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Duke Ellington
Frankfurt am Main, February 6, 1965
Background information
Birth name	Edward Kennedy Ellington
Born	(1899-04-29)April 29, 1899 Washington D.C., United States
Died	May 24, 1974(1974-05-24) (aged 75) New York City, United States
Genres	Orchestral jazz, swing, big band
Occupations	Bandleader, pianist, composer
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1914–1974
Website	www.dukeellington.com

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974)^[1] was an American composer, pianist, and big-band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions. In the opinion of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe "In the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington."^[2] A major figure in the history of jazz, Ellington's music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical. His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, composing stage musicals, and world tours. Several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death and the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowed on him a special posthumous honor in 1999.^[3]

Ellington called his music "American Music" rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as "beyond category."^[4] These included many of the musicians who were members of his orchestra, some of whom are considered among the best in jazz in their own right, but it was Ellington who melded them into one of the most well-known jazz orchestral units in the history of jazz. He often composed specifically for the style and skills of these individuals, such as "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Concerto for Cootie" for Cootie Williams, which later became "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me" with Bob Russell's lyrics, and "The Mooche" for Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's "Caravan" and "Perdido" which brought the "Spanish Tinge" to big-band jazz. Several members of the orchestra remained there for several decades. After 1941, he frequently collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his "writing and arranging companion."^[5] Ellington recorded for many American record companies, and appeared in several films.

Ellington led his band from 1923 until his death in 1974. His son Mercer Ellington, who had already been handling all administrative aspects of his father's business for several decades, led the band until his own death in 1996. At that point, the original band dissolved. Paul Ellington, Mercer's youngest son and executor of the Duke Ellington estate,^[6] kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going from Mercer's death onwards.^[7]

Early life[link]

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Kennedy Ellington. Daisy and J.E. were both pianists. Daisy primarily played parlor songs and J.E. prefered operatic airs. They lived with his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ida Place (now Ward Place), NW in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D.C.^[8] His father, James Edward Ellington, was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina on April 15, 1879 and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1886 with his parents.^[9] Daisy Kennedy was born in Washington, D.C. on January 4, 1879, and was the daughter of a former American slave.^[8][10] James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy.

At the age of seven Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners and teach him to live elegantly. Ellington’s childhood friends noticed that "his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman",^[11] and began calling him Duke. Ellington credited his "chum" Edgar McEntree for the nickname. "I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. So he called me Duke."^[12]

Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was more interested in baseball. "President Roosevelt (Teddy) would come by on his horse sometimes, and stop and watch us play," he recalled.^[13] Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C. He got his first job selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games.

In the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe, he wrote his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag" (also known as the "Poodle Dog Rag"). Ellington created "Soda Fountain Rag" by ear, because he had not yet learned to read and write music. "I would play the 'Soda Fountain Rag' as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot," Ellington recalled. "Listeners never knew it was the same piece. I was established as having my own repertoire."^[14] In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress (1973), Ellington said he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent. Ellington started sneaking into Frank Holiday's Poolroom at the age of fourteen. Hearing the poolroom pianists play ignited Ellington's love for the instrument and he began to take his piano studies seriously. Among the many piano players he listened to were Doc Perry, Lester Dishman, Louis Brown, Turner Layton, Gertie Wells, Clarence Bowser, Sticky Mack, Blind Johnny, Cliff Jackson, Claude Hopkins, Phil Wurd, Caroline Thornton, Luckey Roberts, Eubie Blake, Joe Rochester, and Harvey Brooks.^[15]

Ellington began listening to, watching, and imitating ragtime pianists, not only in Washington, D.C., but in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, where he vacationed with his mother during the summer months.^[14] Dunbar High School music teacher Henry Lee Grant gave him private lessons in harmony. With the additional guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver "Doc" Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style, and improve his technique. Ellington was also inspired by his first encounters with stride pianists James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts. Later in New York he took advice from Will Marion Cook, Fats Waller, and Sidney Bechet. Ellington started to play gigs in cafés and clubs in and around Washington, D.C. and his attachment grew to be so strong that he turned down an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1916. Three months before graduating he dropped out of Armstrong Manual Training School, where he was studying commercial art.^[16]

From 1917 through 1919, Ellington launched his musical career, painting commercial signs by day and playing piano by night. Through his day job, Duke's entrepreneurial side came out: when a customer would ask him to make a sign for a dance or party, he would ask them if they had musical entertainment; if not, Ellington would ask if he could play for them. He also had a messenger job with the U.S. Navy and State Departments. Ellington moved out of his parents' home and bought his own as he became a successful pianist. At first, he played in other ensembles, and in late 1917 formed his first group, "The Duke’s Serenaders" ("Colored Syncopators", his telephone directory advertising proclaimed).^[16] He was not only a member, but also the booking agent. His first play date was at the True Reformer's Hall, where he took home 75 cents.^[17]

Ellington played throughout the Washington, D.C. area and into Virginia for private society balls and embassy parties. The band included Otto Hardwick, who switched from bass to saxophone; Arthur Whetsol on trumpet; Elmer Snowden on banjo; and Sonny Greer on drums. The band thrived, performing for both African-American and white audiences, a rarity during the racially divided times.^[18]

Music career[link]

Early career[link]

When his drummer Sonny Greer was invited to join the Wilber Sweatman Orchestra in New York City, Ellington made the fateful decision to leave behind his successful career in Washington, D.C., and move to Harlem, becoming one of the figures of the Harlem Renaissance. New dance crazes like the Charleston emerged in Harlem, as well as African-American musical theater, including Eubie Blake's Shuffle Along. After the young musicians left the Sweatman Orchestra to strike out on their own, they found an emerging jazz scene that was highly competitive and hard to crack. They hustled pool by day and played whatever gigs they could find. The young band met Willie "The Lion" Smith who introduced them to the scene and gave them some money. They played at rent-house parties for income. After a few months the young musicians returned to Washington, D.C., feeling discouraged.

In June 1923 a gig in Atlantic City, New Jersey, led to a play date at the prestigious Exclusive Club in Harlem. This was followed in September 1923 by a move to the Hollywood Club – 49th and Broadway – and a four-year engagement, which gave Ellington a solid artistic base. He was known to play the bugle at the end of each performance. The group was called Elmer Snowden and his Black Sox Orchestra and had seven members, including James "Bubber" Miley. They renamed themselves "The Washingtonians". Snowden left the group in early 1924 and Ellington took over as bandleader. After a fire the club was re-opened as the Club Kentucky (often referred to as the "Kentucky Club"), an engagement which set the stage for the biggest opportunities in Ellington's life.

Ellington made eight records in 1924, receiving composing credit on three including Choo Choo.^[19] In 1925 Ellington contributed four songs to Chocolate Kiddies, an all-African-American revue which introduced European audiences to African-American styles and performers. "Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra" grew to a ten-piece organization; they developed their own sound by displaying the non-traditional expression of Ellington’s arrangements, the street rhythms of Harlem, and the exotic-sounding trombone growls and wah-wahs, high-squealing trumpets, and sultry saxophone blues licks of the band members. For a short time soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet played with the group, imparting his propulsive swing and superior musicianship to the young band members. In 1927 King Oliver turned down a regular booking for his group as the house band at Harlem's Cotton Club; the offer passed to Ellington. With a weekly radio broadcast and famous white clientele nightly pouring in to see them.

Ellington was joined in New York City by his wife, Edna Thompson, and son Mercer in the late twenties, but the couple soon permanently separated.^[20] According to her obituary in Jet magazine, she was "[h]omesick for Washington" and returned (she died in 1967).^[21]

Although trumpeter Bubber Miley was a member of the orchestra for only a short period, he had a major influence on Ellington's sound.^[22] An early exponent of growl trumpet, his style changed the "sweet" dance band sound of the group to one that was hotter, which contemporaries termed "jungle" style. He also composed most of "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "Creole Love Call". An alcoholic, Miley had to leave the band before they gained wider fame. He died in 1932 at the age of 29. He was an important influence on Cootie Williams, who replaced him.

In 1927 Ellington made a career-advancing agreement with agent-publisher Irving Mills, giving Mills a 45% interest in Ellington's future.^[23] Mills had an eye for new talent and early on published compositions by Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, and Harold Arlen. During the 1930s Ellington's popularity continued to increase – largely as a result of the promotional skills of Mills – who got more than his fair share of co-composer credits. From the beginning of their relationship, Mills arranged recording sessions on nearly every label including Brunswick, Victor, Columbia, OKeh, Perfect, Pathe, the ARC/Plaza group of labels (Cameo, Romeo, Lincoln, Oriole, Domino, Jewel, Banner), Hit of the Week, and Columbia's cheaper labels (Harmony, Diva, Velvet Tone, Clarion) labels which gave Ellington popular recognition, as well giving Ellington's fans the opportunity of hearing multiple versions of the same song. Ellington ended his association with Mills in 1937, although he continued to record under Mills' banner through to 1940.

