Breakfast at Tiffanys (1961)
04 Nov 1961 ● English ● 1 hr 55 mins
This quirky comedy revolves around the experiences of struggling writer Paul Varjak, who moves into a New York apartment building and becomes intrigued by his pretty, quirky neighbor Holly Golightly.
Holly's lifestyle confuses and fascinates Paul; in public she flits through parties with a sexy, sophisticated air, but when they're alone she changes into a sweetly vulnerable bundle of neuroses. However, when it is publicly revealed that Holly has been innocently carrying illegal information, she gets into a whole lot of trouble. Can Paul help Holly out of her anger and convince her to stay with him before she decides to move to Brazil for good?
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal
Crew: Blake Edwards (Director), Franz Planer (Director of Photography), Henry Mancini (Music Director)
Rating: U (India)
Genres: Drama
Release Dates: 04 Nov 1961 (India)
Tagline: Audrey Hepburn is funny...sad...extraordinary...glamorous as Holly Golightly!
Did you know? Audrey Hepburn's salary for the film was $750,000, making her the second highest paid actress (behind Elizabeth Taylor) per film at the time. Read More
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as Holly Golightly
as Paul Varjak
as 2-E
as Sally Tomato
as Nightclub Stripper
as Doc Golightly
as Sid Arbuck
as Mag Wildwood
as Librarian
as Tiffany's Salesman
as Jose
as O.J. Berman
as Mr. Yunioshi
as Rusty Trawler
Direction
Director
Production
Producer
Distribution
Distributor
Camera and Electrical
Director of Photography
Music
Music Director
Art
Art Director
Editorial
Editor
Film Type:
Feature
Language:
English
Colour Info:
Color
Sound Mix:
Mono
Frame Rate:
24 fps
Aspect Ratio:
1.85:1 (Flat), 2.35:1
Stereoscopy:
No
Taglines:
Audrey Hepburn is funny...sad...extraordinary...glamorous as Holly Golightly!
The Fairest Lady of All - Audrey Hepburn in One of her Most Delicious Delights!
The Fairest Lady of All - Audrey Hepburn in One of her Most Delicious Delights!
Filming Locations:
Goofs:
Revealing Mistakes
Throughout the movie the name "José" is always said with the Hispanic pronouncation of the letter "J", even though the character is supposed to be Brazilian.
Revealing Mistakes
When Holly and Paul are riding in the taxi near the end, the street seen in a rear projection through the back window is a wide, four-lane New York City street. But when the cab stops for Holly to throw the cat out, and in subsequent shots on the street and in the alley, the street is very narrow, barely wide enough for two cars, and clearly a set on the studio back lot.
Continuity
Paul's apartment is clearly on the third floor as we know from all the scenes early in the film and yet when Paul returns home with groceries he unlocks his apartment on the first floor.
Continuity
At the end of the film, Holly puts on nylon stockings in the cab. The left one has a visible run on it, yet the stylish Holly still puts it on. When she steps out of the cab, the run is gone. Then, as she searches for the cat, the nylons seem to disappear and then reappear.
Crew/Equipment Visible
(at around 1 min) Just as Holly turns from the Tiffany's window the camera pans left and you can just see a crew/police individual holding back traffic on the street in the distance so they can film the scene.
Factual Mistake
When Holly is listening to the LP to learn Portuguese, the voice in the record speaks Portuguese with a Portuguese accent (and not Brazilian, as it should be).
Miscellaneous
Towards the end of the movie when Holly and Paul are in the cab, you can see that the taxi driver isn't really holding the steering wheel and that it's turning itself.
Continuity
When Holly is in a mad rage in her apartment she pulls up the cloth on her dressing table, throwing the cat to the floor. In the next shot, he flies up to the window.
Continuity
Cat is played by at least two cats, a yellow mackerel tabby and a yellow classic tabby, that change back and forth throughout the movie. (The Trivia section says there were at least nine cats.)
Continuity
Near the end of the movie, when Paul and Holly argue, the model year of the Plymouth taxi changes from 1959 (when they first get in) to 1958 (when they stop for Holly to toss out the cat) to 1957 (when Paul orders the cab to stop so he can exit in anger). When Holly relents and jumps out of the cab (that has not moved since Paul got out), it is a 1958 model again.
Continuity
In the final scene, Paul's rain-soaked hair switches back and forth from being tussled in the wider shots to being slicked back in the close-ups.
Continuity
When Holly first looks through Paul's window and sees the 'decorator' (Leigh) leaving him $300 while he sleeps, the ornate gold clock in the background reads 11:30. However just a few minutes later, once Holly is inside the room, we see it again and it now clearly shows 4:30. For the next five minutes, it remains on 4:30, without moving at all.
