America's Favorite Brit



    
    Audrey Hepburn is a legend. I'd always known that. But, I figured, let Mary obsess about her; I had better things to do. I admit it: I was an idiot.
    Here is my new book (a present from Mother), recommended to me, of course, by Mary:

    I read the whole thing today. And through these pages, written by her son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, I became familiar with the "elegant spirit". It was a very short amount of time in which to become so fascinated, but that's often how that goes. I had no idea what an amazing story she had; what an amazing life! Everything I read made a thrill of delight or surprise or sadness rush through me. The book, written through the eyes of love, made her character so clear. One cannot help but have an immense respect for someone who raises her child so well and inspires in them such loyalty. 

    I have seen a total of four Audrey Hepburn movies over the years. (And plan now to never rest until I've seen them all.) My Fair Lady was probably the first, but that was a really really really long time ago, so I watched it again a few years ago to critique it with my new worldly, polished, educated mind. (I was about twelve, I think.)

THE HAT!!!

    It was a hoot. Pure fun from beginning to end. I wonder: wouldn't it be better if all movies were musicals? The costumes rocked. I don't know if I've ever seen such ridiculously wonderful clothes. The romance was delightful, bearing the crowning seal of the best love stories: she got with the guy. I love that. I came away rather wishing for a snotty Englishman of my own.

    And Eliza Doolittle was bewitching.

    The second Hepburn movie I saw was Breakfast at Tiffany's. Holly Golightly was a batty, charming, and unexpectedly vulnerable character, whose windowsill performance of Moon River left a deep impression, making me think I ought to try learning guitar. Anything to be more like her, right? Her presence and style combined with New York sixties awesomeness made the story unforgettable.

    I awarded it the Romantic Seal of Approval. She got with the guy.

   

    Hepburn movie #3: Roman Holiday.

    I watched this with a sense of ever-increasing delight. The romance was charming, the setting was charming, the characters were charming (most especially the main two, the lovely princess Audrey Hepburn and the cynical news reporter Gregory Peck, ooh la la), the clothes were of course charming, and the plot quite original. I liked it so much I might even watch it again. 

    HOWEVER, it does not win my Romantic Seal of Approval. You see, (and forgive me for giving the plot away) She didn't get with the guy. Anyone who made a movie with these two in the leading roles should understand how important that is. 

    If I think about it any more I'll start crying. 

    And the latest pleasure, Sabrina. Now, to other Hepburn fans it may seem like blasphemy to say this, but I must admit that as a movie I prefer the 1990s version of Sabrina. It's one of the most stylish things ever to appear on screen. Also, though I believe my dear friend the Right Honorable L.R.K. might assassinate me if she found out, I do not like Humphrey Bogart. In this particular movie he seemed overdone, somehow, next to Audrey. Of course, Harrison Ford played Linus Larabee in the latest version, and thinking "Bogart vs. Ford" isn't being fair to poor Bogart, is it?

   

    There was a scene in the original which was thankfully not included in the later film, where a lovesick Sabrina Fairchild attempts suicide; that disturbed me a little. But, after all, the moviemakers at that time seemed largely influenced by the theatrical and poetic, and that's the sort of shocking thing they get up to in stories by Shakespeare and the like. 

   

    In spite of everything, however, Audrey Hepburn's performance in the original Sabrina was so endearing that it causes the film to rank equally with the remake in my estimation. One of those cases where the actor makes the movie. She carried herself as gracefully through the story as at any other time, and her clothes were charming. Oh, yeah, and it receives the Romantic Seal of Approval. She gets with the guy, you see.

    I have mentioned clothes a lot. Maybe it makes me sound too teenage-girl or something, but I flinch not a whit when I say that one of the things I admire most about Audrey Hepburn was her remarkable sense of style. She was quite possibly the most influential style icon of all time. I pored over the wealth of photographs in An Elegant Spirit; recalled the many others I'd seen; recalled her every garment in the movies I'd seen. And concluded that she was never badly dressed. Never. Even when unwell and aged before her time, she looked like a million bucks. 

    This is hugely important to me. For those of you who don't know, I love clothes. Handsome clothes, that is. And Audrey's clothing was always beautiful. Her attention to the way she looked, her determination that no one would ever look at her and regret it, was part of why she was so well-loved and influential. Like it or not, people judge by outward appearance. She said herself that the clothes are what people see first. She made it a pleasure for people to see her, and then established their regard by showing them that her character was no less lovely than her exterior.

