Hello all, and many thanks for your enduring patience with me. To make a long life story short, I decided at the last minute to drive 500 miles south and spend the holiday with my family, since I hadn’t had a holiday with them in 3 years for one reason or another. My mum’s accident made me realize that our time with each other is limited, and I need to make the most of it. My baby nephew also turned one year old and his favourite aunt had to be onhand for that momentous occasion, of course. I also managed to write a novel for NaNoWriMo, but that’s a different story, get it?

Long story short, I’m back and we have a lot of catching up to do! Here’s a short list of things that have been going on in the world of Audrey Hepburn lately:

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There’s a new video on You Tube from a made-for-TV biography that I don’t think I’ve ever seen. The clip that was uploaded was from a Chinese airing, but maybe it’s been aired in English-speaking countries? Either way, it’s fantastic interviews with Mel Ferrer, Henry Mancini (composer of “Moon River”), Stanley Donen (director of Funny Face and Two For the Road), and Hubert de Givenchy. It’s a really fascinating segment to watch and gives more insight into Audrey’s career and relationships with these men, you really just have to see it to appreciate it. I certainly can’t do it justice!

Last month I posted about a new BBC biography series called My Best Friend, and how Sean Hepburn Ferrer had filmed an episode about his mum, Audrey Hepburn. Beaker from L’Ange des Enfants was kind enough to send me a copy of this, and I’ve just finished posting it to You Tube for everyone to enjoy. If you live outside of the UK then chances are you haven’t seen this biography yet, and I highly recommend that you do. Not only does it give you yet another side of Audrey, but we see more of the elusive Sean. The program seems to have been filmed at his house in Tuscany, but it also shows new footage of La Paisible, Audrey’s wonderful home in Tolochenaz, Switzerland. Sean is very open about his relationship with his mother, and talks quite frankly about his parents’ divorce and what went wrong. It’s the most I’ve ever heard on the subject, and it gives a lot of insight to both Audrey and Mel Ferrer that most people either never got or seemed to have missed entirely. All in all, it’s a lovely biography with fascinating content and great pictures, a good way to spend half an hour.

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Last year Sean Ferrer filmed a show for BBC called My Best Friend: Audrey Hepburn. It was part of an ongoing series about behind-the-scenes biographies of celebrities as told by their best friends. As Sean himself said at the time, “It doesn’t happen always that your parent is also your best friend,” but he and his mum were always very close. He had also called Audrey his best friend in his book An Elegant Spirit. I haven’t seen this show yet, but if you care to register at the website of the company that produced this, 3DD, then you may be able to see it for free online! (I’m waiting for my password.) You can click here to learn a bit more about the documentary, and you can register for your password here.

Also, there’s been lots of activity in the Audrey Hepburn community. If you haven’t already, check it out!

There was an eBay auction last week for a white Mercedes-Benz supposedly owned by Audrey Hepburn. There’s a lot of speculation going around between Audrey fans, and the ad itself is very strange. The seller of the car (based in San Francisco) has a very long piece about the car up, though if you actually read the eight paragraphs, it’s mainly insisting that Audrey’s two favourite colours were white and red (the colours of the car), and lists every example in her films available to back up this fact.

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There are scads of books out on Audrey Hepburn now, from picture books to biographies to bizarre fantasy conspiracy “tell-all”s, but one of the first ones out on Audrey was Audrey Hepburn: A Celebration, by Sheridan Morley. While spotty and fairly breezy as a biography, it was a nice black and white picture book and very enjoyable to flip through. Morley was also a film critic, and is cited often in Barry Paris’s biography of Audrey. Morley was most certainly a Hepburn fan from day one, it seems. To read more about Morley and his life, go here.

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If you’re in North Carolina or nearby and have some free time on Saturday, the North Carolina Arboretum is screening Gardens of the World absolutely free this coming Saturday! It starts at 1:30 in the afternoon and runs for an hour, and you only need to pay for parking. For more information and a contact number, go here.

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First off, another big thank you to Franklin, who has made us aware of a new French biography on Audrey. Audrey Hepburn, by Christian Dureau, was released November 9 2006, and while there doesn’t seem to be very much information on it (at least on the French Amazon), it is 109 pages and available for €14,16. Judging from the author’s other works, it seems like this biography is pretty barebones (the page count seems to say so, too) and wouldn’t say anything new to the reader. There are also no reviews up anywhere that I can find, so it’s hard to say for sure whether it’s worth it. If my French were a little less rusty, I’d give it a go!

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News is pretty slow today. Real slow, in fact. So I’m afraid I only have one thing to share, but it’s a very excellent article. It starts off talking about the Christie’s auction, and how the bidding frenzy and record-breaking price showed that the allure of Audrey is still going strong 13 years after she left us, and gives an excellent biography as well. To read the whole article, click here. (It’s a bit long, but well worth the read.) There’s one error, though: towards the end the author goofs and lists Sean Ferrer as Audrey’s husband. Please, no Oedipus references.

From the ever resourceful Audrey Hepburn Circle comes yet another great find: Time Magazine’s first ever article on Audrey! 53 years ago, a then unknown actress was put on the cover of Time. It was the first — and only — time an actor had ever been featured on the cover before even one feature film of theirs had been released. That unknown was Audrey Hepburn, and you can read the entire article here. It’s an exceptional article and has a surprisingly detailed biography on her as well. You almost don’t need to read a book on her after reading this!

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