New Release: Audrey Hepburn DVD line

Sabrina

Iconic wide-eyed actress Audrey Hepburn got her own DVD line from Paramount Home Entertainment on March 29, 2011. Four of Hepburn’s movies were brought out in beautiful new DVD boxes: Sabrina, Funny Face, Roman Holiday and Paris When It Sizzles.

1954’s Sabrina features Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca) and William Holden (The Bridge On the River Kwai) in a love triangle with Hepburn’s Sabrina. The daughter of the chauffeur of a wealthy family, Sabrina falls for their playboy son Holden, but after a trip to Paris where she blossoms into a glamorous woman, Hepburn’s Sabrina catches the eye of more than one brother. Directed by famed filmmaker Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard), the romance movie was remade in 1995 with Julia Ormond trying to fill Hepburn’s shoes, Harrison Ford in Bogart’s role and Greg Kinnear in Holden’s. Special features on the DVD will be a photo gallery and a documentary about the film.

Also starring Fred Astaire (Holiday Inn), 1957’s Funny Face is the filmed version of the 1927 George Gershwin Broadway musical. In the movie, Hepburn plays a “new face” discovered by fashion photographer Astaire, who whisks our heroine off to Paris and transforms her into the world’s hottest model. Along the way, love shows up. The DVD will include photo galleries and the restrospective featurette “Paramount in the 1950s.”

In 1953’s Roman Holiday, Hepburn plays a princess who rebels against her royal obligations and, while exploring Rome on her own, meets and falls for an American journalist (Gregory Peck) seeking an exclusive story. Hepburn won her only Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in this classic romance. (In 1993, she was posthumously honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy.) The DVD will have a bunch of special features, including photo galleris and three featurettes: “Remembering Roman Holiday,” “Restoring Roman Holiday” and “Edith Head — The Paramount Years.”

The latest of all four films, 1964’s Paris When It Sizzles reunites Hepburn and Holden, who plays a Hollywood screenwriter who’s trying to finish a screenplay called “The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower.” Holden hires a live-in secretary (Hepburn) to help him, and soon enough, the love sparks are flying.