Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman (21 page)

The Dream Begins
: Audrey's remark, the baby “will be the greatest thing in my life, greater even than my success,” is from Ellen Johnson, “Will Hollywood ever see Audrey Hepburn Again?”
Modern Screen
(April 1955).

Oscar Night
: Edith Head's acceptance speech on record at the AMPAS Library.

Mrs. Mel Ferrer
: “My mother wanted to have a kid because she wanted to right the wrongs of her childhood,” Sean Ferrer said to me on September 17, 2009. “She carried that into her UNICEF work.” For a woman who didn't like to give interviews, Audrey was quite vocal about the importance of motherhood in her life. “I don't think I was a whole woman then. No woman is without love,” Audrey quoted in Carl Clement, “Look Where You're Going, Audrey (
Photoplay
, April 1956). “He's a protective husband, and I like it. Most women do…” from “Audrey's Advice: Have Fun, Let Hubby Wear the Pants” (
New York Journal American
, August 19, 1957). “She was in part attracted to Mel…” Robert Wolders to SW on October 23, 2009. All through her life, Wolders assured me, Audrey had no qualms about trumpeting the kind of domesticity that many women found regressive. Naturally, she gave it a lot of airtime here, in the mid-1950s. “She's known dictators in her early war-shadowed life,” Audrey quoted in Mary Jones “My Husband Doesn't Run Me,”
Photoplay
(April 1956). “Mel was jealous of her success,” Brynner quoted in Warren Harris,
Audrey Hepburn
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). “Of course, it's a problem…” Ferrer quoted in Joseph Barry, “Audrey Hepburn at 40,”
McCall's
(July 1969).

3.
SEEING IT
, 1955–1958

The Swans
: Gloria Vanderbilt and Carol Matthau's own memoirs provided me with valuable firsthand accounts of swan life. “I rarely asked anyone to my studio,” from Gloria Vanderbilt,
It Seemed Important at the Time
:
A Romance Memoir
(Simon & Schuster, 2004). “You have freed yourself,” Capote quoted in Carol Matthau,
Among the Porcupines
(Turtle Bay Books, 1992). Also of service was Aram Saroyan's
Trio
:
Oona Chaplin
,
Carol Matthau
,
Gloria Vanderbilt
:
Portrait of an Intimate Friendship
(Simon & Schuster, 1985), as well as my correspondence with Mr. Saroyan about the effect
Breakfast at Tiffany's
had upon his mother. “I think Carol was pleased to be associated with Holly Golightly,” he wrote in an e-mail of January 14, 2009, “and to some degree dined out on the association. When I recently reread the book, I did see touches that reminded me of Carol, specifically the zingers like ‘The next time a girl asks for change for the powder room, don't give her 50 cents.' That sounded like Carol to me. I think Carol relished the association more than the other two. Gloria had her own fish to fry, and Oona was an extremely shy person. Then too, looking at the three of them exclusively, Carol does seem to have had more of Holly Golightly's qualities than either Gloria or Oona.”

Beautiful Babe
:
In All His Glory
(Simon & Schuster, 1990), Sally B. Smith's magisterial account of Bill Paley, contains such a wealth of information about Babe it's practically a dual biography. Her strange and fractured relationship with Truman, however, is, understandably, explored only peripherally, and here is where Clarke's
Capote
was of immeasurable help. The book works in perfect counterpoint to Smith's, balancing both sides of the Capote/Babe love story, such that, when taken together, a diptych of startling sadness, and perhaps even tragedy, comes into view. In this section, Truman's quotations—the passages beginning “When I first saw her…,” “whose sole creation…,” and “I was madly in love with her…”—are all from
Capote
, and the evocation of Truman and Babe's conversation about her marriage to Bill was adapted from dialogue related in Smith's book. The Billy Wilder remark is also from
In All His Glory
.

George Axelrod Dreams of Rich People Saying Witty Things and Screwing
: “The film version of
The Seven Year Itch
…” from
Daily Variety
film review of
The Seven Year Itch,
January 1, 1955. “In the Eisenhower years, comedy resides in how close one can come to the concept of hot pussy while still living in the cool of the innocent,” from Norman Mailer,
Marilyn
,
A Biography
(Grosset & Dunlap, 1981).

