Want to know the best Audrey Hepburn movies? How about the worst Audrey Hepburn movies? Curious about Audrey Hepburn’s box office grosses or which Audrey Hepburn movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Audrey Hepburn movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which one got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993), an Oscar® winning actress, appeared in 26 movies from 1951 to 1989. While filming a small part in 1951’s We Will All Go To Monte Carlo, she was spotted by French novelist Colette. Colette picked Hepburn to play Gigi in the Broadway play Gigi. The success of the play led to Hepburn’s first starring role….1953’s Roman Holiday. Roman Holiday was a hit and earned her the Oscar® for Best Actress. From 1953 until the rest of her life she was an internationally star.
Although she only made 16 movies during her peak of stardom (1953-1967)….check out some of her legendary leading men….Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina, Henry Fonda in War and Peace, Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon, Fred Astaire in Funny Face, Burt Lancaster in The Unforgiven, James Garner in The Children’s Hour, Cary Grant in Charade, William Holden in Paris When It Sizzles, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, Peter O’ Toole in How To Steal A Million and Albert Finney in Two For The Road. I can only imagine the stories she could share of her experiences behind the scenes with all of these incredible actors.
My personal favorite Audrey Hepburn movies are 1963’s Charade and 1966’s How To Steal A Million. I have seen 17 of her 24 movies to date.
Her IMDb page shows 33 acting credits from 1949-1989. This page will rank 24 Audrey Hepburn movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in North American theaters were not included in the rankings.
Audrey Hepburn Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Audrey Hepburn Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Audrey Hepburn movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Audrey Hepburn movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
- Sort Audrey Hepburn movies by yearly box office rank or trivia
- Sort Audrey Hepburn movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Audrey Hepburn movie received.
- Sort Audrey Hepburn movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Audrey Hepburn
1. Audrey Hepburn was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar® five times in her career. She won the Oscar® for Roman Holiday. Her other four nominations were for Sabrina, The Nun’s Story, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Wait Until Dark. She also received eight Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress.
2. Audrey Hepburn is one of ten performers to win awards in the four major categories of performing. She won the Oscar® 1953’s Roman Holiday, the Tony award for 1954’s Ondine, the Emmy award for 1993’s Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, and the Grammy® award for 1994’s Audrey Hepburn’s Enchanted Tales.
3. Audrey Hepburn was married two times. The first marriage to actor Mel Ferrer lasted 14 years and produced one son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer. While the second marriage to Andrea Dotti lasted 13 years and produced one son, Luca Dotti.
4. Audrey Hepburn was a distant relative of King George III of England, Princess Diana of Wales, Prince Rainier of Monaco, and actor Humphrey Bogart.
5. Audrey Hepburn spoke 5 languages: English, French, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish.
6. There is a breed of tulip that is named after Audrey Hepburn.
7. Audrey Hepburn was named Goodwill Ambassador to UNICEF….here is her quote when getting the appointment……” I can testify to what UNICEF means to children, because I was among those who received food and medical relief right after World War II. I have a long-lasting gratitude and trust for what UNICEF does”.
8. Roles turned down by Audrey Hepburn……The Birds, Father Goose, The Diary of Anne Frank, Gigi, Out of Africa, The Exorcist, The Sound of Music, and West Side Story.
9. The American Film Institute named Audrey Hepburn the third greatest female actress of all-time.
10. Check out Audrey Hepburn‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
Steve’s Audrey Hepburn You Tube Video
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
BRUCE
1 I’ve already left several post on this site about Audrey but I always love reading and writing about these great stars and what better excuse than a birthday occasion! One historian commenting on the relative brevity of Audrey’s top star period [from about 1953 until 1967] opined that nonetheless that much of what she did in those years will probably be remembered – Roman Holiday, Tiffany’s etc.
2 Indeed IMDB ranks Audrey’s Holly Golightly at No 35 in its list of greatest movie female characters ever and another poll currently on the Internet puts Holly as high as 8th. In a radio interview that he gave before he passed away Gregory Peck cited Audrey as one of the greatest female stars of all time and of course AFI concurs with that view. Anyway I enjoyed revisiting this Hepburn page – good idea these birthday reminders of the track record of these legends Bruce.
