Audrey, Jimmy, and The Second World War: Two Book Reviews
Having grown up with Dutch grandparents, a WWII flier father, and a sister who inspired me with her love of classic film, I couldn’t pass up the chance to review two of Robert Matzen’s books regarding Hollywood stars whose lives were permanently altered by the Second World War:
Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II
and Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe.
Before reading Dutch Girl I thought Audrey Hepburn was an Academy Award winner who happened to have grown up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. When I was finished, I realized she was instead a war survivor who had walked (or more accurately, danced) sideways into cinematic stardom. Matzen’s biography tells Hepburn’s story from her birth into the doomed marriage of two moderately narcissistic bluebloods; being raised by a single mother in two countries; her all-consuming passion to become a professional ballet dancer; and the war years. Matzen punctuates the narrative with occasional slim chapters that attempt to make sense of the connection between Adriaantje the Dutch girl and Audrey the film star.
He had very little source material with which to justify his subtitle; there are few surviving witnesses to Audrey's war years and there is no diary or memoir. The reverse is true: like many who lived through the Nazi-inspired nightmare, Hepburn was so shaken by her experiences that she kept them close for the rest of her life. Another reason for her guardedness was a dangerous skeleton in the family closet: her mother, Ella van Heemstra, had been an enthusiastic fan of the Führer during his rise to power, and there is a newspaper clipping to prove it.
It would seem, then, that writing a book about Hepburn’s life during World War II would be nearly impossible. Whether or not the author should have tried is open for debate, but the result has merit. Most of Dutch Girl is a long, nearly cinematic point-of-view shot revealing what the Dutch people experienced in Audrey’s part of the occupied Netherlands: seeing the German occupiers strutting through the streets for the first time; the terrifying and mysterious disappearance of friends and neighbors; the deadly sound of a V1 “buzz bomb” flying overhead; and the indescribable agony of the Hongerwinter.
Scattered throughout the book are a slim number of quotes from Hepburn that provide a certain structure and keep the reader aware that this is, after all, her biography. A few of these quotes are rare statements from interviews about her wartime experiences—I’m quite sure Matzen unearthed every single one—while others are pearls of wisdom she shared with her sons, as Luca recalls in the book’s forward:
When my mother talked about herself and what life taught her, Hollywood was indeed the missing guest. Instead of naming famed Beverly Hills locations, she gave us obscure and sometimes unpronounceable Dutch ones. Red carpet recollections were replaced by Second World War episodes that she was able to transform into children’s tales.
Speaking of Hepburn’s sons, the last chapter reveals that as soon as she had the chance, Hepburn left Hollywood behind in order to live the life she’d always wanted. Perhaps her youthful dream of ballet stardom would never materialize, but she could still raise her children in a happy and safe world, the one that had been denied her during her own childhood.
Again, it can be argued that the writing of this book wasn’t absolutely essential, but as the author did an excellent job with the material at hand, and because the world can never get enough of European Theater stories or Audrey Hepburn, it deserves a wide readership, as does Mission, Matzen’s biography of Jimmy Stewart.
In a way, Stewart, like Hepburn, was a war veteran who happened to be a movie star. Yes, he was a Hollywood A-lister years before Poland was invaded and Pearl Harbor bombed, but Stewart came from a long line of military veterans: his ancestors fought in the American Revolution and the Civil War. And when Jimmy was 10 years old, his 45 year-old father, already a veteran of the Spanish-American War, went over to France to join the U.S. Army Ordinance Corps. Like Lieutenant Dan Taylor of Forest Gump fame, going to war was in Stewart’s blood, and he earned his pilot’s license long before receiving his most welcome draft letter in March 1941. When Louie B. Mayer tried to prevent Stewart’s exit from Tinseltown, the younger man countered with something the celluloid Senator Jefferson Smith might have said in similar circumstances: “Mr. Mayer, this country’s conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we’ll have to fight.”
When that time came, Stewart worked stateside as a flight instructor before flying as lead pilot in 20 missions over Germany within a 15-month time frame. The pressures of aerial combat gave Stewart a bad case of untreated PTSD, which can be observed, as Matzen points out in the book’s final chapter, in the first film Stewart made upon his return: “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Stewart, like Hepburn (and most veterans of war, civilian or military), didn’t talk much about his work post-war. Matzen indicates this repeatedly, so I found it strange that the book often places us inside Stewart’s head, providing the reader with his detailed thoughts and feelings while at flight. Yes, Matzen did his homework--extensive military research, interviews, and even his own flying—but these attempts to connect the dots for the readers give off a faint whiff of fictionalization.
