Reel Classics: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

This edi­tion of Reel Classics takes a look at Breakfast at Tiffany’s, released in 1961 and star­ring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard.  Included in the well-known cast are Patricia Neal, Martin Balsam, Buddy Ebsen, and Mickey Rooney.  Once again we have a film with a promi­nent role for a pet.  Orangey appears as “Cat,” Holly Golightly’s “room­mate.”  (Note:  Orangey gets the billing but in real­i­ty was one of nine cats play­ing the role. Orangey won the ani­mal actor equiv­a­lent of an Oscar, the “Patsy” award.  It was giv­en out annu­al­ly until 1986 by the American Humane Society, and the very first recip­i­ent was “Francis the Talking Mule” in 1951.)

Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) lives in New York City and appears to be an inde­pen­dent socialite who loves to vis­it Tiffany’s, an upscale jew­el­ry store.  She often vis­its with her break­fast in a paper bag—standing out front admir­ing the win­dow dis­plays.  She also makes reg­u­lar vis­its to Sing-Sing prison to pro­vide a week­ly “weath­er report” to mob­ster Sally Tomato.  His cohorts pay her $100 a week to pro­vide him the cod­ed mes­sages about the gang’s doings.  Holly hopes to mar­ry mon­ey and has her eyes set on a rich gentleman.

Meanwhile, a strug­gling writer, Paul Varjak (George Peppard), moves into Holly’s apart­ment build­ing.  They meet when he buzzes her apart­ment to be let into the build­ing, and they talk and get to know each oth­er while she dress­es to make her week­ly jour­ney to Sing Sing.  As she leaves she is intro­duced to Paul’s “dec­o­ra­tor,” Emily Eustace Failenson (Patricia Neal).  She is a wealthy old­er woman, and Paul refers to her as “2E.”  Later that evening Holly sees “2E” kiss Paul and leave him some money.

As Holly and Paul get to know each oth­er, they both learn that the oth­er is hid­ing things from their past and that there is a pow­er­ful attrac­tion between the two of them.  Holly shares that she is sav­ing mon­ey to help her broth­er when he is dis­charged from the mil­i­tary.  She was pre­vi­ous­ly mar­ried at the age of 14 to an old­er man, but it was even­tu­al­ly annulled.  Paul shares that he has­n’t pub­lished any­thing in five years.  For Holly, the attrac­tion becomes a bar­ri­er to her goal of get­ting mon­ey to help her broth­er.  Paul con­tin­ues to pur­sue, but a cou­ple of unan­tic­i­pat­ed events flip every­thing.  “Cat” plays a major role in help­ing them to dis­cov­er what they tru­ly need and want.

Buddy Ebsen plays the ex-hus­band from Holly’s past, Doc Golightly, and Martin Balsam plays O. J. Berman.  Another famil­iar face is John McGiver who plays the sales­man at Tiffany’s. 

Mickey Rooney plays the role of the apart­ment build­ing man­ag­er Mr. Yunioshi.  As years have gone by this role and char­ac­ter have become more con­tro­ver­sial for the film.  The direc­tor, Blake Edwards, brought the char­ac­ter to the film as a com­e­dy bit.  Edwards was well known for incor­po­rat­ing com­e­dy into his films.  He thought Mickey Rooney would be great in this role.  The char­ac­ter was of Japanese ori­gin, and the role was to exploit the char­ac­ter for laughs.  Today the role is crit­i­cized as being racist.  In an inter­view in 2008, Rooney stat­ed that he was heart­bro­ken about the crit­i­cism he has received.   He stat­ed “Blake Edwards ... want­ed me to do it because he was a com­e­dy direc­tor.  They hired me to do this over­board, and we had fun doing it.”  He said that if he had known peo­ple would have been offend­ed by the char­ac­ter “I would­n’t have done it.”  Blake Edwards also com­ment­ed and said, “Looking back, I wish I had nev­er done it ... and I would give any­thing to recast it, but it’s there...” 

On a more pos­i­tive note, the appear­ance of Buddy Ebsen revived his career.  He had been con­sid­er­ing retir­ing.  Ebsen was a song-and-dance man in the films of the 1930s.  He also became well known as Davy Crockett’s side­kick in the Disney series in the 1950s.  The role of Doc Golightly got him atten­tion again and led to him becom­ing Jed Clampett in the very pop­u­lar TV series The Beverly Hillbillies. 