Continuity
In interior shots the apartments have windows and a fire escape along the side. In exterior shots there is no space between the building and the one adjacent to it, making such architectural modifications impossible.
Continuity
After Holly enters Paul's bedroom through the window, stockings appear on her legs.
Continuity
When Holly breaks things in her apartment, Paul's necktie is alternately in/out of his vest between shots.
Continuity
When Holly gets out of the cab in the rain at the end, her hair is already soaking wet.
Character Error
When learning Portuguese Holly says there are over "four thousand irregular verbs." However in Brazilian Portuguese these have all been rationalized. Holly was going to Brazil.
Character Error
When Holly and Mr. Pereira come from a dinner/party, he brings a banderilla (from the Spanish and not Brazilian folklore) and says "Ole", in Spanish. (Brazilians speak Portuguese).
Throughout the movie the name "José" is always said with the Hispanic pronouncation of the letter "J", even though the character is supposed to be Brazilian.
Revealing Mistakes
When Holly and Paul are riding in the taxi near the end, the street seen in a rear projection through the back window is a wide, four-lane New York City street. But when the cab stops for Holly to throw the cat out, and in subsequent shots on the street and in the alley, the street is very narrow, barely wide enough for two cars, and clearly a set on the studio back lot.
Continuity
Paul's apartment is clearly on the third floor as we know from all the scenes early in the film and yet when Paul returns home with groceries he unlocks his apartment on the first floor.
Continuity
At the end of the film, Holly puts on nylon stockings in the cab. The left one has a visible run on it, yet the stylish Holly still puts it on. When she steps out of the cab, the run is gone. Then, as she searches for the cat, the nylons seem to disappear and then reappear.
Crew/Equipment Visible
(at around 1 min) Just as Holly turns from the Tiffany's window the camera pans left and you can just see a crew/police individual holding back traffic on the street in the distance so they can film the scene.
Factual Mistake
When Holly is listening to the LP to learn Portuguese, the voice in the record speaks Portuguese with a Portuguese accent (and not Brazilian, as it should be).
Miscellaneous
Towards the end of the movie when Holly and Paul are in the cab, you can see that the taxi driver isn't really holding the steering wheel and that it's turning itself.
Continuity
When Holly is in a mad rage in her apartment she pulls up the cloth on her dressing table, throwing the cat to the floor. In the next shot, he flies up to the window.
Continuity
Cat is played by at least two cats, a yellow mackerel tabby and a yellow classic tabby, that change back and forth throughout the movie. (The Trivia section says there were at least nine cats.)
Continuity
Near the end of the movie, when Paul and Holly argue, the model year of the Plymouth taxi changes from 1959 (when they first get in) to 1958 (when they stop for Holly to toss out the cat) to 1957 (when Paul orders the cab to stop so he can exit in anger). When Holly relents and jumps out of the cab (that has not moved since Paul got out), it is a 1958 model again.
Continuity
In the final scene, Paul's rain-soaked hair switches back and forth from being tussled in the wider shots to being slicked back in the close-ups.
Continuity
When Holly first looks through Paul's window and sees the 'decorator' (Leigh) leaving him $300 while he sleeps, the ornate gold clock in the background reads 11:30. However just a few minutes later, once Holly is inside the room, we see it again and it now clearly shows 4:30. For the next five minutes, it remains on 4:30, without moving at all.
Continuity
In interior shots the apartments have windows and a fire escape along the side. In exterior shots there is no space between the building and the one adjacent to it, making such architectural modifications impossible.
Continuity
After Holly enters Paul's bedroom through the window, stockings appear on her legs.
Continuity
When Holly breaks things in her apartment, Paul's necktie is alternately in/out of his vest between shots.
Continuity
When Holly gets out of the cab in the rain at the end, her hair is already soaking wet.
Character Error
When learning Portuguese Holly says there are over "four thousand irregular verbs." However in Brazilian Portuguese these have all been rationalized. Holly was going to Brazil.
Character Error
When Holly and Mr. Pereira come from a dinner/party, he brings a banderilla (from the Spanish and not Brazilian folklore) and says "Ole", in Spanish. (Brazilians speak Portuguese).
Trivia:
Though she had known him previously and got along with him fine during rehearsals, Patricia Neal said that George Peppard was unbearable to work with.
Steve McQueen was offered the co-starring role. However, he was still under contract for the show Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958), which prevented him from appearing. The role eventually went to George Peppard.
Director Blake Edwards was lunching with Mickey Rooney at a posh Hollywood restaurant when Rooney objected to how his salad was being tossed by the waiter and proceeded to show the 'proper' way to do it. Edwards thought Rooney's attention-getting routine so funny that he wrote it into the movie.