Hey Bob she is an all-time great in my book. From Roman Holiday to Sabrina to Charade to How to Steal a Million….what a lovely actress.
Glad you like our birthday pages..I do them when I am limited in time. My other trick is to use Steve’s videos.
Still what a good day to celebrate their careers….on their birthdays. Good feedback.
HI BRUCE:
1 By coincidence I am in the middle of watching a 1985 episode of Murder She Wrote in which Mr Audrey Hepburn aka Mel Ferrer (68) has a small part and playing his wife in the minute or so that she was on the screen is Cyd Charisse (63) whose Hollywood career Steve profiled recently. It seems to me that just about every other star who had prominent Hollywood movie careers in the 1950s or before ultimately descended into A C Lyles productions and/or bit parts in the likes of Perry Mason, Ironside and Angela Lansbury TV series.
2 When I see in these walk-on parts someone like Mel Ferrer who in his heyday was important enough to share top billing in high prestige movies with great stars such as Ty Power, Ava Gardner,and Hank Fonda and was even billed before Flynn in the 1957 The Sun also Rises I always think of that great closing line in The Roaring Twenties which gangster’s moll Gladys George speaks as the cradles the dead body of former lover Cagney “He used to be a big shot.”
STEVE – A Hepburn video.
1 Audrey’s film output was not excessive, she had relatively few classics, her box office was not vertiginous, and her top box office days effectively ended in 1967 with Wait Until Dark; so I always thought that her rank of No 3 in the AFI Legends List flattered her to some extent though she suited better her high placing in Bruce’s chart which dates from just 1950.
2 I think you’ve got the balance right when you place the good stuff in her Top 10 and her flops like They All Laughed and the awful Green Mansions at the bottom of your chart. Personally I would have placed Tiffany’s at No 1 but I see that Bruce agrees with you in giving Roman Holiday the top spot, so who am I to argue with The Two Wise Men of the West?
NB: The deservedly high-placed Sabrina was called Sabrina Fair over here with a play on her surname of Fairchild in the film
3 Despite the limitations of her career Audrey was undoubtedly a great star and her career has therefore always interested me so yours was a worthwhile video for me and the usual superb presentation with again that wonderful Strauss music and the especially iconic posters of Audrey/Lancaster in The Unforgiven deserve another Guns Up !
4 Anyway I enjoyed our weekend exchanges about Coppola [who says we flounder without our Vegas-wandering Leader?] and I’ll close that subject with this parting shot –
Journalist:
“I hear you’ve got money problems with Apocalypse Now going seriously over budget.”
Francis:(Laughing)
“I’ve ALWAYS got money problems !”
Best wishes BOB
Hi Bob, thanks as always for viewing my videos. I haven’t seen that many Audrey Hepburn films, she was pretty but I prefer the other Hepburn. I don’t think I’ve seen Sabrina or it’s remake, I’m curious to watch it now because of dear old Bogart and how the other two stars hated his guts. Three years later and the most iconic actor in movie history succumbed to cancer.
I also can’t recall seeing Hepburn’s Wait Until Dark, I must have but I can’t remember it. That should be on my to watch list.
Bruce and I both picked Roman Holiday as no.1 Hepburn film, hallelujah! Symmetry at last. [wink]
HELLO AGAIN STEVE
1 On to your Big Bob video next Steve – give u a post later in the week.
2 If you look at my John Garfield post today you will see that I’ve mentioned how Richard Burton opined that Brando would have been a great silent star so I couldn’t help thinking that if you and he had been born earlier and co-existed in the SILENT era you might have been his greatest fan !
Enjoy the rest of your day – but where do you find the time to produce all those marvellous videos – there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of them !!
I have thousands of good quality movie posters on one of my hard drives, collected over the years. So all I really need are the ratings and a calculator and I can start putting it together. I usually have a movie playing in the background otherwise it can get monotonous. Luckily my videos are usually less than 10mins long.
I was looking at a youtube video the other day that was a compilation of the 100 best CG video game trailers, the video was nearly 6 hours long! It must have taken him a day just to upload it onto his channel.
Bruce has done a few actor videos too but he seems to have lost interest.
It was bound to happen….that you would finally get it right….lol.
HI STEVE – Audrey’s next on my Lensman video list but I became engrossed with your 25 Greatest Actresses when I consulted it to see where Audrey & Grace were placed.
