Live Auction 14904Audrey Hepburn: The Personal Collection
FUNNY FACE, 1957/DAVID NIVEN
Lot 82

FUNNY FACE, 1957/DAVID NIVEN

Closed27 September 2017

Price Realised

GBP 3,250

Considering selling a similar item?

Discover its value with a complimentary estimate from our specialists.

More Information

How to sell

FUNNY FACE, 1957/DAVID NIVEN
An autograph letter, signed, from David Niven to Audrey Hepburn on 1461 Amalfi Drive headed stationery, dated 29 January, [1957], the letter in blue ink on both sides of one sheet, congratulating Hepburn on her performance in Funny Face, Niven confesses I've kept this to myself for weeks and it won't keep another day!.... "Funny Face" is the best movie I have ever seen in my life and you are so great in it that I "blubbed"!, promising to ...add to my rather dim prayers one of thanks for your gaiety, beauty, absolute sincerity and TALENT!, and finishing with good wishes for her next project ...lots of luck with "Mayerling" (what a hair raising business "live" is?!!), signed The Old Hotel Neighbour! - David Niven, the letter annotated below the letterhead in Hepburn's hand in turquoise ink read this, from David Niven!!! need not keep it
8 ½ x 6 ½ in. (21.6 x 16.5 cm.)

Specialist note

When Audrey first arrived in New York to play the part of Gigi, she took a room at the Blackstone Hotel. Her neighbour was none other than David Niven, who was rehearsing for the Broadway show Nina, set to open within a week of Gigi. For Ian Woodward's biography, Niven remembered Audrey and I shook with fear as our opening nights on Broadway drew inexorably nearer. I think we met when a body crashed down from the eighteenth floor and bounced off Audrey's windowsill... she rushed into our room... our grisly beginning ripened into a long, long friendship.