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Authors: Barry Paris

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CHAPTER 11
Farewell
“Audrey [had] grace and manners—things you cannot take a course in. She could say something risque, but the way she did it had an elegance that you could not, under any circumstances, mistake for Madonna reading the line. What is needed to really become a star is an extra element that God gives or doesn't give you. You cannot learn it. She just was blessed. God kissed her on her cheek, and there she was.”
—BILLY WILDER
 
 
 
A
UDREY HEPBURN, AT SIXTY-THREE, WAS RUNNING OUT OF GAS. In Los Angeles, Sean and Rob immediately checked her into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where three days later, on November 2, 1992, she underwent surgery. A malignant tumor required the partial removal of her colon and a hysterectomy. The cancer had begun in her appendix—ex—tremely unusual—and then formed a vise around the colon. The situation was quite serious, but her physicians were initially optimistic. “There is a strong feeling,” said a hospital spokesman, “that surgeons removed all of the malignancy and that none of her organs were compromised.”
The tabloids sensationally claimed otherwise.
The National Enquirer
said her cancer could not be treated and that she only had three months to live.
“I spoke with her after the operation,” said Hubert de Givenchy. “She was dumbfounded that she had cancer. She had been convinced that she had contracted a virulent amoebic infection during her work in [Somalia]. She was so totally loved that I never stopped hearing from friends—and strangers—who knew of such and such a doctor who could save her. ‘Go see him,' they would say. ‘We're all going to fight this together.'”
Luca flew from Rome to Los Angeles. He and Sean and Rob felt the same, to the point of denial: They would all somehow find a way to lick it.
Audrey's own reaction was colorful and controversial, under the circumstances. According to a family member, when told she had cancer, she just said stoically, “Oh, shit.” Mel Ferrer denies that and says Sean does too. Wolders says, “I remember more than anything, not what she said, but her trying to make it easier for us by trying to make light of it.”
1
Later, she once broke down and asked Sean, “Where am I going to get the courage?”
2
But most of the time she was tremendously brave.
Among those rallying to her cause was Leonard Gershe, who thought humor might be the best medicine:
“When she was in the hospital, I spoke to Rob and he said, ‘If they'd only stop sending flowers, each one vying with the next for the bigger arrangement. There's no room. She barely knows who sent what.' I wanted, if I could, to make her laugh, so I sent her Madonna's
Sex
book with a card saying, ‘Flowers fade away, but great works of art live forever.' Later, she called me: ‘Lenny, you made me the most popular patient in the hospital. Doctors I never heard of were stopping in. Luca will not get off my bed.' Sending it to Lana Turner wouldn't have been funny. But for Audrey, it was funny—like sending it to Queen Elizabeth.”
3
But her condition deteriorated with shocking speed. Just a day or so after the initial surgery, it was learned that the cancer had spread to her stomach. A medical team at that point implanted a Hickman catheter in her chest to administer chemotherapy and painkillers. She had a strong desire to leave the hospital and try to recuperate at Connie Wald's, which, toward the end of November, she was allowed to do.
“I couldn't believe she was so ill,” says R. J. Wagner, who initialized their conversations in more ways than one. “To the very last, I'd call her up and say, ‘A?' She'd say, ‘R? Are you okay?' I'd say, ‘Fine. I love you so much.' She'd say, ‘I love you too. Goodbye, R.' I'd say, ‘Goodbye, A.' ”
4
Rob and Sean asked the doctors not to tell Audrey the extent of the disease—certainly not that it was terminal. In fact, they themselves were not aware of the full truth.
“The National Enquirer
bribed someone in the operating room,” says Rob, “and they had a more detailed report in that damned magazine than we were given! Sean, Luca and I made a statement saying Audrey was going to be all right, and the public tended to believe us rather than the
Enquirer.
But it was one occasion where they were speaking the truth and we were telling the lie. We made up the lie to give ourselves strength.”
UNICEF, for its part, was in full denial and refused to acknowledge she was gravely ill until the last possible moment.
In early December 1992, as if she hadn't enough to worry about, it was time for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Audrey had been selected for the honor much earlier, but the White House was only now getting around to the arrangements. Just a few days after Audrey's release from the hospital, Rob got a call at Connie's house from Laurie Firestone, George Bush's personal secretary, asking if Audrey could speak to the President.
“I said, ‘It's difficult,'” Wolders relates. “‘In her room, there is no phone.' ” Bush then asked to speak with Wolders, who explained and asked if he could hold on. “‘By all means, take all the time you need,' he said. I went to Audrey's room and she did come and take the call. But it didn't sink in with Bush just how ill she was. His last words to her were, ‘I'll be seeing you in two weeks then.' And she said, ‘I'll be there if I can.' ”
When they were in Bangladesh together, recalls John Isaac, “Audrey asked me my beliefs [about death] and I said, ‘I think I have the right to decide about my own life.' She said, ‘For me, the same. I wouldn't want to be dragged on.' When she decided not to go through chemotherapy, I told Rob and Sean about this discussion. They believed she should go through with it—maybe there was a chance. But she didn't want that.”
5
On December 9, Audrey went back into the hospital for new exploratory surgery that revealed nothing more could be done. Christmas was not far off. She wanted to see Switzerland and La Paisible for the holidays, and Rob and Sean decided to take her home. On the night they left, December 20, they asked a few of her closest friends to come by Connie Wald's to say goodbye. Billy Wilder describes the scene:
She, Rob, the nurse and the dogs were all staying at Connie's. She wanted to say goodbye to me and Aud, and also to Gregory Peck and Véronique. She was in a white blouse, I remember, and was smiling all the time. But once in a while, she pushed her elbow into something under the blouse which injected the morphine, because she did not want us to see her suffering. She pushed it to release the drip.
Meanwhile, Rob was organizing the big limousine to get the dogs and the nurse and the luggage in. We said goodbye and went outside, and there behind Connie's big palm trees on Beverly Drive was a cameraman. Peck got very angry and said, ‘You leave now or I'll call the police,' and the guy disappeared. It was very emotional. The end was never mentioned, but we all knew it was hopeless.
6
Much to Rob's relief, Givenchy had arranged to lease a private Gulf-stream jet for the trip to Switzerland, thus sparing Audrey the hassle and publicity of a commercial airliner. It left Los Angeles carrying a woman who now weighed less than ninety pounds and relied on intravenous morphine to relieve her pain.
Faithful Christa Roth went to see her the day after she returned to Tolochenaz, and found her in pretty good spirits. “I'm so glad I'm home,” she told her. “I can see my trees again.” It was a cold but beautiful Swiss December, and Roth came regularly to chat and bundle her up and take her for walks in the garden. “She would still go into the garden every day, even when she was very ill,” says Doris Brynner. “That was her biggest pleasure until those shit photographers took that away from her.”
7
The paparazzi lay in wait behind the fence and took grim photos.
“I came to love Doris a great deal more in those last few months,” says Rob. “She was extraordinary with Audrey and helped her tremendously. Doris came through for her.”
On Christmas Eve, at Rob's request, Audrey did a little reading for Sean and Luca of
Time-Tested Beauty Tips,
author Sam Levenson's wise letter-poem to his grandchild:
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you'll never walk alone....
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and
redeemed and redeemed....
Never throw out anybody.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself,
the other for helping others.
She told her sons, “You are the two best creations I ever made.”
8
Wolders felt she summoned superhuman courage to help him and the boys deal with losing her: “She didn't leave until she knew we were in full accord about everything. She died, not leaving anything unsolved. She became almost stronger than the disease.... It never altered her character. There was no bitterness, not for a moment.”
Sean Ferrer agrees. “She left everything in perfect order,” he says, “as if she knew she wasn't going to be around long.”
The prospect of death did not frighten her?
“No,” Sean replies. “We were much more angry about it than she was, about the fact that it was so unjust. She said, ‘It's not injustice, it's the way nature is. It has nothing to do with me or with injustice. It's the process.' ”
9
They all agreed to celebrate Christmas, as usual, and Rob had gone to the village to get some gifts. “The feeling of desolation,” he says, “—to be there by myself just before Christmas. The merchants kept asking, ‘How is madame?' Those were the saddest hours, the Christmas shopping. I came back extremely down and Audrey said, ‘What's the matter?' I said, ‘It was horrible to be in town without you.' She was quietly angry with me because it meant I was losing courage—that if she left me, she would be responsible for my unhappiness. There was a parallel in her attitude and in Merle's.”
On Christmas Day, Audrey came downstairs, with difficulty, and presented everyone with a little gift. “She gave me a beautiful Givenchy scarf,” says Christa Roth. The day went well and, at the end of it, Rob took her back upstairs.
“That last Christmas is one of the most wonderful recollections for me,” he says. “It was so important to her to have the boys and me together. We were able to sleep in the same bed until the day she died, and once we shut out the lights, we were in our own world and felt very peaceful. It was just us. I remember that voice in the dark saying, ‘This is the happiest Christmas I've ever had.'”
 
