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Title details for Enchantment by Donald Spoto - Wait list

Enchantment

The Life of Audrey Hepburn

by Donald Spoto
Kimberly Farr
Audiobook
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While her name is synonymous with elegance, style and grace, this poignant, funny and deeply moving biography, reveals the private Audrey Hepburn and invites readers to fall in love with her all over again.  
Over the course of her extraordinary life and career, Audrey captured hearts around the world and created a public image that stands as one of the most recognizable and beloved in recent memory. But despite her international fame and her tireless efforts on behalf of UNICEF, Audrey was also known for her intense privacy. With unprecedented access to studio archives, friends and colleagues who knew and loved Audrey, bestselling author Donald Spoto provides an intimate and moving account of this beautiful, elusive and talented woman.
Tracing her astonishing rise to stardom, from her harrowing childhood in Nazi-controlled Holland during World War II to her years as a struggling ballet dancer in London and her Tony Award–winning Broadway debut in Gigi, Spoto illuminates the origins of Audrey’s tenacious spirit and fiercely passionate nature. She would go on to star in some of the most popular movies of the twentieth century, including Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Funny Face, The Nun’s Story, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and My Fair Lady. A friend and inspiration to renowned designer Hubert de Givenchy, Audrey also emerged as a fashion icon and her influence on women’s fashion virtually unparalleled to this day.
Behind the glamorous public persona, Audrey was a different and deeper person and a woman who craved love and affection. Donald Spoto offers remarkable insights into her professional and personal relationships with her two husbands, and with celebrities such as Gregory Peck, William Holden, Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Robert Anderson, Cary Grant, Peter O’Toole, Albert Finney and Ben Gazzara. The turbulent romances of her youth, her profound sympathy for the plight of hungry children, and the thrills and terrors of motherhood prepared Audrey for the final chapter in her life, as she devoted herself entirely to the charity efforts of an organization that had once come to her rescue at the end of the war: UNICEF.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 19, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780739346549
      • File size: 338504 KB
      • Duration: 11:45:12

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Kimberly Farr gives a solid performance of a major biography. Donald Spoto's testament to the life and work of Audrey Hepburn celebrates not only her life but also her famous film characters. Farr's voice is pleasantly rich. She reads with an effortless tempo, seamlessly transitioning between descriptions and dialogue. Fans of Hollywood trivia will savor the "making of" stories of Hepburn's films and the detailed descriptions of filmmaking in the '50s and '60s. Devotees of Hepburn will enjoy the unfolding of her life from nearly starved war survivor to leading lady to ambassador for UNICEF. A remarkable life is gracefully presented in a beautifully read biography. R.F. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 17, 2006
      Celebrity biographer Spoto (The Art of Alfred Hitchcock
      ) offers a sparkling, fawning life of the European gamine whom America took to instantly with her 1953 debut in Roman Holiday
      . Hepburn (1929–1993) held the irresistible charm of a childlike star naïvely unaware of her appeal, from her first big break at age 22 when selected by Colette herself to play the Broadway version of Gigi. Born to a Dutch baroness and an English ne'er-do-well (and fascist sympathizer) who separated when she was six, Hepburn and her mother underwent horrendous deprivations during the Nazi occupation of Holland during WWII; her early ambition to become a ballet dancer was undermined by inadequate nutrition and training. Her early film successes flowed astonishingly, however, from Sabrina
      , Funny Face
      , Love in the Afternoon
      , Breakfast at Tiffany's
      and My Fair Lady
      to attempts at roles with more gravitas, as in The Nun's Story
      and Wait Until Dark
      . Often paired with older, avuncular leads, Hepburn was viewed as unerotic, yet Spoto tracks her steamy relationships with playboys and co-stars, and marriage to American actor-director Mel Ferrer, who often acted as her Pygmalion. Her later work with UNICEF is sketched too briefly. Spoto's previous Hollywood biographies allow the author authoritative access to Hepburn.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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