Roman Holiday
Piazza di Spagna, Rome, Italy
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Roman Holiday, released in 1953, marked Audrey Hepburn's first major American film role, and her performance as a European princess who secretly escapes her royal duties for a day of anonymous adventure in Rome won her the Academy Award for Best Actress in only her second credited screen appearance. The film was shot entirely on location in Rome rather than on Hollywood soundstages, an unusual and expensive choice for its era that gave the film's romantic Roman settings, including the Spanish Steps and the Mouth of Truth, a genuine documentary-like authenticity that significantly boosted post-war tourism to the city. Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, blacklisted during the era's Hollywood anti-communist investigations, wrote the film's script under a front writer's name and wasn't publicly credited for his work until decades later, in 2011, when the Writers Guild of America formally restored his credit posthumously. The film's bittersweet ending, in which the princess ultimately returns to her royal duties rather than pursuing a conventional happy ending with her romantic interest, distinguished Roman Holiday from more formulaic romantic comedies of its era, and Hepburn's breakthrough performance established her as one of the defining film stars of the following two decades.
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