Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Audrey Hepburn Thu 10 Jan 2019, 21:49
I saw the day before yesterday a documentary about Audrey Hepburn. As I saw "My Fair Lady" from her, as "The NUN Story", "War and Peace", "How to Steal a Million", I had always an interest in her. What I learned as new: her Dutch connection and a father as a British Fascist and even once at a dinner with Hitler... https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/the-film-star-and-her-fascist-father-28961174.html From the link: "As a young man, Joseph worked for the British diplomatic service. When the First World War ended, he found himself stationed in the Dutch East Indies. Here he met and married a Dutch woman, Cornelia Bisschop. Not long into their union he became attracted to another Dutch woman 11 years his junior. This was Ella van Heemstra, a baroness from Arnhem. In 1926, Joseph divorced his wife and proposed to Ella. They were married that September. By now Joseph had found work with tin merchants Maclaine, Watson and Co and he managed to get a transfer to London. After a year he was moved to Brussels, Belgium, where he was charged with opening a new branch of the company. It was here that Audrey was born in May 1929. According to Audrey, her parents were not the most affectionate but she was well looked after. Both parents were followers of fascism and even raised funds for British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. Evidence suggests that Joseph was well thought of within the organisation – well enough to dine with Hitler in Munich along with Mosley and some of his associates.
And further during the war Audrey was in the occupied Netherlands: "Once Joseph had put Audrey on the flight, he returned to London, where he was arrested for his association with fascism. He would spend the war interned on the Isle of Man. Germany ignored Holland's neutrality and thus Audrey spent the war in fear and danger. Whatever distance there was between them before the war had deepened by its end. Ella informed her daughter that her father was dead. He was, in fact, alive and living in Dublin. After his release from prison, Joseph came to Ireland, where he started a new life. By 1950 he had met and married Fidelma Walshe. Joseph was now in his early 60s. Fidelma was 30.
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Audrey Hepburn Thu 10 Jan 2019, 22:27
And about Audrey Hepburn's first film in "Nederland in Zeven Lessen" 1948 It is in Dutch and seemingly one can have no subtitles in any language... It's a bit patriotic, but you can forgive the Dutch after five long years of Nazi occupation
And an interview in Brussels by a "Southern Dutch" speaking interviewer and Audrey speaking perfect Dutch without accent, or it has to be a slight, but very slight, Northern Dutch accent...
Kind regards from Paul.
Caro Censura
Posts : 1522 Join date : 2012-01-09
Subject: Re: Audrey Hepburn Fri 11 Jan 2019, 04:41
I presume I had once known this, but if so I have forgotten it. My favourite Audrey Hepburn movie (and one of most favourite movies of all) is Charade, described as a "romantic comedy mystery film". Her co-star was Cary Grant and the premise of the movie is the sudden death of her husband, the loss of the money he was carrying, and the mysterious strangers at his funeral. There is always doubt that the Grant character might be in cahoots with them or be the actual thief.
Some of Audrey's life story puts me in mind of Hedy Lamarr's. She left Czechoslovakia before the second world war actually started but their lives both seem to have been shaped by the war, as I suppose thousands of lives were.
Dirk Marinus Consulatus
Posts : 300 Join date : 2016-02-03
Subject: Re: Audrey Hepburn Fri 11 Jan 2019, 20:21
Paul,
Yes, I read a long time ago that Audrey spend her teen age and war time years in Holland and that she could speak the Dutch language.
I am not sure but think that she lived in Arnhem.
Dirk
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Audrey Hepburn Fri 11 Jan 2019, 21:27
Dirk Marinus wrote:
Paul,
Yes, I read a long time ago that Audrey spend her teen age and war time years in Holland and that she could speak the Dutch language.
I am not sure but think that she lived in Arnhem.
Dirk
Yes Dirk, Arnhem, I read it here: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000030/bio "After her parents divorced, Audrey went to London with her mother where she went to a private girls school. Later, when her mother moved back to the Netherlands, she attended private schools as well. While she vacationed with her mother in Arnhem, Netherlands, Hitler's army took over the town. It was here that she fell on hard times during the Nazi occupation. Audrey suffered from depression and malnutrition." "While she vacationed with her mother in Arnhem, Netherlands, Hitler's army took over the town." But that is in contradiction with this link from the Independent: https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/the-film-star-and-her-fascist-father-28961174.html "Joseph saw Audrey intermittently while she boarded at a school in Kent, England. When the Second World War broke out her father raced from London to take her from her school and put her on a plane to what he thought was refuge in neutral Holland. "You know this is tough for a little girl," says Hepburn-Ferrer. "He goes to fetch her from her school in England, he puts her on this orange plane to Holland. It's almost like the last scene from Casablanca. Emotionally you can't imagine what it does."