Henry Mancini won two Oscars for his music in the film, includ­ing Best Song for Moon River.  In an inter­view, Mancini stat­ed that he had writ­ten that song specif­i­cal­ly for Audrey Hepburn.  He was quot­ed as say­ing that while there have been many ver­sions of the song record­ed (Andy William’s ver­sion imme­di­ate­ly comes to mind), he thought her ver­sion was the best.  Mancini stat­ed that he found inspi­ra­tion in Audrey Hepburn. “It’s unique for a com­pos­er to real­ly be inspired by a per­son, a face or a per­son­al­i­ty, but Audrey cer­tain­ly inspires me.  Normally I have to see a com­plet­ed film before I’ll com­pose the music, but with Tiffany, I knew what to write for Audrey just by read­ing the script.”  The scene where she is sit­ting on the fire escape strum­ming the gui­tar and singing Moon River is one of my favorites in the movie. 

The screen­play for Breakfast at Tiffany’s was adapt­ed from a novel­la by Truman Capote.  It was orig­i­nal­ly set in the 1940s but was changed to be set in 1960.  He want­ed Marilyn Monroe to play the role of Holly Golightly.  Reportedly she was orig­i­nal­ly cast for the role but was talked out of it by her dra­ma coach, Lee Strasberg.  He thought that play­ing the role of a “lady of the evening” would not be good for her image.  Capote was report­ed­ly very upset that Monroe did­n’t get the part, stat­ing “Paramount dou­ble-crossed me in every way and cast Audrey.”  Also con­sid­ered for the role were Shirley MacLaine and Kim Novak.  Audrey Hepburn was offered and took the role.  It turned out to be a very good choice as she was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar for her efforts.

Another inter­est­ing note regard­ing Truman Capote.  In the orig­i­nal trail­er for the film (as seen below) the announc­er mis­pro­nounces Capote’s name—calling him “Capot.”  This error was used for laughs in a 1970 episode of  The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  Anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) com­plains that they need bet­ter writ­ers and should hire “that Truman Capot fel­low.”  Cloris Leachman’s char­ac­ter, Phyllis, cor­rects him by just say­ing “E.”  Ted replies “Oh yeah, Truman E. Capot.” 

Steve McQueen was offered the role of Paul but was unable to accept as he was under con­tract for the TV series Wanted:  Dead Or Alive.  Ironically, by the time the film was released the TV series had been canceled. 

George Peppard report­ed­ly had dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ships with oth­ers on the set.  He did not take well to Blake Edwards’ direc­tions, want­i­ng to do the scenes as he thought they should be done.  It was said that the dis­agree­ments were very intense at times with the two of them near­ly com­ing to blows.  Patricia Neal knew him from the past and stat­ed that he had changed (and not for the bet­ter).  She described him as “spoiled.”  She stat­ed “His char­ac­ter was writ­ten with a bat­tered vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that was total­ly appeal­ing, but it did not cor­re­spond to George’s image of a lead­ing man.  He seemed to want to be an old-time movie hunk.”

There is a scene in the film where Holly and Paul go to Tiffany’s.  He has found a ring in a box of Cracker Jacks and tells Holly he will get it engraved for her.  The pro­duc­tion crew report­ed­ly opened two hun­dred box­es of Cracker Jacks before they found a ring.  The most com­mon prize was a whis­tle (which Paul could have used in the scene where Holly has to whis­tle to get a taxi).
 

Another inter­est­ing scene is where Holly throws a wild par­ty at her apart­ment.  This scene took six days to film.  There were many extras who were friends of Blake Edwards.  To help the par­ty-goers get in the spir­it of the scene they were pro­vid­ed with cham­pagne, 120 gal­lons of soft drinks, 60 car­tons of cig­a­rettes, hot dogs, cold cuts, chips, dips, and sand­wich­es.  They had a real­ly good time.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s was a crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess.  It cost the stu­dio $2.5 mil­lion to make and grossed $14 mil­lion.  Audrey Hepburn’s role is often thought to be her most mem­o­rable role by many.  She stat­ed it was one of her more chal­leng­ing roles as she saw her­self as an intro­vert cast to play an extro­vert.  The New York Times review said it was a “com­plete­ly unbe­liev­able but whol­ly cap­ti­vat­ing flight into fan­cy com­posed of unequal dol­lops of com­e­dy, romance, poignan­cy, fun­ny col­lo­qui­alisms and Manhattan’s swanki­est East Side areas cap­tured in the loveli­est of colors.”

Breakfast at Tiffany’s has been includ­ed in the American Film Institute’s 2002 list of top 100 America’s Greatest Love Stories and in 2012 was select­ed for preser­va­tion in the U.S. Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.

Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates the film at 7.6 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes has a crit­ics’ score of 88% and an audi­ence score of 91%.  In search­ing for free stream­ing sites I found it avail­able on the fol­low­ing sites:

• Kanopy (avail­able with a Clark County Public Library card)
• Movieland TV
• Fawesome (free awe­some TV and movies)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is also avail­able on DVD at the Clark County Public Library. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

Until the next edi­tion of Reel Classics, enjoy the trail­er below: