BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S to play the Cort

[everythingtaboo]

I'm a little nervous that Sean Mathias is directing this show again. I saw the West End version he also directed a few years back (with a different playwright) and it was a pretty show to see, some nice nudity, but ultimately a colossal snooze fest. But I'm hopeful Richard Greenberg can give us something more to bite into.

[EricMontreal22]

I had no idea the same director was doing both... Odd, but maybe the people thought the direction was good, but the text not, I guess. Where was the nudity?

The only thing from Sean Mathias I saw was the Judi Dench/RNT Night Music when I was a teen on my first trip to London, and I thought it was near perfection--but I don't have clear memories of it anymore, had never seen it staged before, and he definitely had great cast and material to support him.

[darion]

hopefully it is more like the novella then the movie. Truman Capote wasnt happy with the movie and hated Audrey Hepburn. he wanted Marilyn Monroe for Holly. He was right, she wouldve been perfect.

[PalJoey]

I thought what Richard Greenberg did with Pal Joey was ham-handed and insensitive to the material and the period, but it's an impossible task for a director and a writer since there has never been anything better than the imperfect original and it may be impossible to solve its problems.

But the original novella of Breakfast might be something that responds to Greenberg's touch.

[newintown]

I don't think that Monroe would have been better than Hepburn as Holly, particularly Holly as portrayed in the novella - that Holly is smart, sly, slim, and not a giant pair of boobs under a blonde mop exuding nothing but baby-doll sex appeal.

Not that I don't love Monroe; I do, but she didn't play real girls, she played lighter-than-air fantasies, even in more "real" roles like those in The Misfits, Bus Stop, and Niagara.

An actress like Annette Bening, circa 1980, would be ideal.

[PalJoey]

This is Carol Grace Matthau, Capote's friend and the basis for Holly Golightly (although he also said he included traces of dancer Joan McCracken and Marilyn Monroe).





A Celebrated Original
The Original Holly Golightly – The New York Times

Carol Grace (September 11, 1924 – July 20, 2003) was born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the sixteen-year-old daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants, and an unknown father. Later, her mother Rosheen Marcus identified him as British actor Leslie Howard, from “Gone with the Wind”. She was eventually placed in foster care until the age of eight when her mother married Charles Marcus, the head of the Bendix Aviation Corp., whose name she took.

Young Carol attended the Dalton School during high-school. It was around this time she met her life-long friends Oona O’Neill (daughter of Eugene O’Neill) and heiress Gloria_Vanderbilt. She was also pals with young Truman Capote, whom she met when both were thirteen. Carol’s personality, not occupation, was the inspiration for Capote’s character Holly Golightly, the heroine of his 1958 novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

Carol twice married and divorced Pulitzer-Prize winning writer William Saroyan, with whom she had two children, Aram Saroyan, a writer,

[newintown]

Every one of Capote's galpal's claimed that he told her and her alone that she was the model for Holly, including Carol Matthau, Gloria Vanderbilt, Oona Chaplin, Babe Paley, Dorian Leigh, Suzy Parker, and C.Z. Guest. Who knows what the truth really is?

[PalJoey]

I actually think it was Joan McCracken's breakdown when told about her brother's death in the dressing room during Bloomer Girl that inspired Capote to actually write the story, but of all those women, Carol Matthau was the most Holly-like. (And definitely NOT C.Z. Guest!)

[newintown]

Perhaps. In any case, I would so much rather sit down with the novella and cast and direct it in my mind than watch Greenberg and Mathias's interpretation, which just couldn't be anywhere near as good.

[PalJoey]

I saw Cory Michael Smith, who will be playing Fred, in The Whale at Playwrights Horizons, and I thought he was excellent. And now they've cast George Wendt as Doc, so it's shaping up to be a high-quality cast.

[newintown]

I read that Wendt is playing the bartender, Joe Bell. Does Joe double as Doc in this version?

[WOSQ]

I remember Capote quoted in an interview years/decades ago where he said his ideal Holly (at the time) was the then teen-aged Jodie Foster.

Capote also supposedly based Holly on himself along with the others.

[henrikegerman]

Wow. Even Audrey Hepburn seems more Holly than Jodie Foster.

[newintown]

I could see Jodie Foster; Holly is a hillbilly by birth. And I believe that Holly says she's "part dyke" or something like that at one point in the story.

[PalJoey]

Weird. Half the articles say Wendt is playing Joe Bell and the other half say:

George Wendt, best known for his Emmy-nominated turn on Cheers, has joined the show as Doc Golightly, the much-older husband of Holly.
PopWatch: George Wendt joins Broadway's 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'

[Jon]

...and I assumed he was playing O.J. Berman, the agent.

[henrikegerman]

It would be so great if Emilia brings a little bit of Daenarys to her Holly.

"Mr. YUNIOSHI, WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS!"