Reel Classics: Roman Holiday

Today Reel Classics takes a look at the 1953 release Roman Holiday.  The film stars Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in her first lead­ing film role. Gregory Peck plays Joe Bradley, a reporter based in Rome work­ing for American News Service.  He’s not real­ly hap­py with this job as he wants to work for what he con­sid­ers “a real news agency” in the USA.  His pal, Irving Radovich (Eddie Albert), is a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and they work togeth­er on stories.

Audrey Hepburn plays the role of Princess Ann, a mem­ber of a roy­al fam­i­ly from Europe who is on a good­will tour of Europe.  At the begin­ning of the movie, we see a news­reel clip of Her Royal Highness’s stops in var­i­ous European cities, and her lat­est stop is Rome.  We quick­ly learn that though she rec­og­nizes the need to uphold the Royal role in which she finds her­self, she is also worn and weary of the role.  She com­plains to one of her “ladies-in-wait­ing” but is quick­ly remind­ed that she is a princess and must con­form to those expectations. 

She opens her bed­room win­dow and gazes out on the street below.  A few blocks away, she sees the lights and hears the music of a street dance.  She longs to be able to expe­ri­ence the “nor­mal life” of a young woman.  She ver­bal­izes her resent­ments to her lady assis­tant, who becomes con­cerned about the men­tal state of Princess Ann.  She calls in a doc­tor who feels she needs rest and gives her a seda­tive to calm her down.  They all leave the room, and Princess Ann again gets out of bed and goes to the win­dow to hear the music and laugh­ter com­ing from the street dance.  She then puts on some clothes and escapes the room, deter­mined to expe­ri­ence life on the street. 

Needless to say, the seda­tive begins to take effect.  Enter Joe Bradley, the dis­con­tent­ed reporter who is sched­uled to be part of an entourage of reporters who will be inter­view­ing the Princess tomor­row.  He is walk­ing down the dark street and finds a young lady, appar­ent­ly suf­fer­ing from too much to drink, lying on a park bench. He tries to rouse her out of con­cern for her safe­ty, but she is obvi­ous­ly quite woozy.  Eventually, and some­what reluc­tant­ly, he decides to take her back to his apart­ment to “sleep it off.”   He does not rec­og­nize her as Princess Ann. 

The next morn­ing he learns she is the Princess and sees an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a real­ly big sto­ry.  He does not tell her he is a reporter.  He tells her he works in the fer­til­iz­er busi­ness. She sees an oppor­tu­ni­ty to spend the day see­ing the streets of Rome as a “nor­mal” young woman, not a mem­ber of roy­al­ty.  She does not tell him she is Princess Ann, but instead says her name is Anya. 

And so they begin a day-long trip see­ing the sights of Rome, each har­bor­ing a secret from the oth­er.  Joe invites his pho­tog­ra­phy pal Irving to join them, ask­ing him to secret­ly take pic­tures of the Princess.  As the day’s adven­tures pro­ceed, Joe and Ann begin to fall in love with each oth­er, both know­ing that the secrets they are har­bor­ing would impact their future together.

As men­tioned above, this was Audrey Hepburn’s first motion pic­ture star­ring role.  It was a set of cir­cum­stances that cre­at­ed this oppor­tu­ni­ty for her.  The direc­tor, William Wyler (also known for direct­ing the Oscar-win­ning films Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Ben-Hur), insist­ed that the film be shot in Rome.  The stu­dio want­ed to film it in Hollywood.  When Wyler’s demands were grant­ed, the stu­dio decid­ed to cut the bud­get.  Instead of Technicolor, it would be filmed in black and white.  Initially con­sid­ered for the role of Princess Ann were Jean Simmons and Elizabeth Taylor. Instead of a well-known and cost­ly lead actress, they would look for some­one unknown and not as costly. 

It is report­ed that what got Audrey Hepburn the role was not her script­ed screen test, but her spon­ta­neous and unscript­ed behav­ior after­ward. The cam­era­man was told to keep the film run­ning after the script­ed test, and Wyler was impressed with what he saw.  Not only was this a for­tu­nate deci­sion on his part, but Audrey Hepburn went on to wow many with her per­for­mance — win­ning the Best Actress Oscar in 1953. 

A fun­ny sto­ry about the Oscar for Audrey.  In her excite­ment over win­ning the award, she report­ed­ly start­ed up to the stage the wrong way, kissed the pre­sen­ter on the mouth (instead of the cheek), and then left the award in the ladies’ room — hav­ing to go find it so she could pose for the press.

