45 Fun Facts About Breakfast at Tiffany's

What does Holly nibble as she gazes into Tiffany's window at dawn in the opening scene?

A pastry and a takeaway coffee, eaten on the pavement in an evening gown, are the only breakfast of the title: Holly never goes inside to eat.

What does Holly call the sudden attacks of fear that only a trip to Tiffany's can cure?

The mean reds, Holly explains, are worse than the blues: the blues are plain sadness, while the reds leave you suddenly afraid without knowing what you are afraid of.

Which director made Breakfast at Tiffany's?

Blake Edwards replaced the director first announced after Hepburn's side pressed for a bigger name, and she later credited him with talking her into the part.

Who plays the writer Paul Varjak, Holly's new neighbour?

George Peppard was only a few months older than Hepburn, a change for a star whose leading men had typically been old enough to be her father.

What is the theme song of Breakfast at Tiffany's, first sung on screen by Holly herself?

Moon River was nearly cut after a preview, when a studio executive said the song had to go; in different tellings it was Hepburn or the producers who refused.

Who composed the score of Breakfast at Tiffany's and the music of its theme song?

Henry Mancini called the song one of the hardest things he ever wrote, because he could not work out what a woman like Holly would be singing out on a fire escape.

Which lyricist wrote the words to the Breakfast at Tiffany's theme song?

Johnny Mercer filled the lyric with memories of his Savannah boyhood, and an inlet near the city was later renamed after the song in his honour.

Which actor did Capote want to play Holly Golightly?

Marilyn Monroe was the author's choice, but she passed after her acting coach warned that playing a 'lady of the evening' would be bad for her image.

Which actor's portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi has drawn decades of criticism as a racist caricature?

Mickey Rooney's turn was faulted from the start: in 1961 the Hollywood Reporter called the role a caricature that would be 'offensive to many', and another review that autumn called it inexcusable.

On which Manhattan avenue does Holly's beloved Tiffany's stand?

Fifth Avenue was also where the cameras first rolled: shooting began outside the store in October 1960, so the film's famous opening was among the first things filmed.

Holly refuses to give her pet a proper name until she finds a real home; what does she call him?

Cat is all he gets: Holly says she has no right to name him because the two of them do not belong to each other, and she calls them both 'no-name slobs'.

Where does Holly go every week to visit the mobster Sally Tomato?

Sing Sing is where Holly spends every Thursday, visiting a jailed mobster in return for a weekly fee from his lawyer, an errand she treats as easy and innocent income.

Holly carries coded messages out of prison for the mobster Sally Tomato, disguised as what?

Weather reports were what Holly believed she was passing to the mobster's lawyer for $100 a visit; they were really messages for his narcotics ring, and they got her arrested.

What was Holly's birth name before she reinvented herself in New York?

Lulamae Barnes is the name her husband Doc still uses; it was her agent, O. J. Berman, who groomed the country girl out of her and helped create Holly Golightly.

What is Doc Golightly's profession in the novella?

Veterinarian: Doc is the country vet who married Holly when she was a young teenager, and he turns up in New York years later hoping to take her home.

Which state did Holly run away from?

Texas is where Doc hopes to take her back to, but Holly sees him off at the bus station instead, having had the marriage annulled long before.

Which actor plays Doc Golightly?

Buddy Ebsen had been cast as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz until the aluminium dust in his make-up made him too ill to go on; a year after playing Doc he was Jed Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies.

In Breakfast at Tiffany's, what does kept man Paul call 2E, the wealthy older woman who pays his bills?

His decorator is the polite fiction for Mrs Failenson, played by Patricia Neal; Paul ends the arrangement once he realises that he is in love with Holly.

Which country is Holly planning to move to with José near the end of the story?

Brazil is home to José, the rich man Holly means to marry; he breaks it off by letter as soon as her arrest becomes public.

What did Paul have engraved at Tiffany's as a gift for Holly?

A Cracker Jack ring, the free prize from a box of the snack, is what Paul asks Tiffany's to engrave; at the end he tosses it to Holly when she tries to run from him.

Whose death sends Holly into a spiral of grief?

Her brother Fred is the person Holly loves most and the reason she is saving money; when word comes that he is dead, she smashes up her apartment.

Which magazine bought Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's first but then refused to print it?

Harper's Bazaar had the novella set for its July 1958 issue, but its owners at Hearst judged the language unsuitable and feared upsetting Tiffany's, a major advertiser.

Which magazine finally published Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's in November 1958?

Esquire took it after its first buyer got cold feet, and the outraged author made it a condition that the magazine use David Attie's photographs.

In the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly's dates hand her $50 as money for what?

The powder room is a polite pretext: the $50 from each escort is, along with her weekly prison errand, how Holly makes her living.

