# Please spoil Breakfast at Tiffany's for me **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 8, 2007, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206 "2007-04-08T19:50:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sonia\_Montdore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@Sonia\_Montdore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sonia_Montdore)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/1 "2007-04-08T19:50:40Z")
At the risk of sounding as if I’ve spent the last 50 years in a bomb shelter, I have never seen _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_. Always meant to catch it but just never did. Can someone please describe the plot to me? ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/2 "2007-04-08T19:57:49Z")
[Here ya go](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany's#Summary). ---
**Author:** ![Sonia\_Montdore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@Sonia\_Montdore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sonia_Montdore)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/3 "2007-04-08T20:08:42Z")
[QUOTE=friedo] [Here ya go](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany's#Summary). [/QUOTE] Thanks, Friedo. I appreciate your sharing the link. I followed it, but the wikipedia description was a little vague on important details. It hinted at plot elements rather than describing them and left me wondering, for example, how Holly Golightly came to be married to Jed Clampett. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/4 "2007-04-08T20:29:07Z")
[http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings\_of\_the\_metrop/\_rooneytiffany.gif](http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/_rooneytiffany.gif) ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/5 "2007-04-08T20:35:33Z")
From the American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures: > [@](#): > > Holly Golightly lives in a brownstone on Manhattan’s swank East Side. Totally madcap, she has a partially furnished apartment, owns a cat with no name, gets rid of the “mean reds” by visiting Tiffany’s, and is forever misplacing her door key, much to the dismay of her upstairs neighbor Mr. Yunioshi, a Japanese photographer. Holly makes her living in two ways: she receive $50 from her gentlemen escorts whenever she needs powder room money, and she is paid $100 for each weekly trip she makes to Sing Sing, where she visits Sally Tomato, an ex-mobster. One day Paul Varjak, a young writer who is supported by an older woman nicknamed “2E,” comes into Holly’s life. Following one of Holly’s wild cocktail parties, Paul unexpectedly meets Doc Golightly, a gentle Texan whom Holly married when she was only 15 years old. Holly explains to Paul that the marriage was annulled long ago, and he helps her send the heartbroken Doc away. After a day on the town together, Paul realizes that he is in love with Holly and proposes to her; but she is determined to marry José, a South American millionaire. However, when it is publicly revealed that Holly has been innocently carrying narcotics ring information from Sally Tomato to his New York associates, the stuffy José abandons her. Furious at everything and everyone, Holly throws Cat into the rain and decides to leave town, but Paul lectures her and then goes out to find Cat. Holly realizes how much she is giving up and races through the wet streets to a happy reunion with Paul and Cat. Doc Golightly was an animal doctor. Truman Capote explained the heart of their marriage, in the novel: > [@](#): > > “Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,” Holly advised him. “That was Doc’s mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.” > > “She’s drunk,” Joe Bell informed me. > > “Moderately,” Holly confessed. “But Doc knew what I meant. I explained it to him very carefully, and it was something he could understand. We shook hands and held onto each other and he wished me luck.” She glanced at the dock. “He must be in the Blue Mountains by now.” > > “What she talkin’ about?” Joe Bell asked me. > > Holly lifted her martini. “Let’s wish the Doc luck, too,” she said, touching her glass against mine. “Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc — it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.” ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/6 "2007-04-08T20:52:24Z")
Doc Golightly on how he met Holly (née Lulamae) when he was a widower with children: > [@](#): > > “'Twas Nellie, my oldest girl, 'twas Nellie that brought 'em into the house. She come to me one morning, and said, 'Papa, I got two wild younguns locked up in the kitchen. I cought ‘em outside stealing milk and turkey eggs.’ That was Lulamae and Fred. Well, you never saw a more pitiful something. Ribs sticking out everywhere, legs so puny they can’t hardly stand, teeth wobbling so bad they can’t chew mush. Story was: their mother died of the TB, and their papa done the same — and all the churren, a whole raft of 'em, they been sent off to live with different mean people. Now Lulamae and her brother, them two been living with some mean no-count people a hundred miles east of Tulip. She had good cause to run off from that house. She didn’t have none to leave mine. 'Twas her home.” ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/7 "2007-04-08T21:45:37Z")
The best part about _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ is the music by Henry Mancini. ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/8 "2007-04-08T22:10:19Z")
Too late, OP. Mickey Rooney already spoiled it. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/9 "2007-04-08T22:38:52Z")
[QUOTE=choie] Too late, OP. Mickey Rooney already spoiled it. [/QUOTE] Mickey Rooney’s buck-toothed chinaman was a product of the times. Embarassing now, funny then. Watch it in context. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/10 "2007-04-08T22:44:35Z")
