Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris

“We rushed her to the doctor and she underwent every conceivable test. But they couldn’t find anything and they said it would be all right to travel. They knew it was important to us. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been that important.”
    The events in Rochester, October 24 and 25, 1992, were rather more grueling than either she or Rob had expected. On the first evening, she met with the press at six o’clock—looking pained during the photo session—and attended a long dinner and social afterward, which began at eight and was still going on when she and Rob left much later in the evening.
    She rallied the next night for the presentation of the Eastman Award, following a screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Aware that she was in some pain, Eastman director James Enyeart had proposed limiting the postfilm question-and-answer session to half an hour. It was agreed that Rob would give Audrey a sign when the half hour was up. She looked frail in her somber black satin Givenchy gown. But she got caught up in the spirit of the event, buoyed by a pleasant surprise midway and then by a series of intelligent questions on Somalia. When Rob signaled her that the half hour was up, she didn’t want to stop and kept going.
    The surprise took the form of an old pal. A woman in the audience stood up and asked if Audrey remembered the gentleman sitting next to her. Audrey stared in amazement: “Yes, absolutely! Of course I remember you! My God, you haven’t changed a bit! Nick Dana, ladies and gentlemen, a fabulous dancer! We danced together in High Button Shoes in 1948! ... You were awfully good, flipping across that stage at the Hippodrome!”
    Dana recalls that “Rob was crouched down the whole time on the side of the organ, checking on her, waiting to see if she got too weak.” But her adrenaline was flowing, and she was determined to make everyone happy and answer all the questions she could—including a nasty one from a man demanding to know why she had left the previous night’s event so quickly.
    â€œForgive me for leaving early last night,” she said, “but I’m still very jet-lagged.”
    That was partly true. “She didn’t want to say, ‘I’m also in great pain,’ ” says Rob. “Nobody knew how ill she was—how could they? I didn’t, either. It was quite heroic what she did that night. They never had such a turnout and couldn’t accommodate everyone in the [Dryden] Theater. They had to use the ballroom, with a closed-circuit TV, and Audrey made it a point at the end to go to the other hall and greet the people there as well.”
    The next day, a call came from the doctors in Los Angeles saying that the test results indicated Audrey had an amoeba. She was given a prescription—essentially, a massive purge—which made her feel so terrible that she stopped taking it after the first few pills. They went on to New York City, where she did several more interviews and accepted a Maria Casita Award from Ralph Lauren at the Plaza Hotel. In just twenty-four hours, they were to leave for Antigua. But her pain became so intense during dinner that they canceled the holiday and decided to fly back to Los Angeles for urgent medical attention.
    The following morning on their way to the airport, despite her pain, Audrey insisted on stopping first at Larry Bruce’s apartment for a brief visit. He was dying, and she knew it.

    GUILT AND hindsight go hand in hand.
    â€œPeople said Audrey knew she was ill, but I absolutely know she didn’t,” says Anna Cataldi. “She had a routine checkup in August in Geneva, including a colonoscopy, before the trip to Somalia, and they said she was okay.”
    Cataldi had her own Somalia assignment for Epoca magazine in Milan, and for the rest of August, she and Audrey spoke frequently on the phone about what they had to do to prepare:
    â€œAudrey did all the