The Producers
: A substantial portion of the information I used to evoke Marty Jurow came from his own book,
Marty Jurow Seein' Stars
:
A Show Biz Odyssey
(Southern Methodist University Press, 2001), and what I know of Richard Shepherd and his own career was relayed to
me, over the course of several interviews, from Shepherd himself.

What Truman Capote Does in Bed
: Truman's interview with Patti Hill, “The Art of Fiction No. 17,” originally published in
The Paris Review
(Spring-Summer 1957), goes into Capote's working methods, as does Gerald Clarke's
Capote
. “When it's a quarter to two and sleep hasn't come…” from Capote's essay “The White Rose,” collected in
Portraits and Observations
:
The Essays of Truman Capote
(Random House, 2007). The morsel of Capote's old purple prose style, “he was spinning like a fan blade through metal spirals…,” is from
Other Voices
,
Other Views
(Random House, 1948). Capote's observation, “Every year, New York is flooded with these girls…,” is taken from his interview with Eric Norden,
Playboy
(March 1968).

Breakfast at Tiffany's,
Traveling
: The exact words Nancy White objected to are noted in some file somewhere in Gerald Clarke's possession. “Of one thing I am certain,” he wrote to me on November 2, 2009, ‘“Fuck' was not one of the four letter words to which
Esquire
objected. That would have been much too strong for the fifties, and Truman would have known it wouldn't pass. I think the words were more like ‘hell' and ‘damn.'” Capote's letter to Cecil Beaton, “The Bazaar is printing it in their July issue…,” is excerpted from
Too Brief a Treat
:
The Letters of Truman Capote
(Random House, 2004). “Truman Capote I do not know well, but I like him…” Norman Mailer,
Advertisements for Myself
(G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1959). “Whenever Capote tries to suggest the inner life of his heroine…” Alfred Kazin, from “Truman Capote and ‘the Army of Wrongness'” collected in
Contemporaries
(Little, Brown, 1962).

The Real Holly Golightly
: “The Bonnie Golightly Sweepstakes” is detailed in “Golightly at Law” (
Time
, February 9, 1958). James Michener's side of things, from which I drew all of the quotations that appear in this section, takes up a hunk of his introduction to Lawrence Grobel's
Conversations with Capote
(New American Library, 1985). Truman's typically slippery take comes from his interview with Eric Norden (
Playboy
, March 1968). “Truman mentioned such a woman to me too…” Gerald Clarke to SW on December 23, 2008. “Beatnik” coined by Herb Caen in his column in the
San Francisco Chronicle,
April 2, 1958. Here it is: “Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.'s Beat Generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!), hosted a party in a
No. Beach house for 50 Beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles' free booze. They're only Beat, y'know, when it comes to work…”

4.
TOUCHING IT
, 1958–1960

Jurow and Shepherd Make Their Move
: This sequence between Marty Jurow and Richard Shepherd comes to the page by way of Jurow's own book,
Marty Jurow Seein' Stars
:
A Show Biz Odyssey
(Southern Methodist University Press, 2001), in addition to the several conversations I had with Shepherd, who, with astonishing generosity, made himself, as well as his own shooting script of
Breakfast at Tiffany's,
exceedingly available to me. All of his quotations come from those exchanges. “Well-written, off-beat, amusing…” quoted in a Paramount reader's report on file in the Special Collections in the AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library. The dialogue between Truman and Jurow, and Jurow and Paula Strasberg, is as reported by Jurow himself in
Marty Jurow Seein' Stars
. “I remember it this way…” Shepherd to SW on November 24, 2009.

Marilyn
: Truman's intense feeling for Marilyn survives in “A Beautiful Child” from
Music for Chameleons
(Random House, 1975). After reading the piece, she ends up looking a lot like Holly. Or Holly a lot like her. “It's not that she was mean…” Billy Wilder quoted in Michel Ciment, “Billy Wilder urbi et orbi,”
Positif
(July–August, 1983). Strasberg's phone conversation with Marty Jurow is recounted in
Marty Jurow Seein' Stars
.

The Serious Writer
: The details of Jurow-Shepherd's deal with Sumner Locke Elliott are drawn from an extended correspondence kept in the AMPAS Library Special Collections. Contained there are all of the various memos, changes, and legal stipulations of his contract, as well as the draft he turned out.

