Chapter two: A Little Sun in her Eyes

Audrey and her mother moved to Amsterdam after the war. Her mother became a cook. She was not rich, but she paid for Audrey’s dancing lessons. Audrey had the best dancing teacher in Holland. Then, when she was seventeen, she had a small part in a travel movie. The director loved her happy face. He said, “A little sun is shining in her eyes.”

In 1948 Audrey and her mother moved to London. Her mother worked in a flower store. Friends gave them some money, and Audrey went to the Ballet Rambert. This was the most important ballet school in London. Audrey worked hard at her dancing. She had no time for boyfriends. But one day the ballet school told her, “I’m sorry, but you’ll never be a famous dancer. You’re too tall.”

Audrey was sad, but then something happened. It changed her life. Somebody remembered her from the ballet school, and gave her a small part in a big London musical. Three thousand girls tried to get the part, but the producers wanted Audrey. She quickly found jobs in other musicals. Everybody liked this thin girl with the pretty face and wide smile. “I was not a great dancer,” Audrey remembered later. “I threw up my arms and smiled. That’s all.”

When Audrey was twenty, her photo was in many magazines. She had small parts in three cheap movies, and she was a cigarette-girl in the famous movie, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).

One evening she went to a party and met a rich Englishman. James Hanson fell in love with Audrey. He wanted to marry her and take her to his home in the north of England. Audrey loved him too. He was strong and rich, and she felt safe with him. But there was one big problem: she wanted to be in movies and the theater too. “I don’t want to get married now,” she told him. “Let’s wait.”

In 1951 Audrey had a small part in the movie Monte Carlo Baby, so she went to the south of France. The famous French writer, Colette, was in the south of France too. She wanted to find a girl for the Broadway musical of her book, Gigi. When she saw Audrey, with her thin arms and legs, long dark hair, and big pretty eyes, she said, “She is Gigi! Half-woman, half-boy. Wonderful!”

Audrey was excited, but nervous. “I can’t do that,” she told the great writer. “I’m a dancer, not an actor.” But Colette did not listen. She called New York and said, “Stop looking for Gigi. She is here!”