Audrey Hepburn or Katherine Hepburn?

College-Aged Female Finds Unlikely Kindred Spirit In Audrey Hepburn

Catching up, catching up.

I've been listening to the Julie Ruin's Run Fast in the car for a couple of days. My favourite song is "Lookout"--found this video. Could do without the oversized lyrics blocking out all the images.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4id-3mw2hsI

The new doc is not good.

in fact, it is absolutely terrible

I liked it a lot.

Pretty sure I just watched my first-ever Audrey this week (The Children's Hour). Probably not the best intro to her allure but she was quite good in it.

re Audrey - Sabrina, Funny Face, Green Mansions, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Children’s Hour, Charade - she was great in all of them

Roman Holiday, My Fair Lady, and Wait Until Dark are my favorite performances of hers

19 years later, still so embarrassed that i got kate’s name wrong in the thread title

Katharine has the more impressive career by far.

Nothing in common, these two.

I can think of one thing.

They were into threeways and pistachio ice cream

Beat me to it.

Both Katherine and Audrey were slotted into very particular types of roles throughout their careers. How one relates to them is bound to be largely dependent on how one relates to their typical characters, with a small side order of how one relates to their biographies. I happen to relate better to Katherine than Audrey, just as a matter of my personal tastes.

Just because I got to watch and hear her for 90 minutes, I thought the documentary was pretty good. The framing bit with the ballet dancers was quite unnecessary, and they skipped over a few crucial films for some reason: Charade, The Nun's Story, The Children's Hour. (Skipping Bloodline, which played when I was an usher in 1979, a little more understandable.) I didn't know anything about her war experiences, and if I've ever seen Mel Ferrer in a film, I'm drawing a blank. (Like many, I'm sure, I probably always thought she was married to José Ferrer.) I found that guy who swooped in near the end--"Merle Oberon's companion"--a little suspicious, but it seemed like a important relationship in her life. Her time with UNICEF was moving.

Charade is fun. But so is To Have and Have Not.

I see no necessity to choose.

Wait, fuck, did I really just write that? Not To Have and Have Not. African Queen.

(Lauren Bacall vs Rosalind Russell would be just as difficult, tho - To Have and Have Not vs His Girl Friday)

Would have been KH's birthday today, so I played this clip from Woman of the Year for a grade 8 class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H00_NJtbJY

First time--I should have been playing this clip for the last 20 years! All that eye-play when they first look at each other--amazing.

Saw a restoration of Roman Holiday today. Just love it--for me, in the first rank of American B&W sound films, up there with Double Indemnity, Kane, On the Waterfront, Sweet Smell of Success, a handful more. Not AH's first film--IMDB has it as her eighth, including one famous one (The Lavender Hill Mob), but the roles must have all been small enough that the opening credits say "Introducing Audrey Hepburn." (And "Presenting Gregory Peck.") It's perfect from start to finish, and the last scene, the press conference, is an amazing sustained bit of acting by both of them almost wholly expressed in gestures and glances. In a few of Stanley Kauffmann's books, he would append a "Reviewings" section where he'd go and look back on three or four of his favourite films. (The thing that first prompted me to see Roman Holiday in the '80s.) His Roman Holiday piece is in Before My Eyes--will reread that tonight.

I assume the film primarily (or wholly) springs from the coronation of Elizabeth II the year before, but I tend to view stuff from the '50s as it relates to the arrival of rock and roll in '55. And Roman Holiday feels like a tiny stirring--someone trapped in a stratified life, complaining that "everything we do is so wholesome," dying to break out. Which she does, for 24 hours.

(Must have come out just before Dalton Trumbo getting blacklisted; his name is prominent in the credits twice.)

Audrey in Lavender Hill Mob is a very short appearance indeed...around 20 seconds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mjcfTOJ4Nc

Wow--like Richard Dreyfuss in The Graduate.

I might be wrong about Trumbo. Seems that he wrote the script before the blacklist? Maybe his name was restored at some point.

Yeah first time I watched Lavender Hill Mob I had no idea of the Audrey bit part and it was a real WAIT WHAT moment.

Audrey Hepburn's accent in My Fair Lady is absolutely excruciating - without even the excuse of being American. New Year, new confession, I can't stand Audrey Hepburn.

Any time I see her in anything I wonder where the hell that accent comes from. It cannot be Belgian or Dutch.

What was happening in the 60s to explain all these gorblimey cockney knees ups in musicals: My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins, Half a Sixpence, Oliver? There's probably others too.

Audrey Hepburn's accent in My Fair Lady is absolutely excruciating - without even the excuse of being American. New Year, new confession, I can't stand Audrey Hepburn.

― The Italian Yob (Tom D.), Monday, 1 January 2024 16:56 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

in everything tbh

I never noticed til today that these two actors with entirely discrete careers had the same last name

well katharine pronounced it hep-burn and audrey pronounced it "hebbehhhnnehenb"

Lmao

pls note i am still in love with her for every second she is on screen tbf

She plays the dumbest blind woman who ever tapped a sidewalk in Wait Until Dark, and I can't watch Breakfast at Tiffany's without breaking things, but she had the intended effect in Roman Holiday and The Nun's Story.

Never made it past Rooney's first appearance in Tiffany's. I love Audrey in other stuff though! I watched How To Steal A Million again recently and it's great and she's great

that is an example of a movie with a nice poster. movie itself eh

perhaps i too am all style and no substance. in 2024 i am trying to be aware of glass houses and stuff.

You live in a Peter O'Toole heist movie?

i do not usually like to give out personal information, but yes

Love her to death, and also--Rooney excepted; I can't remove from the film--love Breakfast at Tiffany's--the party scene, John McGiver, Buddy Ebsen pulling away on the bus, Audrey on the windowsill singing "Moon River."

"remove him"

And, yes--"singing."

Actually, I guess she does sing...I must have known that.

i remember hearing some recording of her efforts for my fair lady and she wasnt at all bad tbf

Also I know it was a big deal at the time but Rex Harrison's sprechgesang thing gets old very quickly.

turns out he couldn't talk to the animals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYbRQWbQ4q4

Love her to death, and also--Rooney excepted; I can't remove from the film--love _Breakfast at Tiffany's_--the party scene, John McGiver, Buddy Ebsen pulling away on the bus, Audrey on the windowsill singing "Moon River."

Also Audrey in Funny Face, except for that ghoulish ad that used footage from it a few years back, it’s wonderful.

I know it's fish in a barrel to talk about gender relations in a lot of these old movies but Astaire in "Funny Face" singing that song that's like "girl you look grotesque but I'd still hit it" to Audrey Hepburn really is insane.

Recommend Paris When It Sizzles, a metacomedy featuring Hepburn and William Holden, the latter being a frustrated writer working on a terrible caper film called The Girl Who Stole The Eiffel Tower. They have Sinatra come in just to sing the theme tune (the girl who stole the Eiffel tower/she also stole my heart).

without signing off on any content as such, if you cant watch a 1937 or whatever movie for what it is then i think we might consider whether the warning sticker should be placed on the viewer instead of the dvd case

What was happening in the 60s to explain all these gorblimey cockney knees ups in musicals: My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins, Half a Sixpence, Oliver? There's probably others too.

Britain hugely in fashion but the audience for this type of thing too square for British Invasion or movies with Michael Caine having sex so this was the triangulation?

darra I can do that and also still laugh at that moment, actually