Audrey Hepburn by Ian Woodward

Author:Ian Woodward [Ian Woodward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1993-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

21

‘It’s tough for me when I see myself on the screen. I suffer. It’s hard to be objective.’

IT HAPPENED TO all of them . . . all those unemployed discoveries from Britain’s sex-starved studios who journeyed to Hollywood and became international stars. In the process they matured. They became aware. They became women. But people never thought it would happen to Audrey Hepburn, the frightened fawn of Elstree. While making her last picture in the Congo she had even confessed, in an off-guard moment, ‘I am happy to make this film because it’s a story without sex, a film in which I don’t have to give either a kiss or an embrace.’

Her next movie changed all that. Green Mansions was a watershed, the moment in her career which marked the transition from a purely asexual screen image to one of full-blooded sexuality. Directed by Mel and based on W. H. Hudson’s powerful love story set in a South American jungle, Audrey indulged in such an orgy of kissing, cuddling and sensual romping with co-star Anthony Perkins that voyeurs could be excused for thinking that she was determined to make up for lost time and, indeed, for lost opportunities.

Audrey’s admirers were shocked. Some, pleasantly. Never for one moment had they thought of frail, elfin Audrey in terms of female Tarzan-like jungle goddess awakened to full womanhood by handsome adventurer Perkins. Never had they expected to see her gallivanting so scantily dressed among the giant snakes and prowling jaguars of some tropical paradise, and, as the ‘bird girl’ Rima, frolicking and gasping in the Amazonian undergrowth with all the frantic fervour of a convent schoolgirl let loose on sex for the first time.

It was all Mel’s idea. He had experienced a rare flash of inspiration. He had decided that Audrey was just the girl to play Rima, a role that had defied casting for nearly thirty years. MGM backed his inspiration with three million dollars and got Anthony Perkins, the leading young heart-throb of the day, to play the young man who loses his heart (and once or twice his clothes) to Audrey’s jungle sprite.

While Audrey had been engaged on The Nun’s Story, Mel and a film unit had spent three months photographing the jungle backgrounds on a location trip that entailed travelling some 25,000 miles into the hinterlands of Venezuela, Colombia and British Guiana by light plane, dugout canoe and – machete in hand – on foot. More than 250 tons of materials and props, and a veritable Noah’s Ark of birds, plants and animals, were also shipped back from South America on the SS Vesuvius for use at MGM’s Hollywood studios, where replicas of the native village and Rima’s hut were completed and, on Lot 3, more than twenty-five acres converted into a river area.

Mel’s three earlier efforts as a film director, Girl of the Limberlost, The Secret Fury and Vendetta, possessed individually about as much charm as a used Kleenex. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted to become a director of stature in the eyes of the world.

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