1 You have selected from their prime years the photos of the 25 chosen actresses and have therefore reminded us of how lovely many of them once looked and of one of the key reasons for their stardom.
2 There are elements of originality in your chart in that –
(1) It contains more than “the usual suspects” with the inclusion also of lesser-knowns such as Geraldine Page, Agnes Moorhead, sexy Thelma a Cogerson favourite and Eleanor Parker one of my own very top 1950s actresses. Excellent !
(2) It is slightly more ‘cosmopolitan’ that most charts in that deserving actress such as the great Vanessa Redgrave from England and the excellent Jeanne Moreau from France are given places. Refreshing.
(3) I have long felt that Liz Taylor who is not one of my personal faves nonetheless is in strong contention for Greatest Female Star of All Time but most surveys stop somewhat short of that. However in giving her your penultimate ranking you are leaning closer to me regarding her status Guns up !
3 Your overall Top 10 is difficult to quarrel with except for the fine tuning of a few of the rankings and I would tend to have reservations about just one exclusion. In a Vogue magazine interview Mr Mumbles claimed that he was bisexual and in The Missouri breaks (1976) he went into drag for a sequence in the film, so is there not a case for stretching a point and including him at say joint 25th in your great actresses list?
Have a good weekend BOB
Hi Bob, ho ho ho that post confused the heck out of me but it was entertaining. I’ll get to Ms Mumbles in the next group of actors. I don’t really have an overall plan to my top 10 videos and I’m just picking classic movie stars pretty much at random. I’m not working from a top 25 actress list though it might look that way. Where did you see Jeanne Moreau?
Like I told Flora I wish I had Moon River playing on that Audrey Hepburn video but it’s just not allowed. I’ve been browsing the net for copyright-free music but many of them are of the electronic ‘techno’ variety and won’t suit these videos. You would think that 100 years+ classical music would be free to use, but the conductor and orchestra have rights too, oh well.
Thanks for checking out these videos, has the chief been sighted yet? 🙂
STEVE:
1 According to my notes Jeanne Moreau was n your Top 25 Actresses from the Hollywood Era List that has Davis as No 1 and at the bottom are Moorehead, Ritter and I think Rosalind Russell. I can’t trace it again and would be grateful of the direct link for future reference if you can provide it
2. During filming of The Missouri Breaks a group of young co-stars sat on the top of a hill all day watching the railway track below for the anticipated arrival of the train bringing Mr Mumbles to the set. I’m no longer young but if I was OVER THERE I would have been at some strategic point scanning the terrain for the return of our own idol
3 That not being the case I can only say that there’s a new John Garfield update flagged up today so he HAS BEEN recently in action – but from where ?
There was a sighting earlier today but it turned out to be Bigfoot.
I wish I knew where that Top 25 Actresses list was too and if it really existed.
I think the chief, despite the holidays, is going thru the ‘doldrums’ and needs some cheering up and fresh ideas from his minions. I told him ages ago to start on some ‘yearly’ movie pages if he gets bored of actors, they were fascinating to look at. And he has about 80 years worth of box office cinema to choose from.
STEVE:
1 When I used the link to your videos that Bruce gave me on my last post on the Burt Reynolds page I kept spotting what I took to be YOUR 25 Greatest Actresses one among your other listed videos about Grace Kelly, Cooper, the Duke etc and Grace Kelly’s picture fronted the 25 Actresses flag up I’m talking about.
2 I have since been unable to relocate it so whilst I am not usually into ‘conspiracy theories’ your own mystification has got me wondering if someone else made it, then allowed to stray into your lists by mistake, and now having seen my Cogerson posts has withdrawn it form your lists ? Anyway whoever made it deserves full credit for it is an excellent video.
Hey Steve….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jj67RzEqwg I think this is the video….that will make the comments more understandable.
HI STEVE
1 I apologise for attributing to you a video from one of your (possible) competitors and for crediting you with selections that you didn’t make, but I acted in good faith as the video like your own ones was of high quality and the rankings sensible. Among connoisseurs only Bruce it seems wants to put Elizabeth Hurley in contention for Greatest Actress of All Time !