At the Cotton Club, Ellington's group performed all the music for the revues, which mixed comedy, dance numbers, vaudeville, burlesque, music, and illegal alcohol. The musical numbers were composed by Jimmy McHugh and the lyrics by Dorothy Fields (later Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler), with some Ellington originals mixed in. Weekly radio broadcasts from the club gave Ellington national exposure. In 1929 Ellington appeared in his first movie, a nineteen-minute all-African-American RKO short, Black and Tan, in which he played the hero "Duke". In the same year, the Cotton Club Orchestra appeared on stage for several months in Florenz Ziegfeld's Show Girl, along with vaudeville stars Jimmy Durante, Eddie Foy, Jr., Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, and with music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Gus Kahn. That feverish period also included numerous recordings, under the pseudonyms "Whoopee Makers", "The Jungle Band", "Harlem Footwarmers", and the "Ten Black Berries". In 1930 Ellington and his Orchestra connected with a whole different audience in a concert with Maurice Chevalier and they also performed at the Roseland Ballroom, "America's foremost ballroom". Noted composer Percy Grainger was also an early admirer and supporter. He wrote "The three greatest composers who ever lived are Bach, Delius and Duke Ellington. Unfortunately Bach is dead, Delius is very ill but we are happy to have with us today The Duke".^[24]

In 1929, when Ellington conducted the orchestra for Show Girl, he met Will Vodery, Ziegfeld’s musical supervisor. In his 1946 biography, Duke Ellington, Barry Ulanov wrote:

From Vodery, as he (Ellington) says himself, he drew his chromatic convictions, his uses of the tones ordinarily extraneous to the diatonic scale, with the consequent alteration of the harmonic character of his music, its broadening, The deepening of his resources. It has become customary to ascribe the classical influences upon Duke – Delius, Debussy and Ravel – to direct contact with their music. Actually his serious appreciation of those and other modern composers, came after his meeting with Vodery.^[25]

As the Depression worsened, the recording industry was in crisis, dropping over 90% of its artists by 1933.^[26] Ellington and his orchestra survived the hard times by taking to the road in a series of tours. Radio exposure also helped maintain popularity. Ivie Anderson was hired as their featured vocalist. Sonny Greer had been providing occasional vocals and continued to do in a cross-talk feature with Anderson. Ellington, however, later had many different vocalists, including Herb Jeffries (until 1943) and Al Hibbler (who replaced Jeffries in 1943 and continued until 1951).

Ellington led the orchestra by conducting from the keyboard using piano cues and visual gestures; very rarely did he conduct using a baton. As a bandleader Ellington was not a strict disciplinarian; he maintained control of his orchestra with a crafty combination of charm, humor, flattery, and astute psychology. A complex, private person, he revealed his feelings to only his closest intimates and effectively used his public persona to deflect attention away from himself.

While the band's United States audience remained mainly African-American in this period, the Cotton Club had a near-exclusive white clientele and the Ellington orchestra had a huge following overseas, exemplified by the success of their trip to England in 1933 and their 1934 visit to the European mainland. The English visit saw Ellington win praise from members of the "serious" music community, including composer Constant Lambert, which gave a boost to Ellington's aspiration to compose longer works. For agent Mills it was a publicity triumph, as Ellington was now internationally known. On the band's tour through the segregated South in 1934, they avoided some of the traveling difficulties of African-Americans by touring in private railcars. These provided easy accommodations, dining, and storage for equipment while avoiding the indignities of segregated facilities.

The death of Ellington's mother in 1935 led to a temporary hiatus in his career. Competition was also intensifying, as African-American and white swing bands began to receive popular attention, including those of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Carter, Earl Hines, Chick Webb, and Count Basie. Swing dancing became a youth phenomenon, particularly with white college audiences, and "danceability" drove record sales and bookings. Jukeboxes proliferated nationwide, spreading the gospel of "swing". Ellington's band could certainly swing, but their strengths were mood and nuance, and richness of composition; hence his statement "jazz is music; swing is business".^[27] Ellington countered with two developments. He made recordings of smaller groups (sextets, octets, and nonets) drawn from his then-15-man orchestra and he composed pieces intended to feature specific instrumentalist, as with "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Yearning for Love" for Lawrence Brown, "Trumpet in Spades" for Rex Stewart, "Echoes of Harlem" for Cootie Williams and "Clarinet Lament" for Barney Bigard.

In 1937 Ellington returned to the Cotton Club which had relocated to the mid-town theater district. In the summer of that year, his father died, and due to many expenses, Ellington's finances were tight. Things improved in 1938 and he met and moved in with Cotton Club employee Beatrice "Evie" Ellis. After splitting with agent Irving Mills, he signed on with the William Morris Agency. The 1930s ended with a very successful European tour just as World War II loomed.

Ellington delivered some huge hits during the 1930s, which greatly helped to build his overall reputation. Some of them include: "Mood Indigo" (1930), "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" (1932), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933), "Solitude" (1934), "In a Sentimental Mood" (1935), "Caravan" (1937), "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart" (1938). "Take the "A" Train" which hit big in 1941, was written by Billy Strayhorn.

Strayhorn, originally hired as a lyricist, began his association with Ellington in 1939.^[28] Nicknamed "Swee' Pea" for his mild manner, Strayhorn soon became a vital member of the Ellington Organization. Ellington showed great fondness for Strayhorn and never failed to speak glowingly of the man and their collaborative working relationship, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine".^[29] Strayhorn, with his training in classical music, not only contributed his original lyrics and music, but also arranged and polished many of Ellington's works, becoming a second Ellington or "Duke's doppelganger". It was not uncommon for Strayhorn to fill in for Duke, whether in conducting or rehearsing the band, playing the piano, on stage, and in the recording studio.^[30]

Duke in the 1940s[link]

Duke Ellington at the Hurricane Club in New York, May 1943

The band reached a creative peak in the early 1940s, when Ellington and a small hand-picked group of his composers and arrangers wrote for an orchestra of distinctive voices who displayed tremendous creativity.^[31]

Some of the musicians created a sensation in their own right. The short-lived Jimmy Blanton transformed the use of double bass in jazz, allowing it to function as a solo rather than a rhythm instrument alone. Ben Webster, the Orchestra's first regular tenor saxophonist, started a rivalry with Johnny Hodges as the Orchestra's foremost voice in the sax section. Ray Nance joined, replacing Cootie Williams (who had "defected", contemporary wags claimed, to Benny Goodman). Nance, however, added violin to the instrumental colors Ellington had at his disposal.

Three-minute masterpieces flowed from the minds of Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Ellington's son Mercer Ellington, Mary Lou Williams and members of the Orchestra. "Cotton Tail", "Main Stem", "Harlem Airshaft", "Sidewalks of New York (East Side, West Side)", "Jack the bear", and dozens of others date from this period.

Privately made recordings of Nance's first concert date, at Fargo, North Dakota, on November 7, 1940 by Jack Towers and Dick Burris, are probably the most effective display of the band during this period. These recordings, later released as Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 Live, are among the first of innumerable live performances which survive, made by enthusiasts or broadcasters, significantly expanding the Ellington discography.

Ellington's long-term aim became to extend the jazz form from the three-minute limit of the 78 rpm record side, of which he was an acknowledged master.^[32] He had composed and recorded Creole Rhapsody as early as 1931 (issued as both sides of a 12" record for Victor and both sides of a 10" record for Brunswick), and his tribute to his mother, "Reminiscing in Tempo," had filled four 10" record sides in 1935; however, it was not until the 1940s that this became a regular feature of Ellington's work.

In this, he was helped by Strayhorn, who had enjoyed a more thorough training in the forms associated with classical music than Ellington. The first of these, "Black, Brown, and Beige" (1943), was dedicated to telling the story of African-Americans, and the place of slavery and the church in their history. Ellington debuted Black, Brown and Beige in Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943, beginning a series of concerts there suited to displaying Ellington's longer works. While some jazz musicians had played at Carnegie Hall before, few had performed anything as elaborate as Ellington’s work.

Unfortunately, starting a regular pattern, Ellington's longer works were generally not well-received. Jump for Joy, a full-length musical based on themes of African-American identity, debuted on July 10, 1941 at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles. Although it had the support of the Hollywood establishment, and received mostly positive reviews, its socio-political outlook provoked a negative reaction among some members of the public. It ran for 122 performances until September 29, 1941, with a brief revival in November of that year. Its subject matter did not make it appealing to Broadway, despite Ellington's plans to take it there.^[33]

The settlement of the first recording ban of 1942–43 had a serious effect on all the big bands because of the increase in royalty payments to musicians which resulted from it. The financial viability of Ellington's Orchestra came under threat, though Ellington's income as a songwriter ultimately subsidized it. Ellington always spent lavishly and although he drew a respectable income from the Orchestra's operations, the band's income often just covered expenses.^[34]

The music industry's focus shifted away from the big bands to the work of solo vocalists such as the young Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and mainstream groups like The Andrews Sisters as World War II drew to a close. The Kay Davis wordless vocal feature "Transblucency" (1946) was not going to have a similar reach. By the mid 1940s, jazz artists were changing their approach. The new form of jazz, Bebop was an early hit with club owners of smaller venues who could draw the jazz form's growing audiences in New York City at a fraction of the cost of hiring a big band. Newer, smaller bands and splinter forms of music increasingly put pressure on the larger clubs who now had to pay higher wages to maintain their big bands. Bebop was the preferred form for younger talent based in New York, such as Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk who both rarely embraced the Big Band idiom. By 1950, another emerging musical trend, the African-American popular music style known as Rhythm and Blues driven by musicians like Fats Domino was drawing young audiences away.

Ellington poses with his piano at the KFG Radio Studio November 3, 1954.

Ellington continued on his own course through these tectonic shifts in the music business. He did not wholly resist trends while trying to turn out major works. He still performed major extended compositions such as Harlem (1950), whose score he presented to music-loving President Harry Truman. In 1951, Ellington suffered a major loss of personnel, with Sonny Greer, Lawrence Brown, and most significantly Johnny Hodges, leaving to pursue other ventures. Lacking overseas opportunities and motion picture appearances, Ellington's Orchestra survived on "one-nighters" and whatever else came their way.

