Breakfast at Tiffany’s is perhaps the single best known film of Audrey Hepburn’s career. Less well-remembered for it is the other lead, George Peppard. It is based – somewhat loosely – on a short story of the same name written by Truman Capote. Hepburn and Peppard play Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak. He’s a struggling writer. She’s, umm, well, something unspecified. But although the film (largely due to the Hays Code) dodges around the issue, Capote’s story is less circumspect: she’s a call girl (albeit, a very high class one) and he’s a kept man. The don’t fight crime (what with being too busy committing it on a daily basis), but they do, somehow, find love with each other.
Hepburn was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance, but lost out to Sophia Loren. In fact, the film’s two Oscars actually came from it’s music – one for Henry Mancini’s score, one for the song “Moon River”, co-written by Mancini with Johnny Mercer and performed by Hepburn in the film.
The film is also controversial for its stereotypical depiction of the Asian character, Mr. Yunioshi, who was played by Mickey Rooney, and is little more than a buffoon.
