05):
love at first sight. It was nineteen fifty three, the
war was still a recent memory, and American culture was
really just starting to take root in Japan. The Japanese
connection to the film may have something to do with
the importance of duty. You see spoiler alert, Princess Anne
tearfully leaves her true love to return to her royal world,
(25:28):
not a Hollywood ending. I have to leave you now.
I'm going to that corner. That done. You stay in
the gun drive away. It was very understandable for Japanese.
Taki Kato lives in Japan and was a young girl
(25:49):
when Roman Holiday premiered, But Order Helper we could identify
with how they say so charming, so natural for us,
was so cute, and the Japanese tend to like someone
who's cute. And apparently the Japanese found Hepburn's pixie haircut
(26:09):
cuter than Hello Kitty. Hepburn talked about it in a
Dutch TV interview in nineteen eighty eight, and actually it
caused a bit of a fjor, especially in Japan, with
the film was an enormous success, still is today, because
they're all girls have very long hair and it was
part of the tradition and they'll cut off their hair,
(26:30):
and I was held responsible. Yes, that's very true. Taki
went on to become a show business coordinator in Tokyo.
She worked with a lot of big names, Frank Snatche,
Harry Barafonte, Ringosta, and as you may have guessed, miss
Ldre Hepburn. In a surprise move, Hepburn left Hollywood when
she was still very much in demand in the late
(26:52):
nineteen sixties to live abroad and focus on motherhood. But
in nineteen seventy one, Taki helped negotiate to get her
back in of the camera, this time for Japanese commercials.
It's that lost in translation thing where Americans appeared in
ads that were never broadcast in the US, which was
very very sensational Hinchapan, of course, and the commercials was
(27:15):
very fashionable. Incidentally, she was advertising high end wigs. But
it wasn't until nineteen eighty three that Audrey Hepburn actually
went to Japan. The occasion a fashion show for her
dear friend and designer Hubert de Givanshi. Quick side note,
The Givanschi fashion show in funny Face is a magical sequence.
(27:40):
When Hepburn landed in Tokyo, it was like Princess Anne
from Roman Holiday had finally arrived. Hepburn was naturally exhausted
after a very long flight, and she worried that she
might disappoint fans who were accustomed to seeing her as
a young woman on screen. So she said to me, Taki,
I am very sad. If the Japanese fans look at
(28:02):
me in that tired face, they may not like me anymore.
Talkie told her friend not to worry, that Japanese fans
would always love her, and she said, I still remember
her big smile. Taki. Okay, you're right. Taki and Audrey
remained friends for years. I have about thirty letters from her.
(28:24):
This must be in nineteen eighty three, after she left Japan.
I think I have now almost recovered from my jet lag,
but will never get over Japan. Never, she underlines, none
of us will ever be the same again. Exclamation mark
(28:48):
three of them. She told me, Taki, perhaps in the
past years in the in my ancestor era. I might
have in a Japanese Hepburn may have been joking here,
but she understood that there was a bond. So to
test this notion of devotion, we sent a producer to
(29:08):
this Audrey Hepburn photo exhibition happening in a department store
just outside Tokyo, and one of the women waiting in
line likened Hepburn to a goddess. Another lady talked about
a sense of elegance and her quote straight spine that
goes like tis a day and you'll remember. That's what
(29:33):
I remembered from that day at Macy's when I caught
a glimpse of Audrey Hepburn back in nineteen ninety two.
I had no way of knowing how little time she
had left. In September, she was diagnosed with cancer of
(29:53):
the appendix, and she died on January twentieth, nineteen ninety three.
I would have thought it would have been front page news.
I did front page, even above the fold, yes, I
still think in newspaper terms. But someone else was front
and center that day. I William Jefferson Clinton, who solemnly
(30:15):
swear that I will faithfully execute the office President of
the United States. Yep, Bill Clinton kind of stole her spotlight.
Were you aware that the day of your inauguration, Audrey
Hepburn died. No, you didn't know that. No, it didn't
(30:35):
look I didn't. It was a fairly busy time. I
didn't sleep for two days. Understandably, he'd been a little distracted.
So to jog his memory, I brought along an old
copy of The New York Times. She was only sixty three. Yeah,
I remember then. I remember how young I thought she was.
I didn't think about it being my inaugural. They yeah,
she's like she they put her back here. But it's
(30:55):
a nice spread. She was amazing. I loved her. I
love Roman Holiday, I love Funny Face, I love Sabrina.
I like the remake because I like the first one
so much. That may be pushing it. Oh that is yeah,
(31:17):
that's definitely a stretch. That's Karen James. She's a culture
critic and on January twentieth, nineteen ninety three, she was
working for The New York Times when she was assigned
Audrey Hepburn's obituary. So I'm going to show you it's
been a long time since you've seen it. I haven't
read this obituary in years. I glanced at it. What
(31:38):
did I say? I think? I said she was elegant
and graceful. You do use those words. Audiences were enchanted
by her combination of grace, elegance, and high spirits, and
she won an Academy Award as Best Actress. You were
talking about Roman Holiday. There. In a string of films
that followed, she continued to play the lie, the young
thing with stars in her eyes and the ability to
make Cinderella transformations. I stand by that. But there's a
(32:01):
whole story behind this obituary. So Karen's in the news
the day of the inauguration, and at about five in
the afternoon, when all the top editors were in the
Page one meeting putting together the front page, the deputy
Culture editor came running over to my desk and said,
thank goodness you're here. Katherine Hepburn is dead and we
(32:24):
have a ten year old obituary. Can you rewrite it?