Kind regards from Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Audrey Hepburn Fri 11 Jan 2019, 21:47
Caro wrote:
I presume I had once known this, but if so I have forgotten it. My favourite Audrey Hepburn movie (and one of most favourite movies of all) is Charade, described as a "romantic comedy mystery film". Her co-star was Cary Grant and the premise of the movie is the sudden death of her husband, the loss of the money he was carrying, and the mysterious strangers at his funeral. There is always doubt that the Grant character might be in cahoots with them or be the actual thief.
Some of Audrey's life story puts me in mind of Hedy Lamarr's. She left Czechoslovakia before the second world war actually started but their lives both seem to have been shaped by the war, as I suppose thousands of lives were.
Caro,
"I presume I had once known this, but if so I have forgotten it. My favourite Audrey Hepburn movie (and one of most favourite movies of all) is Charade, described as a "romantic comedy mystery film". Her co-star was Cary Grant and the premise of the movie is the sudden death of her husband, the loss of the money he was carrying, and the mysterious strangers at his funeral. There is always doubt that the Grant character might be in cahoots with them or be the actual thief." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charade_(1963_film)
Caro, I see now that I have never seen the film, although in that ime I was still a cinema lover. And Cary Grant was my favourite...but perhaps because it was a busy period in my life...in that time marrying and that is already a business on itself...and then after a year already looking for ground to built a house...building that house...after fourteen years divorce...and recently a female notary rang me up to say that she passed away and if there were still some links with her...after all, that brings some emotion...fourteen years are quite some very personal remembrance...
"Some of Audrey's life story puts me in mind of Hedy Lamarr's. She left Czechoslovakia before the second world war actually started but their lives both seem to have been shaped by the war, as I suppose thousands of lives were."
Posts : 3327 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Audrey Hepburn Sun 13 Jan 2019, 10:43
I quite liked Audry Hepburn in The Nun's Story. I never saw Breakfast at Tiffany's - I think when it came out I was just that little bit too young to see it at the cinema without an adult.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Audrey Hepburn Sun 13 Jan 2019, 22:39
LadyinRetirement wrote:
I quite liked Audry Hepburn in The Nun's Story. I never saw Breakfast at Tiffany's - I think when it came out I was just that little bit too young to see it at the cinema without an adult.
It was not the same front page but alas... And then the film (I didn't find a copy as one has nowadays mostly to subscribe to a site)
And thanks to you LiR I found the unbelievable ("ongelooflijk") story about the connection between the three women, the real sister Luke, the author and Audrey Hepburn... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nun%27s_Story https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dk1rj8jt Toen regisseur Fred Zinneman, op zoek naar filmlocaties voor The nun's story, in 1957 naar het klooster in Gent afzakte, kreeg hij er te horen dat de zusters hun medewerking niet wensten te verlenen. Kardinaal Suenens bevestigde die beslissing later nog eens. Zinneman zei toen tegen de overste van de Zusters van Liefde in Gent: 'Maar zuster, we maken de film toch, met of zonder uw medewerking.' De film werd uiteindelijk gedraaid op locatie in Brugge, Antwerpen en Congo. Binnenopnames werden gemaakt in de filmstudio's Cinécitta in Rome. Zinneman wasn't allowed to film in the convent of Ghent by Cardinal Suenens, while it acted about a nun, who had thrown her cap over the hedge "haar kap over de haag gesmeten") At the end the film was turned in Bruges, Antwerp and the Belgian Congo. The interior footage was taken at Cinecitta Rome. https://www.revolvy.com/page/Marie-Louise-Habets
Kind regards from Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Audrey Hepburn Mon 14 Jan 2019, 23:16
"Zinneman wasn't allowed to film in the convent of Ghent by Cardinal Suenens, while it acted about a nun, who had thrown her cap over the hedge "haar kap over de haag gesmeten") At the end the film was turned in Bruges, Antwerp and the Belgian Congo. The interior footage was taken at Cinecitta Rome."
I found nowhere a translation of "haar kap over de haag gooien, smijten" a nun becoming secular again