Top Secret (1954)

LIFE did not print this pic of chorus line in the spicy French show “Sauce Piquante” at London’s Cambridge Theatre. Arrow points to the only girl who doesn’t look shocked by ribald dialog of female impersonator Douglas Byng — and, guess what, it’s innocent little Audrey! the spectacle into a ribald affair catering to the lower regions of male imagination. Furthermore, TOP SECRET can also introduce the mystery man in Audrey’s currently overpublicized life — her father, a strange and erratic man who was carried for years on the suspect list of British counterespionage because of his pro-Nazi activities. No matter how hard you may try, you will find nothing about these episodes in the columns printed on Audrey. And search as you may, you will discover not a hint of “Sauce Piquante” or Audrey’s appearances in the floor shows of certain London night clubs. When LIFE awarded Audrey the distinction of its front page and featured her in an unprecedented nine-page layout, you saw only the demure little actress skyrocketed to stardom by her natural talent, lifting her cup of coffee “with natural gracefulness," riding her bike with the gay abandon of an urchin, doing her homework like a conscientious schoolgirl, and loved by all and sundry “for her orderliness and formal;*v.” When Hollywood’s own Hedda Hopper described her in a rave column as a "dedicated woman” with a "magical spark,” she emphasized Audrey’s "queenly dignity” and remarked that she would never be seen "peddling around town in pedal pushers.” When a London weekly rushed a special correspondent to Audrey in Hollywood, you discovered in his article that she didn’t even know how to mix a Martini. Hearts melt and souls rejoice at the sight of so much loveliness and innocence, at this virgin beauty so-o-o devoid of even the suggestion of sin, at this personification of virtue and instinctive rectitude. A BABE IN HOLLYWOOD Audrey Hepburn did not always aspire to the role of the unblemished princess whose angelic face enchants all men with its goody-goody appeal. There were a few struggling years in her life whose unretouched story would blur the synthetic picture and draw aside the toga of utter probity from the slim torso of Hollywood’s current woman of distinction. But, don’t get us wrong! We have no objecttion to the fulsome praise now poured on Audrey’s roguish little head on the basis of a single supercolossal production in which she played havoc with two naive Americans in frantic search of a scoop. Her "Roman Holiday” was a delight ful bit of tomfoolery, even though in this atomic age its Graustarkian nonsense seemed as phony as the Piltdown man. We enjoyed her film as much as you did, only we didn’t collapse at the sight of Miss Hepburn and didn’t think that she was the greatest actress of all time, as some of the critics did. To set the record straight, TOP SECRET fills out the gaps in the biography of Miss Audrey Hepburn and presents a selection of stills from her pre-Hollywood days. Here, then, are pictures from Sauce Piquante, with Audrey bringing up the rear of a naughty chorus line. Here, then, is the photograph of a different Audrey, the white skin of her thigh flashing through the sexy hose, her falsies ensconed in decorative bras, her lips opened for that comeonish smile on that go-onish stage. Here is the coy picture of little Audrey, in the line of lovelies, aiding and abetting the crude frolics of the female impersonator in the most outspoken manner of gay Paree. To be sure, from Audrey’s point of view this “Sauce Piquante” was nothing but a modest (Continued on Next Page) 7