VIRTUALLY every person on Earth has seen the face of actress Audrey Hepburn at least once. Just like the image of her contemporary Marilyn Monroe in a billowing white dress, Audrey Hepburn’s image in a slinky black Givenchy gown in her role as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s has been frozen in time to serve as a snapshot of showbiz glamor. This same image of her has been reproduced millions of times on posters, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and masses and masses of kitsch. But beyond that face, and beyond the movie roles that made that face enduringly famous for decades, how many people actually know her?
An exhibit called “Intimate Audrey” seeks to reintroduce her to the world, redirecting the light far from the flashbulbs of Hollywood to the more intimate glow which shone from a singular, extraordinary woman. The 730 square-meter exhibition, featuring photographs, scenes from her films, voice recordings, letters, and sketches from the actress premiered in Belgium (her birthplace) in 2019, then moved to Holland (where she spent World War II). The Manila stop is its first in Asia — thanks to the efforts of FashX, a fashion trade and licensing company in the Philippines, after its founder Carmina Sanchez-Jacob fell in love with the exhibit in Amsterdam. The exhibition runs from Aug. 1 to Oct. 29 in S Maison at Conrad Manila in Pasay City.
No less than her own firstborn, Sean Ferrer (with her first husband, fellow actor Mel Ferrer), took media guests and First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos around on the last day of July for the exhibit’s opening.
For 30 years, Mr. Ferrer has been curating his mother’s physical memories, and composing them all into an exhibit, covering her childhood, her fame, her family, and her work as an ambassador with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). True to her final role as a humanitarian, proceeds from the exhibit will go to children’s charities. Profits will go to EURORDIS — Rare Diseases Europe — as well as other charitable projects, according to the exhibition’s website.
“Obviously, we don’t do this to make her any more famous, because she’s permanently viral. We do this to raise monies for children’s charities and so forth,” said Mr. Ferrer in an interview with BusinessWorld.
EARLY CHILDHOODAudrey Hepburn was born on May 4, 1929 as Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Ixelles, one of the municipalities of Brussels. She was the only child from the second marriage of her mother, the Baroness Ella van Heemstra (her mother’s childhood home was Huis Doorn, the estate where the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm II spent his years in exile after World War I) to British subject Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston. The name by which she would be later known came from her father’s impression that he was connected to the aristocratic Hepburn family, transforming his and his daughter’s name to Hepburn-Ruston. Her parents divorced when Audrey was six. She called this “the most traumatic event in my life,” according to Enchantment, Donald Spoto’s biography of the actress.
While there are photographs of a young Audrey and her father in the exhibit, there is also one of an adult Audrey and her father in the 1960s. She had tracked him down in Dublin through the Red Cross. In Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit, a biography Mr. Ferrer wrote about his mother, he said, “The man she had longed for her entire childhood was in reality an emotional invalid. And so my mother did it: she stepped forward and hugged him, knowing full well that was going to be it. She chose to forgive him, instinctively, in one instant.”
Enrolled at boarding school in England, young Ms. Hepburn was sent back to Arnhem in the Netherlands at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. While first protected from the war’s dangers due to the Van Heemstra family’s status as respected citizens of Arnhem, the war would eventually spare no one. The Dutch famine of 1944-1945, for example, forced Ms. Hepburn and her family to eat bread made from grass, and share broth made from boiling a single potato.
“Don’t discount anything you hear or read about the Nazis. It was worse than you could ever imagine. We saw my relatives put against the wall and shot,” said the actress. “I knew the cold clutch of human terror all through my early teens: I saw it, I felt it, heard it — and it never goes away. You see, it wasn’t just a nightmare: I was there, and it all happened.”
The girl, educated in dance, and with a dream to be a dancer, helped raise funds for the Dutch Resistance movement by giving performances, the audiences forced to be quiet by the fear of arrest: a story she discussed during her screen test for Roman Holiday. “The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performance,” the actress later said.
In the exhibit, there is a picture of Ms. Hepburn, taken on her 16th birthday, holding bunches of flowers. The Germans in the Netherlands surrendered to the Allied Forces a day later.
FROM BALLET TO MOVIESMother and daughter moved to London after the war to continue Ms. Hepburn’s education in ballet, with Marie Rambert, a collaborator of ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. It was here that she was told that she was too tall and that she had started her ballet training too late, thus limiting a future career as a prima ballerina.
That was when she started acting, taking roles on stage, and then small parts in movies. While shooting another small role in the film Monte Carlo Baby, Ms. Hepburn was discovered by French novelist Collette, who cast her as the lead for her play Gigi. That would lead to her being noticed by Paramount Pictures which chose her to play a princess who spends a madcap day in Rome with a reporter but would have to give up love for duty and return to her royal job in the film Roman Holiday. For that role, she would win her first Oscar at 23. The Vespa scooter from the film can be seen in the exhibit.