The Gag Man Gagged
: “Truman, they won't use me…” / “Well, bullshit…” This brief exchange comes by way of Joan Axelrod, quoted in George Plimpton,
Truman Capote
:
In Which Various Friends
,
Enemies
,
Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career
(Doubleday, 1997). George tells another version of the same story in
Backstory 3
(University of California Press, 1997).

The Serious Writer Gagged
: Shepherd's terrific memo, like all of the material related to Sumner Locke Elliott's deal, is kept in the AMPAS Library Special Collections.

The Pitch
: The list of screenwriters under consideration for the
Breakfast at Tiffany's
rewrite is kept in the AMPAS Library Special Collections. My description of Axelrod's intended revision comes from Axelrod's own explanations of the process (to be found in the various interviews sourced in the section “One Hot Spurt,” above), as well as what was passed down to me from my conversations with Shepherd and Illeana Douglas. Comparing Elliott's treatment and draft (AMPAS Library) with Axelrod's revision(s), the changes are readily apparent. Joan Axelrod relates her husband's bedtime epiphany in George Plimpton,
Truman Capote
:
In Which Various Friends
,
Enemies
,
Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career
(Doubleday, 1997), and Axelrod's recognition of his low-class standing is prevalent in his interview with Patrick McGilligan in
Backstory 3
(University of California Press, 1997).

Audrey's Retreat
: “I blamed God,” Audrey Hepburn quoted in Ian Woodward,
Audrey Hepburn
(St. Martin's Press, 1984). Robert Wolders told me that when he asked Audrey about the details of the Hitchcock affair, she was very unclear, leading him to believe that a significant part of the deal was orchestrated by Kurt Frings behind her back. Herbert Coleman, Hitchcock's right hand, told it differently. In his book,
The Man Who Knew Hitchcock
(Scarecrow Press, 2007), Coleman maintains Audrey was complicit. Of the added rape scene, he has Hitchcock saying, “We won't let her see that sequence until we're ready to film it.” Coleman refused outright and sent Audrey the new pages directly to Durango where she was shooting
The Unforgiven
. Audrey said, “Herbie, I've always wanted to work with Mr. Hitchcock. Take that scene out and tell me when you want me to report.” Hitch retaliated: “Tell Paramount they must make her report when you call her or I will cancel my contract.” Audrey's quote that children were “indispensable for a woman's life and happiness” is from Claude Berthod, “Audrey Hepburn,”
Cosmopolitan
(October 1966). “The pregnancy transported her…” Sean Ferrer to SW on September 17, 2009. “She loved family more than her career…” Robert Wolders to SW on October 23, 2009.

Romantic Comedy
: “They offered him Rhode Island and a piece of the gross…” Joan Axelrod quoted in George Plimpton,
Truman Capote
:
In Which Various Friends
,
Enemies
,
Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career
(Doubleday, 1997). From the cigars, to the vodka, to the picture of Marilyn, the evocation of Axelrod at work on
Tiffany's
was passed down to me from Illeana Douglas. “Most sex comedies involve men cheating on their wives…” from Vernon Scott, “Axelrod Emphasizes the Marital Theme” (
The Philadelphia Inquirer
, December 24, 1967).

Doing It for Money
: All quotations from Geoffrey Shurlock's memos as well as his review of Axelrod's draft are from the
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Production Code Files in the Special Collections of AMPAS Library.

5.
LIKING IT
, 1960

The Seduction
: “Frings was pretty sure…” Shepherd to SW on November 24, 2009. Jurow's description of his meeting at Dinty Moore's and his courtship of Audrey Hepburn in
Marty Jurow Seein' Stars
:
A Show Biz Odyssey
, along with input from Richard Shepherd, helped to rebuild the chronology of events leading up to the moment when Audrey, finally, accepts the part of Holly Golightly. The dialogue is all Jurow's. “Audrey's reluctance was wrapped up in Mel's…” Robert Wolders to SW on October 23, 2009. Interestingly, Jurow never placed Axelrod at the scene, but according to Axelrod, he was absolutely there. Considering the consistency between George's own versions of the story, I'm inclined to believe Axelrod's memory and conclude that Jurow, being of Hollywood, omitted George from the scene for the sake of claiming sole credit for the casting coup.