Marian Seldes on Audrey Hepburn
"I am always, always grateful, and I can–I must–immediately forget anything that blocks my gratitude. Audrey taught me to live in the state of gratitude.”
Interview with Marian Seldes/17 West 71st Street/1993
“We met and worked together in what was a dazzling time for her. There was not a single moment of her every day that was not scheduled, orchestrated, demanded. She was starring in a hit play on Broadway; she was a global movie star; she was nominated for an Academy Award; she won that Academy Award; she won a Tony Award. And every night at the stage door, she stood for as long as she could and spoke to people and signed things and touched arms and faces. She radiated kindness.”
Marian had kept a series of boxes that held mementos from each production of her theatre career. In a box marked PETROUCHKA, there were tiny pieces of paper, punched out of white and ecru paper, that had fallen on her at the Metropolitan Opera House, when she had been a supernumerary on Fokine Night for the American Ballet Theatre. The date on the box read “October, 1942.”
The ONDINE box held notes in Marian’s tiny, spidery handwriting–like that of Jacqueline Kennedy’s and so many other girls who went to good schools and were told, as Marian put it, “to be quiet and polite and of very little trouble”–photographs, a piece of fabric, various other tokens, but mostly the lid of the box being opened acted as an incentive for Marian to speak of her “brief, beautiful” friend Audrey Hepburn.
“It was a magical time for me,” Marian said, “and I was treated with so much care and affection by both Alfred Lunt and his wife [Lynn Fontanne]. Lynn and I would spend time together during the days, and she would gently tell me how I should dress, what I should eat, and, as you know, how to breathe properly.” [From a book on health, Marian had decided it was best to inhale deeply and fully, to fill the lungs and to bring a glow to the face, but she did not realize how comically loud her breathing had become.] “Lynn had to tell me that she could hear me breathing; she could hear me coming from distances. It was a good lesson.”
During the time of Ondine, Marian’s mother passed away. Marian inherited her mother’s dark hair and alabaster complexion; her height; her patrician manner. Marian did not wish to inherit her mother’s lethargy and illness. “I remember my mother almost always as ill,” Marian told me. “I always think of her in bed, propped up by pillows, reading or sleeping, being tenderly cared for by my father. I did not want to be that person, even though I loved my mother so much. My mother made me aware, at an early age, of the value of time, the danger of time lost, and so I took care of myself, and I wrote things down, and I saved things. If I saved things, they did not disappear or die: They remained alive and in my memory.”
Also in the box was a quote from Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science:
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How is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal or revision, by seeing it in its proper light, and then turning it or turning from it. We undo the statements of error by reversing them. Through these three statements, or misstatements, evil comes into authority:
First: The Lord created it.
Second: The Lord knows it.
Third: I am afraid of it.
By a reverse process of argument evil must be de-throned:
First: God never made evil.
Second: He knows it not.
Third: We therefore need not fear it.
Try this process, dear inquirer, and so reach that perfect Love which “casteth out fear,” and then see if this Love does not destroy in you all hate and the sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance.
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Marian told me it was from a book by Eddy called “Unity of Good,” and the piece had been given to her by Katharine Cornell, who had gotten it from Ruth Gordon. “Katharine Cornell was not a Christian Scientist. Nor am I. But I like a lot of it. So many people have. Katharine thought I would like it. Thought I needed it. But, really, one of her favorite books on thinking and living was “The Body Has A Head” by Gustav Eckstein. [Marian gave me her copy.]
Marian enjoyed nibbling at the buffet of religion and spirituality, and she and I were the only two people we knew who possessed all three copies of We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, a trilogy of testimonies of those who had lived with, among, or in the study of the founder of Christian Science. Even those we knew who studied Christian Science (Katharine Hepburn, Mildred Natwick, Ruth Gordon) had not owned these books, or had not kept them. “I keep everything,” Marian admitted, “even some of the tenets of Christian Science.”
Audrey Hepburn had been trained in Christian Science–her mother, Marian said, was quite devout–and so one conversation at what was then the 46th Street Theatre (and is now the Neil Simon) turned to that religion, and what it meant to these two young women.
“Audrey and I were roughly the same age,” Marian remembered, “and yet our lives, while devoted to acting, were so different. I saw myself as awkward, dreaming, stumbling toward something, a theatre, perhaps, that did not exist. Something I dreamed. For Audrey, stardom had burst upon her, fallen on her like those little pieces of paper that served as snow that I showed you. It was more like a wave, actually, a huge wave that was wild and loud, but, when it reached her, simply lapped at her feet. She calmed and charmed anything and anyone who approached her. I was shy and apologetic and, always, always, so star-struck. I watched how Audrey dressed, what she ate, how she behaved. I wanted to know her secrets. One of her secrets was Mel, who was very strong, very smart, and he told her everything she should read or think. I did not like how he spoke to her, or how he spoke to Alfred Lunt. Mel was brusque with all of us, and Audrey held that beautiful face up to him like a hungry bird and ingested everything he said. I thought Mel was a far more brutal wave than the one that fame and her admirers brought to her everywhere she went. I felt that her fans loved her, and I didn’t know, really, how Mel felt about her.”
Fear brings people together, often in hatred and destruction, but also in friendship. Marian and Audrey did not believe in hatred, and they both fled disagreements, discord, so they found comfort with each other, silence amid so much noise and light. “I was a character of darkness,” Marian said, “and Audrey was this glorious water nymph, bathed in light, wearing such diaphanous costumes, and I felt we were the same off the stage, out of character. I had loss in my life, doubt, and I wondered if there would be a place for me in a theatre that might or might not exist. And here was Audrey, surrounded by people and offers and demands and Champagne and flowers, and she was, ironically, given the play we were in, drowning. I asked her how she managed it.
“Audrey had the most remarkable eyes–dark and beautiful, very full of feeling, and she cried easily. I mean to say that she teared up, and never so much than when she was grateful or relieved. She looked at me and she told me that hers was a life of so much gratitude. She had so much after having so little for such a long time. She loved to care for her mother, her friends. She took such joy in helping others in the cast, and she helped me: She took the time to let me know I was worthy; to let me know I had meant something to her. She was grateful to me and for me. She was grateful that Mel loved her and was willing to educate and shape her. I did not agree that she needed such things, but she did, and she was grateful for all he had done for her. Mel had made the New York production of Ondine possible, and Audrey believed that Mel had delivered to her the Oscar she had just won [for William Wyler’s Roman Holiday], and she would believe that the Tony she would win for Ondine was delivered to her by him as well, just as Alfred Lunt had been hired to elevate her. put light upon all that she was. ‘And,’ Audrey said, ‘all I did was dream it. I believed that there was beauty in dance and in acting and in living among beautiful words and beautiful people, and now it is true, and I am grateful. I cannot believe in lack for myself or for others. I acknowledge what I have, and I share what I don’t need, and there is no lack.’ Audrey had taken the kernels of Christian Science, and she had expanded them to to suit her, but she was aware, in a way similar to mine, that life was very fast and could be very tough, but we had to keep our minds and our hearts always in a beautiful place. We always had to be grateful. A grateful heart remembers, she told me, and so she could not mind a busy day when she recalled the days of hunger and fear and loneliness. The gifts had been delivered to her, and she was grateful, and I’ve taken that lesson with me. I am always, always grateful, and I can–I must–immediately forget anything that blocks my gratitude. Audrey taught me to live in the state of gratitude.”