2 At least one positive thing came out of the confusion in that we know that Our Hero will not countenance Mr Mumbles flexing his bisexual vocal chords in the actress
lists.
3 However even Cogerson cannot command the waves to go back as ironically immediately after The Godfather was released in 1972 two rip-offs came out both titled The Godmother, one a spoof vehicle of some sort with a British comedy actress called Hylda Baker which has disappeared from sight and the other an apparent serious drama which is still listed in IMDB.
4 Anyway I have watched your video about little Aud and will provide a post soon.
Nice communicating with U again BOB
Hey Bob….you are not the only one to make that mistake…I have gotten many comments on videos I did not make…but people are giving me credit for….and I have realized it was a You Tube video closely related to the one I posted.
Hey Bob…..I am thinking this is the video you are talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jj67RzEqwg Sometimes when a You Tube video goes off….it goes to another video by somebody else. This was done by somebody named “Kimberlite”…and I agree it was nice to see the video start off with Agnes Moorehead.
As for Brando….he was a great one….but I think he should stay in the actor group…lol.
Return’d from the Vegas bustle and thrill,
He’s back where we’v long’d him to be;
“Home is the sailor home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill.”
Thanks for clearing that up. I wasn’t sure what Bob was on about in some of his posts and just went with the flow for a while. When he mentioned Jeanne Moreau I knew something wasn’t quite right. Not that there’s anything wrong with Jeanne Moreau of course. 🙂
Yes what must have happened Bob is that after my video stopped playing that persons video started straight after and you thought it was one of mine. I’ve done videos on about 40 actors and actresses already and if all goes well I’m planning to do hundreds more.
ps. That’s 40 videos on golden age actors and actresses, I’ve also produced videos on nearly 200 modern day actors and actresses and their top box office grosses. Like Bruce, I’ve been busy. 🙂
Hey Steve….here to help….lol.
I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s on TCM for about the 300th time today. I do try to watch new to me movies, but sometimes I just want to watch an old favourite of mine. I have it memorized, really.
Hoped you enjoy watching Holly Golightly for the 300th time…that is 299 more times than I have watched that classic movie. Did Rooney’s character improve on this viewing? That sounds like that lollipop commerical…how licks does it take to get to the middle…..how many times do you have to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s before you enjoy Rooney’s performance….lol.
Earlier tonight…in haste I attached a comment to the wrong Robert…told you I got them mixed up……lol. I just got through fixing that error….the comment came from the place that Columbo used to hang out at. Couldn’t remember if the commentor was on the no fly list….so I just listed them by initials.
Wow….I got nothing done on Audie Murphy today….still sitting at 18 movies fully researched….and now I am headed to bed.
Hey, Bruce.
I thought it was likely a comment from another site regarding Montgomery, because all the comments on both pages cleared up the two Bobs.
No, Rooney’s performance does not get better. Usually, I have the mute button on when he talks. But I did not do that last night. I just walked into another room or did dusting etc.
HELLO FLORA !
1 I’m sure that in Breakfast “Cat” was really the star for you and that Audrey had to take 2nd
place. The scene in the rain at the end always brings tears to my mind and in my view is matched only by the closing scenes of The Apartment..
2 Nobody ever mentions George Peppard,who I thought provided a marvellous low key counter-balance.to live-wire Holly.. He’s never been better. When I watch re-runs of Breakfast it is for BOTH George and Audrey – and “Cat” of course ! So successful was the George/Audrey team that I’m surprised and saddened that it was never repeated. Perhaps she decided he was too young for her ! ! !
3 Rooney was dreadful in my opinion Luckily he wasn’t in the film much or he would have ruined it.
4 My favourite type of film is a human interest one as opposed to for example sci-fi or animation For me Breakfast is a marvellous ‘time warp’ movie when the screen was more circumspect in relation to language and the other stuff. For example it is never made clear in the film what Holly does for a living; whereas today that would be made over-obvious.
5 Anyway once again our tastes coincide.
Best Wishes BOB
PS Bruce and you hardly watched the film at all ! ! Apparently very time Elvis got the Blues he would lock himself away and watch |The Wild One [you’ve no doubt seen him in the leather gear and on the motorbike] and it is rumoured that he saw it about 1000 times over his career. However Howard Hughes’ because of his obsession with The Conqueror and (Bruce has now informed us) Jet Pilot both starring the Duke probably ‘out-viewed’ even Elvis
I love George Peppard in this movie. It is my favourite film of his.
