Paramount Pictures bought the rights for the Broadway play 'Sabrina Fair' expressly for Audrey Hepburn, coming off of the phenomenal success of her very first film and Oscar win for Best Actress the prior year in "Roman Holiday". With a two million dollar budget and seven weeks of shooting in October/November of 1953, "Sabrina" was filming even before there was a finished script. Director Billy Wilder even asked Hepburn to fake an illness on the day they were shooting a scene still being rewritten!
The result however remains one of the all time great romantic comedies, casting Hepburn against a pair of mismatched brothers, David (William Holden) and Linus (Humphrey Bogart) Larrabee. Linus in fact is such a corporate stiff that he's seen dictating a letter to his brother about reporting to work on time, while David seems singularly obsessed with fast sports cars and hit and run marriages. I found it amusingly interesting that the Larrabees were getting into plastics well before Dustin Hoffman could get that advice in "The Graduate".
Two years at cooking school in Paris transforms the waif like Sabrina into a fashionable young woman who's learned how to live. Responding to her father's constant lament that she should stop reaching for the moon, Sabrina counters that now ... "the moon's reaching for me".
As a stand in for his brother, Bogey proclaims himself Joe College with a touch of arthritis as he begins to court Sabrina. But he does manage to pull off one of the smoothest moves of his movie career when he comments 'it's all in the family' just before kissing her for the first time.
One can just imagine how audiences of the 1950's might have been taken with the glamor and party life depicted in the film, unattainable as it was for the majority. Yet in the midst of it all, Audrey Hepburn exhibited a natural and quiet sophistication that endeared her to an entire decade of movie goers. Her self assurance in the role of Sabrina earned her a second Best Actress nomination in as many films.
Stay attentive, and you'll catch Bogart's character request his secretary for a pair of tickets to 'The Seven Year Itch". Ever the self promoters, Paramount was already getting audiences ready for their next big hit for the following year, also to be directed by Billy Wilder.
The result however remains one of the all time great romantic comedies, casting Hepburn against a pair of mismatched brothers, David (William Holden) and Linus (Humphrey Bogart) Larrabee. Linus in fact is such a corporate stiff that he's seen dictating a letter to his brother about reporting to work on time, while David seems singularly obsessed with fast sports cars and hit and run marriages. I found it amusingly interesting that the Larrabees were getting into plastics well before Dustin Hoffman could get that advice in "The Graduate".
Two years at cooking school in Paris transforms the waif like Sabrina into a fashionable young woman who's learned how to live. Responding to her father's constant lament that she should stop reaching for the moon, Sabrina counters that now ... "the moon's reaching for me".
As a stand in for his brother, Bogey proclaims himself Joe College with a touch of arthritis as he begins to court Sabrina. But he does manage to pull off one of the smoothest moves of his movie career when he comments 'it's all in the family' just before kissing her for the first time.
One can just imagine how audiences of the 1950's might have been taken with the glamor and party life depicted in the film, unattainable as it was for the majority. Yet in the midst of it all, Audrey Hepburn exhibited a natural and quiet sophistication that endeared her to an entire decade of movie goers. Her self assurance in the role of Sabrina earned her a second Best Actress nomination in as many films.
Stay attentive, and you'll catch Bogart's character request his secretary for a pair of tickets to 'The Seven Year Itch". Ever the self promoters, Paramount was already getting audiences ready for their next big hit for the following year, also to be directed by Billy Wilder.