Few cinematic pairings really feel as fated as Audrey Hepburn and Holly Golightly. The little black gown, the cigarette holder and that early-morning bagel outdoors Tiffany’s have etched into popular culture like diamonds on glass.
However behind this picture-perfect casting lies one among Hollywood’s nice almosts. Sure, a model of Breakfast at Tiffany’s the place Marilyn Monroe, not Hepburn, steps into Holly’s stilettos. It’s the form of what-if that retains movie lovers tossing and turning, imagining a completely totally different tone by way of Blake Edwards’ 1961 adaptation.
3/24/1955-New York, NY
Novelist Truman Capote having some problem holding the eye of actress Marilyn Monroe whereas dancing on the El Morocco.
Capote had Monroe in thoughts for Holly Golightly in “Breakfast At Tiffany’s,” & famously disliked Hepburn within the function. pic.twitter.com/u1yzTFdEps
— G-Man (@GMan23677156) March 20, 2024
Marilyn Monroe’s Holly Would’ve Been a Mirror
Hepburn’s Holly turned an emblem of stylish detachment and fragile attraction, however when Truman Capote penned the unique novella in 1958, he had another person totally in thoughts.
Capote’s imaginative and prescient of Holly was nearer to Monroe, not simply in look, with these light-catching blonde strands and eyes flecked with contradiction, however in soul. Monroe’s mix of sensuality, vulnerability, and a form of aching glamour appeared nearly written into Holly’s DNA.
It wasn’t a stretch that the 2 even shared a private connection. Capote noticed in Monroe a mirror of Holly’s precarious dance between glittering surfaces and the lonely reality behind them.
Within the novella, Holly is extra uncooked and fewer polished. She’s not the refined determine that Hepburn portrayed however a Southern escapee reinventing herself amid Manhattan’s excessive society. Her title isn’t even Holly, it’s Lulamae Barnes, a woman from rural Texas who married at 14 and ran off to chase one thing shinier. That backstory, filled with rebranding and reinvention, suits Monroe like a silk glove. Each girls lived lives formed by efficiency, turning into what the world needed even when it price them components of themselves.
When Hollywood Politics Took Over
Capote pushed onerous to get Monroe solid, reportedly even tailoring components of the script to suit her cadence and vary. She might need introduced extra dramatic weight to the function, including layers of lived expertise and emotional grit that might have made Holly Golightly much less a dream and extra a deeply conflicted soul.
Monroe wasn’t simply the blonde bombshell, she might be surprisingly tender and emotionally uncooked. And that model of Holly, one crafted by a lady continually balancing fame and inside turmoil, may’ve taken Breakfast at Tiffany’s into deeper, maybe darker territory.
Nevertheless, casting is rarely easy. Monroe’s performing coach, Paula Strasberg, suggested her to steer clear, cautious of the function’s implications. She reportedly believed that Holly’s ambiguous occupation would tarnish Monroe’s picture, which is bitter irony, contemplating how a lot of Monroe’s real-life battles got here from Hollywood’s refusal to let her be greater than an icon.
Audrey Hepburn Wasn’t Holly — Till She Was
Capote was livid when Paramount handed the function to Hepburn as a substitute, a alternative he publicly detested. In his eyes, they’d stripped Holly of her essence.
But right here lies the paradox. Audrey Hepburn, together with her gamine class, turned out to be the form of Holly that nobody anticipated however everybody embraced. She didn’t mirror Holly’s backstory, however that distinction created one thing magical. Hepburn turned the fantasy Holly was all the time chasing, one thing subtle, charming and otherworldly.
Watching her glide by way of Manhattan in outsized sun shades, it’s straightforward to overlook that Holly was ever meant to be anybody else. That’s the alchemy of nice performing, bending a task into one thing that turns into timeless, even when it began off as one thing else totally.
Two Icons, Two Very Totally different Hollys
If Monroe had taken the half, the movie possible would have carried extra emotional gravity and a sharper commentary on American desires turned hole. It might need challenged audiences extra, drawn them into the shadows between Holly’s glittering surfaces. However Hepburn gave the character one thing else, a lightness that masked the melancholy and a grace that floated simply above the ache. She gave us a model of Holly that’s all aspiration, all attraction, which, in its personal approach, completely captures the character too.
So on this alternate Hollywood universe, Monroe sips espresso outdoors Tiffany’s and charms a weary author together with her tragic magnificence. However in ours, it’s Audrey who does it with a smile that hides all the pieces and divulges nothing. The movie we received is probably not what Capote needed, however it’s the one which turned Holly Golightly into legend.
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