Despite the fact that Audrey Hepburn always said that the role she felt most hers was Story of a Nun (1959), it was undoubtedly Roman Holidays (1953) that most marked her film career and personal life. The film by William Wyler, who turns 70 today, opened the doors of Hollywood wide for her and also revealed to her the city that she would call home for more than 20 years.
“My mother became an icon of a different and joyful ‘Romanity’ that goes around the world on the back of a Vespa,” wrote Luca Dotti in the prologue that introduces the book Audrey Hepburn in Rome. In it, he tells that it was also during the filming of this film, made in the iconic Roman studios Cinecittà (War and Peace, Cleopatra), where he met the De Rossi couple, she a hairdresser and he a make-up artist and creator of the marked eyebrows in the shape of gullwing that accompanied the actress on the big screen and on the hundreds of covers of fashion magazines that she starred in over the years.
How Hepburn got into the role of Princess Anne is one of those divine coincidences that enhance her career. Originally, the role was to go to Elisabeth Taylor, who would share the screen with star Cary Grant as Joe Broadley. But Wyler stumbled across a recorded audition by an unknown and gorgeous Belgian-born Brit in which she discovered all the traits the rebellious European princess needed from her: sophisticated movements but cheerful and innocent character. In that audition the camera kept rolling after Hepburn recited her lines and, without her knowing it, the naturalness that she showed then won over the filmmaker.
The role was his but Cary Grant turned down the costar and the studio turned to the kind and seductive Gregory Peck. The actor ironized that he would always be offered the roles that Grant turned down, but once filming began he put his self-pity aside. There he met Hepburn, with whom he would cultivate a strong friendship and it was also on that set, during an interview, that he fell madly in love with the journalist Veronique Passini, whom he would marry in December 1955, one day after divorcing Greta Kukkonen.
Leaving his love affairs in the background, Peck found in Hepburn a lifelong friend and a co-star with a promising future ahead of her. So much so, that the actor asked the studios to include the name of the actress next to his in the final credits, since in theory she should not appear in them as she is unknown to the American public. It was clear to him: she was going to become a big star and win her first Oscar. Peck was not wrong.
Roman Holiday was the springboard that propelled the Belgian actress to the top of Hollywood. Her title earned her an Oscar and made her the first performer to win a Tony in the same year, for Ondine. The suddenly established revelation artist would get her chance to validate herself with titles like Sabrina (1995), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Charade (1963) or My Fair Lady (1964). But that’s another story.
Roman Holiday is one of those movies that have aged well and still arouses interest today. In fact, one of his mysteries, actually an open secret, took 58 years to unravel. The Writers Guild recognized in 2012 that the script was actually the work of Dalton Trumbo, who could not sign it due to appearing on the black list of American cinema, promoted by Senator McCarthy during his well-known witch hunt.
The elegance of Audrey Hepburn and the bearing of Gregory Peck are timeless, eternal on the big screen and in the imagination of the people. Wyler had a presentiment of it and therefore decided to give them all the focus, even above the eternal city that gives its name to the film, dyed in black and white so that it will let the stellar duo shine.
The perfectionist director – it is said that he made Hepburn repeat the ice cream scene on the steps for five days – sought realism in every detail of this film that has become a classic today. Thus, the film had the participation of members of the Italian aristocracy and also journalists, one of them from this same medium: “Moriones, from La Vanguardia de Barcelona”, the correspondent of our head mentions on screen during the 50s and up to late 1970s, Julio Moriones, to a stunning Audrey Hepburn dressed by iconic stylist Edith Head. It is this type of delicious detail, the lights and shadows behind the shooting, which have served to swell the legend of Roman Holidays. A classic that, despite the fact that it is adding years, is eternal.