Ellington's hope that television would provide a significant new outlet for his type of jazz was not fulfilled. Tastes and trends had moved on without him. The introduction of the 33 1/3 rpm LP record and hi-fi phonograph, though, did give new life to many of his older compositions. However by 1955, after three years of recording for Capitol, Ellington no longer had a regular recording affiliation.

Career revival[link]

Ellington's appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956 returned him to wider prominence and exposed him to new audiences. The feature "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue", with saxophonist Paul Gonsalves's six-minute saxophone solo, had been in the band's book since 1937, but on this occasion nearly created a riot. The revived attention should not have surprised anyone – Hodges had returned to the fold the previous year, and Ellington's collaboration with Strayhorn had been renewed around the same time, under terms more amenable to the younger man. Such Sweet Thunder (1957), based on Shakespeare's plays and characters, and The Queen's Suite, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth II, were products of the renewed impetus which the Newport appearance helped to create.

A new record contract with Columbia produced Ellington's best-selling LP Ellington at Newport and yielded six years of recording stability under producer Irving Townsend, who coaxed both commercial and artistic productions from Ellington.^[35] In 1957, CBS (Columbia's parent corporation) aired a live television production of A Drum Is a Woman, an allegorical suite which received mixed reviews. Festival appearances at the new Monterey Jazz Festival and elsewhere provided venues for live exposure, and a European tour in 1958 was well received.

Ellington in 1973

While his music had been featured on screen for years, and sometimes the whole orchestra in film shorts, Ellington (with Strayhorn) now began to work directly on music for movies, contributing scores for Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Paris Blues (1961). Ellington and Strayhorn, always looking for new musical territory, produced suites for John Steinbeck's novel Sweet Thursday, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt. The late 1950s also saw Ella Fitzgerald record her Duke Ellington Songbook with Ellington and his orchestra—a recognition that Ellington's songs had now become part of the cultural canon known as the 'Great American Songbook'.

Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker concludes that the work of Billy Strayhorn and Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder, the trial court drama film directed by Otto Preminger in 1959, is "indispensable, [although] . . . too sketchy to rank in the top echelon among Ellington-Strayhorn masterpiece suites like Such Sweet Thunder and The Far East Suite, but its most inspired moments are their equal."^[36] Film historians have recognized the soundtrack "as a landmark – the first significant Hollywood film music by African Americans comprising non-diegetic music, that is, music whose source is not visible or implied by action in the film, like an on-screen band." The score avoided the cultural stereotypes which previously characterized jazz scores and rejected a strict adherence to visuals in ways that presaged the New Wave cinema of the ’60s".^[37]

In the early 1960s, Ellington embraced recording with artists who had been rivals of the past, or who had been young artists from a later generation. The Ellington and Count Basie orchestras recorded together. During a period when he was between recording contracts he made records with Louis Armstrong (Roulette), Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane (both for Impulse) and participated in a session with Charles Mingus and Max Roach which produced the Money Jungle (United Artists) album. He signed to Frank Sinatra's new Reprise label, but the association with the label was short-lived.

Musicians who had previously worked with Ellington returned to the Orchestra as members: Lawrence Brown in 1960 and Cootie Williams in 1962.

"The writing and playing of music is a matter of intent.... You can't just throw a paint brush against the wall and call whatever happens art. My music fits the tonal personality of the player. I think too strongly in terms of altering my music to fit the performer to be impressed by accidental music. You can't take doodling seriously."^[14]

He formed new working relationships with artists from around the world, including the Swedish vocalist Alice Babs, and South African musicians Dollar Brand and Sathima Bea Benjamin (A Morning in Paris, 1963/1997). He was now performing all over the world; a significant part of each year was spent on overseas tours.

Ellington receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Nixon, 1969.

Last years[link]

Ellington was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1965, but was turned down.^[38] His reaction at 67 years old: "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be famous too young."^[39] In September of the same year, the first of his Sacred Concerts was given its premiere. It was an attempt to fuse Christian liturgy with jazz, and even though it received mixed reviews, Ellington was proud of the composition and performed it dozens of times. This concert was followed by two others of the same type in 1968 and 1973, known as the Second and Third Sacred Concerts. This caused controversy in what was already a tumultuous time in the United States. Many saw the Sacred Music suites as an attempt to reinforce commercial support for organized religion, though Ellington simply said it was, "the most important thing I've done."^[40] The Steinway piano upon which the Sacred Concerts were composed is part of the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Like Haydn and Mozart, Ellington conducted his orchestra from the piano – he always played the keyboard parts when the Sacred Concerts were performed.^[41]

Ellington continued to make vital and innovative recordings, including The Far East Suite (1966), the New Orleans Suite (1970), and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971), much of it inspired by his world tours. It was during this time that Ellington recorded his only album with Frank Sinatra, entitled Francis A. & Edward K. (1967).

Ellington was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966. He was later awarded several other prizes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, an Honorary PhD from the Berklee College of Music in 1971, and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973, the highest civilian honors in each country.^[3]

Work in films and the theater[link]

Jimmy Stewart and Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder.

Ellington's film work began in 1929 with the short film Black and Tan.^[42] Symphony in Black (1935) featured his extended piece 'A Rhapsody of Negro Life'. It introduced Billie Holiday, and won an Academy Award as the best musical short subject. He also appeared in the Amos 'n' Andy film Check and Double Check (1930). Ellington and his Orchestra continued to appear in films through the 1930s and 1940s, both in short films and in features such as Murder at the Vanities and Belle of the Nineties (1934), and Cabin in the Sky (1943). In the late 1950s, his work in films took the shape of scoring for soundtracks, notably Anatomy of a Murder (1959), with James Stewart, in which he appeared fronting a roadhouse combo, and Paris Blues (1961), which featured Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as jazz musicians.

He wrote an original score for director Michael Langham's production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada which opened on July 29, 1963. Langham has used it for several subsequent productions, most recently in an adaptation by Stanley Silverman which expands the score with some of Ellington's best-known works.

Ellington composed the score for the musical Jump For Joy, which was performed in Los Angeles during 1941. Ellington's sole book musical, Beggar's Holiday, was staged on Broadway in 1946. Sophisticated Ladies, an award-winning 1981 musical revue, incorporated many tunes from his repertoire.

Personal life[link]

Ellington married his high school sweetheart, Edna Thompson, on July 2, 1918, when he was 19. Shortly after their marriage, on March 11, 1919 Edna gave birth to their only son, Mercer Kennedy Ellington. Mercer played trumpet, led his own band and worked as his father's business manager, eventually taking full control of the band after Duke's death. He was an important archivist of his father's musical life.

Ellington's sister Ruth (1915–2004) later ran Tempo Music, Ellington's music publishing company. Ruth's second husband was the bass-baritone McHenry Boatwright, whom she met when he sang at her brother's funeral.

Ellington's eldest grandson Edward Kennedy Ellington II also is a musician and maintains a small salaried band known as the Duke Ellington Legacy, which frequently comprises the core of the big band operated by The Duke Ellington Center for the Arts.

Ellington died of lung cancer and pneumonia on May 24, 1974, a month after his 75th birthday, and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York City.^[43] At his funeral, attended by over 12,000 people at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Ella Fitzgerald summed up the occasion, "It's a very sad day. A genius has passed."^[44] Mercer Ellington picked up the reins of the orchestra immediately after Duke's death.

Legacy[link]

Duke Ellington's work has come to be recognized as a cornerstone of American culture and heritage. He is widely regarded as the most important composer in jazz; he was also a galvanizing bandleader who inspired many of his musicians to produce their best work, whilst himself being a significant exponent of jazz piano. His works have been revisited by artists and musicians around the world both as a source of inspiration and a bedrock of their own performing careers. Ellington's compositions are now the staple of the repertoire of music conservatories, and even high-school band programs that have embraced his music continue to give it life and voice.

His son, Mercer Ellington kept his big band alive after his death. When Mercer died, Paul Ellington kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going. It plays in concert halls around the world to this day.

Awards, honors and recognitions[link]

Memorials[link]

The grave of Duke Ellington

Numerous memorials have been dedicated to Duke Ellington, in cities from New York and Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles.

In Ellington's birthplace of Washington, D.C., there is a school dedicated to his honor and memory as well as one of the bridges over Rock Creek Park. The Duke Ellington School of the Arts educates talented students, who are considering careers in the arts, by providing intensive arts instruction and strong academic programs that prepare students for post-secondary education and professional careers. The Calvert Street Bridge was renamed the Duke Ellington Bridge; built in 1935, it connects Woodley Park to Adams Morgan.

On February 24, 2009, the United States Mint launched a new coin featuring Duke Ellington, making him the first African American to appear by himself on a circulating U.S. coin.^[45] Ellington appears on the reverse ("tails") side of the District of Columbia quarter.^[45] The coin is part of the U.S. Mint's program honoring the District and the U.S. territories^[46] and celebrates Ellington's birthplace in the District of Columbia.^[45] Ellington is depicted on the quarter seated at a piano, sheet music in hand, along with the inscription "Justice for All", which is the District's motto.^[46]

Ellington lived for years in a townhouse on the corner of Manhattan's Riverside Drive and West 106th Street. After his death, West 106th Street was officially renamed Duke Ellington Boulevard. A large memorial to Ellington, created by sculptor Robert Graham, was dedicated in 1997 in New York's Central Park, near Fifth Avenue and 110th Street, an intersection named Duke Ellington Circle.