The book Paul has written and brings to Holly's apartment is titled "Nine Lives" - a reference to Cat.
Tony Curtis stated in his 2008 autobiography that he asked his friend, director Blake Edwards to cast him in the role of writer Paul Varjak but Mel Ferrer didn't want his wife, Audrey Hepburn to make a movie with him, so Edwards declined his services.
The Patricia Neal character does not appear in Capote's novella. The subplot of George Peppard serving as Neal's "kept man" was apparently added to the movie to establish the heterosexual credentials of Peppard's character. This then allowed for the movie's boy-gets-girl climax, something also not found in the novella. It also gave Peppard a chance to appear bare-chested in a bedroom setting, the very best "beefcake" scene in his entire movie career.
John Frankenheimer was hired to shoot the film with Marilyn Monroe. When the producers suddenly moved to Switzerland and Audrey Hepburn replaced Monroe, she said she had never heard of Frankenheimer and insisted that he be paid off and another director be hired.
After seeing Buddy Ebsen in his country role in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), the creator of The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) wanted him to play family patriarch Jed Clampett. At the time, Ebsen was thinking of retiring, but the producers sent him a copy of the script, and he changed his mind.
The uncredited voice of the "terrifying man" tearing up Holly's apartment is actually George Peppard. Years later, in 1983, as Hannibal Smith of TV's "The A-Team", Peppard's character regularly disguised his voice - a talent he used to deceive the show's villains. Rather than dubbing his voice for those sequences, Peppard did the various voices himself.
Truman Capote was reportedly unhappy with the decision to cast Audrey Hepburn as he'd been in favor of Marilyn Monroe. Hepburn was very self-conscious of her performance while Capote was on set as she felt inadequate as the Holly he had envisioned.
Holly's whistle when she hails a cab for Paul was actually dubbed in. Audrey Hepburn attempted to learn how to whistle with two fingers, but could never produce the desired sound.
Elements of Holly's character in the original novel, such as her flirtation with bisexuality, were omitted to make the part more suitable for Audrey Hepburn.
Audrey Hepburn's salary for the film was $750,000, making her the second highest paid actress (behind Elizabeth Taylor) per film at the time.
The song "Moon River" was written especially for Audrey Hepburn, since she had no training as a singer. The vocals were written to be sung in only one octave.
The movie was shot only three months after the birth of Hepburn's first son, Sean H. Ferrer.
Holly Golightly is supposed to be just nineteen years old when she meets with Paul. Audrey Hepburn was thirty-one years old when playing Holly.
Henry Mancini wrote "Moon River" specifically for Audrey Hepburn. He later said that while many version of the song have been done, he feels that Audrey's was the best.
Audrey felt that she was miscast as Holly Golightly in this film, although it was one of her most popular roles.
The famous black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in the opening scenes of this movie was sold for $807,000 on December 4, 2006 at Christie's Auction House in London, making it the second most expensive piece of movie memorabilia ever sold. The first is the Best Picture Oscar for Gone with the Wind (1939).
Although not visible on camera, hundreds of onlookers watched Audrey Hepburn's window-shopping scene at the start of the film. This made her nervous and she kept making mistakes. It wasn't until a crew member nearly got electrocuted behind the camera that she pulled herself together and finished the scene.
Holly Golightly wears the same dresses all the way through the movie, simply changing the accessories to give each outfit a different look. Her black shift dress features through the movie at least four times.
About nine cats were used throughout the film as the role of Cat.
At a post-production meeting following a screening of the film, a studio executive, in reference to "Moon River," said, "Well, I think the first thing we can do is get rid of that stupid song." Audrey Hepburn stood up at the table and said, "Over my dead body!" The song stayed in the picture.
Tiffany's opened its doors on a Sunday for the first time since the 19th century so that filming could take place inside the store.
Author Truman Capote envisioned Marilyn Monroe in the part of Holly Golightly. Monroe was originally cast as Golightly, but her drama coach, Lee Strasberg, told her that playing a call-girl was not good for her image. The film went on to be a huge success, with Monroe's replacement Audrey Hepburn receiving Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Actress.
Audrey Hepburn said the scene where she throws Cat into the rainy street was the most distasteful thing she ever had to do on film.
In the 2006 short documentary Breakfast at Tiffany's: The Making of a Classic (2006), Blake Edwards said that when the movie was made, he didn't think about the implications of casting a white actor, Mickey Rooney, in a role as a Japanese person, but "looking back, I wish I had never done it... and I would give anything to be able to recast it."
Steve McQueen was offered the co-starring role. However, he was still under contract for the show Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958), which prevented him from appearing. The role eventually went to George Peppard.
