Introducing Audrey Hepburn
A romp in the park with an unknown young chorus girl
Alex Q. Arbuckle
May 1950
In the spring of 1950, Audrey Hepburn was an unknown 21-year-old chorus girl appearing in musical theatre revues in London’s West End. Here, Picture Post photographer Bert Hardy uses her as a model, frolicking in London’s Kew Gardens for a seasonal feature entitled “We Take A Girl To Look For Spring."Born in Brussels, Hepburn grew up in an aristocratic and international family, and could speak five languages by a young age.During the German occupation of the Netherlands, a teenage Hepburn smuggled messages for the Dutch resistance in between ballet performances. As the occupied Netherlands plunged into famine during the winter of 1944, Hepburn suffered severe malnutrition and developed anemia. After the end of the war, Hepburn continued to study ballet, eventually traveling to London on a scholarship. There, she was told she was too weakened from the famine to ever become a prima ballerina. She shifted her focus to acting.While taking lessons to develop her elocution for stage and screen, she appeared in musical revues including Cecil Landeau’s Sauce Piquante.It was her work that year on Sauce Piquante that first caught the eye of a film casting director, which launched her legendary screen career.
