Audrey and Orangey
Thursday, 16 May 2024 09:03
Audrey Hepburn, luminous film star, fabulous fashion icon, and all-round class act, would have been 105 this month, on 4 May. The force was certainly with her: she took bronze as the American Film Industry choice for Third-Greatest Female Screen Legend of Classical Hollywood Cinema. Belvedere is impressed with the precision of this title. Of course she was inducted into the International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame List; we were rather surprised she wasn’t made its President in Perpetuity alongside Cary Grant.
However, there is a problem.
Whereas Cary Grant was a cat fan, Hepburn wasn’t. Or rather couldn’t be: she was allergic to cats. Yes really. Don’t be fooled by publicity shots of Audrey with adorable kittens.They were made possible by anti-histamines and fast work.
So what must it have been like for the poor woman shooting Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the 1961 film in which she starred alongside a cat called Cat? What a pro she was, you would never have known she was suffering.
To take the pressure off Hepburn, we will focus on Orangey
Well. What a star. To start with, it’s a great name - he’s orange, that’s his name, do you wanna make something of it, punk? No gussied-up stage moniker for Orangey. He’s brother to Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Arnie Schwarzenegger and Humphrey Bogart in this matter..
Born in 1950, Orangey was owned and trained by Frank Inn, an animal handler in the film industry. The marmalade tabby worked big and small screens, starting in 1951 with his first movie, Rhubarb. He won a PATSY–Picture Animal Top Star of the Year–for that; like an Oscar but for animals. There is no proof that he displayed it next to his litter box. Then of course he was a young tearaway tom. A decade of hard work later he scored a second Patsy for his superb portrayal of Cat, ‘the poor slob without a name’ in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. His human co-stars did not podium, but Henry Mancini won the Oscar for Best Soundtrack and Best Movie Song, Moon River.
Known as the Hardest Working Cat in Show Biz, Orangey appeared in many other films and US TV shows of the 50s and 60s, including a regular gig in drag as Minerva on the series ‘Our Miss Brooks’. He rejected typecasting, and fearlessly explored his range, appearing as Mouschi in the 1959 film version of The Diary of Anne Frank, and as the family pet Butch in the 1957 movie The Incredible Shrinking Man. He could do action cat – IMF agent Rusty in the original TV version of Mission Impossible; eat dirt Tom Cruise. He could do comedy cat – Mr Henderson in The Dick Van Dyke Show. He could do cornball cat –The Beverly Hillbillies. He could do mystery and menace – Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His last role, sadly uncredited, was as Catwoman’s henchcat in the iconic Adam West Batman series for TV.
He died in 1967 and is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills, surrounded by fellow icons of the silver screen.
Orangey The living proof that orange cats are not all dumb Cat.
NB
There is a rumour that Orangey was not an individual cat, but a collective or orange felines, working together but always credited as Orangey. Film maker and critic Dan Sallit wrote an essay exploring this notion, The Hardest Working Cat in Show Biz, and in 2020, Canadian filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz made a short documentary based on it. Neither I nor Belvedere believe a word of this joyless slur on a legendary feline superstar. It’s up there with the ‘Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’ conspiracists.