Although he made two more stage appearances before his death, Ellington performed what is considered his final "full" concert in a ballroom at Northern Illinois University on March 20, 1974.^[47] The hall was renamed the Duke Ellington Ballroom in 1980.

A statue of Ellington at a piano is featured at the entrance to UCLA's Schoenberg Hall. According to UCLA Magazine:

When UCLA students were entranced by Duke Ellington's provocative tunes at a Culver City club in 1937, they asked the budding musical great to play a free concert in Royce Hall. 'I've been waiting for someone to ask us!' Ellington exclaimed. On the day of the concert, Ellington accidentally mixed up the venues and drove to USC instead. He eventually arrived at the UCLA campus and, to apologize for his tardiness, played to the packed crowd for more than four hours. And so, "Sir Duke" and his group played the first-ever jazz performance in a concert venue.^[48]

He is one of only five jazz musicians ever to have been featured on the cover of Time (the other four being Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Wynton Marsalis, and Dave Brubeck).^[49]

The Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival is a nationally renowned annual competition for prestigious high school bands. Started in 1996 at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the festival is named after Ellington because of the large focus that the festival places on his works.

Tributes[link]

Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6535 Hollywood Blvd.

• Dave Brubeck – dedicated "The Duke" (1954) to Ellington and it became a standard covered by others,^[50] both during Ellington's lifetime (such as by Miles Davis on Miles Ahead, 1957) and posthumously (such as George Shearing on I Hear a Rhapsody: Live at the Blue Note, 1992). The album The Real Ambassadors has a vocal version of this piece, You Swing Baby (The Duke), with lyrics by Iola Brubeck, Dave's wife. It is performed as a duet between Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae. It is also dedicated to Duke Ellington.
• Miles Davis – one month after Ellington's death, created his half-hour dedicated dirge "He Loved Him Madly" (1974) collected on Get Up with It.
• Stevie Wonder – wrote the song "Sir Duke" as a tribute to Ellington in 1976.

There are hundreds of albums dedicated to the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn by artists famous and obscure. The more notable artists include Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Bennett, Claude Bolling, Oscar Peterson, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Dick Hyman, Joe Pass, Milt Jackson, Earl Hines, André Previn, World Saxophone Quartet, Ben Webster, Zoot Sims, Kenny Burrell, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Martial Solal, Clark Terry and Randy Weston.

Homage from critics[link]

Gunther Schuller wrote, "Ellington composed incessantly to the very last days of his life. Music was indeed his mistress; it was his total life and his commitment to it was incomparable and unalterable. In jazz he was a giant among giants. And in twentieth century music, he may yet one day be recognized as one of the half-dozen greatest masters of our time."^[51]

Martin Williams said: "Duke Ellington lived long enough to hear himself named among our best composers. And since his death in 1974, it has become not at all uncommon to see him named, along with Charles Ives, as the greatest composer we have produced, regardless of category."^[52]

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Duke Ellington on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.^[53]

Andre Previn said, "You know, Stan Kenton can stand in front of a thousand fiddles and a thousand brass and make a dramatic gesture and every studio arranger can nod his head and say, ‘‘Oh, yes, that’s done like this.’’ But Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don’t know what it is!"^[54]

Awards[link]

Grammy Awards[link]

Ellington earned 12 Grammy awards from 1959 to 2000, three of which were posthumous.

Grammy Hall of Fame[link]

Recordings of Duke Ellington were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

Honors and inductions[link]

Ellington on the Washington, D.C. quarter released in 2009.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Cohen, Harvey G. Duke Ellington's America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-226-11263-3
• Collier, James Lincoln. Duke Ellington. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-19-503770-7
• Dailey, Raleigh. "Ellington as a Composer for the Piano," in Jazz Research Proceedings Yearbook, No. 31 (Jan.2001), pp. 151–156.
• Dance, Stanley. The World Of Duke Ellington. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970. ISBN 0-306-80136-1
• Ellington, Duke. Music Is My Mistress. New York: Da Capo, 1976 ISBN 0-7043-3090-3
• Ellington, Mercer. Duke Ellington In Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. ISBN 0-395-27511-5.
• Hajdu, David, Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996. ISBN 978-0-86547-512-0.
• Hasse, John Edward. Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington. New York: Da Capo, 1995. ISBN 0-306-80614-2
• Lawrence, A. H. Duke Ellington and His World: A Biography. New York: Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0-415-93012-X
• Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 978-0-19-504043-2. Especially pp. 318–357.
• Schuller, Gunther. The Swing Era: The Development Of Jazz, 1930–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-507240-5. Esp. pp. 46–157.
• (French) Gilles Tordjman, François Billard, Duke Ellington, Le Seuil, Paris, 1994. ISBN 978-2-02-013700-3
• Terkel, Studs (2002), Giants of Jazz (2nd ed.), New York: The New Press, ISBN 978-1-56584-769-9.
• Tucker, Mark. Ellington, The Early Years, University of Illinois Press, 1991. ISBN 0-252-01425-1
• Tucker, Mark. The Duke Ellington Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 ISBN 978-0-19-509391-9 .
• Ulanov, Barry. Duke Ellington, Creative Age Press, 1946.
• Weisbard, Eric, ed.. This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01344-1.
• Massagli, Luciano and Volonté, Giovanni. The New Desor: Duke Ellington's Story on Records Parts One and Two, 1999, Milan, Italy. Privately published two-part discography with no ISBN number. The most comprehensive Ellington discography for sessions and record issues.
• Stratemann, Dr. Klaus. Duke Ellington: Day by Day and Film by Film. Copenhagen: JazzMedia, 1992. ISBN 87-88043-34-7 Covers all of Duke's travels and films from the 1929 short film Black and Tan onwards.
• Timner, W.E. Ellingtonia: The Recorded Music of Duke Ellington and His Sidemen. 5th ed. Lanham, Md. & Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2007. ISBN 0-8108-5889-4 Has a unique discography of Ellington's sidemen.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Duke Ellington

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Duke Ellington

• Official website
• Official family website
• Symphony In Black (discussion and film)
• Duke Ellington at the Internet Movie Database
• Duke Ellington at the Internet Broadway Database
• Duke Ellington Biography, in Down Beat Magazine.
• Duke Ellington Collection: Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Archive Center.
• Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn: Jazz Composers An online exhibition from the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
• A Duke Ellington Panorama; including detailed discography.
• The Duke Ellington Society, TDES, Inc
• Duke Ellington: 20th International Conference. May 2008, London.
• Duke Ellington Orchestra at Wenig-LaMonica Associates
• "Duke Ellington". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=318. Retrieved September 2, 2010. 

Audrey Hepburn
Hepburn in a studio publicity portrait for 1957 film Love in the Afternoon
Born	Audrey Kathleen Ruston (1929-05-04)4 May 1929 Ixelles, Belgium
Died	20 January 1993(1993-01-20) (aged 63) Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland
Cause of death	Appendiceal cancer
Resting place	Tolochenaz Cemetery, Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland
Nationality	British
Other names	Edda van Heemstra Audrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston
Occupation	Actress, humanitarian
Years active	1948–1992
Spouse	Mel Ferrer (1954–1968) Andrea Dotti (1969–1982)
Partner	Robert Wolders (1980–1993; her death)
Children	Sean Hepburn Ferrer Luca Dotti
Parents	Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (deceased) Ella van Heemstra (deceased)
Awards	List of awards and honours
Signature
Website
www.audreyhepburn.com

Audrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time who was ranked as the third greatest female screen legend in the history of American cinema. Remembered as both a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century, Hepburn redefined glamour with "elfin" features and a gamine waif-like figure that inspired designs by Givenchy and earned her place in the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame.^[1][2][3]

Born in Ixelles, a district of Brussels, Hepburn spent her childhood between Belgium, England and the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem during the Second World War, where she studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam before moving to London in 1948 to continue ballet training with Marie Rambert and perform as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions.

After appearing in several British films and starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi, Hepburn gained instant Hollywood stardom for playing the Academy Award-winning lead role in Roman Holiday (1953). Later performing in Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Charade (1963), My Fair Lady (1964) and Wait Until Dark (1967), Hepburn became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age who received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations and accrued a Tony Award for her theatrical performance in the 1954 Broadway play Ondine. Hepburn remains one of few people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.

She appeared in fewer films as her life went on, devoting much of her later life to UNICEF. Her war-time struggles inspired her passion for humanitarian work and, although contributing to the organisation since 1954, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia between 1988 and 1992. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in late 1992, but a month later, aged 63, Hepburn died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland in early 1993.^[4][5][6]

Early life[link]

Audrey Hepburn was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston on 4 May 1929 on Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles, a municipality in Brussels in Belgium.^[7] Her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889–1980), was born in Úžice, Bohemia^[8] to a father of British Isles and Austrian descent^[9] and an Austrian mother.^[10] Ruston had earlier been married to Cornelia Bisschop, a Dutch heiress he met in the Dutch East Indies.^[11] Although born Ruston, he later double-barrelled the surname to the more "aristocratic" Hepburn-Ruston, mistakenly^[12] believing himself descended from James Hepburn, third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.^[11]

Her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra (1900–1984), was a Dutch aristocrat and the daughter of Aarnoud van Heemstra, who was mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920 and served as Governor of Suriname from 1921 to 1928. Ella's mother was Elbrig Willemine Henriette, Baroness van Asbeck (1873-1939), who was a granddaughter of Dirk van Hogendorp.^[10] At age nineteen, Ella had married the knight Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford, but they divorced in 1925. Hepburn had two half-brothers from this marriage: Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford (1920–1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924–2010).^[11][13]

Ruston and van Heemstra married in Batavia in September 1926. They moved back to Europe, to Ixelles in Belgium, where Hepburn was born in 1929. In January 1932 the family moved on to Linkebeek, a nearby Brussels municipality.^[14] Although born in Belgium, Hepburn had British citizenship through her father.^[7] Because of her mother's family in the Netherlands and her father's job with a British company,^[15] the family often travelled between the three countries. With her multinational background, she had a talent for languages ​​and went on to speak fluent English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian. Hepburn was a playful and imaginative child who discovered a passion for ballet by the age of 5, loved to read and was nicknamed "Monkey Puzzle" by her father.

