Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.
Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
Before Breakfast at Tiffany’s Audrey Hepburn was still a little-known actress with few film roles to speak of; after it – indeed, because of it - she was one of the world’s most famous fashion, style and screen icons. It was this film that matched her with Hubert de Givenchy’s “little black dress”. Meanwhile, Truman Capote’s original novel is itself a modern classic selling huge numbers every year, and its high-living author of perennial interest.
Now, this little book tells the story of how it all happened: how Audrey got the role (for which at first she wasn’t considered, and which she at first didn’t want); how long it took to get the script right; how it made Blake Edwards’ name as a director after too many trashy films had failed to; and how Henry Mancini’s soundtrack with its memorable signature tune ‘Moon River’ completed the irresistible package.
This is the story of how one shy, uncertain, inexperienced young actress was persuaded to take on a role she at first thought too hard-edged and amoral – and how it made Audrey Hepburn into gamine, elusive Holly Golightly in the little black dress - and a star for the rest of her life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wasson, who wrote on the career of writer-director Blake Edwards in A Splurch in the Kisser, tightens his focus for a closeup of Edwards's memorable Breakfast at Tiffany's, which received five Oscar nominations (with two wins). Interviewing Edwards and others, he skillfully interweaves key events during the making of this cinema classic. He begins (and ends) with Truman Capote, whose novel was initially regarded as unadaptable by the producers, since they 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. The flow of Wasson's words carries the reader from pre-production to on-set feuds and conflicts, while also noting Hepburn's impact on fashion (Givenchy's little black dress), Hollywood glamour, sexual politics, and the new morality. Always stingy with praise, Capote dismissed the finished film as a mawkish valentine to New York City, but one feels he would have been entranced by Wasson's prismatic approach as he walks a perilous path between the analytic interpretation and the imaginative one. The result deserves Capote's nonfiction novel label. Recapturing an era, this evocative factual re-creation reads like carefully crafted fiction.
