Thank you all for your ongoing patience here. I’m in the midst of moving (yes, again) and I start a whopping 16 units of school next week, so needless to say, I’m a bit crazy right now.

I hope you’ve been enjoying the pictures from the Timeless Audrey exhibit! Perhaps someday soon when I have a free day (hah!), I can maybe drop by the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund office and ask if they need help and maybe suss out some information, like where the exhibit will go next. You should all have the chance to see it in person! I shall try for you.

In the meantime, my brother-in-law unearthed the script for Why Can’t I Be Audrey Hepburn? among his things and lent it to me. Not sure if it was for my screenwriting class that I’ll be taking, or because I’m somewhat enamored of the lady, but after hearing about this script (and the rumors surrounding it) for ages, I can’t wait to read it!

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Oh, finally! I have just finished uploading my pictures from the Timeless Audrey exhibit in Berlin to Flickr for your enjoyment.

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I’m still in Germany right now, but somewhere in the world it’s still May 4th and Audrey’s birthday. So I’m not really late. Went to the Timeless Audrey exhibit, of course, and thanks to dear Daniel Acksteiner got to see the award ceremony for the 2009 Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award. I’m using other people’s computers until I get back home and my cable to hookup the camera is in my hotel room, so I’m afraid there’s no pictures yet. When I get back to Paris, promise. In the meantime, wish Audrey a happy 80th birthday in your own special way, even if it’s just watching your favourite movie of hers, and have a great rest of the day.

More later . . .

This time, my friends, there’s good reason for my not updating regularly. I’ve been sitting on this as long as I can, but now I must share: I will be in Berlin for the Timeless Audrey exhibit on May 4, Audrey’s birthday! I haven’t found any details yet but I know that something special is happening on what would have been our fair lady’s 80th birthday, so you shall know shortly after I do. I will, of course, be taking loads of pictures where I can (there’s no photos allowed in the exhibit, but I’ll see what I can do in the name of journalistic integrity) and bringing back as much information as possible for everyone that can’t just jump out to Germany at the drop of a hat. (There’s also rumors that the exhibit may be coming back to the US for a mini-tour, but nothing is confirmed.)

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Great news for all of the Audrey fans around the world who have been asking about the Timeless Audrey exhibit, the traveling display of Audrey Hepburn memorabilia. I got an email this morning from a fellow by the name of Daniel who tells me that the exhibit is currently in Berlin (Germany), and will stay there until May 10th. This is very exciting! After spending more than a year in Japan, where Audrey is still a very huge icon, the flats and displays needed to be refurbished after a lot of moving and general wear and tear, and no one at the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund was sure when the exhibit would be ready to travel again. Now we know.

Anyway, all proceeds from visitors to Timeless Audrey will directly benefit UNICEF’s All Children In School, a project we know was very close to Audrey’s heart. I’m putting up a copy of the flyer (in English, so I don’t need to translate for you) below, and Daniel has also asked that I put up a link to a website put up expressly for Timeless Audrey’s time in Germany, which I’m more than happy to do. The site can be found here. It’s all in German, though, so brush up on your Deutsche before heading in.

That’s the only information I have about the exhibit at this time, but I’ll be sure to keep an eye out and see if I can’t find out if it will be making other European stops. It’d be silly not to, right? And maybe someday it’ll come back to the States and do a more extensive tour for us Americans that can’t afford a trip right now. *sigh* Soon. The bad never lasts forever, even though it may feel like it, right?

Okay, that’s all for now. If you haven’t been around to visit lately, then you probably don’t know that the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund website got quite a major overhaul and now matches the Audrey Bag site. Go look!

By now everyone must have heard about the Timeless Audrey exhibit. If you haven’t, I shall refresh your memory: it’s a traveling exhibit of memorabilia and personal items from Audrey Hepburn’s public and private life, put together in an intimate, open show where you’re close enough to actually touch certain items if you are so inclined. In fact, Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund executive director Ellen Erwin once said that people were a little too free to touch things — women would walk off with Audrey’s scarves! Anyway, this exhibit was around in New Orleans for a while, then toured Japan extensively for two years. It’s being refurbished right now and is set to tour Europe next year, and who knows where it will go next?