Childhood and adolescence in World War II[link]

Hepburn's parents were members of the British Union of Fascists in the mid-1930s,^[16] with her father becoming a true Nazi sympathiser.^[17] After her mother discovered him in bed with the nanny of her children,^[18] Hepburn's father left the family abruptly. In the 1960s, Hepburn would finally locate him again in Dublin through the Red Cross. Although he remained emotionally detached, his daughter remained in contact and supported him financially until his death.^[19]

After Joseph had left in 1935, Ella van Heemstra took her children home to Arnhem, though her sons spent much time with their father in The Hague. Ella and Audrey moved to Kent in 1937, where Hepburn was educated at a tiny independent girls' school in the village of Elham, run by the sisters Rigden and then attended by about 14 children.^[20][21] In September 1939, her mother relocated her back home in Arnhem, in the belief that, like in the First World War, the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared a German attack. Whilst there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945 where, in addition to the standard school curriculum, she trained in ballet with Winja Marova. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, a derivative of her mother's name Ella,^[22] because an "English sounding" name was considered dangerous during the German occupation. In 1942, her uncle Otto van Limburg Stirum, husband of Ella's older sister Miesje, was executed in retaliation for a sabotage by the resistance movement, while her half-brother Jan was deported to Berlin to work in a German labour camp (Alex went into hiding to avoid the same fate).^[23] After this, Ella, Miesje and Audrey moved in with Baron van Heemstra in nearby Velp. During her wartime struggles, Hepburn suffered from malnutrition, developed acute anæmia, respiratory problems, and œdema.^[24] Hepburn, in a retrospective interview, commented, "I have memories. More than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on to the train. I was a child observing a child."^[25]

Notwithstanding such strife, by 1944, Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She had secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. "The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performances," she remarked.^[26] After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse and Arnhem was subsequently devastated by Allied artillery fire under Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed in the winter of 1944, the Germans had blocked the resupply routes of the Netherlands' already-limited food and fuel supplies as retaliation for railway strikes that were held to hinder German occupation. People starved and froze to death in the streets; Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits.^[17][27] One way that Hepburn passed the time was by drawing; some of her childhood artwork can be seen today.^[28] When the country was liberated, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed.^[29] Hepburn said in an interview that she fell ill from putting too much sugar in her oatmeal and eating an entire can of condensed milk.^[30] Hepburn's war-time experiences sparked her devotion to UNICEF, an international humanitarian organisation, in her later career.^[17][27]

Career[link]

Career beginnings and early roles[link]

After the war ended in 1945, Ella and Audrey moved to Amsterdam, where Hepburn took ballet lessons for three years with Sonia Gaskell, arguably the leading figure in Dutch ballet.^[31] In 1948 she appeared for the first time on film, as an air stewardess in an educational travel film made by Charles van der Linden and Henry Josephson, Dutch in Seven Lessons.^[32] Gaskell provided an introduction to Marie Rambert, and in 1948 Hepburn traveled with her mother to London to study ballet at the Ballet Rambert. She supported herself with part-time work as a model. Around that time she decided to drop "Ruston" from her double-barreled surname. When Hepburn asked Rambert about her future, Rambert assured her that she could continue to work there and have a great career, but her relatively tall height of 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m)^[33] coupled with her poor nutrition during the war would keep her from becoming a prima ballerina. Hepburn trusted Rambert's assessment and decided to pursue acting: a career in which she at least had the chance to excel.^[34] After becoming a star, Rambert said of Hepburn, "She was a wonderful learner. If she had wanted to persevere, she might have become an outstanding ballerina."^[35]

Hepburn's mother worked menial jobs in order to support them but Hepburn needed to find employment. Since she had trained in theatre all her life, working as a London chorus girl seemed sensible. "I needed the money; it paid ₤3 more than ballet jobs."^[36] She performed in the musical theatre revues High Button Shoes (1948) at the London Hippodrome and Cecil Landeau's Sauce Tartare (1949) and Sauce Piquante (1950) at the Cambridge Theatre in the West End. Her theatrical work, however, revealed that her voice was not strong and needed to be developed. Hepburn, therefore, took elocution lessons with the actor Felix Aylmer.^[37] After being spotted by a scout for Paramount Pictures on stage,^[35] Hepburn registered with the casting officers of British film studios while working in the West End and appeared in minor roles in the 1951 films One Wild Oat, Laughter in Paradise, Young Wives' Tale and The Lavender Hill Mob. Hepburn's first significant film performance was in Thorold Dickinson's The Secret People (1952), in which she played a prodigious ballerina and performed all of her own dancing sequences. Noticed by the French novelist Colette when on the set of Monte Carlo Baby (1951), Hepburn was also chosen to play the title character in the Broadway play Gigi. Upon first sight of Hepburn, Colette whispered, "Voilà," indicating Hepburn, "there's your Gigi."^[35][38] Opening on 24 November 1951 at the Fulton Theatre, the play ran for 219 performances finishing on 31 May 1952.^[39] Hepburn's debut on Broadway earned her a Theatre World Award.^[39]

[edit] Roman Holiday and increased popularity

Hepburn in a screen test for Roman Holiday (1953) which was also used as promotional material

In the Italian-set Roman Holiday (1953), a film she would later call her dearest movie, Hepburn had her first starring role as Princess Ann, an incognito European princess who, escaping the reins of royalty, falls in love with an American newsman (Gregory Peck). While producers initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role, director William Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn's screen test that he cast her in the lead. Unbeknownst that she was still being filmed after the screen test, Hepburn displayed her ability as she candidly answered questions, relaxed and completely unaware. Wyler later commented, "She had everything I was looking for: charm, innocence and talent. She also was very funny. She was absolutely enchanting and we said, 'That's the girl!'"^[40] Originally, the film was to have had only Gregory Peck's name above its title in large font while she would receive "Introducing Audrey Hepburn" beneath though Peck suggested to Wyler that he elevate her to equal billing so her name appeared before the title and in type as large as his: "You've got to change that because she'll be a big star and I'll look like a big jerk."^[41]

Peck was correct. Hepburn garnered critical and commercial acclaim for her portrayal and supplemented the unexpected Academy Award for Best Actress with her first BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and only Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama in 1953. A. H. Weiler noted in The New York Times that although "she is not precisely a newcomer to films, [Hepburn] the British actress who is being starred for the first time as Princess Ann, is a slender, elfin and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike in her profound appreciation of newly found, simple pleasures and love. Although she bravely smiles her acknowledgement of the end of that affair, she remains a pitifully lonely figure facing a stuffy future."^[1] Due to the instant celebrity that came with the film, she was signed to a seven-picture contract with Paramount with twelve months in between films to allow her time for stage work^[42] while spawning what became known as the Audrey Hepburn "look" after her illustration was placed on the September 1953 cover of TIME magazine.^[43]

Following her success in Roman Holiday, she starred in Billy Wilder's romantic Cinderella-story comedy Sabrina (1954) in which wealthy brothers (Humphrey Bogart and William Holden) compete for the affections of their chauffeur's innocent daughter (Hepburn). For her performance, she was nominated for the 1954 Academy Award for Best Actress while winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role the same year. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times labeled Hepburn "a young lady of extraordinary range of sensitive and moving expressions within such a frail and slender frame" concluding that "she is even more luminous as the daughter and pet of the servants' hall than she was as a princess last year."^[44] The uncredited Hubert de Givenchy was responsible for many of Hepburn's outfits in the film. Initially disappointed, Givenchy noted that, upon being told that the actress would be "Miss Hepburn", he had expected Katharine Hepburn. When faced with this actress, he told Hepburn he had little time to spare. Nevertheless, she knew exactly how she wanted to look and asked to view his latest collection.^[41] Their collaboration in Sabrina formed a life-long friendship and partnership; she was often a muse for many of his designs and her style became renowned internationally.

Beginning another collaboration that year, this time with actor Mel Ferrer, she starred in the fantasy play Ondine on Broadway. With her lithe and lean frame, Hepburn made a convincing water spirit named Ondine in this sad story about love found and lost with a human (Ferrer). A New York Times critic commented, "Somehow Miss Hepburn is able to translate [its intangibles] into the language of the theatre without artfulness or precociousness. She gives a pulsing performance that is all grace and enchantment, disciplined by an instinct for the realities of the stage." While the leading characters in the play grow apart, the actors found themselves becoming closer. Hepburn and Ferrer got married on September 25, 1954, in Switzerland; their sometimes tumultuous partnership would last for the better part of the next fifteen years. Her performance won her the 1954 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, the same year she won the Academy Award for Roman Holiday. Hepburn, therefore, stands as one of three actresses to receive the Academy and Tony Awards for Best Actress in the same year (the others being Shirley Booth and Ellen Burstyn).^[45] By the mid-1950s, Hepburn was vastly becoming one of the biggest motion picture stars in Hollywood and received the Golden Globe for World Film Favorite – Female in 1955,^[46] but also a major fashion influence. Her gamine and elfin appearance and widely recognised sense of chic were both admired and imitated. Hepburn was asked to play Anne Frank's counterpart in both the Broadway and film adaptations of Frank's life. Hepburn, however, who was born the same year as Frank, found herself "emotionally incapable" of the task, and at almost thirty years old, too old.^[47] The role was eventually given to Susan Strasberg and Millie Perkins in the play and film respectively.

