1954 Look Back: Audrey's Style in "Sabrina" or the Givenchy Effect

We continue our 1954 celebration (Year of the Month) with abstew on Audrey... 

Audrey Hepburn isn't just a movie star, but a fashion icon. Her image is so closely linked to her style that the moments that immediately come to mind when we think of her - in a black cocktail dress, pearls, and oversized sunglasses nibbling a croissant in front of the window of Tiffany & Co, descending the stairs of the Louvre in a red evening gown, arms out-stretched with Winged Victory as backdrop to name just two - are all influenced by what she was wearing.

Every year some young ingénue is compared to Audrey on the red carpet. Her look and grace have become shorthand for a kind of elegance. In Jerry Maguire, when Renée Zellweger's Dorothy appears in a little black dress for her date with Tom Cruise's Jerry his adoring reaction is:

That's more than a dress. That's an Audrey Hepburn movie."

And it's thanks to the work of French designer Hubert de Givenchy and his creations on 1954's Sabrina that launched the timeless Audrey Hepburn look we know today. [More...]

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Vintage 1954: Brando, Monroe, Godzilla, and Much More...

"Can Marlon Brando Be Tamed?" - the answer, as the next 50 years taught the world was an unequivocal "No."1954 is our "Year of the Month" and this post was fun to research. People who only care about 'the now' are really missing out. Movie tickets were only 70 cents. Can you imagine?

We'll announce the panelists for the Supporting Actress Smackdown (August 30th) on Tuesday. But until then let's marinate a little in the year that was.  

BEST MOVIES ACCORDING TO...

Oscar:
On the Waterfront (12 noms / 8 wins)
The Country Girl (7 noms | 2 wins)
The Caine Mutiny (7 nominations)
Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (5 noms | 1 win)
Three Coins in the Fountain (3 noms | 2 wins).

Just outside the Best Picture shortlist looking in was surely Billy Wilder's wonderful and funny Sabrina and maybe the airplane drama The High and the Mighty (both with 6 noms | 1 win). Probably not just-misses as they were not totally loved but definitely prestigious / respected were two musicals, the awesome A Star is Born (6 nominations) which should have definitely been there and which in fact won both the acting Globes for comedy/musical and the historic Carmen Jones (2 nominations). It's always worth noting that only beginning in the 80s were musicals like rare unicorns. There were 22 musicals released in 1954! It was just another type of movie with hits and misses like any other film genre for the first 50 years of sound cinema.

Golden Globe: (drama) On the Waterfront (comedy/musical) Carmen Jones

Cannes: Gate of Hell  (Japan) took the Palme D'Or and after opening in the US in December and Oscar nomination for Costume Design and an Honorary Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (before that category was created)

List-Mania continues with music hits, debuts, and adorable "born in '54" people after the jump...  

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Life Magazine Best Actress Covers, 1954

Researching 1954 for other posts, I came upon the realization that Life Magazine had featured not one, not two but three of the eventual Best Actress nominees on their covers that year in April (Grace Kelly who had a lot of films out that year including The Country Girl), September (Judy Garland for A Star is Born) and November (Dorothy Dandridge as "Hollywood's Fiery Carmen Jones"). It was "Hollywood's Brightest and Busiest New Star" vs. the World's Greatest Entertainer for the golden statue that year. The tag line to the Judy article was "Judy Garland Takes Off After Oscar" but it was not to be and Grace Kelly cemented the Princess effect with Oscar just a year after that had already helped Audrey Hepburn to her Roman Holiday win. (With Oscar, it rarely turns out that well for the older women, as you know)

This particular Best Actress race will haunt actressexuals forever as Judy Garland's A Star is Born performance is one of the greatest ever committed to celluloid. Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina) and Jane Wyman (Magnificent Obsession) were also nominated that year but did not get a Life cover. That's weird in Audrey's case as she was a regular cover girl. 

Finally while everyone knows that Dorothy Dandridge was a trailblazer this cover represents a twofer: She was not only the first African American nominated for a Leading Role at the Oscars (previous nominations had only happened in Supporting Actress) she was also the very first black woman to appear on the cover of Life Magazine!

