Breakfast at Tiffany's Trivia
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45 free Breakfast at Tiffany's trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Breakfast at Tiffany's trivia quiz covers the 1961 Blake Edwards film from every angle: the casting saga (who Truman Capote actually wanted as Holly Golightly, and who turned the part down), the Fifth Avenue opening shot, Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer's Oscar-winning song, the Givenchy dress that sold for nearly half a million pounds, the nameless cat, and the Mickey Rooney controversy that still follows the film. It also goes back to the source: Capote's 1958 novella, its 1940s setting, the magazine that refused to print it, the women who claimed to be the real Holly, and the very different ending Capote wrote. There is even a stop at Deep Blue Something's 1995 hit that borrowed the title. Questions run from easy (who plays Holly) to expert (the working title of the song). Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries and primary sources before publishing, so you can settle arguments with confidence.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does Holly nibble as she gazes into Tiffany's window at dawn in the opening scene?
A pastry
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.
Q 02What does Holly call the sudden attacks of fear that only a trip to Tiffany's can cure?
The mean reds
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.
Q 03Which director made Breakfast at Tiffany's?
Blake Edwards
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.
Q 04Who plays the writer Paul Varjak, Holly's new neighbour?
George Peppard
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.
Q 05What is the theme song of Breakfast at Tiffany's, first sung on screen by Holly herself?
Moon River
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.
Q 06Who composed the score of Breakfast at Tiffany's and the music of its theme song?
Henry Mancini
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.
Q 07Which lyricist wrote the words to the Breakfast at Tiffany's theme song?
Johnny Mercer
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.
Q 08Which actor did Capote want to play Holly Golightly?
Marilyn Monroe
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.
Q 09Which actor's portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi has drawn decades of criticism as a racist caricature?
Mickey Rooney
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.
Q 10On which Manhattan avenue does Holly's beloved Tiffany's stand?
Fifth Avenue
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.
Q 11Holly refuses to give her pet a proper name until she finds a real home; what does she call him?
Cat
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'.
Q 12Where does Holly go every week to visit the mobster Sally Tomato?
Sing Sing
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.
Q 13Holly carries coded messages out of prison for the mobster Sally Tomato, disguised as what?
Weather reports
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.
Q 21Whose death sends Holly into a spiral of grief?
Her brother Fred
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.
Q 22Which magazine bought Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's first but then refused to print it?
Harper's Bazaar
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.
Q 23Which magazine finally published Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's in November 1958?
Esquire
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.
Q 14What was Holly's birth name before she reinvented herself in New York?
Lulamae Barnes
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.
Q 15What is Doc Golightly's profession in the novella?
Veterinarian
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.
Q 16Which state did Holly run away from?
Texas
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.
Q 17Which actor plays Doc Golightly?
Buddy Ebsen
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.
Q 18In Breakfast at Tiffany's, what does kept man Paul call 2E, the wealthy older woman who pays his bills?
His decorator
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.
Q 19Which country is Holly planning to move to with José near the end of the story?
Brazil
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.
Q 20What did Paul have engraved at Tiffany's as a gift for Holly?
A Cracker Jack ring
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.
Q 24In the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly's dates hand her $50 as money for what?
The powder room
The powder room is a polite pretext: the $50 from each escort is, along with her weekly prison errand, how Holly makes her living.
Q 25Which relative of Capote's, a country girl who remade herself in New York society, is thought to be a model for Holly?
His mother
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'.
Q 26Critics see Holly as a literary descendant of which earlier free-spirited heroine, created by Capote's mentor?
Sally Bowles
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.
Q 27In what weather does the final scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's play out?
Pouring rain
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.
Q 28George Axelrod's screenplay gave Breakfast at Tiffany's an ending Capote never wrote; what happens in it?
Holly stays with Paul
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.
Q 29Breakfast at Tiffany's is a New York story, but in which city were nearly all its interiors filmed?
Los Angeles
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.
Q 30Which studio released Breakfast at Tiffany's in October 1961?
Paramount Pictures
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.