Hepburn in War and Peace (1956)

Having become one of Hollywood's most popular box-office attractions, she went on to star in a series of successful films during the remainder of the decade, including her BAFTA- and Golden Globe-nominated role as Natasha Rostova in War and Peace (1956), an adaptation of the Tolstoy novel set during the Napoleonic wars with Henry Fonda and husband Mel Ferrer. In 1957, she exhibited her dancing abilities in her debut musical film Funny Face (1957) where Fred Astaire, a fashion photographer, discovers a beatnik bookstore clerk (Hepburn), who, lured by a free trip to Paris, becomes a beautiful model. The same year Hepburn starred in another romantic comedy, Love in the Afternoon, alongside Gary Cooper and Maurice Chevalier. Yet, she stepped away from lighthearted fare when she played Sister Luke in The Nun's Story (1959), which focuses on the character's struggle to succeed as a nun alongside co-star Peter Finch. The role accrued her third Academy Award nomination and earned her a second BAFTA Award. A review in Variety said "Hepburn has her most demanding film role, and she gives her finest performance." Films in Review stated that her performance "will forever silence those who have thought her less an actress than a symbol of the sophisticated child/woman. Her portrayal of Sister Luke is one of the great performances of the screen."^[48] Reportedly, she spent hours in convents and with members of the Church to bring truth to her portrayal: "I gave more time, energy and thought to this than to any of my previous screen performances."^[49] Following this, she received lukewarm reception for starring with Anthony Perkins in the romantic adventure Green Mansions (1959) where she plays – "with grace and dignity" – the "ethereal" Rima, a jungle girl, who falls in love with a Venezuelan traveller played by Perkins^[50] and The Unforgiven (1960), her only western film, where she appears "a bit too polished, too fragile and civilized among such tough and stubborn types" of Burt Lancaster and Lillian Gish in a story of racism against a group of Native Americans.^[51]

[edit] Breakfast at Tiffany's and continued stardom

Hepburn in the opening scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), wearing the iconic little black dress by Givenchy

Three months after the birth of her son, Sean, in 1960, Hepburn began work on Blake Edwards' Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), a film very loosely based on the Truman Capote novella. The film was drastically changed from the original version. Capote disapproved of many changes and proclaimed that Hepburn was "grossly miscast"^[52] as Holly Golightly, a quirky New York call girl,^[53] a role he had envisioned for Marilyn Monroe.^[52] Hepburn's portrayal of Golightly was adapted from the original: "I can't play a hooker," she admitted to Marty Jurow, co-producer of the film.^[52] Despite the lack of sexual innuendo in her character,^[52] her portrayal was nominated for the 1961 Academy Award for Best Actress and became an iconic character in American cinema. Often considered her defining role,^[54] Holly Golightly, Hepburn's high fashion style and sophistication within the film became synonymous with her. She named the role "the jazziest of my career"^[55] yet admitted that, "I'm an introvert. Playing the extroverted girl was the hardest thing I ever did."^[56] The little black dress which is worn by Hepburn in the beginning of the film is cited as one of the most iconic items of clothing in the history of the twentieth century and perhaps the most famous little black dress of all time.^{[57][58][59][60]}

Shirley MacLaine and Hepburn in the trailer for The Children's Hour (1961)

Playing opposite Shirley MacLaine and James Garner, her next role in William Wyler's lesbian-themed drama The Children's Hour (1961) saw Hepburn and MacLaine play teachers whose lives become troubled after a student accuses them of being lesbians. The film was one of Hollywood's earliest treatments of the subject of lesbianism,^[54] and perhaps due to the illiberal state of society, the film and Hepburn's performance went seemingly unnoticed both critically and commercially. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, however, noted that "it is not too well acted" with the exception of Hepburn who "gives the impression of being sensitive and pure" of its "muted theme"^[61] while Variety magazine also complimented Hepburn's "soft sensitivity, marvellous projection and emotional understatement" adding that Hepburn and MacLaine "beautifully complement each other."^[62]

With Cary Grant in Charade (1963)

Her only film with Cary Grant came in the comic thriller Charade (1963). Hepburn, who plays Regina Lampert, finds herself pursued by several men who chase the fortune her murdered husband had stolen. The role earned her third and final competitive BAFTA Award and accrued another Golden Globe nomination though critic Bosley Crowther was less kind: "Hepburn is cheerfully committed to a mood of how-nuts-can-you-be in an obviously comforting assortment of expensive Givenchy costumes."^[63] Grant (59 years old at the time), who had previously withdrawn from the starring male lead roles in Roman Holiday and Sabrina, was sensitive about the age difference between Hepburn (at age 34) and him, making him uncomfortable about the romantic interplay. To satisfy his concerns, the filmmakers agreed to change the screenplay so that Hepburn's character would be the one to romantically pursue his.^[64] Grant, however, loved to humour Hepburn and once said, "All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn."^[65]

Paris When It Sizzles (1964) reteamed Hepburn with William Holden nearly ten years after Sabrina. The Parisian-set screwball comedy, called "marshmallow-weight hokum",^[66] was "uniformly panned"^[67] but critics were kind to Hepburn's creation of Gabrielle Simpson, the young assistant of a Hollywood screenwriter (Holden) who aids his writer's block by acting out his fantasies of possible plots, describing her as "a refreshingly individual creature in an era of the exaggerated curve."^[66] Critical reception was worsened by a number of problems that plagued the set behind the scenes. Holden tried, without success, to rekindle a romance with the now-married actress; that, combined with his alcoholism made the situation a challenge. Hepburn, after principal photography began, demanded the dismissal of cinematographer Claude Renoir after seeing what she felt were unflattering dailies.^[67] Superstitious, she also insisted on dressing room 55 because that was her lucky number (she had dressing room 55 for Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and required that Givenchy, her long-time designer, be given a credit in the film for her perfume.^[67]

"Not since Gone with the Wind has a motion picture created such universal excitement as My Fair Lady," wrote Soundstage magazine in 1964,^[45] yet Hepburn's landing the role of Eliza Doolittle in the 1964 George Cukor film adaptation of the stage musical sparked controversy. Julie Andrews, who had originated the role in the stage show, had not been offered the part because producer Jack Warner thought Hepburn or Elizabeth Taylor more "bankable" propositions.^[68] Initially refusing, Hepburn asked Warner to give it to Andrews but, eventually, Hepburn was cast.^[68] Further friction was created when, although non-singer Hepburn had sung with "throaty charm" in Funny Face and had lengthy vocal preparation for the role in My Fair Lady,^[68] her vocals were dubbed by Marni Nixon.^[69][70] A dubber was required because Eliza Doolittle's songs were not transposed down to accommodate Hepburn's "low-mezzo voice" (as Nixon referred to it).^[68] Upset, when first informed, she walked out. She returned the next day and apologized to everybody for her "wicked behavior".^[68] Although Hepburn had lip synced to her recorded tracks during filming, Nixon looped her vocals in post-production and was given multiple attempts to match Hepburn's lip movements precisely.^[68] Overall, about 90% of her singing was dubbed despite being promised that most of her vocals would be used.^[68] Hepburn's voice remains in one line in "I Could Have Danced All Night", in the first verse of "Just You Wait", and in the entirety of its reprise in addition to sing-talking in parts of "The Rain in Spain" in the finished film.^[68] When asked about the dubbing of an actress with such distinctive vocal tones, Hepburn frowned and said, "You could tell, couldn't you? And there was Rex, recording all his songs as he acted ... next time —" She bit her lip to prevent her saying more.^[56] She later admitted that she would have never have accepted the role knowing that Warner intended to have nearly all of her singing dubbed.^[68] The controversy reached its height when, despite the film's accumulation of eight out of a possible twelve awards at the 37th Academy Awards, Hepburn was left nomination-less in the Best Actress category. Julie Andrews, however, was nominated for her efforts in Mary Poppins (1964), and won it. The media tried to play up a rivalry between the two actresses, even though both women denied any such bad feelings existed and got along well. Despite such strife, many critics greatly applauded Hepburn's "exquisite" performance.^[70] "The happiest thing about [My Fair Lady]," wrote Bosley Crowther in The New York Times "is that Audrey Hepburn superbly justifies the decision of Jack Warner to get her to play the title role."^[69] Her co-star Rex Harrison, who played Professor Higgins, also called Hepburn his favourite leading lady and Gene Ringgold of Soundstage also commented that "Audrey Hepburn is magnificent. She is Eliza for the ages,"^[45] while adding, "Everyone agreed that if Julie Andrews was not to be in the film, Audrey Hepburn was the perfect choice."^[45]

