Sabrina

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was there ever a sweeter, more enchanting, more sparkling, elfin, childlike screen presence than Audrey Hepburn? She kept audiences charmed from "Roman Holiday" in 1953 to "Robin and Marian" in 1976. There were a few stinkers, to be sure, especially the couple of things she did before rising to stardom and a few forgettable films in the late seventies and eighties like "Sidney Sheldon's Bloodlines." But who can forget the gems: "Roman Holiday," "Funny Face," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "Charade," "My Fair Lady," "Two for the Road," "Wait Until Dark." Which brings us to "Sabrina," the film Paramount couldn't wait to get into theaters after the success of Ms. Hepburn's "Roman Holiday" picture. If it didn't quite live up to her previous success, it wasn't for lack of trying. It had a terrific cast, a great director, and a fine co-writer.

"Sabrina" is a Cinderella story of a poor little rich girl finding her Prince Charming among New York's upper crust, not really a believable tale except in the outermost stretches of imagination. So that's where you have to go to enjoy the film, to a reliance on fairy tales. If you can buy into the fantasy romance and humor, the film is rewarding and then some.

Screenwriters Billy Wilder, Samuel Taylor, and Ernest Lehman based their 1954 script on a stage play, "Sabrina Fair," by Taylor. Paramount got Wilder to direct it, his past and future successes including "The Lost Weekend," "Sunset Blvd.," "Stalag 17," "Witness for the Prosecution," "Some Like It Hot," and "The Apartment." Wilder couldn't help fiddling with the script and brought in Lehman ("The King and I," "North By Northwest," "West Side Story," "The Sound of Music") to help touch it up. Then the studio hired William Holden and Cary Grant to be Hepburn's leading men. What more could you ask for? Well, Grant dropped out of the project about a week before production, perhaps sensing a potential disaster, and who did Paramount get to replace him, in a piece of the goofiest casting imaginable, but Humphrey Bogart! Bogart subbing for Grant? It's probably the stickiest part of the film, too, and if you don't buy into it, you'll hate the whole thing. In a way, though, the new casting probably worked better, as we'll see.

The story deals with a young woman growing up as the chauffeur's daughter in an incredibly wealthy family. The superrich Larrabees, who own half the world and control the rest of it, hardly notice Sabrina Fairchild (Hepburn), their chauffeur's daughter. Momma and Poppa Larrabee (Nella Walker and Walter Hampton) and their two sons, David (Holden) and Linus (Bogart), live in a fabulous estate on Long Island. It's the kind of place with both indoor and outdoor swimming pools and tennis courts. David, the younger son, is a philandering playboy, married three times and working on his fourth. Linus, the older brother, is a stuffy, uptight financier, a businessman with a heart of stone who thinks of nothing but making money, with no time for romance. Now, can you really see Cary Grant as that kind of guy?

Sabrina grows up living with her father (John Williams) above the Larrabee's garage. She's something of a tomboy, but she has a crush on David, whom she spies on at every opportunity. He doesn't know she's alive. Then, when she's in her late teens, her father sends her away to Paris to a cooking school, presumably for her to return as a working member of the household staff. But when she reappears several years later, she's a different woman. She has gone from plain and pretty to cultured, sophisticated, and glamorous, a trademark rags-to-riches transformation Ms. Hepburn would repeat in "Funny Face" and "My Fair Lady."

When Sabrina steps off the train, David doesn't even recognize her, and he tries to pick her up. This in spite of the fact that he's engaged to the daughter of a sugar baron in a projected marriage of convenience for the Larrabee business empire. When David learns of Sabrina's true identity, it doesn't stop him; he wants to marry her, anyway. But no, no, no, says brother Linus. David must marry Elizabeth (Martha Hyer) in order to secure a company merger and further the financial goals of Larrabee Enterprises. No dice, says David. So Linus concocts a scheme whereby he will pretend to romance Sabrina, distract her from David, and save the merger. Trouble is, he falls for her himself.

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