Breakfast at Tiffany's

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The woman in me really likes Audrey Hepburn because she is successful at what she’s doing, she’s sort of in charge of herself, and is a realist beyond being so cute and attractive,” said film critic Judith Crist in 2009. “That appeal—a woman’s appeal—comes from the very basic idea of the gamine, and not just the gamine’s physical being, but the idea of her cleverness. Marilyn didn’t have that, but Audrey did. As a gamine, shrewdness was available to her. So she’s a call girl, but we let her have it. There’s even something very appealing about it. We won’t admit it, but don’t we, really, all secretly admire her for it? Because she gets away with it? Because she’s so imperious, and at the same time is slightly, shall we say, immoral?” Later, Capote claimed that the inspiration for Holly Golightly came from a German refugee, a young girl of just 17 years who arrived in New York City at the beginning of World War II. “Very few people were aware of this, however, because she spoke English without any trace of an accent,” he said. “She had an apartment in the brownstone where I lived and we became great friends.” He claimed that Holly’s friendship with gangster Sally Tomato was fictionalized, but based on true events that happened to the real Holly. Gerald Clarke said that Capote told him a similar story. “But in the version I heard she was Swiss. He even gave me her name. I could never find any of his friends who remembered her.” Clarke was also well aware of women who continued to claim they were the real Holly Golightly even decades later, all of them alleging they were friends with Capote at one time or another. “There were lots of women like that in those days,” he said, “and my guess is that Holly owed something to any number of them.” When Published: First appeared in Esquire in November of 1958, and was published in book form several months thereafter. While there are several “swans” who are believed to have contributed to the fictional creation of Holly, including Gloria Guinness, Oona O’Neill Chaplin, Carol Marcus, and Gloria Vanderbilt, there is one in particular that is thought to have gone above and beyond in terms of inspiration: Babe Paley, the wife of William S. “Bill” Paley, founder of the CBS television network.

Breakfast at Tiffanys by Truman Capote - review - The Guardian Breakfast at Tiffanys by Truman Capote - review - The Guardian

In the end, I find that each of us has to decide for themselves what they like best: the movie or the book, as they both are extraordinary creations. The narrator becomes increasingly interested in what happens in Holly’s apartment. Mag moves in, and she intends to marry a Brazilian politician named José starts coming to see her. Mag intends to marry him. At one point, the narrator learns that a small literary magazine has accepted one of his stories, and he rushes to show the letter to Holly, who insists that they go to lunch to celebrate. They spend the afternoon walking around together. The narrator shows Holly a large birdcage in a shop window that he has been admiring for quite some time. She admits it’s beautiful, but hates the idea of restricting a bird’s freedom. That Christmas, Holly gives the narrator the birdcage. of Capote’s most popular works, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is a novella about Holly Golightly, a young fey café society girl; it was first published in Esquire magazine in 1958 and then as a book, with several other stories. Read MoreTwo men came into the bar, and it seemed the moment to leave. Joe Bell followed me to the door. He caught my wrist again. “Do you believe it?”

Breakfast at Tiffany’s: How Hollywood retold a gritty story Breakfast at Tiffany’s: How Hollywood retold a gritty story

So we’re suddenly in a classic rom-com situation, and their final-scene kisses in the pouring rain becoming the blueprint for the genre, from Four Weddings and a Funeral to The Notebook. The novella meanwhile – despite the frothy, fizzing readability of Capote’s shimmering prose – leaves a more bitter taste, Holly scooting away in a cab never to be seen again. Golightly is a wild thing; there’s no containing her, no making her stay. She keeps on going lightly over the world, even if the need to keep reinventing herself starts to look more like a heavy burden. Challenging the sanctity of heterosexual dominion, Capote is suggesting that the gendered strictures of who makes the money (men) and who doesn’t (women) might not be as enriching as the romance between a gay man and straight woman,” wrote Wasson. “This isn’t because he believed platonic relationships were somehow ideal, or because he considered straight people bores, but because in 1958, with wives across America financially dependent upon their husbands, being a married woman was a euphemism for being caught.” I strongly recommend this book to all those who like dramas and who love analyzing the main characters. Finally, Holly emerges and tells O.J. that the narrator is a writer, though O.J. is uninterested. Gradually, the living room fills with men who all seem surprised by the crowd, each one having thought Holly invited him exclusively. The narrator identifies the most boisterous and confident person in the room as Rusty Trawler, who gregariously makes martinis while the narrator stands by the wall and pretends to read the books on Holly’s shelves. As he does so, he finds a newspaper clipping about Rusty, which explains that his parents died when he was a boy, turning Rusty into a highly-publicized millionaire orphan. Ever since then, Rusty has gotten a scandalous divorce and gone through legal battles that have appeared in the tabloids. He is also a widely-suspected Nazi-sympathizer. As the narrator reads these things, Holly approaches, deflecting the narrator when he asks about her visit to Sally Tomato that week.The movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” written by George Axelrod and directed by Blake Edwards came out in 1961. Starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard as the main characters, the movie was bound to be successful. And so it was. It soon became Hepburn’s most memorable role and one of the most beloved Hollywood films. Risky Business. Breakfast at Tiffany’s was originally going to be published in Harper’s Bazaar, but the magazine’s parent company, the Hearst Corporation, felt uncomfortable printing some elements of the novella. Frustrated, Capote agreed to edit certain parts of the story, but Hearst ultimately decided not to run the piece, worrying that Tiffany & Co. would withdraw advertising support. Holly and the narrator have a drink, and the narrator tells her that he’s a writer. Holly says she’ll help him become well-known and asks him to read a story aloud. When he does, she critiques it. This deeply hurts the narrator, but he still finds Holly appealing and she endears herself to him once more. As someone used to sharing personal information, Holly tells the narrator that she visits a mobster named Sally Tomato in prison every Thursday, explaining that Sally’s lawyer approached her and asked if she would keep Sally company. Holly agreed, she tells the narrator, so she goes to see Sally each week, delivering coded messages, though she mainly enjoys the man’s company and doesn’t think too much about whatever information she’s communicating. One day, Holly tells the narrator that she gave his story to O.J., who liked it but thinks he’s wasting his time writing about things nobody cares about. Holly says she agrees, which creates a nasty falling out between her and the narrator. Over the next few days, the narrator keeps his distance, but he soon notices a strange man lingering outside Holly’s apartment. One day, the man follows him to a café, and when the narrator finally confronts him, he learns that the suspicious man is Doc Golightly—Holly’s much older husband. Sitting at a diner counter, Doc Golightly explains that Holly—whose real name is Lulamae—wandered onto his property in Texas when she was still a girl, having run away from nasty foster parents with her brother Fred. Doc caught both Holly and Fred stealing from his farm, so he took them in. When Holly turned 14, he married her, and she eventually ran away despite seeming happy. Although on the surface Paley had everything she could have ever wanted and more, she and Bill had a relentlessly unhappy marriage. According to Capote’s testimony to Clarke, Babe had twice attempted suicide, once with pills and once by attempting to slit her wrists, and both times Capote claimed to have saved her. “Babe was caught,” Wasson wrote. “Truman would fashion Breakfast at Tiffany’s so Holly Golightly wouldn’t be.”