“This year is kind of a bittersweet anniversary, because it does mark the 70th birthday of Roman Holiday,” said Mr. Ferrer in a speech. Forty years after the release of Roman Holiday, Audrey died of cancer in 1993.
Other movie roles would follow — in the exhibit, there are stills from Sabrina, Funny Face, Charade; costume swatches on which she made notes, and a whole wall devoted to off-duty pictures with famous friends.
“I think that with each film, it’s hard to say a ‘favorite role,’ because she would kind of do it, and then let it go. But each film represented the beginning of lifelong friendships,” said Mr. Ferrer. “I think that Funny Face had a special place in her heart, because you know, she wanted to be a dancer to begin with. To be able to sort of spread her wings next to Fred Astaire is any woman’s dream come true.” In that movie, Ms. Hepburn played a shy bookstore clerk who becomes a model in Paris, with a solo dance sequence showing the world her love of dance.
FAVORITE ROLE: MOTHERHer actual favorite role as a mother would also be represented in the exhibit. Special sections are devoted to her marriage to Mel Ferrer — after their divorce, she would marry and divorce once more, to psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, and have another son, Luca; and ended life in the company of fellow actor Robert Wolders — as well as a section with just her son Sean.
There’s her wedding dress by Pierre Balmain, Mr. Ferrer’s christening gown by his mother’s friend, designer Hubert de Givenchy, as well as dozens of photographs documenting a quiet domestic life away from Hollywood.
“I think that if you consider the fact that at the top of her career, she gave up being an actress to become a full-time mother to me because I couldn’t travel anymore, to visit her on the set, that says a lot. She knew that she couldn’t do too many things at once. She gave up her career to be my mom. That’s a huge present,” Mr. Ferrer told BusinessWorld. Ms. Hepburn herself said, “The one thing I dreamed of in my life was to have children of my own. It always boils down to the same thing — not only receiving love but wanting desperately to give it.”
Another cherished role was her work with UNICEF, a decision that goes back full circle to her hardships during the war.
“There’s a big difference between dying of starvation and malnutrition, of course, but I was very, very undernourished. Immediately after the war, an organization, which later became UNICEF, instantly came in with the Red Cross and brought relief for the people in the form of food… I was one of the beneficiaries with the other children. I’ve known about UNICEF all my life,” she said.
A section in the exhibit shows her travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand, and Bangladesh, surrounded by the children she helped. In the UNICEF website, she is quoted as saying, “There is a moral obligation for those who have, to give to those who have nothing.” In Enchantment, Donald Spoto quotes her: “Giving is living. If you stop wanting to give, there’s nothing more to live for.”
INNER AND OUTER BEAUTYIt is in these instances that we see a connection between inner and outer beauty, in a world often too eager to appreciate only what can be seen.
Mr. Ferrer told BusinessWorld, in a discussion about his mother’s own beauty: “Without the inner grace and generosity she would have been something else. There is no doubt. I mean, she was not a classic beauty.” Ms. Hepburn herself said, “I never thought of myself as beautiful. I’d like not to be so flat-chested. I’d like not to have such angular shoulders, such big feet, and such a big nose. When you see what is happening in the world, it’s so trivial to talk about looks. Actually, I’m very grateful for what God has given me. And there’s a lot more — so much more — that I must do!”
“She saw herself as a wonderful package of imperfections… I think in her case, the light comes from within,” said Mr. Ferrer.
Hepburn’s face, contrary to her own belief, endures as a symbol of beauty. Mr. De Givenchy once said, “There is not a woman alive who does not dream of looking like Audrey Hepburn.”
“I think it’s not so much about what she looks like,” said Mr. Ferrer on his mother’s enduring legacy. “It’s about what she feels like.
“What she felt like to all those children in Africa — who didn’t know who she was. What she feels like to all the younger generations — a lot of poetic justice there — because it’s the same generations that she fought for as a UNICEF ambassador, who today are carrying her into the future. She’s really become viral also for tweens and teens and kind of has taken the place next to James Dean on that closet door in that teen’s bedroom,” said Hepburn’s son.
“They sense her. Each of them has a little piece of her life. All together, they have a wonderful, kaleidoscopic view of who she was,” he said. “I can only tell you what she said at the end of her life, when I had to tell her myself that we couldn’t get her better.
“She said: ‘How disappointing.’ But at the same time, ‘That’s life. The tall tree has to fall for the sun to shine through, and the little sapling to grow up.’ She saw it as a cycle of life. She was not angry. I think she felt she lived a very fortunate and rich life. I think she was thankful, even though she was taken very young.” — Joseph L. Garcia
Exhibition tickets will be available online via SM Tickets and at all SM Ticket offline locations such as SM Department Stores and SM Cinemas. Exhibition access is priced at ₱850 with a special rate of ₱450 for students, senior citizens, PWDs, national athletes and medal of valor awardees, and allows access for one hour and a half per visit.