Have you ever seen Carmen Jones? We've talked about it before.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Sunset Blvd"

For this week's special edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot -- temporarily redubbed "Hit Me With Your Second-Best Shot" as I've declared that iconic finale off limits -- we're looking at the finest Movie About the Movies ever made. Or one of them at least. The point is it's entirely unmissable and a candidate for any sane All Time Greatest Movie list. The film never gets old or becomes irrelevant even though those are two of its best and most horrifically stared-down topics.

Billy Wilder's masterpiece (or one of them at least), immeasurably aided by inspired performances from William Holden as the screenwriter to Gloria Swanson's screen siren, is not just an acting and writing triumph. It's also a stunner in all the craft categories, particularly its Oscar-winning art direction and its cinematography by John F Seitz, a seven time nominee. His work is magnificent throughout, providing maximum pleasure to "those wonderful people out there in the dark" with his expressive lighting.

So let's get right to those (second) best shots...

A Visual Index of Sunset Blvd (1950)

(Second) Best Shot. According to these 15 movie-loving participants
Click on any image to be taken to the corresponding article
Images presented in rough order as to when they appear in the movie

My New Plaid Pants - this is not technically an entry but people, let this be a lesson to you. If you've already chosen a shot, write a sentence or two about it. The hard part is choosing after all. If you've chosen, do it. We'll link up! 

100% macabre
- Movie Motorbreath *video entry* 

'Stars are ageless.' This shot disagrees."
-I Want to Believe 

There is one entity who has never betrayed her: her 'celluloid self.'"
-The Entertainment Junkie 

Everyone, including Norma, can't help but look at Norma...
-Sorta That Guy 

This image sums up Sunset Blvd., and even more than that,  the entire psychological universe of noir... 
-Antagony & Ecstasy 

No matter how crazy Norma Desmond may be, I always find her incredibly sympathetic...
-Film Actually 

We might be entering the movie’s world through Joe Gillis’s point of view, but unlike him, we *are* here to see Norma Desmond. 
-Coco Hits NY 

It's easy to imagine she does this ever year, even without a handsome writer..."
-Awards Madness 

Already too attached to Norma and her gifts...
-Dancin Dan on Film 

If Norma Desmond is a fictionalized version of Gloria Swanson, Max Von Mayerling is a quasi-(auto)biographical portrait of Erich von Stroheim...
-Paul Outlaw 

We expect cold humiliating truth but what we get is the film's most genuinely warm moment... 
- The Film Experience 

Norma Desmond would be proud of the leading lady portraying her..."
-54 Disney Reviews 

A true star always finds the light...
-Jija Crazy Movie *first time participant*

A one-man army of servants, for her sake, steps back into his role as director once more..."
-Allison Tooey  

Please do visit each article, share, and comment. The more eyes the merrier when it comes to worshipping great stars. You haven't forgotten what a star looks like.

NEXT WEDNESDAY: 1995's [safe] starring Julianne Moore

Poor Joe. This Spotlight is For Norma Desmond

When I issued the challenge of Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Sunset Blvd (1950), with the caveat that you couldn't use that final close up for Mr DeMille, I knew it would make for a great episode. What a stone cold classic it is, filled with potent images in every scene that are too often taken for granted given the combined impact of its haunting iconic opening and closing. What I had dumbly not remembered was how intoxicatingly full Sunset Blvd feels on every repeat viewing inbetween. You can go into each screening with one topic in mind ("I shall write about this") and come out with a dozen more topics boiling, your original thoughts crowded out of the mind's frame. So I must painfully set aside the self-deprecating script, the gestural bravado, the timelessness of its time capsule, its shame-trigger economics and sexuality. So much of it distracts from the real purpose of HMWYBS which is to zero in on a particular image from a public piece of art that seizes your individual imagination with its beauty or thematic resonance or what not, and discuss. 

So Joe McGillis will have to wait. Which is a shame. He's worth at least 11 essays of his own according to my easily distracted notes. They're messier than Norma's epic handwritten "Salome" opus which visually buries Joe long before she works up enough actual crazy to really bury him. [More...]

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