How Audrey Hepburn Risked Demise to Assist the Dutch Resistance in World Struggle II


Audrey Hep­burn might not have had essentially the most professional­lif­ic Hol­ly­wooden profession, however a good few of her char­ac­ters nonetheless really feel immediately like roles she was born to play. Per­haps the identical may have been true of the a part of Anne Frank, had she not refused to take it up. When Anne’s father Otto Frank inquired about it, one would possibly imag­ine that Hep­burn felt like she did­n’t have the appropriate expe­ri­ence to play that younger girl, now lengthy regard­ed because the embod­i­ment of the vic­tims of the Holo­caust. In actual fact, for the actress who can be remem­bered as Princess Ann and Hol­ly Golight­ly, it was too near residence: Hep­burn may remem­ber all too properly her personal har­row­ing wartime expe­ri­ence within the Nether­lands, com­ing to the purpose of star­va­tion whereas hid­ing from the Nazis.

Born in Bel­gium, the younger Hep­burn went to board­ing college in Eng­land within the mid-nine­teen-thir­ties. On the finish of that decade, with the out­break of the warfare, she went together with her moth­er to reside within the Nether­lands. A stu­dent of bal­let, she danced for audi­ences that includ­ed Nazi par­ty mem­bers — an unavoid­ready reality of which a lot has been made — however she additionally danced, secret­ly, for the resis­tance. As biog­ra­ph­er Robert Matzen writes, “Audrey’s celebri­ty as a bal­le­ri­na for close to­ly 4 years on the Arn­hem metropolis the­ater made her tal­ents valu­in a position to Dr. Viss­er ’t Hooft,” considered one of that transfer­males­t’s lead­ers, who placed on “ille­gal musi­cal per­for­mances at var­i­ous by-invi­ta­tion-only loca­tions” meant to earn artists mon­ey “after that they had been compelled out of the Dutch fundamental­stream by the Nazi union of artists, the Kul­tu­urkamer.”

Hep­burn her­self dis­cuss­es this peri­od in the inter­view clip on the prime of the publish. As time went on, Matzen writes, “Dr. Viss­er ’t Hooft despatched her at one level dur­ing this peri­od to take a mes­sage, and per­haps meals, to one of many downed fliers. Her qual­i­fi­ca­tions have been sim­ple: She spoke Eng­lish flu­ent­ly the place­as oth­er younger peo­ple with­in simple attain within the vil­lage didn’t.”

Within the autumn of 1944, “she and her fam­i­ly saved a British para­troop­er of their base­ment, the lat­est act in a collection of defi­ances,” writes Den of Geek’s David Crow. “By the fol­low­ing win­ter, they too can be liv­ing down there, cautious to even crawl out of ‘mattress’ because the bombs fell on their small Dutch vil­lage of Velp.” Even­tu­al­ly, “after what was left of their meals was deplet­ed, they ate tulip bulbs. When these have been gone, they ate the weeds.”

Endured at such a younger age, this ordeal had final­ing results. “The depri­va­tions would hang-out Audrey the remainder of her days, inform­ing her svelte body and, Matzen argues, pos­si­bly her ear­ly demise from appen­diceal can­cer.” No gained­der, then, that she remained truthful­ly tac­i­flip about her warfare even after becom­ing an inter­na­tion­al­ly well-known actress (an alter­na­tive to her first dream of danc­ing). Therefore the for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge laid earlier than Matzen within the analysis that went into what turned Dutch Lady: Audrey Hep­burn and World Struggle II, which you’ll hear him dis­cuss in the Sto­ry­tellers’ Stu­dio video simply above. Her sto­ry turned out dif­fer­ent­ly from Anne Frank’s — which itself, as Matzen argues, beset her with a form of “sur­vivor’s guilt” — however now, each of them reside on as icons of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry at its gentle­est and darkish­est.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Audrey Hepburn’s Mov­ing Display Check for Roman Hol­i­day (1953)

How Two Teenage Dutch Sis­ters Finish­ed Up Be a part of­ing the Resis­tance and Assas­si­nat­ing Nazis Dur­ing World Struggle II

Albert Camus, Edi­tor of the French Resis­tance Information­pa­per Com­bat, Writes Mov­ing­ly About Life, Pol­i­tics & Struggle (1944–47)

Col­or Footage of the Lib­er­a­tion of Paris, Shot by Hol­ly­wooden Direc­tor George Stevens (1944)

Cha­rade, the Finest Hitch­cock Movie Hitch­cock Nev­er Made. Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hep­burn

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e-book.



Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *