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Bridging the Gap. The skies over Hollywood have exploded with new stars time and time again: heavily accented" femmes fatales like Pola Negri, sturdy peasants like Anna Sten, indestructible waifs like Luise Rainer or Elisabeth Bergner, calendar girls like Marilyn Monroe, dignified stars from London's West End like Deborah Kerr. Audrey Hepburn fits none of the clichés and none of the clichés fit her. Even hard-boiled Hollywood personages who have seen new dames come & go are hard put to find words to describe Audrey. Tough Guy Humphrey Bogart calls her "elfin" and "birdlike." Director John Huston frankly moons: "Those thin gams, those thin arms and that wonderful face ..." Director Billy Wilder, who is slated to direct Audrey's second picture (Sabrina Fair), contents himself with a prophecy: "This girl, singlehanded, may make bosoms a thing of the past."
The truth is that the quality Audrey brings to the screen is not dependent on her figure, her face, her accent (which is neither quite British nor quite foreign) or even her talent. Belgian-born (of a Dutch mother and an Anglo-Irish father), she has, like all great actresses from Maude Adams to Greta Garbo, the magic ability to bridge the gap between herself and her audience, and to make her innermost feelings instantly known and shared.
Hollywood's first inkling of this magic quality came when a screen test ordered by Director William Wyler was viewed by Paramount's brass. It showed Audrey playing the princess part a little nervously, a little self-consciously. But Wyler had played a sly trick on the newcomer by ordering the British director who made her test to keep his cameras turning after the scene was over. When the word "cut" rang out, Audrey sat up in her royal bed, suddenly natural as a puppy, hugging her knees and grinning the delighted grin of a well-behaved child who has earned a cookie.
"She was absolutely delicious," says Wyler. "We were fascinated," says Paramount's Production Boss Don Hartman. "It's no credit to anyone that we signed her immediately."
Monte Carlo Baby. Audrey's screen test clinched Wyler's decision to make the picture on which it was based. He had considered and rejected most of the obvious Hollywood beauties for the part. He picked Audrey not so much on the basis of her talent as on the fact that she was unknown, and could not therefore be spotted through the royal disguise. The only trouble was that Audrey refused to stay unknown.