    So why not wear Givenchy for a lifetime, if you can pay for it? Put it to good use, like she did.

    Naturally someone who knows her story would not appreciate a lack of mention of her work in third-world countries, helping ease horrible suffering. I don't elaborate on that because I wouldn't know where to start. It would take weeks to write something that did justice to the subject. Suffice it to say that my admiration is undying, for she went though a lot as a child in Holland during WWII, and nearing the end of her life, she was willing to see all that sort of thing again, for the sake of doing a little good, and of making use of her passionate love for children.  

      

   

    But the most important effect, I think, that her story had on me, was the the revival of my long-time dream of becoming an actress. Thinking about her successes, her influence, her deep attention to the science of acting, sparked a hot feeling of determination in my chest which I know beyond a shadow of a doubt will never cool. That dream that I didn't think about much just because it seemed so crazy is real; true; it's going to happen. My new role model has seen to it.

   

    I kick myself for not having been born earlier. Like, maybe seventy years ago. That way I could have had the privilege of meeting and perhaps photographing her myself. Wouldn't that be loverly? The photographer's dream subject: a woman who looks perfect from all angles at all times. 

  

    But it was not to be. She died a two or three years before I was born. Still, what a legacy she left. People like me, who paid little attention to her and didn't even share years in her lifetime, cannot escape fanhood for long. And because she is will always be fresh in the hearts even of people far past her generation, she is the only lady in history who will never truly die.    



The haircut rocks my world.



The Glass-Cabinet

    Very well. I will admit that this photograph, even for an amateur photographer, is pretty pathetic. But taking pictures in a kitchen means that the choices for orientation are extremely limited. (In other words, I didn't want you all to see the mulch of spattered cookbooks and wayward telephones beneath and around the cabinet.)

    And now . . .

    You may think you see an ordinary cabinet. (Okay, an ugly ordinary cabinet.) That's what I used to think, too. It's made of terribly plain, pinkish-hued wood, and is opened using those horrid little porcelain handles with the herbs painted on them. Little did I know how strong a hold it had upon me.

    I call it the glass-cabinet for two reasons: 1) because it has glass panes (duh) and 2) because it contains the collected muster of the family's glassware. It is because there are few places in this house which are designated and used for a single purpose that I consider the latter remarkable.

    You know how certain things gather in the dark corners of your mind and stay there awhile without your noticing? That's how the cabinet was. It should have been treated with more respect by yours truly, considering the fact that we have no others of its kind or for its sacred purpose, but I never bothered with it. I fingerprinted the panes, watched passively whilst grease and fly specks gathered on it, and never once pitied its plight. Worst of all, the glassware, each item of which is in itself very handsome, was jumbled about and mixed up and shoved in unceremoniously, so that behind the doors loomed chaos. One never remembered how many glasses of each kind there were, and had to fish about for long minutes just to find the ones one wanted.

    So the ugliness of that cabinet scratched up a nest in my subconscious and made itself comfortable. And it was only when the carefree Ben Franklin commented on it that I realized something had to be done.    

This something turned out to be pretty straightforward. I simply found a cloth and a bottle of Windex and started rubbing. Then it occurred to me that the glasses ought to be organized into proper rows, so I did that, too. Simple.

    But with complicated effects. I felt as I scrubbed, polished, and rearranged, that I was doing the same thing to my cobwebbed soul. That grime and disorganization had weighed so much on me in the past, along with occasional hard times and teenage brooding. When through, I felt enlightened, refreshed, empowered: finally emerging from the layers of weariness I'd gathered over the long winter.

    I daresay the affair was not so important to the rest of the family, for they offered cheerful comment as I worked, perched like a canary on the counter, but did not seem to grasp the pomp of the affair. No, this was a personal battle. To me, what had once been just another ugly cabinet was now a charming facet of a charming home. Looks like it belongs in Green Gables, I thought smugly as I surveyed the victory.

    "So what's the point?" You say.

    The point is that you should keep your cabinets clean. And dust those shelves in your mind's attic. And remember that all will be right in the end. In the meantime, it's best to be gainfully employed.