 
ONLY A WEEK or so before her death, she called Michael Tilson Thomas, whose parents had recently died within a few weeks of each another. “You're so lucky,” Audrey told him. “If only I could have loved my parents as freely as you did yours.” He tried to express his concern for her, but she wouldn't talk about herself: “It was, ‘Are you all right, Michael? I'm sorry I haven't contacted you sooner. You must take strength in your music.' So typical of her gentility and enormous care.”
10
Hubert de Givenchy arrived from Paris. “They were so, so close,” says Leslie Caron. “There was a deep symbiosis between them.” On their last stroll together in her garden, she had to rest every ten steps. There, Givenchy recalled, “I noticed the fragrance of apples. I had to know where it came from, so I asked a servant. A part of the cellar was filled by the harvest of the previous autumn, which they were preparing to send, at Audrey's wish, as in previous years, to the Salvation Army. She thought constantly of others.”
11
As a last gift, she had bought three quilted coats, one for Sean, one for Rob and a navy-blue one for Hubert. As Givenchy was leaving, she asked for the coat to be brought to her and presented it to him, touching her lips to it with a little kiss and murmuring, “Think of me when you wear it.”
12
Around New Year's of 1993, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Audrey (and Elizabeth Taylor) would be the recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the next Oscar ceremony in April. But that was eons away in time and space. More immediate was the Screen Actors Guild Achievement Award, which she was to receive in Hollywood on January 10. She had sent an acceptance letter to be read by Julia Roberts, whose character in
Pretty Woman
at one point drifts off to sleep in a hotel room while watching
Charade.
“One would
never
fall asleep watching Audrey Hepburn,” Roberts apologized, and then read Hepburn's last public statement:
As a child I was taught that it was bad manners to draw attention to yourself and make a spectacle of yourself. I then went on to make a rather nice living doing just that—with a little help from the greatest directors, the best writers, the most fabulous stars, glorious photography, terrific scores, super clothes, and the best crews in the industry. My job was to be on time and know my lines. [Others] helped and honed, triggered and taught, pushed and pulled, ... guided and nurtured a totally unknown, insecure, inexperienced, skinny broad into a marketable commodity. I am proud to have been in a business that gives pleasure, creates beauty and awakens our conscience, arouses compassion and perhaps most importantly, gives millions a respite from our so violent world.
BOOK: Audrey Hepburn
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