As the decade carried on, Hepburn appeared in an assortment of genres including the heist comedy How to Steal a Million (1966) where she played Nicole, the daughter of a famous art collector whose collection consists entirely of forgeries. Fearing her father's exposure, Nicole sets out to steal one of his priceless statues with the help of Simon Dermott (Peter O'Toole). In 1967, she starred in two films; the first being Two for the Road, a non-linear and innovative British dramedy that traces the course of a couple's troubled marriage. Director Stanley Donen said that Hepburn was more free and happy than he had ever seen her, and he credited that to co-star Albert Finney.^[71] The second, Wait Until Dark, is a suspense thriller in which Hepburn demonstrated her acting range by playing the part of a terrorised blind woman. Filmed on the brink of divorce, it was a difficult film considering husband Mel Ferrer was its producer and she lost fifteen pounds under the stress, but she found solace in co-star Richard Crenna and director Terence Young. Hepburn earned her fifth and final competitive Academy Award nomination for Best Actress; Bosley Crawther affirmed, "Hepburn plays the poignant role, the quickness with which she changes and the skill with which she manifests terror attract sympathy and anxiety to her and give her genuine solidity in the final scenes."^[72]

Final entertainment-related projects[link]

From 1967 onward, after fifteen highly successful years in film, Hepburn decided to devote more time to her family and acted only occasionally. She attempted a comeback in 1976, co-starring with Sean Connery, in the period piece Robin and Marian, which was moderately successful. In 1979, Hepburn took the lead role of Elizabeth Roffe in the international production of Bloodline, re-teaming with director Terence Young (Wait Until Dark). She shared top billing with co-stars Ben Gazzara, James Mason and Romy Schneider. Author Sidney Sheldon revised his novel when it was reissued to tie into the film, making her character a much older woman to better match the actress's age. The film, an international intrigue amid the jet-set, was a critical and box office failure. Hepburn's last starring role in a cinematic film was with Ben Gazzara in the 1981 comedy They All Laughed, directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The film was overshadowed by the murder of one of its stars, Bogdanovich's girlfriend, Dorothy Stratten; the film was released after Stratten's death but only in limited runs. In 1987, she co-starred with Robert Wagner in a tongue-in-cheek made-for-television caper film, Love Among Thieves, which borrowed elements from several of Hepburn's films, most notably Charade and How to Steal a Million.

After finishing her last role in a motion picture in 1988, a cameo appearance as an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always, Hepburn completed only two more entertainment-related projects, both critically acclaimed. Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn was a PBS documentary television series, her final performance before cameras filmed on location in seven countries in the spring and summer of 1990. A one-hour special preceded the series, debuting in March 1991, while the series commenced the day after her death (21 January 1993). For the series's debut, Hepburn was posthumously awarded the 1993 Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming. Recorded in 1992, her spoken word album, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales, features readings of classic children's stories and earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. She remains one of the few entertainers to win Grammy and Emmy Awards posthumously.

Contributions to UNICEF[link]

Hepburn was appointed Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF. Then-United States president George H. W. Bush presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work with UNICEF, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences posthumously awarded her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity, with her son accepting on her behalf. Grateful for her own good fortune after enduring the German occupation as a child, she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping impoverished children in the poorest nations. Hepburn's travels were made easier by her wide knowledge of languages; besides being naturally bilingual in English and Dutch, she also was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, and German.^[73]

Though she had done work for UNICEF in the 1950s, starting in 1954 with radio presentations, this was a much higher level of dedication. Those close to her^[who?] say that the thoughts of dying, helpless children consumed her for the rest of her life. Her first field mission was to Ethiopia in 1988. She visited an orphanage in Mek'ele that housed 500 starving children and had UNICEF send food. Of the trip, she said, "I have a broken heart. I feel desperate. I can't stand the idea that two million people are in imminent danger of starving to death, many of them children, [and] not because there isn't tons of food sitting in the northern port of Shoa. It can't be distributed. Last spring, Red Cross and UNICEF workers were ordered out of the northern provinces because of two simultaneous civil wars... I went into rebel country and saw mothers and their children who had walked for ten days, even three weeks, looking for food, settling onto the desert floor into makeshift camps where they may die. Horrible. That image is too much for me. The 'Third World' is a term I don't like very much, because we're all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering."^[74]

In August 1988, Hepburn went to Turkey on an immunisation campaign. She called Turkey "the loveliest example" of UNICEF's capabilities. Of the trip, she said, "the army gave us their trucks, the fishmongers gave their wagons for the vaccines, and once the date was set, it took ten days to vaccinate the whole country. Not bad."^{[citation needed]} In October, Hepburn went to South America. In Venezuela and Ecuador, Hepburn told the United States Congress, "I saw tiny mountain communities, slums, and shantytowns receive water systems for the first time by some miracle – and the miracle is UNICEF. I watched boys build their own schoolhouse with bricks and cement provided by UNICEF." Hepburn toured Central America in February 1989, and met with leaders in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In April, she visited Sudan with Wolders as part of a mission called "Operation Lifeline". Because of civil war, food from aid agencies had been cut off. The mission was to ferry food to southern Sudan. Hepburn said, "I saw but one glaring truth: These are not natural disasters but man-made tragedies for which there is only one man-made solution – peace."^{[citation needed]} In October, Hepburn and Wolders went to Bangladesh. John Isaac, a UN photographer, said, "Often the kids would have flies all over them, but she would just go hug them. I had never seen that. Other people had a certain amount of hesitation, but she would just grab them. Children would just come up to hold her hand, touch her – she was like the Pied Piper." In October 1990, Hepburn went to Vietnam in an effort to collaborate with the government for national UNICEF-supported immunisation and clean water programmes.

In September 1992, four months before she died, Hepburn went to Somalia. Calling it "apocalyptic", she said, "I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn't prepared for this." "The earth is red – an extraordinary sight – that deep terracotta red. And you see the villages, displacement camps and compounds, and the earth is all rippled around them like an ocean bed. And those were the graves. There are graves everywhere. Along the road, around the paths that you take, along the riverbeds, near every camp – there are graves everywhere."^{[citation needed]} Though scarred by what she had seen, Hepburn still had hope. "Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicisation of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanisation of politics." "Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist. I have seen the miracle of water which UNICEF has helped to make a reality. Where for centuries young girls and women had to walk for miles to get water, now they have clean drinking water near their homes. Water is life, and clean water now means health for the children of this village." "People in these places don't know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognise the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump UNICEF."

Personal life[link]

Romances, marriages, children and miscarriages[link]

Hepburn and Mel Ferrer on the set of War and Peace (1955)

In 1952, Hepburn was engaged to the young James Hanson,^[75] whom she had known since her London dancing days. She called it "love at first sight"; however, after having her wedding dress fitted and the date set, she decided the marriage would not work because the demands of their careers would keep them apart most of the time.^[76] She issued a statement about her decision, saying, "When I get married, I want to be really married."^[77] In the early 1950s, she also dated future Hair producer Michael Butler.^[78] Hepburn and Gregory Peck bonded during the filming of Roman Holiday (1953) and there were rumours that they were romantically involved; both denied it. Hepburn, however, added, "Actually, you have to be a little bit in love with your leading man and vice versa. If you're going to portray love, you have to feel it. You can't do it any other way. But you don't carry it beyond the set."^[79] They did however become lifelong friends. During the filming of Sabrina (1954), Hepburn and the already-married William Holden became romantically involved. She hoped to marry him and have children, but she broke off the relationship when Holden revealed that he had undergone a vasectomy.^[80][81] Although a common perception that Bogart and Hepburn (both starred in Sabrina together) did not get along, Hepburn commented that, "Sometimes it's the so-called 'tough guys' that are the most tender hearted, as Bogey was with me."^[82]

Hepburn and Andrea Dotti

At a cocktail party hosted by Gregory Peck, Hepburn met American actor Mel Ferrer.^[45] Ferrer recalled that, "We began talking about theatre; she knew all about the La Jolla Playhouse Summer Theatre, where Greg Peck and I had been co-producing plays. She also said she'd seen me three times in the movie Lili. Finally, she said she'd like to do a play with me, and she asked me to send her a likely play if I found one."^[45][83] Ferrer, vying for Hepburn to take the title role, sent her the script for the play Ondine. She agreed and rehearsals started in January 1954. Eight months later, on 25 September 1954, after meeting, working together and falling in love, the pair were married^[84] while preparing to star together in the film War and Peace (1955). Before having their only son, Hepburn had two miscarriages in March 1955^{[citation needed]} and in 1959. The latter occurred when filming The Unforgiven (1960) where breaking her back after falling off a horse and onto a rock resulted in hospital stay and miscarriage induced by physical and mental stress. Hepburn, therefore, took a year off work in order to successfully have a child. Sean Hepburn Ferrer, their son, whose godfather was the novelist A. J. Cronin who resided near Hepburn in Lucerne, was born on 17 July 1960. Despite the insistence from gossip columns that the marriage would not last, Hepburn claimed that she and her husband were inseparable and very happy together yet admitting that he had a bad temper.^[85] Ferrer was rumoured to be too controlling of Hepburn and had been referred to by others as being her Svengali – an accusation that Hepburn laughed off.^[86] William Holden was quoted as saying, "I think Audrey allows Mel to think he influences her." After a 14 year marriage, the couple divorced on 5 December 1968. Their son believed that Hepburn had stayed in the marriage too long. In June 2008, Mel Ferrer died of heart failure at the age of ninety.