And Cat – well, my cat I an orange male tabby who looks very much like Cat.
Basically, the ONLY thing I don’t like about this film is Rooney’s portrayal.
Moon River, by the way, is my favourite song from the movies that won Best Song. I sing it all the time.
HELLO AGAIN FLORA!
1 In 1962 I left a cinema in the England after watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the first time. As I left Moon River was ringing in my ears.
2 To return to the military camp where I was based i had to travel by a long walkway
high above the River Severn. Ironically there was a lovely full moon following me along my journey.
3 It is nostalgia such as that which has over the years kept Moon River
the favourite movie score of me, too, along with Theme for a Summer Place.
4 I have many other nostalgic cinematic memories of my days in military service. For example being driven through a large city that was new to me and seeing on a billboard high above the vehicle in which I was travelling:GREGORY PECK IN THE GUNS OF NAVARONE. Those were the days I was young and Greg was at his peak. An Oscar for To Kill a mockingbird was soon to follow for him.
Best wishes
BOB
Elvis relaxing to The Wild Ones. Interesting stuff. I think everybody has that movie. My mom loves the Jolson Story (either Larry Parks movie) my wife is all about The American President….while it is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for me.
Watching Love in the Afternoon after having watched Sabrina on TCM as part of Billy Wilder festival.
Great double feature.
FLORA
1 I was working in the Belfast Shipyard when Love in the Afternoon came out in 1957. A workmate of mine was looking up in a newspaper the films playing at the local cinemas when he burst out laughing. He Said “Wait to you hear this. Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in LOVE in the Afternoon!” Coop was around 56 at the time and Audrey 28.
2 Her main co-star in the second half of your double bill was also too old for her. In fact according to one of Bogie’s biographers when he married Bacall and they were speeding off for their honeymoon one of Lauren’s family [it could even have been her father] morbidly remarked to other guests that the car should be heading for the morgue and not the honeymoon suite.
3 In the 1955 Daddy Long Legs Astaire was 58 and Leslie Caron 26. In the film he is a millionaire whom she has never met but who secretly sponsors her college career. They become penfriends and she gives him the nickname ‘Daddy Long Legs’. He mentions the nickname to a friend who had always disapproved of the sponsorship and the friends says “Should it not be Daddy Sugar?”
4 I loved most of them but those old Hollywood Greats seemed to get away with being “ageless” on screen when they were long past their sell-by date Did you know that in North by Northwest Cary Grant ‘s mother had him when she was only 8. Jessie Royce Landis who played her was actually just about eight years older than Grant in the real world.. .
5 In the string of B westerns that Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea made when they were in their mid-50s other characters (some of whom were round about their own age) would often address them as “young man”!
6 For all that though we DO need escapism in our lives and in that respect Love in the Afternoon, Sabrina, and Daddy Long Legs were just with the doctor order. Besides Audrey and Leslie were so lovely and talented that audiences back then probably didn’t care how old their male co-stars were. [One of my own all-time favourites: Breakfast Tiffany’s.]
.
Hey Robert Roy.
1. That is a good memory of Love in the Afternoon. Belfast Shipyard? The wife works at the Newport News Shipyard…I wonder how different things are in the field of work.
2. You are 100% correct about Hepburn being paired with much older co-stars….I think the only screen couple I did not buy at all was Hepburn and Cooper in Love In The Afternoon….I like Gary Cooper but he looked older than 56 in that one….he looked like her granddad in that movie.
3. I had no problem buying Astaire and Caron in Daddy Long Legs….probably because Astaire aged so much better than Cooper….but not nearly as well as Grant…Grant and Hepburn made a great screen team in Charade.
4. That is good trivia about Cary Grant and Jessie Royce Landis…that is one of the tidbits my dad used to mention.
5. Funny about McCrea and Scott….although not thinking that got called that in their swan song Ride The High Country.
6. Escapism…is what movies are all about.
Thanks for the input….it is always very interesting.
MR C:
1 Good point about Ride the High Country. In fact in that one they went out of their way to emphasise their age. Also Scott’s portrayal in the 1957 Decision at Sundown was one of the most unflattering portrayals of a hero that you would get in those days.
