Breakfast at Tiffany’s arrived in American theaters on October 5, 1961, from Paramount Pictures, and it has never quite left. Blake Edwards directed it. George Axelrod wrote the screenplay from Truman Capote’s 1958 novella. Audrey Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, a New York socialite with a country past and a plan.
The plan is a Brazilian millionaire. The obstacle is a writer.
That is the engine of a film that runs 115 minutes and sits somewhere between comedy, romance and drama without ever settling. It grossed $14 million worldwide. It was nominated for five Academy Awards and won two, including Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture for Henry Mancini.
It is a beautiful, uneven, occasionally careless movie. It scores 7.7 out of 10.
Trailer, via Paramount Pictures Australia.
Holly Golightly and the Tiffany & Co. Window
The film opens with Holly fending off a date from the night before. She goes to the Tiffany & Co. flagship store. The date finds her at her apartment building anyway.
She cannot find her keys. She buzzes her landlord, Mr. Yunioshi, to let her in. On her way out she meets her new neighbor, Paul Varjak, played by George Peppard. She is heading to her weekly visit to Sally Tomato, an incarcerated mobster. Tomato’s lawyer pays her $100 a week to deliver “the weather report.”
That detail does a lot of work. Holly is not a party girl with a trust fund. She is on somebody’s payroll, and the somebody is in prison.
Paul has his own arrangement. He is seeing Emily Eustace Failenson, a wealthy older woman he nicknames “2E,” played by Patricia Neal. She is listed in the cast as his “decorator.” That night Holly crawls onto the fire escape to dodge an over-eager date. She sees 2E leaving Paul money and kissing him goodbye.
Neither of them says a word about it. The film does not need them to.
A Writer With No Ribbon
Holly visits Paul and learns what he is. A writer. Nothing published in five years. No ribbon in his typewriter.
That is the whole character in one prop. Paul is not blocked in some grand artistic sense. He is kept, and the keeping has sanded him down to nothing.
Holly explains she is saving money to support her brother, Fred, after he finishes his Army service. The two fall asleep. They wake when Holly has a nightmare about Fred. Paul asks about it. Holly chides him for prying.
She buys him a typewriter ribbon to apologize. Then she invites him to a party at her apartment.
The party is where the film shows its hand. Paul meets Berman, Holly’s Hollywood agent, played by Martin Balsam, who describes how a country girl became a Manhattan “socialite.” He meets José da Silva Pereira, a wealthy Brazilian politician, played by José Luis de Vilallonga. He meets Rusty Trawler, wealthy and American, played by Stanley Adams.
Berman’s account of Holly is the film’s thesis. She was not born this. She was assembled.
“Audrey Hepburn plays that daring, darling Holly Golightly to a new high in entertainment delight!”
That is the film’s own tagline, and it is selling something the movie itself keeps undercutting.
Doc Golightly at the Door
Some time later, 2E comes into Paul’s apartment, worried about someone loitering outside the building. Paul confronts the man. He is Holly’s husband.
Doc Golightly, played by Buddy Ebsen, is elderly and from rural Texas. He tells Paul that Holly ran away and he has come to take her back. Paul reunites them. Holly tells Paul the marriage was annulled. She will not go back with Doc.
This is the best stretch of the film. It is also the shortest. A man walks in from a life Holly has spent the entire runtime burying, and the movie treats him as an episode rather than a reckoning.
Paul and Holly go drinking at a club afterward. Then they go home.
The Cast Around Hepburn
Hepburn is the reason the film survives its own inconsistencies. She plays Holly as someone performing a self she is still building, and the performance holds even when the script does not.
Peppard has the harder job. Paul is the audience’s eyes, which means he spends much of the film watching. He is good at the watching. He is less well served when the film asks him to want something.
Neal makes 2E small and exact. Balsam gets one scene and takes it. Ebsen’s Doc is the film’s one genuine intrusion of the real world, and he plays it without pleading.
The supporting cast is deep. John McGiver appears as the Tiffany’s salesman. Alan Reed is Sally Tomato. Dorothy Whitney is Mag Wildwood. Beverly Powers is the nightclub stripper. Claude Stroud is Sid Arbuck.
The film is also, in places, a mess. The comedy and the drama do not always sit in the same frame. What the film finds funny, the film sometimes also means to be sad, and the switch is not always clean.
What the Novella Did Differently
Capote’s novella has both lead characters gay. The 1961 screenplay does not. That is a change, not a footnote, and it reshapes what the story is about.
Development on the film began soon after the novella was published. Marilyn Monroe, Shirley MacLaine, Kim Novak, Steve McQueen, Jack Lemmon and Robert Wagner were all considered for the lead roles before Hepburn and Peppard were cast.
Axelrod and director John Frankenheimer originally completed the screenplay. Frankenheimer was replaced by Edwards well into pre-production. Principal photography began October 2, 1960, in New York City and at the Studios at Paramount in Hollywood, California.
Mancini composed the music. Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics to “Moon River.”
The Production Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1958 | Capote’s novella published |
| Pre-production | Axelrod and Frankenheimer complete screenplay; Frankenheimer replaced by Edwards |
| October 2, 1960 | Principal photography begins in New York City and at Paramount |
| October 5, 1961 | U.S. release by Paramount Pictures |
That is a fast turnaround by any standard. A novella, a director swap, a shoot in two cities, and a release inside a year of the first day of filming.
Why 7.7
Breakfast at Tiffany’s is remembered for Hepburn’s style and performance, and for its music. That reputation is earned. It is also narrower than the film.
The movie is at its best when it lets Holly be a person with a history rather than a type. Doc Golightly’s arrival is the clearest example. It is at its weakest when it mistakes charm for resolution.
The Academy nominated Hepburn for Best Actress. It did not win that one. The film won two, including Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. Its reputation has outrun its awards, which is usually a sign that something in it worked beyond what the voters saw.
What actually matters here is not the romance. It is the money. Holly is paid $100 a week to carry messages for a man in prison. Paul is paid by a woman who calls him her decorator. Everyone in this film is on somebody’s payroll, and the love story is what happens when two kept people notice each other.
That is the part worth watching. The rest is a window display.
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