For a time last week, as people recalled the luminous images of Hepburn in her 25 films, it seemed as if the whole world were in mourning. “You looked at her, and all you could think was that nothing bad should ever happen to her,”said actress Arlene Dahl. “If there was a cross between the salt of the earth and a regal queen.” said Shirley MacLaine,her costar in The Children’s Hour (196, “then she was it.”
In 1948 the resilient teenager left for England to study ballet and landed a chorus girl’s part in a London production of High Button Shoes. Three years later, in Monte Carlo for a movie bit, she was spotted by the novelist Colette,who instantly realized that she had found the girl to play her Gigi on Broadway. That role won Hepburn a Theatre World Award in 1952, and then-after she kept a photo of Colette on her dressing table, inscribed, “To Audrey Hepburn, the treasure I found on the beach.” After seeing her screen test, director William Wyler cast Hepburn in his 1953 film, Roman Holiday. “She’s not beautiful,” said the crusty1 Wyler after Audrey picked up an Oscar for the part, “but she gets to1 you.”Bogart, perhaps nettled by her romance with their costar William Holden in 1954’s Sabrina, said she was “OK if you like doing 36 takes.” And a film magazine she long outlasted called her “this weird hybrid with butchered hair.” But the moviegoing public worshiped her, and eventually even Bogie recanted. “You take the Monroes and the Terry Moores,”he said, “and you know just what you’re going to get every time. With Audrey it’s kind of unpredictable. She’s like a good tennis player—she varies her shots.”