Where to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

Trivia & production notes

• Truman Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Holly Golightly and even had the screenplay tailored to her, but Monroe declined after a theater director warned her that playing such a role would damage her image.
• Shirley MacLaine and Kim Novak both turned down the role of Holly Golightly before it went to Audrey Hepburn, prompting Capote to remark that the studio had double-crossed him.
• Audrey Hepburn was initially hesitant about taking the lead role because she found it difficult to play an extroverted character.
• The screenplay underwent significant changes from the novella, including shifting the tone from drama to romantic comedy, replacing an unnamed gay narrator with a named heterosexual male love interest, and reducing gay subtext.
• John Frankenheimer originally directed the film but was replaced after Hepburn's agent requested a higher-profile director.
• Filming began on October 2, 1960 on Fifth Avenue outside Tiffany & Co.'s flagship store, with one account claiming the iconic opening sequence was nearly derailed by crowd control issues and an accident that almost electrocuted a crew member.
• Audrey Hepburn was 31 years old during filming, though Holly Golightly is described as 19 in the original novella.
• Henry Mancini composed "Moon River" for Hepburn specifically to fit her limited vocal range, and wrote the song in half an hour after realizing what Holly Golightly's character represented.
• After a San Francisco test screening, Paramount's head of production wanted to replace "Moon River" with a vocal performance by someone else, but the producers refused.
• The original soundtrack album released with the film was a re-recording; the complete score in its actual film performance wasn't released until 2013 by Intrada Records.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Breakfast at Tiffany's (film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.