[QUOTE=Musicat] Mickey Rooney’s buck-toothed chinaman was a product of the times. Embarassing now, funny then. Watch it in context. [/QUOTE] I’m pretty good at considering the context in such situations; Stepin Fetchit in _Judge Priest_, almost all women in almost all pre-60s movies, etc. But Rooney’s performance (as a Japanese, not Chinese) in \*BaT \* just makes me cringe. I cannot watch it. ---
**Author:** ![Sonia\_Montdore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@Sonia\_Montdore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sonia_Montdore)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/11 "2007-04-08T23:06:09Z")
Thank you all very much! This has been very helpful. I can see I’ve been missing a very good movie, apart from the Mickey Rooney role. Re Rooney playing an Asian character: casting Westerners in Asian roles seems to have been a trend in bygone days. - Alec Guinness played a Japanese man in _A Majority of One,_ - ditto Marlon Brando in the _Teahouse of the August Moon._ - Peter Lorre played the Japanese detective Mr. Moto. - Several non-Asian actors, among them Warner Oland, Sidney Toler and J. Carroll Naish, played the Chinese detective Charlie Chan. - Shirley MacLaine played a Hindu woman in _Around the World in 80 Days._ - Jacqueline Malouf, who was of Middle Eastern descent, was cast as a Polynesian princess in _Donovan’s Reef._ ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/12 "2007-04-08T23:10:51Z")
Actually the fact that a western man played an Asian man is not the issue I have with Rooney’s performance. The fact that he is cringeworthy while playing a cartoonish stereotype - one that was outdated even back then (it was the '60s, not the '40s for God’s sake) - is what I and many others find icky. The cat was damn cute, though. I can’t get through the last scene when Holly tosses him out without sobbing. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/13 "2007-04-08T23:12:41Z")
[QUOTE=Sonia Montdore] …casting Westerners in Asian roles seems to have been a trend in bygone days. [/QUOTE] As was casting actors of Italian descent as American Indians in movies and television series, including the famous [Iron Eyes Cody](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eyes_Cody). ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2007, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/14 "2007-04-08T23:19:16Z")
[QUOTE=Sonia Montdore] Thank you all very much! This has been very helpful. I can see I’ve been missing a very good movie, apart from the Mickey Rooney role. Re Rooney playing an Asian character: casting Westerners in Asian roles seems to have been a trend in bygone days. - Alec Guinness played a Japanese man in _A Majority of One,_ - ditto Marlon Brando in the _Teahouse of the August Moon._ - Peter Lorre played the Japanese detective Mr. Moto. - Several non-Asian actors, among them Warner Oland, Sidney Toler and J. Carroll Naish, played the Chinese detective Charlie Chan. - Shirley MacLaine played a Hindu woman in _Around the World in 80 Days._ - Jacqueline Malouf, who was of Middle Eastern descent, was cast as a Polynesian princess in _Donovan’s Reef._ [/QUOTE] Almost all of those performances (save perhaps the Brando, one of his most embarrassing moments) were played essentially for realism. Rooney’s performance is an astonishingly over-the-top caricature of every racist stereotype you could possibly imagine. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-spoil-breakfast-at-tiffanys-for-me/399206/15 "2007-04-09T00:25:24Z")
The oldest living Oscar winner is [Luise Rainer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luise_Rainer), a German Jew who fled the Nazis, settled in Hollywood, and won her second Oscar as the Chinese peasant Olan in _The Good Earth_ (1937). They’ve been puttin’ the Asian in Caucasian ever since. As for _Breakfast_, Capote loved the notoriety and name recognition the movie brought but hated the movie because they made the Capote character not only straight but Holly’s love interest. He also wrote the part for Marilyn Monroe, though he later claimed the character was a composite of his mother (an Alabama farmgirl who eventually got to Park Ave. by way of a rich Cuban husband [she killed herself when he went broke], Carol Matthau (wife of Walter M. and ex-wife of Wm. Saroyan), Gloria Vanderbilt (?! no idea how), Babe Paley, Slim Keith (more likely than the others save for Mrs. Capote), and whoever else he was flattering at the time. Rooney was cast essentially as an act of charity. He was dead broke (gambling, high living, bad investments, big and multiple alimony and multiple child support payments, IRS problems, etc.) and on his ass careerwise at the time (he was working, but not in high profile vehicles- he had been, as he recounts in every single interview, the biggest star in the world just a few years before, but when he fell it was very far and very quick). During the early 50s he had a TV sitcom that went nowhere, but he hired a young (30-ish) Blake Edwards as a writer. Edwards’ wife was pregnant at the time and he was strongly debating becoming a teacher or businessman in order to provide for his family, and it was the paycheck for _The Mickey Rooney Show_ that allowed him to remain in show business and thus ultimately for all his later success. After he turned to directing TV shows and had an unexpectedly huge hit with _Operation Petticoat_ (it was a Cary Grant vehicle so it wasn’t low budget, but because Grant had negotiated such a ridiculous contract [something like 70% of the gross] the studio didn’t expect to make a dime on it so they tossed it to Edwards) he was given _Breakfast at Tiffanys_, his first really big production. He used the chance to toss Rooney the role of Mr. Yunioshi as a payback for his own big-break, hoping a “special guest star” role in an Audrey Hepburn vehicle would help jumpstart the obnoxious hobbit’s career. It didn’t- Disney and TV a decade later helped more- but he’s certainly never hurt for work.