Initially, Cary Grant was con­sid­ered for the role of Joe Bradley.  He turned down the role as he believed he was too old to play the love inter­est of the quite young Audrey Hepburn.  Interestingly, they did share a love inter­est ten years lat­er in the film Charade. Cary Grant lat­er was report­ed to say that Audrey Hepburn was one of his favorite actress­es with whom he had worked.

One of the rea­sons that William Wyler insist­ed on film­ing in Italy was report­ed­ly to dis­tance him­self from the House Un-American Activities Committee, whose efforts had led to many in Hollywood being barred or at least taint­ed for their lib­er­al views.  Dalton Trumbo was a screen­writer who had been black­list­ed for his polit­i­cal views.  He was the writer of the sto­ry for this film but could not take any cred­it.  His friend Ian McLellan Hunter was list­ed in the cred­its and actu­al­ly was pre­sent­ed an Oscar for the efforts. A lat­er release of the film in 2002 gave cred­it to Dalton Trumbo. 

On anoth­er inter­est­ing note, Paramount Studios entered into an agree­ment with the British Government that there would be no indi­ca­tion that the char­ac­ter Princess Ann was of the British Royal Family.  The British were con­cerned that view­ers might link Princess Ann to their own Princess Margaret, who her­self was buck­ing some of the roy­al restric­tions.  She had fall­en in love with a “com­mon­er” and was forced to renounce her love for him with the expec­ta­tion that she find a “suit­able” part­ner.  Fans of The Crown on Netflix will be well aware of Princess Margaret’s adven­tures.  There was a scene shot for the movie to specif­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fy Princess Ann as not being part of the British royalty.

This film is a romance, but also a com­e­dy.  There are numer­ous fun­ny scenes, includ­ing the inter­ac­tion between Joe and Ann when he finds her on the park bench. 

Another hilar­i­ous scene involves their trip to the “Mouth of Truth.”  It’s a carved-in-stone head of an ani­mal with a hole where the mouth would be.  The leg­end was that if you put your hand in the mouth of the beast and you had been untruth­ful, the beast would bite off your hand.  We must remem­ber that both Ann and Joe were keep­ing a secret from the oth­er regard­ing their true iden­ti­ties.  Joe sug­gests Anya (her made-up name) go first.  She starts to, but then is hes­i­tant, obvi­ous­ly remem­ber­ing the “lit­tle lie” she has told.  Prior to the shoot­ing of the scene, Gregory Peck had told the direc­tor that he was going to pull a trick that he has seen Red Skelton use before. Audrey Hepburn was unaware of this gag.  He put his hand in the mouth and start­ed scream­ing.  He pulled out his arm and had his hand hid­den up his sleeve, appear­ing to have lost his hand to the beast.  Audrey Hepburn freaked out and screamed when she saw that and then real­ized he had played a trick on her.  The scene was done in one shot, and the reac­tion you see is real. 

Roman Holiday was nom­i­nat­ed for 10 Academy Awards, includ­ing Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Eddie Albert), and Best Director (William Wyler). It won three includ­ing, as men­tioned above, Best Leading Actress for Audrey Hepburn.  In an inter­view, Gregory Peck said that watch­ing Audrey Hepburn in her first star­ring role was “like watch­ing a flower sud­den­ly come to bloom” and that she “was born to play this princess.”

The American Film Institute lists Roman Holiday as num­ber four on its list of ten great­est Romantic Comedies.  In 1999 it was select­ed for preser­va­tion in the United States National Film Registry.  Reviewers were high­ly com­pli­men­ta­ry as well.  The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Roman Holiday “proves a charm­ing, laugh-pro­vok­ing affair that often explodes into hilar­i­ty...” and  has a “delight­ful screen­play that sparkles with wit and out­ra­geous humor that at times comes close to slap­stick.”  The Guardian report­ed the film was a “mod­ern fairy-tale whose two leads have a charm and inno­cence that irra­di­ate the whole movie.”

A remake of the film was made for tele­vi­sion in 1987, star­ring Catherine Oxenberg and Tom Conti.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) gives Roman Holiday a rat­ing of 8 out of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes has a crit­ic’s score of 97% and an audi­ence score of 93%. 

In look­ing for stream­ing sites that offer the film for free, I found it on the fol­low­ing sites:  Pluto, Kanopy (avail­able with a library card), Movieland TV, and Fawesome.  It is also avail­able on DVD at the Clark County Public Library.

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

Keep watch­ing for the next edi­tion of Reel Classics, and in the mean­time, enjoy the trail­er below.