Audrey Hepburn's 1953 'Roman Holiday' an enchanting fairy tale

Oscar Archives: William Wyler's 1953 Cinderella-esque comedy made Audrey Hepburn an overnight sensation and launched a new fashion trend for the gamin young star's hair and chic clothes.

William Wyler's enchanting 1953 Cinderella-esque comedy, "Roman Holiday," made Audrey Hepburn an overnight sensation. She not only won the Academy Award for best actress but she also received a Golden Globe, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award and the New York Film Critics Circle honor for her role as Ann, a sheltered princess on a goodwill tour of Europe who escapes her guardians in Rome and finds adventure and a storybook romance.

And the gamin actress, who was born in Belgium in 1929, also set a new fashion trend with her short hair and casually chic clothes — even as Edith Head won an Oscar for the film's costume design.

"Many familiar stars have given great performances," said film critic-historian Leonard Maltin. "But there are times when being an unknown is an invaluable asset. I think of Ben Kingsley in 'Gandhi' as an emblematic example of that and, certainly, Audrey Hepburn."

Part of the film's charm, said Maltin, "is there is a parallel between the character's story and Audrey Hepburn. If you know anything about the background of the film itself, you can't avoid thinking about that. It is not just a fresh, charming performance, it is a fresh, charming performance by someone blossoming into stardom right before your eyes."

Though reports state that Jean Simmons was briefly considered for the role of Ann, Wyler wanted an unknown to play the part. "With anybody familiar, you have to first forget your previous associations with them, shed that baggage before you completely accept and embrace them in this new role," said Maltin. "With an unknown, there is no such barrier."

Hepburn had appeared in few films before being selected by Wyler, who at that time had won director Oscars for 1942's "Mrs. Miniver" and 1946's "The Best Years of Our Lives." The young actress had small parts in 1951's "Laughter in Paradise" and "The Lavender Hill Mob" and a more substantial role in the forgettable 1952 film "Secret People."

Choosing a virtual unknown, said Maltin, was one of "many smart decisions William Wyler made regarding this film."

Even before finding Hepburn, Wyler had insisted that Paramount allow him to shoot in Rome. Gregory Peck, who plays Joe Bradley, the American journalist whom the princess falls for, was hesitant to take on a secondary role, but Wyler persuaded him to join the film.

While in pre-production in Rome, the director traveled to London to look at ingenues for the lead. That's  where he met Hepburn, whom he described as "very alert, very smart, very talented and very ambitious."

With Wyler on his way back to Rome, he asked Thorald Dickinson, who had directed Hepburn in "Secret People," to do a screen test with her at Pinewood Studios in England — and to keep the cameras rolling after she completed her scene so he could watch the young actress in a more relaxed, natural state. Unaware she was still being filmed, Hepburn went on to have a lively chat with Dickinson about her experiences during World War II.

"She was absolutely delightful," Wyler was quoted as saying when he saw the test. "Acting, looks and personality!"

He was so taken with her that he held up production for the actress to fulfill her commitment to star on Broadway in an adaptation of Colette's "Gigi." And in 1952, Audrey Hepburn began work on the movie that would change her life.

Hepburn's career blossomed after "Roman Holiday." Not only did she win the Academy Award in 1954 but she also snagged a Tony Award for "Ondine." She would go on to earn Oscar nominations for 1954's "Sabrina," 1959's "The Nun's Story," 1961's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and 1967's "Wait Until Dark," and also starred in such classics as 1957's "Funny Face," 1963's "Charade," 1964's "My Fair Lady" and 1967's "Two for the Road."

 

Audrey Hepburn Teaches Economics

 

If only the men who write our musicals would write our labor laws. Not only would they be more entertaining, they would likely be more practical.

Take Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady.” In her role as Eliza Doolittle, she not only turned in a wonderful performance but also delivered a lesson about upward mobility that is particularly timely today in light of the latest war of modern progressivism: on nail salons.

It started, as these things often do, with a two-part exposé in the New York Times, one focusing on the lousy pay and the other on the health threats. This provoked howls of outrage, and was in turn followed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo invoking “emergency measures,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) citing federal legislation on product safety she’s introduced and of course New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio presiding over a “day of action.” The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute declares nail salon abuses a function of “national policy failures.”

Enter Audrey Hepburn. In her opening scene, her Eliza Doolittle is selling flowers on the street when she realizes someone is taking down every word she says. She confronts him, insisting she’s a “respectable girl” who is doing nothing illegal. It turns out the man—played by Rex Harrison—isn’t a copper but a professor of phonetics.

In the discussion that follows, Professor Higgins notes that it is Eliza’s “curbstone English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days.” He boasts that with a few months under his instruction, she could get a job “as a lady’s maid or a shop’s assistant.”

The next morning, Eliza appears at Professor Higgins’s doorstep to hire him to teach her English because she wants to be “a lady in a flow’r shop, ’stead of sellin’ at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.” He accepts.

Note the assumptions. Eliza didn’t place her hope in new regulations for street-side flower mongering. For Eliza, upward mobility was about acquiring the skills she needed to get ahead, in this case proper English and the manners that went with it.

How different this is to the approach to nail salons now being worked out in New York and Washington. Like so many other bursts of progressive passion, chances are that while their bid for more government will make the pols and activists feel better about themselves, it will do little to improve the lives of these women.

That’s because most of what they propose does nothing to resolve the fundamental issues the Times rightly identifies as making these women workers vulnerable to abusive bosses: They don’t speak English, they don’t have skills, and about a quarter of them are here illegally. All this greatly limits their job opportunities.

To put it another way, will a crackdown on licensing really help women who will need to complete the 250 hours of study for a New York state license? What about closing down the salon of a rotten employer because he doesn’t pay the women sick leave?

In a 2001 column, no less than Paul Krugman noted a similar case of good intentions that had terrible unintended consequences, citing a bill proposed in the 1990s by Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) to outlaw child labor in products made overseas. The threat of the legislation succeeded in the sense that some companies in Bangladesh stopped hiring children.

But Mr. Krugman noted that follow-up research by Oxfam found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets—and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.

Whether by minimum-wage boosts that make them more expensive to hire, licensing requirements that make it more difficult to get a job, or other forms of regulation that will likely mean fewer nail salons and fewer jobs, it’s not hard to imagine displaced nail salon workers in America driven more deeply down into the black market, or into something worse, such as prostitution.

By contrast, wouldn’t a simple guest worker program help those here illegally more than a higher minimum wage? Likewise, wouldn’t a concerted effort that helped these women learn English do more for their opportunities in life than enforcing paid sick leave? Come to think of it, wouldn’t a rapidly growing economy creating jobs give them more avenues of escape from an abusive boss than piling more regulations onto an already sluggish economy?

In the end, the only real leverage a worker has over a boss is her ability to tell him where to get off—secure in the knowledge that she has other opportunities. Which is exactly what Eliza Doolittle does at the end, when she’s acquired the English and manners that mean she no longer has to put up with the bullying of Professor Henry Higgins.