Audrey Hepburn: I Believe in Miracles

The Audrey Hepburn DVD Collection (Roman Holiday / Sabrina / Breakfast at Tiffany's) (1961)

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At one time the longest-running Broadway musical, My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from the George Bernard Shaw comedy Pygmalion. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, dishevelled cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) meets linguistic expert Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). After delivering a musical tirade against "verbal class distinction," Higgins tells his companion Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White) that, within six months, he could transform Eliza into a proper lady, simply by teaching her proper English. The next morning, face and hands freshly scrubbed, Eliza presents herself on Higgins' doorstep, offering to pay him to teach her to be a lady. "It's almost irresistable," clucks Higgins. "She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty." He turns his mission into a sporting proposition, making a bet with Pickering that he can accomplish his six-month miracle to turn Eliza into a lady. This is one of the all-time great movie musicals, featuring classic songs and the legendary performances of Harrison, repeating his stage role after Cary Grant wisely turned down the movie job, and Stanley Holloway as Eliza's dustman father. Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza on Broadway but producer Jack Warner felt that Andrews, at the time unknown beyond Broadway, wasn't bankable; Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Andrews instead made Mary Poppins, for which she was given the Best Actress Oscar, beating out Hepburn. The movie, however, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Harrison, and five other Oscars, and it remains one of the all-time best movie musicals.

Enter Audrey Hepburn’s private world in this unique biography compiled by her son that combines recollections, anecdotes, excerpts from her personal correspondence, drawings, and recipes for her favorite dishes written in her own hand, and more than 250 previously unpublished personal family photographs.

Audrey at Home offers fans an unprecedented look at the legendary star, bringing together the varied aspects of her life through the food she loved—from her childhood in Holland during World War II, to her time in Hollywood as an actress and in Rome as a wife and mother, to her final years as a philanthropist traveling the world for UNICEF.

Here are fifty recipes that reflect Audrey’s life, set in the context of a specific time, including Chocolate Cake with Whipped Cream—a celebration of liberation in Holland at the end of the war; Penne alla Vodka—a favorite home-away-from-home dish in Hollywood; Turkish-style Sea Bass—her romance with and subsequent marriage to Andrea Dotti; Boeuf à la Cuillère—Givenchy’s favorite dish, which she’d prepare when he’d visit her in Switzerland; and Mousse au Chocolat—dinner at the White House. Audrey also loved the basics: Spaghetti al Pomodoro was an all-time favorite, particularly when returning home from her travels, as was a dish of good vanilla ice cream. Each recipe is accompanied by step-by-step instructions, including variations and preparation tips, anecdotes about Audrey and her life, and a poignant collection of photographs and memorabilia.

Audrey at Home is a personal scrapbook of Audrey’s world and the things she loved best—her children, her friends, her pets. It is a life that unfolds through food, photographs, and intimate vignettes in a sophisticated and lovely book that is a must for Audrey Hepburn fans and food lovers.

"Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book and remembering- because you can’t take it all in at once." —Audrey Hepburn

On many occasions, she was approached to pen her autobiography, the definitive book of Audrey Hepburn, yet she never agreed. A beloved icon who found success as an actress, a mother and an humanitarian, Audrey Hepburn perfected the art of gracious living.

More philosophy than biography, How to Be Lovely revisits the many interviews Audrey gave over the years, allowing us to hear her voice directly on universal topics of concern to women the world over: careers, love lives, motherhood and relationships. Enhanced by rarely seen photographs, behind-the-scenes stories, and insights from the friends who knew her well, How to Be Lovely uncovers the real Audrey, in her own words.

While she would have been the last to say so, Audrey Hepburn was an expert in the art of being a woman. How to Be Lovely imparts whatever wisdom and insight she found along the way to the millions who grew up, or will grow up, wanting to be just like her.

Published to coincide with Audrey Hepburn’s would-be seventy-fifth birthday, How to Be Lovely offers a rare glimpse into the woman behind the mystique and the definitive guide to living genuinely with glamour and grace.

Hollywood legends Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn light up the screen in the stylish thriller Charade.   Regina (Hepburn) finds herself pursued through the streets of Paris by several men in search of the fortune that her murdered husband stole from them.  As her world becomes entangled with suspense, murder and plots twists, she finds herself leaning on a suave, charming stranger (Grant) whose motives are unclear. Beautifully directed by Stanley Donen and co-starring James Coburn, George Kennedy and Walter Matthau, this timeless classic will keep you guessing until the very end.  Expect the unexpected!