But for now, Grace Kelly seems set to step in and fill that gap that the Timeless Audrey exhibit is leaving in its absence. To commemorate the 25 year anniversary of Princess Grace’s untimely death, her family is putting together a remarkably similar concept called The Grace Kelly Years. Like Timeless Audrey, The Grace Kelly Years will feature a timeline of Grace’s life and many artifacts from her short film career and private life as Princess of Monaco. The exhibit is set to open on July 12 in Monaco, and will then travel to New York in September, where two of Grace’s dresses will be sold at auction. The interesting thing (besides the whole similar exhibit bit) is that her dresses will also be sold to benefit the charity of Grace’s choice, and is expected to fetch more than the record-breaking amount that Audrey’s black column dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s caught at auction last December. It’s not recorded as to who gave that estimate, or if both dresses are being sold together or separately, or even where the dresses will be auctioned at, but we’ll see if Grace can indeed knock Audrey out of her record-breaking spot. You can read more about Les Annees Grace Kelly (The Grace Kelly Years) here.

Late last year the official site of the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund said that the European leg of the Timeless Audrey Exhibit should be launching sometime in 2007. I wrote Ellen Erwin, executive director of the Children’s Fund, to ask if any tour dates had been set as of yet for the tour. She was kind enough to write back, and it looks as if the tour will be delayed a bit. After traveling Japan for two years, the wall and platform props that are an integral part of the exhibit need to be refurbished, so it looks like 2008-2009 for the European tour. This just means more time to save money and plan for an Audrey-centered trip for some of us. We’ll have to wait a bit longer to see the exhibit, but it’ll look sparkling and brand-new, which is worth waiting for.

In other news, Natalie Portman is again drawing comparisons to Audrey Hepburn. This time it’s for the US premiere of Natalie’s latest film, Paris, je t’aime. She was sporting a cute black and white mod dress and a very Audrey updo, as you can see in the picture to the right. What do you think?

So I just got an email from the Children’s Fund (don’t get huffy, I’m on the mailing list just like a million other people are), and they’re finally offering The Audrey Hepburn Treasures for sale on their website like they did when Sean’s Elegant Spirit came out. But unlike Elegant, Treasures is not signed, so please make note of that. It’s also selling at full price ($49.95 US), so I personally think you’re better off at Amazon. And don’t worry about hurting the Children’s Fund, since they published the book anyway and will get the writer’s cut.

What’s better than that, though, is the fact that they’ve finally updated the events page! Now you can see what they’re doing. They kind of cheated by entering stuff from the more recent past that hadn’t been up before, but here’s the link to the events page (now with pictures!), and for the lazy amongst you, here’s a list of their upcoming events:

November 4, 2006
Audrey Hepburn will receive the Lifetime Humanitarian Rose Award at a gala being held at Kensington Palace in London, England. The honor is being given by the People’s Princess Charitable Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in memory or Princess Diana, whose mission it is to raise funds for charities around the world using the Princess’ collection of dresses it owns and which annually recognizes, “extraordinary individuals.”

November 28, 2006
The 2006 Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award will be presented at UNICEFS’s annual Snowflake Gala in New York City. Established in 2004, past recipients include Sir Roger Moore, Pamela Fiori and special award recipients Bob Geldof, Bono and One org.

2007
Timeless Audrey Exhibit – European Tour
After an 18 month, 10 city tour of Japan, Timeless Audrey, the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund traveling exhibit on the life and career of Audrey Hepburn, will launch its multi-city, multi-country European tour. Funds from the exhibit, created to benefit UNICEF’s “All Children In School” educational initiative, help to provide 120,000,000 children with quality basic education.

No offense to the Europeans, but I’m pretty cheesed about that last entry. The exhibit was supposed to come to America this year (2006) and tour, and that would be the last stop. So you guys took our Audrey time! Completely not fair, unless I make a trip . . . well, thinking about it. Still, it was pretty mean of them to tell me about the American leg and get a lot of people’s hopes up.

Also, there are a few new items in their shop for your shopping pleasure. Besides the two books they have up, there’s also new UNICEF postcards, a DVD called “The Children of the Tsunami” (remember their big fundraising when the tsunami hit?), the t-shirts from before, the world music CD, and finally the Christmas cards with Audrey’s drawings.

Moving on, I found an article that’s really very funny. It talks about the upcoming dress auction, and as long as you’re dreaming about buying it — let alone wearing it! — this article will help you choose some jewelry to go along with the priceless dress.

Next up is an article about Audrey’s new wave of popularity, and while the author seems to admit that the Gap ads were crass and a bit silly, nothing could really hurt Audrey’s image and it does well to promote her to new generations. It talks about her continuing popularity and her timelessness, and can be read in full here.

Lastly, here’s yet another article talking about the Gap commercials, but this piece morphs into a review for Spoto’s book. It says Spoto’s book is formulaic, but gives a mini-biography of Audrey as well as some good quotes. One that’s been pointed out in the Audrey Hepburn Circle is, “Humanitarian means human welfare and responding to human suffering — that’s what politics should be about, ideally.” You can read the full story here.