Director Blake Edwards was lunching with Mickey Rooney at a posh Hollywood restaurant when Rooney objected to how his salad was being tossed by the waiter and proceeded to show the 'proper' way to do it. Edwards thought Rooney's attention-getting routine so funny that he wrote it into the movie.
The book Paul has written and brings to Holly's apartment is titled "Nine Lives" - a reference to Cat.
Tony Curtis stated in his 2008 autobiography that he asked his friend, director Blake Edwards to cast him in the role of writer Paul Varjak but Mel Ferrer didn't want his wife, Audrey Hepburn to make a movie with him, so Edwards declined his services.
The Patricia Neal character does not appear in Capote's novella. The subplot of George Peppard serving as Neal's "kept man" was apparently added to the movie to establish the heterosexual credentials of Peppard's character. This then allowed for the movie's boy-gets-girl climax, something also not found in the novella. It also gave Peppard a chance to appear bare-chested in a bedroom setting, the very best "beefcake" scene in his entire movie career.
John Frankenheimer was hired to shoot the film with Marilyn Monroe. When the producers suddenly moved to Switzerland and Audrey Hepburn replaced Monroe, she said she had never heard of Frankenheimer and insisted that he be paid off and another director be hired.
After seeing Buddy Ebsen in his country role in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), the creator of The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) wanted him to play family patriarch Jed Clampett. At the time, Ebsen was thinking of retiring, but the producers sent him a copy of the script, and he changed his mind.
The uncredited voice of the "terrifying man" tearing up Holly's apartment is actually George Peppard. Years later, in 1983, as Hannibal Smith of TV's "The A-Team", Peppard's character regularly disguised his voice - a talent he used to deceive the show's villains. Rather than dubbing his voice for those sequences, Peppard did the various voices himself.
Truman Capote was reportedly unhappy with the decision to cast Audrey Hepburn as he'd been in favor of Marilyn Monroe. Hepburn was very self-conscious of her performance while Capote was on set as she felt inadequate as the Holly he had envisioned.
Holly's whistle when she hails a cab for Paul was actually dubbed in. Audrey Hepburn attempted to learn how to whistle with two fingers, but could never produce the desired sound.
Elements of Holly's character in the original novel, such as her flirtation with bisexuality, were omitted to make the part more suitable for Audrey Hepburn.
Audrey Hepburn's salary for the film was $750,000, making her the second highest paid actress (behind Elizabeth Taylor) per film at the time.
The song "Moon River" was written especially for Audrey Hepburn, since she had no training as a singer. The vocals were written to be sung in only one octave.
The movie was shot only three months after the birth of Hepburn's first son, Sean H. Ferrer.
Holly Golightly is supposed to be just nineteen years old when she meets with Paul. Audrey Hepburn was thirty-one years old when playing Holly.
Henry Mancini wrote "Moon River" specifically for Audrey Hepburn. He later said that while many version of the song have been done, he feels that Audrey's was the best.
Audrey felt that she was miscast as Holly Golightly in this film, although it was one of her most popular roles.
The famous black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in the opening scenes of this movie was sold for $807,000 on December 4, 2006 at Christie's Auction House in London, making it the second most expensive piece of movie memorabilia ever sold. The first is the Best Picture Oscar for Gone with the Wind (1939).
Although not visible on camera, hundreds of onlookers watched Audrey Hepburn's window-shopping scene at the start of the film. This made her nervous and she kept making mistakes. It wasn't until a crew member nearly got electrocuted behind the camera that she pulled herself together and finished the scene.
Holly Golightly wears the same dresses all the way through the movie, simply changing the accessories to give each outfit a different look. Her black shift dress features through the movie at least four times.
About nine cats were used throughout the film as the role of Cat.
At a post-production meeting following a screening of the film, a studio executive, in reference to "Moon River," said, "Well, I think the first thing we can do is get rid of that stupid song." Audrey Hepburn stood up at the table and said, "Over my dead body!" The song stayed in the picture.
Tiffany's opened its doors on a Sunday for the first time since the 19th century so that filming could take place inside the store.
Author Truman Capote envisioned Marilyn Monroe in the part of Holly Golightly. Monroe was originally cast as Golightly, but her drama coach, Lee Strasberg, told her that playing a call-girl was not good for her image. The film went on to be a huge success, with Monroe's replacement Audrey Hepburn receiving Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Actress.
Audrey Hepburn said the scene where she throws Cat into the rainy street was the most distasteful thing she ever had to do on film.
In the 2006 short documentary Breakfast at Tiffany's: The Making of a Classic (2006), Blake Edwards said that when the movie was made, he didn't think about the implications of casting a white actor, Mickey Rooney, in a role as a Japanese person, but "looking back, I wish I had never done it... and I would give anything to be able to recast it."