Which relative of Capote's, a country girl who remade herself in New York society, is thought to be a model for Holly?

His mother, born Lillie Mae Faulk in Alabama, had plenty of rivals: so many society women claimed to be Holly that Capote called the contest the 'Holly Golightly Sweepstakes'.

Critics see Holly as a literary descendant of which earlier free-spirited heroine, created by Capote's mentor?

Sally Bowles, the Berlin nightclub singer of Christopher Isherwood's stories, came first; Isherwood was a mentor to Capote, and one critic called the novella his 'personal crystallization' of her.

In what weather does the final scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's play out?

Pouring rain drenches the closing scene, in which Holly pushes her pet out of a taxi and then has to search a wet alley to get him back.

George Axelrod's screenplay gave Breakfast at Tiffany's an ending Capote never wrote; what happens in it?

Holly stays with Paul, a happy ending invented for the screen; in the novella she flies abroad alone and the narrator never learns what became of her.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a New York story, but in which city were nearly all its interiors filmed?

Los Angeles: after eight days of location work in Manhattan in October 1960 the company went back to a Hollywood sound stage, so Holly's brownstone apartment is a studio set.

Which studio released Breakfast at Tiffany's in October 1961?

Paramount Pictures cast its own choice of star rather than the author's, and Capote was furious: 'Paramount double-crossed me in every way,' he said.

Which Italian star of Two Women beat Hepburn's Holly to the 1962 Best Actress Oscar?

Sophia Loren won, the first Best Actress winner for a film in Italian; Hepburn's consolation came from Loren's own country, whose David di Donatello named her best foreign actress.

Which designer created Holly's famous little black dress for Breakfast at Tiffany's?

Hubert de Givenchy had dressed Hepburn since Sabrina, though their first meeting began with a letdown: told that 'Miss Hepburn' was coming, he was expecting Katharine.

Proceeds from the 2006 auction of Holly's little black dress went to build schools in which country?

India: the designer had given the dress to the writer Dominique Lapierre for his City of Joy charity in Calcutta, and at Christie's it fetched £467,200, more than six times its top estimate.

Capote denied that Holly was a call girl, describing her instead as an American what?

Geisha was his word in a 1968 Playboy interview: Holly had no job, he said, but was taken out by expense-account men who were expected to give her a present or a cheque.

What was the lyricist's original working title for the Breakfast at Tiffany's theme song?

Blue River was dropped when the lyricist found that another songwriter had already used the title; the huckleberries he picked as a boy in Georgia stayed in the lyric.

Which crooner made the Breakfast at Tiffany's theme song his signature tune and opened his TV show with it?

Andy Williams opened every episode of his television show with the song's first bars, and later named his theatre in Branson, Missouri, after it.

Which instrument does Holly play while singing on her fire escape in Breakfast at Tiffany's?

A guitar is what Holly strums, yet Hepburn's own vocal was left off the soundtrack album and was not released until after her death in 1993.

Which band had a 1995 hit single titled 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'?

Deep Blue Something reached number one in Britain and number five in America with it, then never had another hit of that size, which left the band tagged as a one-hit wonder.

Which Audrey Hepburn film actually inspired the 1995 hit song 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'?

Roman Holiday was the film songwriter Todd Pipes had in mind, but he thought the title of another of her pictures would make a better name for the song.

Which actress starred as Holly in the short-lived 2013 Broadway stage adaptation?

Emilia Clarke made her Broadway debut in the role; the play went back to the novella, restoring Joe Bell, the barman whom the film had left out.

What is missing from Paul's typewriter when Holly first visits, a sign that he has stopped writing?

The ribbon is missing, and Paul has published nothing in five years; Holly later buys him a new one to apologise for snapping at him.

Which actress turned down Holly Golightly to star in Two Loves instead?

Shirley MacLaine came to regret it: she later told Daily Variety that she should have done Breakfast at Tiffany's, and called the film she chose instead horrible.

Which actor, then tied to a TV western, was in the running to play Paul Varjak in Breakfast at Tiffany's?

Steve McQueen read for the part in July 1960, but he was still under contract to the TV western Wanted: Dead or Alive, and the role went to another actor a week later.

Which TV star played Holly in the 1966 Broadway musical of Breakfast at Tiffany's that closed after four previews?

Mary Tyler Moore starred opposite Richard Chamberlain, but even a rewrite by the playwright Edward Albee could not save the show, and producer David Merrick closed it at a total loss.

Hepburn hesitated over playing Holly because she saw herself as what?

An introvert, she said, playing an extrovert: Hepburn called it the hardest thing she had ever done; she was also 31, a dozen years older than the novella's Holly.