Then-President Ronald Reagan with Hepburn and Robert Wolders in 1981

She met Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti on a cruise and fell in love with him on a trip to Greek ruins. She believed she would have more children, and possibly stop working. She married him on 18 January 1969 at age 40, she gave birth to their son Luca Dotti on 8 February 1970. When pregnant with Luca in 1969, Hepburn was more careful, resting for months and passing the time by painting before delivering him by caesarean section. Hepburn had her final miscarriage in 1974.^[87] Although Dotti loved Hepburn and was well liked by Sean, who called him "fun", he began having affairs with younger women. As for herself, Hepburn had a romantic relationship with actor Ben Gazzara during the filming of the 1979 movie Bloodline.[3] The Dotti-Hepburn marriage lasted thirteen years and ended in 1982 when Hepburn felt Luca and Sean were old enough to handle life with a single mother.^{[citation needed]} Although Hepburn broke off all contact with Ferrer (she only spoke to him twice more in the remainder of her life), she remained in touch with Dotti for the benefit of Luca. In October 2007, Andrea Dotti died from complications of a colonoscopy.

From 1980 until her death, Hepburn lived and was romantically involved with Dutch actor Robert Wolders,^[88] the widower of actress Merle Oberon. She met Wolders through a friend in the later stage of her marriage to Dotti. The divorce from Dotti finalised, Wolders and Hepburn started their lives together, although they never married. In 1989, she called the nine years she had spent with him the happiest years of her life. "Took me long enough," she said in an interview with American journalist Barbara Walters. Walters then asked why they never married; Hepburn replied that they were married, just not formally.^{[citation needed]}

Death[link]

Grave of Audrey Hepburn in Tolochenaz, Switzerland

Upon return from Somalia to Switzerland in late September 1992, Hepburn began suffering from abdominal pains. She went to specialists and received inconclusive results, so decided to have herself examined while on a trip to Los Angeles, California in October. On 1 November, Hepburn checked in at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with her family. Doctors performed a laparoscopy and discovered abdominal cancer that had spread from her appendix, a very rare form of cancer belonging to a group of cancers known as pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP).^[89] Having grown slowly over several years, the cancer had metastasised, not as a tumour, but as a thin coating over her small intestine. After surgery, the doctors put Hepburn through 5-fluorouracil Leucovorin chemotherapy.^[90] A few days later, she had an obstruction and medication was not enough to dull the pain. She underwent further surgery on 1 December. After one hour, the surgeon decided that the cancer had spread too far to be removed fully, and was inoperable.

After coming to terms with the gravity of Hepburn's illness, her family decided to return home to Switzerland in order to celebrate her last Christmas. Because Hepburn was still recovering from surgery, she was unable to fly on commercial aircraft. Hubert de Givenchy offered to help and arranged for Rachel Lambert "Bunny" Mellon to send her private Gulfstream jet, filled with flowers, to take Hepburn from Los Angeles to Geneva.^[91] On the evening of 20 January 1993, at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland, Hepburn died in her sleep of appendiceal cancer. After her death, Gregory Peck went on camera and tearfully recited her favourite poem, "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore.^[92]

Funeral services were held at the village church of Tolochenaz, Switzerland, on 24 January 1993. Maurice Eindiguer, the same pastor who wed Hepburn and Mel Ferrer and baptised her son Sean in 1960, presided over her funeral while Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, of UNICEF, delivered a eulogy. Many family members and friends attended the funeral, including her sons, partner Robert Wolders, brother Ian Quarles van Ufford, ex-husbands Andrea Dotti and Mel Ferrer, Hubert de Givenchy, executives of UNICEF, and fellow actors Alain Delon and Roger Moore.^[93] Flower arrangements were sent to the funeral by Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor and the Dutch royal family.^[94] The same day as her funeral, Hepburn was interred at the Tolochenaz Cemetery, a small cemetery that sits atop a hill overlooking the village.^[95]

Legacy[link]

Hepburn's legacy as an actress and a personality has endured long after her death. The American Film Institute named Hepburn third among the Greatest Female Stars of All Time. Even in her last years, she remained a visible presence in the film world. She received a tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 1991 and was a frequent presenter at the Academy Awards. She was the recipient of four posthumous awards including the 1993 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and competitive Grammy and Emmy Awards. She has been the subject of many biographies since her death and the 2000 dramatisation of her life titled The Audrey Hepburn Story which starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and Emmy Rossum as the older and younger Hepburn respectively.^[96] The film concludes with footage of the real Audrey Hepburn, shot during one of her final missions for UNICEF.

Hepburn's image is widely used in advertising campaigns across the world. In Japan, a series of commercials used colourised and digitally enhanced clips of Hepburn in Roman Holiday to advertise Kirin black tea. In the United States, Hepburn was featured in a Gap commercial which ran from 7 September 2006, to 5 October 2006. It used clips of her dancing from Funny Face, set to AC/DC's "Back in Black", with the tagline "It's Back – The Skinny Black Pant". To celebrate its "Keep it Simple" campaign, the Gap made a sizeable donation to the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund.^[97]

Hepburn has been considered a gay icon.^{[98][99][100]}

Style[link]

Hepburn was first dressed by Givenchy in the film Sabrina (1954)

Hepburn's reverence as a fashion icon has continued long since her death, proved by accruing the titles "most beautiful woman of all time" and "most beautiful woman of the 20th century" in polls by Evian and QVC respectively.^{[101][102][103]} Despite her physique being far from the Hollywood preference of bosomy actresses like Marilyn Monroe, Martine Carol, Kim Novak and Lana Turner. "This girl, singlehanded, may make bosoms a thing of the past," said director Billy Wilder maliciously, adding that she was very feminine by her grace, huge eyes and long legs, but even against the gender stereotypes of the time, the natural thickness of her brown eyebrows makes her "funny face unforgettable."^[104]

Her style was partially the result of meeting the couturier Hubert de Givenchy, who designed her dresses for Sabrina in 1954. Hepburn revealed, "[Givenchy] gave me a look, a kind, a silhouette. He has always been the best and he stayed the best. Because he kept the spare style that I love. What is more beautiful than a simple sheath made an extraordinary way in a special fabric, and just two earrings?"^[104] The designer created her outfits for many other films, including Funny Face, Love in the Afternoon, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Paris When It Sizzles, Charade and How to Steal a Million. In the latter, Peter O'Toole's character tells Hepburn's to "give Givenchy the night off", persuading her to dress as a cleaning lady. Givenchy was always amazed that, even after thirty five years of collaboration, "her measurements [had] not changed an inch."^[104] Givenchy remained Hepburn's friend and ambassador, and she his muse, throughout her life. Hepburn observed, "I have many things in common with Hubert. We like the same things."^[104] She agreed to model, on occasions, the creations of her friend. In 1988, when he presented his summer collection in Paris, she said, "Wherever I am in the world, he is always there. He is a man who does not disperse into worldliness. He has time for those he loves."^[104] Givenchy subsequently created a perfume for her titled L'Interdit (French for "Forbidden"). She equally inspired fashion photographer Richard Avedon, who captured an intentionally overexposed close-up of Hepburn's face in which only her famous features – her eyes, her eyebrows, and her mouth – are visible. "I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait."^[105]

Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

Italian shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo created a shoe for her and made her ambassador of his fashion house while honouring her in a 1999 exhibition dedicated to the actress titled Audrey Hepburn, a woman, the style. She also popularised the Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses after the film Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) in addition to being on the cover of many fashion magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. She exercised fashion in her lifetime and continues to influence fashion. Fashion experts affirmed that Hepburn's longevity as a style icon results from her sticking with a look that suited her: "clean lines, simple yet bold accessories, minimalist palette."^[106] One of her many costars, Shirley Maclaine, wrote in her 1996 memoir My Lucky Stars, "[Hepburn] had very rare qualities and I envied her style and taste. I felt clumsy and old fashioned when I was with her." Hepburn's fashion styles continue to be popular among women today.^[107] Although Hepburn enjoyed fashion, she did not place much importance on it, preferring casual and comfortable clothes contrary to her image.^[108] In addition, she never considered herself attractive. She stated in a 1959 interview, "you can even say that I hated myself at certain periods. I was too fat, or maybe too tall, or maybe just plain too ugly... you can say my definiteness stems from underlying feelings of insecurity and inferiority. I couldn't conquer these feelings by acting indecisive. I found the only way to get the better of them was by adopting a forceful, concentrated drive."^[109]

The "little black dress" from Breakfast at Tiffany's, designed by Givenchy, was sold at a Christie's auction on 5 December 2006 for £467,200 (approximately $920,000), almost seven times its £70,000 pre-sale estimate. This was the highest price paid for a dress from a film,^[110] until it was surpassed by the $4.6 million paid in June 2011 for the Marilyn Monroe "subway dress" from The Seven Year Itch.^[111] The proceeds went to the City of Joy Aid charity to aid underprivileged children in India. The head of the charity said, "there are tears in my eyes. I am absolutely dumbfounded to believe that a piece of cloth which belonged to such a magical actress will now enable me to buy bricks and cement to put the most destitute children in the world into schools."^[112] However, the dress auctioned by Christie's was not the one that Hepburn wore in the film.^[113] Of the two dresses that Hepburn did wear, one is held in the Givenchy archives while the other is displayed in the Museum of Costume in Madrid.^[112] A subsequent London auction of Hepburn's film wardrobe in December 2009 raised £270,200 ($437,000), including £60,000 for the black Chantilly lace cocktail gown from How to Steal a Million. Half the proceeds were donated to All Children in School, a joint venture of The Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund and UNICEF.^[114]

Credits[link]

Awards[link]

See also[link]

Biography portal

• List of persons who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards
• White floral Givenchy dress of Audrey Hepburn (Academy Awards, 1954)

References[link]