Marty Jencius and Cindy Rotz check into the most famous brownstone in movie history. Blake Edwards' 1961 adaptation of Truman Capote's novella gave us Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy, Henry Mancini's "Moon River," and a heroine who insists nobody belongs to anybody. We talk about the girl Capote actually wrote, the ending Hollywood grafted on, the Mickey Rooney performance nobody can defend, and why a movie this charming keeps making us uneasy.
THE FILM
• Directed by Blake Edwards; screenplay by George Axelrod from Capote's 1958 novella
• Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal, Buddy Ebsen, Martin Balsam, Mickey Rooney
• Music by Henry Mancini, "Moon River" lyrics by Johnny Mercer; cinematography by Franz Planer
• 114 minutes, color, Paramount, released October 5, 1961
• $2.5 million budget, $14 million box office; five Oscar nominations, two wins
• Added to the National Film Registry in 2012
TRIVIA WE GET INTO
• Capote wrote Holly for Marilyn Monroe and never forgave Paramount. Lee Strasberg warned Monroe the part would damage her image; she made The Misfits instead
• The role passed to Shirley MacLaine, then Kim Novak, before Hepburn — an introvert cast as an extrovert, and she called it one of her hardest jobs
• Hepburn was paid $750,000, making her the highest-paid actress per picture at the time
• Steve McQueen was offered Paul Varjak but was locked into Wanted: Dead or Alive
• John Frankenheimer was attached to the Monroe version; getting paid off sent him straight to The Manchurian Candidate
• Filming began October 2, 1960, on Fifth Avenue. Tiffany's opened on a Sunday for the first time since the 1800s so the crew could shoot inside
• Hepburn disliked Danish pastries, which made the most famous breakfast in movies a chore
• Roughly nine cats played Cat, chosen from three hundred at an open call
• Holly's couch is an antique bathtub sawn in half — the fixtures and feet are visible in several shots
• The crew opened around 200 boxes of Cracker Jack looking for a ring; that season's prize was a whistle
• Mancini built the "Moon River" melody inside one octave because Hepburn had no vocal training. A Paramount executive wanted it cut after a preview and she shut him down
• Mercer first wrote "Blue River," which is why "my huckleberry friend" lost its logic. Played on piano, the song needs no black keys
• Paramount hid Rooney's casting behind a fictional Japanese comedian in its press releases. Edwards later said he wished he had never done it; Axelrod tried to get the part recast and was refused
• One of three Givenchy dresses sold at Christie's in 2006 for roughly $947,000
• Tiffany & Co. paid £632,750 in 2017 for the original working script — the priciest film script ever auctioned
• Alan Reed (Sally Tomato) was Fred Flintstone; Mel Blanc voices Holly's drunk visitor
• Edwards wrote the salad-tossing bit after watching Mickey Rooney correct a waiter over lunch
• The party scene took six days, with real champagne and a beekeeper's smoker for haze
• Patricia Neal's hair was dyed red so it wouldn't compete with Hepburn's chignon; she found Peppard unbearable on set
• Buddy Ebsen's quiet turn as Doc Golightly led directly to Jed Clampett the next year
• In the novella Holly jumps bail and vanishes for good. In France the title translates as "Diamonds on Toast"
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