by Sam Wasson
Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.
Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman
Sam Wasson
To Halpern, Cheiffetz, and Ellison,
without whom, etc.
IF THERE IS ONE FACT OF LIFE THAT AUDREY HEPBURN IS DEAD CERTAIN OF, adamant about, irrevocably committed to, it’s the fact that her married life, her husband and her baby, come first and far ahead of her career.
She said so the other day on the set of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the Jurow-Shepherd comedy for Paramount, in which she plays a New York play girl, café society type, whose constancy is highly suspect.
This unusual role for Miss Hepburn brought up the subject of career women vs. wives—and Audrey made it tersely clear that she is by no means living her part.
PARAMOUNT PICTURES PUBLICITY,
NOVEMBER 28, 1960
Contents
Epigraph
Starring
Holly Golightly’s New York
Map
Coming Attraction
1
Thinking It
1951–1953
2
Wanting It
1953–1955
3
Seeing It
1955–1958
4
Touching It
1958–1960
5
Liking It
1960
6
Doing It
October 2, 1960–November 11, 1960
Photographic Insert
7
Loving It
1961
8
Wanting More
The 1960s
End Credits
A Note on the Notes
Notes
About the Author
Other Books by Sam Wasson
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
STARRING
Audrey Hepburn
as The Actress who wanted a home
Truman Capote
as The novelist who wanted a mother
Mel Ferrer
as The Husband who wanted a wife
Babe Paley
as The swan who wanted to fly
George Axelrod
as The screenwriter who wanted sex to be witty again
Edith Head
as The Costumer who wanted to work forever, stay old-fashioned, and never go out of style
Hubert de Givenchy
as The Designer who wanted a muse
Marty Jurow and Richard Shepherd
as The producers who wanted to close the deal for the right money and get the right people to make the best picture possible
Blake Edwards
as The Director who wanted to make a sophisticated grown-up comedy for a change
Henry Mancini
as The Composer who wanted a chance to do it his way
and Johnny Mercer
as The lyricist who didn’t want to be forgotten
COSTARRING
Colette
Doris Day
Marilyn Monroe
Swifty Lazar
Billy Wilder
Carol Marcus
Gloria Vanderbilt
Patricia Neal
George Peppard
Bennett Cerf
Mickey Rooney
Akira Kurosawa
as The offended
AND INTRODUCING
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
as The Girl who saw the dawn
HOLLY GOLIGHTLY’S NEW YORK
1. COLONY RESTAURANT, MADISON AVENUE & 61ST STREET
Where producer Marty Jurow won the rights to Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
2. GOLD KEY CLUB, 26 WEST 56TH STREET
Carol Marcus and Capote would meet here at 3:00 A.M., sit in front of the fireplace, and talk and talk.
3. COMMODORE HOTEL, LEXINGTON AVENUE & 42ND STREET
Where paramount held an open cat-call to cast the part of Holly’s cat, Cat.
4. PALEY PIED-À-TERRE
A three-room suite on the tenth floor of the St. Regis Hotel where Bill and Babe Paley lived when they weren’t at their estate on Long Island.
5. 21 CLUB, 21 WEST 52ND STREET
In the film of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, where Paul, after Holly bids farewell to Doc, takes Holly for a drink.
6. GLORIA VANDERBILT, 65TH STREET BETWEEN FIFTH & MADISON AVENUES
A brownstone that served as the model for Holly’s, and the place where Carol Marcus met Capote.
7. EL MOROCCO, 154 EAST 54TH STREET
Where Marilyn Monroe kicked off her shoes and danced with Capote.
8. LA CÔTE BASQUE, 5 EAST 55TH STREET AT FIFTH AVENUE
Favorite lunch spot of Truman and his swans. Also the setting for Capote’s incendiary “La Côte Basque, 1965,” which nearly cost him everyone he professed to love.
9. PLAZA HOTEL, 58TH STREET & FIFTH AVENUE
Frequented by Gloria Vanderbilt and Russell Hurd, one of Capote’s inspirations for Breakfast at Tiffany’s unnamed narrator.
10. FOUNTAIN ON NORTHEAST CORNER OF 52ND STREET & PARK AVENUE
Exterior location for Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
11. TIFFANY & CO., 727 57TH STREET AT FIFTH AVENUE
Site of the first scene of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, shot on the first day of filming, Sunday, October 2nd, 1960, 5:00 A.M.
12. BROWNSTONE AT 169 EAST 71ST STREET, BETWEEN LEXINGTON & THIRD AVENUES
Chez Golightly in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
13. NAUMBURG BANDSHELL IN CENTRAL PARK, 72ND STREET & FIFTH AVENUE
Exterior location for Breakfast at Tiffany’s where Doc and Paul have their chat about Holly.
14. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ON 42ND STREET & FIFTH AVENUE
Exterior location for Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
15. RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL, 1260 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS
Site of Breakfast at Tiffany’s New York premiere, October 5, 1961.
Map
Invitation to Breakfast at Tiffany’s Hollywood premiere, October, 1961.
COMING ATTRACTION
Like one of those accidents that’s not really an accident, the casting of “good” Audrey in the part of “not-so-good” call girl Holly Golightly rerouted the course of women in the movies, giving voice to what was then a still-unspoken shift in the 1950s gender plan. There was always sex in Hollywood, but before Breakfast at Tiffany’s, only the bad girls were having it. With few exceptions, good girls in the movies had to get married before they earned their single fade to black, while the sultrier among them got to fade out all the time and with all different sorts of men in just about every position (of rank). Needless to say, they paid for their fun in the end. Either the bad girls would suffer/repent, love/marry, or suffer/repent/marry/die, but the general idea was always roughly the same: ladies, don’t try this at home. But in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, all of a sudden—because it was Audrey who was doing it—living alone, going out, looking fabulous, and getting a little drunk didn’t look so bad anymore. Being single actually seemed shame-free. It seemed fun.
Though they might have missed it, or not identified it as such right away, people who encountered Audrey’s Holly Golightly in 1961 experienced, for the very first time, a glamorous fantasy life of wild, kooky independence and sophisticated sexual freedom; best of all, it was a fantasy they could make real. Until Breakfast at Tiffany’s, glamorous women of the movies occupied strata available only to the mind-blowingly chic, satin-wrapped, ermine-lined ladies of the boulevard, whom no one but a true movie star could ever become. But Holly was different. She wore simple things. They weren’t that expensive. And they looked stunning.
Somehow, despite her l
ack of funds and backwater pedigree, Holly Golightly still managed to be glamorous. If she were a society woman or fashion model, we might be less impressed with her choice of clothing, but because she’s made it up from poverty on her own—and is a girl no less—because she’s used style to overcome the restrictions of the class she was born into, Audrey’s Holly showed that glamour was available to anyone, no matter what their age, sex life, or social standing. Grace Kelly’s look was safe, Doris Day’s undesirable, and Elizabeth Taylor’s—unless you had that body—unattainable, but in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Audrey’s was democratic.
And to think that it almost didn’t come off. To think that Audrey Hepburn didn’t want the part, that the censors were railing against the script, that the studio wanted to cut “Moon River,” that Blake Edwards didn’t know how to end it (he actually shot two separate endings), and that Capote’s novel was considered unadaptable seems almost funny today. But it’s true.
Well before Audrey signed on to the part, everyone at Paramount involved with Breakfast at Tiffany’s was deeply worried about the movie. In fact, from the moment Marty Jurow and Richard Shepherd, the film’s producers, got the rights to Capote’s novel, getting Tiffany’s off the ground looked downright impossible. Not only did they have a highly flammable protagonist on their hands, but Jurow and Shepherd hadn’t the faintest idea how the hell they were going to take a novel with no second act, a nameless gay protagonist, a motiveless drama, and an unhappy ending, and turn it into a Hollywood movie. (Even when it was just a book, Breakfast at Tiffany’s was causing a stir. Despite Capote’s enormous celebrity, Harper’s Bazaar refused to publish the novel on account of certain distasteful four-letter words.)
Morally, Paramount knew it was on shaky ground with Tiffany’s; so much so that they sent forth a platoon of carefully worded press releases designed to convince Americans that real-life Audrey wasn’t anything like Holly Golightly. She wasn’t a hooker, they said; she was a kook. There’s a difference! But try as they might, Paramount couldn’t hoodwink everyone. “The Tiffany picture is the worst of the year from a morality standpoint,” one angry person would write in 1961. “Not only does it show a prostitute throwing herself at a ‘kept’ man but it treats theft as a joke. I fear ‘shoplifting’ will rise among teen-agers after viewing this.” Back then, while the sexual revolution was still underground, Breakfast at Tiffany’s remained a covert insurgence, like a love letter passed around a classroom. And if you were caught in those days, the teacher would have had you expelled.
So with all that was against Breakfast at Tiffany’s, how did they manage to pull it off? How did Jurow and Shepherd convince Audrey to play what was, at that time, the riskiest part of her career? How did screenwriter George Axelrod dupe the censors? How did Hubert de Givenchy manage to make mainstream the little black dress that seemed so suggestive? Finally—and perhaps most significantly—how did Breakfast at Tiffany’s bring American audiences to see that the bad girl was really a good one? There was no way she could have known it then—in fact, if someone were to suggest it to her, she probably would have laughed them off—but Audrey Hepburn, backed by everyone else on Breakfast at Tiffany’s, was about to shake up absolutely everything. This book is the story of those people, their hustle, and that shake.