2 I liked Joel and loved Randolph; but I defy you to watch and not laugh at:
(1) The scene in the 1955 Wichita where the 50 year-old Joel as Wyatt Earp calls with a picnic basket to court the 26 year old Vera Miles and her (in real life) 45 year old father meets him at the door. smiling
(2) The bit in a Randolph western where the town preacher keen to drum up business says to mid fifties Scott leaving the church (with his usual soon-to-be ‘child bride’) “It’s good to see the young men starting to come to church.”
(3) The Astaire outing where a 50-something Fred gatecrashes a music hall and squeezes up people in their seats, prompting a woman of roughly his own age to round on him and say “You’re half in my seat young man!”
3 Grant DID look well for his years; which to an extent always surprised me because of what I had read about his life life-style. For example one of his wives in her autobiography claimed that when she was married to him he was into drugs, which made him very volatile and bad-tempered at times. She recounted the incident on their honeymoon suite when they were watching the Oscars ceremony and (because apparently he felt that Oscar had not given him the respect he deserved) he suddenly started jumping up and down on the bed, pointing his finger and shouting : ! “look at HIM!. He’s wearing a wig. And HE’s got false teeth. SHE would show you her legs for a lick of your ice-cream.”
5 Back to Randolph Scott——————————
PS: It’s show-off time again. Whilst Ride the High Country [1962] was Scott’s swan song Joel took one last bow in the 1976 Mustang Country co-starring the Duke’s son Patrick. Who got top billing in High Country was decided by the flip of a coin between the two greats in a Brown Derby restaurant. Over here that film was called Guns in the Afternoon (my own personal preference for the title)
Best wishes BOB
Hey Robert Roy:
1. I have been watching many of Scott’s 1950s westerns recently…but I have not found Decision at Sundown yet….hopefully I can find it in the near future.
2. Those sound like some funny scenes…not sure which movies those scenes would be located in.
3. I have read lots of Grant books….seems his off screen life was not the happiest….too bad he did not have children earlier…as that seems to be his happiest off screen. Grant is one of my favorite actors…but there is not a performance that I go….”Oh he got ripped off by the Academy for not giving him an nomination or a win”. Actually his Oscar nominated performances are two of my least liked Grant movies…Penny Serenade and None But The Lonely Hearts.
5. Cool about the coin flip……I know McCrea was originally going to play the Scott role…but decided at the last minute he could not play the “bad guy”…Scott was not bothered at all when he played the bad guy.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
POSTSCRIPT
BRUCE
1 I was very interested in the fact that Mrs C works at a shipyard and wanted time to think about your broad question about differing conditions.
2 I am retired 20 years now and l;left the shipyard when I was 21 to first serve in the Armed Forces in England, after which I became a Civil Servant in Northern Ireland for the rest of my working life. :
3 However I suspect that for one thing working conditions would be more ‘politically correct’ today. My job was to clean and maintain with oil and grease one of those skyscraper cranes that help build large ships [such as the Titanic in Belfast years before my own time].
4 When I was first employed in the Shipyard I was just 14 [not quite as young as Astaire and Cooper!] and yet my employers could oblige me to work from 8 AM until 9 PM without sufficient breaks for food. Finally in Oliver Twist fashion I refused – and was sacked on the spot.
5 Also I was almost not here today. I nearly plunged off the very top of one of those cranes and saved myself only by grabbing onto a jib cable. Of course accidents will always happen; but under today’s health and safety legislation I probably would not have been exposed to such a risk.
Best Wishes BOB
PPS: Your Olivia D tip did the trick and I have now done my Gable assessment. Courtesy dictates that I tell you that on the basis of the breakdown for GWTW that you have provided its domestic rentals would today according to CPI have a purchasing power of around 750 million$. I know that’s a mark-down figure compared with what would result from a corresponding ticket price inflation calculation; but under CPI it’s massive for just the US earnings of only one film. That is evident when one considers that the 2016 purchasing power of all 27 of Doris Day’s greatest box office hits is 800 million$, and under CPI that figure is in its turn i very good. [Wikipedia on the Internet always uses CPI when adjusting for inflation regarding movie earnings.]
