Beverly Hills thought it had seen it all – until Audrey Hepburn went to supermarkets and parties with Pippin the deer
In 1958, Audrey Hepburn was shooting Green Mansions, playing a woman in the Venezuelan jungle who is followed everywhere by a little fawn. In order to bond with Pippin the fawn (Hepburn called her Ip), she was encouraged to care for her, feeding her milk from a baby bottle. “I don’t have any children of my own,” she told a reporter on set, “but I’m learning a lot from Ip.” She took the deer to parties, and slept in bed with her.
In his book Remembering Audrey, the photographer Bob Willoughby, who followed Hepburn for years, including on this trip to the supermarket, wrote: “Beverly Hills habitués are fairly blasé about what they see, but Audrey being followed around town by this lovely creature stopped everyone in their tracks.” When the film wrapped, she was devastated to give the fawn back; a year later she had a miscarriage. To try and lift her out of depression, her husband tracked down Ip, then, much to the disappointment of her Yorkshire terrier Mr Famous, took her in as a pet. And then she had a baby.
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