1
THINKING IT
1951-1953
THE FIRST HOLLY
Traveling was forced upon little Truman Capote from the beginning. By the late 1920s, his mother, Lillie Mae, had made a habit of abandoning her son with relatives for months at a time while she went round and round from man to high-falutin’ man. Gradually the handoffs began to hurt Truman less—either that, or he grew more accustomed to the pain—and in time, his knack for adaptation turned into something like genius. He was able to fit in anywhere.
After his parents’ divorce, five-year-old Truman was sent to his aunt’s house in Monroeville, Alabama. Now was Lillie Mae’s chance to quit that jerkwater town and hightail it to a big city. Only there could she become the rich and adored society woman she knew she was destined to be, and probably would have been, if it weren’t for Truman, the son she never wanted to begin with. When she was pregnant, Lillie Mae—Nina, as she introduced herself in New York—had tried to abort him.
Perhaps if she had gone away and stayed away, young Truman would have suffered less. But Nina never stayed away from Monroeville for long. In a whirl of fancy fabrics, she would turn up unannounced, tickle Truman’s chin, offer up an assortment of apologies, and disappear. And then, as if it had never happened before, it would happen all over again. Inevitably, Nina’s latest beau would reject her for being the peasant girl she tried so hard not to be, and down the service elevator she would go, running all the way back to Truman with enormous tears ballooning from her eyes. A day or so would pass; Nina would take stock of her Alabama surroundings and once again, vanish to Manhattan’s highest penthouses.
Had he been older, Truman might have stolen his heart back from his mother the way he would learn to shield it from others, but in those days he was still too young to be anything but in love with her. She said she loved him, too, and at times, like when she brought him with her to a hotel, promising that now they’d really be together, it looked to him as though she finally meant it. Imagine his surprise then when Nina locked him in the room and went next door to make money-minded love with some ritzy someone deep into the night. Truman, of course, heard everything. On one such occasion, he found a rogue vial of her perfume and with the desperation of a junkie, drank it all the way to the bottom. It didn’t bring her back, but for a few pungent swallows, it brought her closer.
For the better part of Capote’s career as a novelist, that bottle—what was left of his mother—would be the wellspring of most of his creations. The idea of her, like the idea of love and the idea of home, proved a very hard thing to pin down. He tried, though. But no number of perfume bottles or whiskey bottles, no matter how deep or beautiful, could alter the fact of her absence. Nor could most of the women or men to whom Truman attached himself. They could never pour enough warmth into the void.
In consequence, Capote was equal parts yearning and vengeance, clutching at his intimates with fingers of knives that he would turn back on himself when left alone. However sharp, those fingers pulled his mother from the past and put her on the page where, in the form of language, he could remake her perfume into a bottomless fragrance called Holly Golightly. That’s how Truman finally learned the meaning of permanence.
Once the reading world got a whiff of it, eau d’Holly made everyone fall in love with Truman, which, since his mother had left him that first time, was the only thing he ever wanted. That and a home—a feeling of something familiar—like an old smell, a favorite scarf, or the white rose paperweight that sat on Truman’s desk as he wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
THE WHITE ROSE PAPERWEIGHT
When he was in Paris in 1948, soaking in accolades for his lurid first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman was delivered by Jean Cocteau to Colette’s apartment in the Palais Royal. She was nearing eighty, but the author of Gigi, the Claudine novels, and countless others, was still France’s grandest grande dame of literature.
In full recline, Colette, racked with arthritis, no doubt smiled at Truman’s author photograph on the dust jacket of Other Voices. Staring out at her with his languid eyes and slick lips, the boy’s salacious look was one the old woman knew well; in her day, she had rocked Paris with a few succès de scandales of her own, both on the page and off. Now here was this rascal with his angel’s face—a hungry angel’s face. How delicious. She felt for sure there existed a kind of artery between them, and even before he entered her bedroom, Truman sensed it too. “Bonjour, Madame.” “Bonjour.” They hardly spoke each other’s language, but as he approached her bedside, their bond grew from assured to obvious. The artery was in the heart.
After the tea was served, the room got warmer, and Colette opened Truman’s twenty-three-year-old ha
nd. In it she placed a crystal paperweight with a white rose at its center. “What does it remind you of?” she asked. “What images occur to you?”
Truman turned it around in his hand. “Young girls in their communion dresses,” he said.
The remark pleased Colette. “Very charming,” she said. “Very apt. Now I can see what Jean told me is true. He said, ‘Don’t be fooled, my dear. He looks like a ten-year-old angel. But he’s ageless, and has a very wicked mind.’” She gave it to him, a souvenir.