My father had a lot of close calls in the various jobs he had in his lifetime after retiring from music. He was in construction and of course that is a dangerous profession. Plus one time he was in an airplane and it did not get any higher than a telephone poll.
When my father did die, it was of a heart attack at 70 – at home.
Sounds like your dad was able to experience lots of great stuff….hope your Father’s Day went well.
Hey Robert Roy
1. As soon as I mentioned that you worked at the Belfast shipyard….Wife of Cogerson (that is how she likes to be referenced)…said…that is where they built the Titanic.
2. Working around those big cranes is some dangerous work for sure….she is in the software side of the ship building business….when she is not making my movie Access program better she is making things work smoothly at the shipyard.
3. I like the Oliver reference. 14 and working all of those hours…incredible…glad you survived.
4. Good thing the job cable was there…here in the states a teenager can not even use a paper baler (grocery store way of getting rid of cardboard)…much less working around serious equipment.
5. Glad you found the GWTW table…it was also on my 1939 Movie Page…..my site is getting so big….it sometimes takes a while to remember where I put all of the stuff. That is amazing that GWTW almost equaled Day’s entire career…and it is not like Day was a one hit wonder….but one of the biggest stars for almost 20 years. Thanks for sharing that information.
I LOVE Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I have the entire movie memorized.
As for the age differences in the other films you mention – I’ve seen them. I think they were paired because the men were big stars and it was good for box office.
I’ll tell you something. On stage I have played many a character in musicals who were much older than myself. I remember that in Fiddler on the Roof my “son” was 3 years younger than I am. LOL.
I liked to call myself the Angela Lansbury of Fraser Valley theatre. LOL.
I thought it was weird but I found out later it wasn’t typecasting as I once thought. I was actually being complimented on my acting ability.
FLORA:
1 Your comment about box office was a most sensible observation; and of course in itself there’s nothing wrong with doing something that makes good business sense.
2 However I feel that the license that Old Hollywood gave to that generation of 50-something Peter Pans illustrates again the gender bias in Hollywood that Mrs Cogerson’s survey has identified as continuing today. If on the screen a 56 year old female had
dragged a young man 30 years her junior into a carriage for later ‘love in the afternoon’ I’m sure a few eyebrows would have been raised .
3 Audrey was apparently very selective about her film roles; so perhaps just as McQueen seemed to have a preoccupation with ‘escaping’ in his movies Audrey had a psychological compulsion to mate much older men in hers. By my reckoning in the 16 films that she made in her peak years between 1953 and 1967 eleven of her leading men were a good deal older than she, with six of them being over 50.
4 Anyhow to again quote Dalton in Road House: opinions vary; and the men didn’t seem to object. Pre My Fair Lady ‘Sexy Rexy’ as he was known back then apparently resented being obliged to partner Audrey in that movie as he wanted his stage soulmate Julie Andrews for the film. In an interview he said disparagingly “Instead of Julie Hollywood has given me one of their million dollar girls.” However years later when asked who his favourite female co-star was the man who had worked with the likes of Liz Taylor and Ingrid Bergman said without hesitation: “Audrey Hepburn.”
5 I could have predicted that you would have enjoyed your double bill as to some extent your tastes and mine seem to coincide. Every time the 1954 Sabrina is repeated on TV I am glued to it. [though I also enjoy watching the 1995 repeat starring Julia Ormonde and Bruce’s idol, Harrison Ford.]
6 When I was growing up Bogie seemed ancient ( particularly because, as Bruce has observed about Gary Cooper, Humph didn’t wear very well). However if he was alive and in his fifties today, and at my age of 75 I had the good fortune to meet him as Bruce’s dad did with McQueen, I’d probably say: “I very much admire your films YOUNG MAN.”
Yes!
It does depend upon the chemistry of the actor and actress and for whatever reason, Audrey had great chemistry with older men. Hence I enjoyed my double feature.
And Bogart and Bacall are one of my favourite coples.
Not true of all matches between older men and younger women. Regarding Sexy Rexy – well:
Bogart wanted Lauren in Sabrina.
Julie Andrews did originate the role on Broadway.
In Mary Poppins, she won the the Oscar anyway -Audrey was not nominated, if I remember correctly.
Hey Flora…..glad you found a good double feature to watch.