That aside, Mission is a wonderful book that punctuates Stewart’s biography with single chapters featuring other players—young Germans and another American pilot—all of which brilliantly sets the main narrative and its leading man within their historical context.
Before reading Dutch Girl I thought Audrey Hepburn was an Academy Award winner who happened to have grown up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. When I was finished, I realized she was instead a war survivor who had walked (or more accurately, danced) sideways into cinematic stardom. Matzen’s biography tells Hepburn’s story from her birth into the doomed marriage of two moderately narcissistic bluebloods; being raised by a single mother in two countries; her all-consuming passion to become a professional ballet dancer; and the war years. Matzen punctuates the narrative with occasional slim chapters that attempt to make sense of the connection between Adriaantje the Dutch girl and Audrey the film star.
He had very little source material with which to justify his subtitle; there are few surviving witnesses to Audrey's war years and there is no diary or memoir. The reverse is true: like many who lived through the Nazi-inspired nightmare, Hepburn was so shaken by her experiences that she kept them close for the rest of her life. Another reason for her guardedness was a dangerous skeleton in the family closet: her mother, Ella van Heemstra, had been an enthusiastic fan of the Führer during his rise to power, and there is a newspaper clipping to prove it.
It would seem, then, that writing a book about Hepburn’s life during World War II would be nearly impossible. Whether or not the author should have tried is open for debate, but the result has merit. Most of Dutch Girl is a long, nearly cinematic point-of-view shot revealing what the Dutch people experienced in Audrey’s part of the occupied Netherlands: seeing the German occupiers strutting through the streets for the first time; the terrifying and mysterious disappearance of friends and neighbors; the deadly sound of a V1 “buzz bomb” flying overhead; and the indescribable agony of the Hongerwinter.
Scattered throughout the book are a slim number of quotes from Hepburn that provide a certain structure and keep the reader aware that this is, after all, her biography. A few of these quotes are rare statements from interviews about her wartime experiences—I’m quite sure Matzen unearthed every single one—while others are pearls of wisdom she shared with her sons, as Luca recalls in the book’s forward:
When my mother talked about herself and what life taught her, Hollywood was indeed the missing guest. Instead of naming famed Beverly Hills locations, she gave us obscure and sometimes unpronounceable Dutch ones. Red carpet recollections were replaced by Second World War episodes that she was able to transform into children’s tales.
Speaking of Hepburn’s sons, the last chapter reveals that as soon as she had the chance, Hepburn left Hollywood behind in order to live the life she’d always wanted. Perhaps her youthful dream of ballet stardom would never materialize, but she could still raise her children in a happy and safe world, the one that had been denied her during her own childhood.
Again, it can be argued that the writing of this book wasn’t absolutely essential, but as the author did an excellent job with the material at hand, and because the world can never get enough of European Theater stories or Audrey Hepburn, it deserves a wide readership, as does Mission, Matzen’s biography of Jimmy Stewart.
In a way, Stewart, like Hepburn, was a war veteran who happened to be a movie star. Yes, he was a Hollywood A-lister years before Poland was invaded and Pearl Harbor bombed, but Stewart came from a long line of military veterans: his ancestors fought in the American Revolution and the Civil War. And when Jimmy was 10 years old, his 45 year-old father, already a veteran of the Spanish-American War, went over to France to join the U.S. Army Ordinance Corps. Like Lieutenant Dan Taylor of Forest Gump fame, going to war was in Stewart’s blood, and he earned his pilot’s license long before receiving his most welcome draft letter in March 1941. When Louie B. Mayer tried to prevent Stewart’s exit from Tinseltown, the younger man countered with something the celluloid Senator Jefferson Smith might have said in similar circumstances: “Mr. Mayer, this country’s conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we’ll have to fight.”
When that time came, Stewart worked stateside as a flight instructor before flying as lead pilot in 20 missions over Germany within a 15-month time frame. The pressures of aerial combat gave Stewart a bad case of untreated PTSD, which can be observed, as Matzen points out in the book’s final chapter, in the first film Stewart made upon his return: “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Stewart, like Hepburn (and most veterans of war, civilian or military), didn’t talk much about his work post-war. Matzen indicates this repeatedly, so I found it strange that the book often places us inside Stewart’s head, providing the reader with his detailed thoughts and feelings while at flight. Yes, Matzen did his homework--extensive military research, interviews, and even his own flying—but these attempts to connect the dots for the readers give off a faint whiff of fictionalization.
That aside, Mission is a wonderful book that punctuates Stewart’s biography with single chapters featuring other players—young Germans and another American pilot—all of which brilliantly sets the main narrative and its leading man within their historical context.
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