And they were tearing apart in page one because they
thought Katherine Hepburn was dead. So we walk over to
the Culture news desk. You're looking very mystified for a
good reason. I really am. We went to the news
desk and said, how do we know she's dead? And
someone said, oh, the Uwen called to tell us, and
(32:45):
it was like one of those cartoon moments where you
saw the lightbulbs go on over everyone's head and we
realized it was Audrey, not Katherine. Before the world to
knew the word disambiguation, you experienced it, That's right, I
(33:05):
did firsthand. Did you mean Audrey Hepburn or Katherine Hepburn.
That's right. They were so relieved that they did not
have to tear apart page one for Audrey Hepburn's obituary
that Katherine Hepburn would have warranted tearing apart a page one,
even though that page one was about a presidential inauguration exactly.
(33:26):
They would have found room for her on page one,
and they were doing it. But when I heard it
was Audrey, immediately what they said to me was, oh,
can you write Audrey's obituary? I feel like this is
the kind of mistake that Audrey Hepburn would have been
really gracious about. Katherine Hepburn would not have been pleased about,
(33:46):
because Katherine Hepburn did not suffer fools. No, she didn't
well it's a lovely oh bit, so it does. It
doesn't seem like a rush job. I mean, really, thank you.
I'm glad to hear that, because I felt bad after
that I didn't have time to give her, you know,
the atention I would have if I'd known. And it's
kind of remarkable when you read your oh bed that
her career was basically fourteen years long. I mean nineteen
(34:10):
fifty three to nineteen sixty seven. There was a little
stuff before, a little stuff afterward. I just have the
impression she wasn't one of those people who had to act.
There are people who really feel like they have to
do it no matter what. And she had other things
to do. She had a family, she had her un work.
She really didn't feel as driven to do things that
(34:30):
she wasn't really passionately interested in doing. I remember how
special it felt to watch the Oscars, and you know,
in those days, right, and it was an event that
Audrey Hepburn would show up and float across the stage
to deliver best costume or whatever, right, partly because she
wasn't on screen all the time, so when she appeared,
it really did seem like an event. Why do you
(34:51):
think people still remember her so fondly. I think there
was great affection for her at the time, and I
think there's but no one like her, since there are
maybe Audrey Hepburn types there in there, but she was
so special and so graceful and so elegant in a
way that was distinctly hers. You know, Karen's story is
(35:16):
so great, and she's not even an obituary writer. In fact,
she's only written two obits in her life, Audrey Hepburn
and Katherine Hepburn. Maybe it's weird to feel nostalgic for
a time you didn't live through. I wasn't around during
Audrey Hepburn's heyday. And yet on those days when the
(35:37):
news is particularly dreary and people are being especially awful,
and I'm flipping through the channels and I land on
one of her movies, I can't help but wonder how
did we drift so far from Audrey Hepburn. Can we
ever get back? One can only hope marcle Ary friend
(36:10):
and me next time on mobituaries. He did it all,
Sammy Davis Junior. He was everything. I mean, he could
play any instrument, he could sing, he could dance like
(36:30):
a maniac. You were lovers, you were boyfriend's friends. What
was that like? It was fabulous. He's as talented in
that area as he wasn't he was otherwise. I certainly
hope you enjoyed this mobid be sure to rate and
review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook
and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca.
(36:53):
For more great content about Audrey Hepburn, you can visit
mobituaries dot com. You can subscribe to Mobituaries wherever you
get your podcasts. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by
Megan Marcus. Our team of producers also includes Gideon Evans,
Kate mccauliffe, Meghan Dietree, and me Mo Rocca. It was
edited by Ashley Cleek and engineered by Dan Dzula. Indispensable
(37:18):
support from Genius Daneski, Alison Stanley, David Fox, Richard Roreer,
everyone at CBS News Radio, and special thanks to Macy's
Young and Rubicam and the Paley Center for Media. Our
theme music is written by Daniel Hart and as always,
on Dying thanks to Rand Morrison and John Carp without
(37:39):
whom Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo if you're enjoying
Mobituary Reads the podcast. May I invite you to check
(38:02):
out Mobituaries the book. It's chock full of stories not
in the podcast. Celebrities who put their butts on the line,
sports teams that threw in the towel for good, forgotten fashions,
defunct diagnoses, presidential candidacies that cratered, whole countries that went caput.
And dragons, Yes, dragons, you see. People used to believe
(38:25):
that dragons will reel until just get the book. You
can order Mobituaries the Book from any online bookseller, or
stop by your local bookstore and look for me when
I come to your city. Tour information and lots more
at mobituaries dot com
Host
Mo Rocca
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