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Authors: Diana Maychick
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didn’t
understand him. He postponed opening night by a day and drilled his players for
twenty hours without stop.
When
the show opened, it was a resounding success. But Audrey was too tired to care.
Throughout her career, she’d overdo efforts to please and wear herself out in
the bargain. On her one day off, she slept for a full day and pretended she had
been out shopping. “I always fought being delicate,” she said.
“It made me feel inadequate.”
A
year later, when Landau was casting for a similar revue,
Sauce Piquante,
Audrey was his first choice. “The audiences
just loved her,” he told a colleague. “With all the stars in the
show, they always give that skinny little thing the longest ovation.”
Moira
Lister, the bona fide star of both revues and a comic actress renowned for her
ability to completely transform herself into her characters, said that Audrey
was “quite the opposite. She was herself whatever she did, and people just
loved her for it.”
Jealousies
did arise, however. “I’ve got the best tits onstage,” a buxom
Scandinavian named Aud Johanssen reportedly griped, “but everybody’s
staring at a girl who hasn’t got any!” Audrey always insisted the story
was apocryphal, but she laughed with glee anytime it was repeated. “It’s
true,” she said. “They did stare. But I think that’s because I stuck
out even more—in height, that is!”
Chapter 7
For
a girl who kept to herself throughout her teen years, the heady experience of
being watched and wanted was both intoxicating and frightening.
When
famed photographer Anthony Beauchamp first laid eyes on Audrey, he
“couldn’t quite fathom that she was real. There were so many paradoxes in
that face,” he recalled. “Darkness and purity; depth and youth;
stillness and animation. I had photographed many of the greats, Garbo included,
but I felt I’d made a real discovery when I found Audrey.
“She
had a fresh new look, a beauty that was ethereal. It certainly had nothing to
do with her dancing. She was on the wooden side in that area, but she was so
striking to look at, you barely noticed.
“She
was extremely nervous when I approached her backstage after the show. I got the
impression that a lot of gentlemen and not so gentle men were making her all
kinds of propositions at this time. When I introduced myself and said I wanted
to take her picture, she pleaded poverty. I told her the honor would be mine. I
wanted to have her in my portfolio! After the session, she sent me a proper
English schoolgirl thank-you note and a box of chocolates. She was one of the
nicest subjects I ever had.”
Critics,
too, were beginning to single her out. “She had no lines to say, no part
to play,” recalled reviewer Milton Shulman about her performance in Sauce Piquante. “But with her
infectious grin, she actually looked like she was enjoying herself. Perhaps it
was this marked contrast to what the rest of us were feeling that made her as
conspicuous as a fresh carnation on a shabby suit.”
And
the beauty of it all was that her delightful way, that charming insouciance,
was a genuine reflection of her personality.
Dressed
in tailored suits and pillbox hats, with her ubiquitous white gloves spotless,
Audrey was the good daughter every parent longed for. And that kind of
innocence embodied its own brand of sex appeal—she was the forbidden fruit,
the unapproachable one. In fact, however, she was game for a variety of
rough-and-tumble activity.
“I
was doing a lot of modeling at the time,” Audrey recalled, “and the
photographers were always shocked that I was willing to take some risks for the
photo shoot. I got a kick out of jumping across streams or hanging from the
edge of a building. I wasn’t afraid of stuff like that. After living through
war, those things were minor.”
But
when one photographer suggested that she pad her bra to appear more bosomy,
Audrey balked, until her press agent at the time, the influential
understand him. He postponed opening night by a day and drilled his players for
twenty hours without stop.
When
the show opened, it was a resounding success. But Audrey was too tired to care.
Throughout her career, she’d overdo efforts to please and wear herself out in
the bargain. On her one day off, she slept for a full day and pretended she had
been out shopping. “I always fought being delicate,” she said.
“It made me feel inadequate.”
A
year later, when Landau was casting for a similar revue,
Sauce Piquante,
Audrey was his first choice. “The audiences
just loved her,” he told a colleague. “With all the stars in the
show, they always give that skinny little thing the longest ovation.”
Moira
Lister, the bona fide star of both revues and a comic actress renowned for her
ability to completely transform herself into her characters, said that Audrey
was “quite the opposite. She was herself whatever she did, and people just
loved her for it.”
Jealousies
did arise, however. “I’ve got the best tits onstage,” a buxom
Scandinavian named Aud Johanssen reportedly griped, “but everybody’s
staring at a girl who hasn’t got any!” Audrey always insisted the story
was apocryphal, but she laughed with glee anytime it was repeated. “It’s
true,” she said. “They did stare. But I think that’s because I stuck
out even more—in height, that is!”
Chapter 7
For
a girl who kept to herself throughout her teen years, the heady experience of
being watched and wanted was both intoxicating and frightening.
When
famed photographer Anthony Beauchamp first laid eyes on Audrey, he
“couldn’t quite fathom that she was real. There were so many paradoxes in
that face,” he recalled. “Darkness and purity; depth and youth;
stillness and animation. I had photographed many of the greats, Garbo included,
but I felt I’d made a real discovery when I found Audrey.
“She
had a fresh new look, a beauty that was ethereal. It certainly had nothing to
do with her dancing. She was on the wooden side in that area, but she was so
striking to look at, you barely noticed.
“She
was extremely nervous when I approached her backstage after the show. I got the
impression that a lot of gentlemen and not so gentle men were making her all
kinds of propositions at this time. When I introduced myself and said I wanted
to take her picture, she pleaded poverty. I told her the honor would be mine. I
wanted to have her in my portfolio! After the session, she sent me a proper
English schoolgirl thank-you note and a box of chocolates. She was one of the
nicest subjects I ever had.”
Critics,
too, were beginning to single her out. “She had no lines to say, no part
to play,” recalled reviewer Milton Shulman about her performance in Sauce Piquante. “But with her
infectious grin, she actually looked like she was enjoying herself. Perhaps it
was this marked contrast to what the rest of us were feeling that made her as
conspicuous as a fresh carnation on a shabby suit.”
And
the beauty of it all was that her delightful way, that charming insouciance,
was a genuine reflection of her personality.
Dressed
in tailored suits and pillbox hats, with her ubiquitous white gloves spotless,
Audrey was the good daughter every parent longed for. And that kind of
innocence embodied its own brand of sex appeal—she was the forbidden fruit,
the unapproachable one. In fact, however, she was game for a variety of
rough-and-tumble activity.
“I
was doing a lot of modeling at the time,” Audrey recalled, “and the
photographers were always shocked that I was willing to take some risks for the
photo shoot. I got a kick out of jumping across streams or hanging from the
edge of a building. I wasn’t afraid of stuff like that. After living through
war, those things were minor.”
But
when one photographer suggested that she pad her bra to appear more bosomy,
Audrey balked, until her press agent at the time, the influential
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