Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait by Diana Maychick

Author:Diana Maychick [Maychick, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781559721950
Amazon: 1559721952
Publisher: Birch Lane Pr
Published: 1993-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

In the summer of 1954, when Carlo Ponti and Dino de Laurentüs asked Audrey to star in their $6 million epic film version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, she requested that Ferrer be given a part.

Her desire to help her husband was not unusual, but the anxiety which accompanied it certainly was. She made it clear she wouldn’t even consider taking the role of Natasha unless Ferrer costarred with her. Just a year into her marriage, Audrey was becoming distraught over trying to boost her husband’s sagging ego and preserve their tenuous connection.

She hemmed and hawed at length before agreeing to do the film. In October, when she realized she was pregnant, she seriously thought about canceling her commitment, but her ironclad rule about professionalism in the face of duty in a field rife with broken promises helped her to stick to her agreement.

“I wanted Audrey right from the start,” said Dino de Laurentüs. “I felt her girlish charm and wide-eyed naivete would do much to enhance the character of Natasha. I also thought that Mel would be wonderful. He had a brooding quality that gave everything he did that added dimension of soulfulness. I thought it would be perfect. But when Audrey announced she was pregnant, I had this sinking feeling in my gut. By the time we were scheduled to begin filming, she would begin showing. I was sure of that, no matter how skinny she was. And my concept of Natasha was completely childlike; I couldn’t have any womanly curves. I felt in an awful position. I didn’t know what to do.

“Audrey would come over sometimes, and my kids would just flock to her, and she to them. It was astounding, honestly, how she communicated with even the littlest among them. All this time, I knew she was finally letting go a little, finally ready to be a little more spontaneous. And it was all because of the prospect of having a child. She was practicing with my children, and she was doing a wonderful job. But I still didn’t know what I was going to do about War and Peace. I needed an overload of virginity—the quintessential innocent—for the girl who was to wander among Napoleon’s troops, and all of that had to show in her physical innocence.”

In March of 1955, Audrey experienced premature labor pains and suffered a painful miscarriage. “I wanted to cancel the movie,” she said. “I wanted to cancel my life. But I moved forward for Mel. He thought that War and Peace would help me get over my grief and I felt it would help him recapture his career. I’m not sure it accomplished either of those goals, but it helped pass a desolate time and brought us closer together.”

The kinks in the new wide-screen technique, VistaVision, were not ironed out by the time director King Vidor began filming War and Peace, and the magnitude of the venture—six screenwriters, four thousand guns, six thousand rifles, seven thousand costumes (requiring more

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.