Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Marilyn Monroe 1961

-

 

        It is hard to imagine the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's without Audrey Hepburn. Her image as Holly Golightly has been on posters, t-shirts and just about anything else you can buy. However when the author of "Breakfast at Tiffany's", Truman Capote, heard that she going to be cast in an adaptation of his book he thought she was terribly miscast. He had wanted Marilyn Monroe to play his lead character. She was offered the role but was advised against it. A young Steve McQueen was offered the male lead but was unavailable. The role that I would like to see recast is Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi. Couldn't they have gotten someone more appropriate like Alec Guiness or Marlon Brando? The original director was to have been John Frankenheimer.

     If they had gone with those original choices the film could have been quite different. I believe Hepburn was responsible for Givenchy designing her character's wardrobe. Henry Mancini was a frequent collaborator of Blake Edwards, so with Frankenheimer directing not just the mood of the movie but also the music would probably be different.  It might still have become a classic but it would surely not be the movie we know.

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 15, 2024 at 8:35 AM

    I think I might have enjoyed the movie more if it had been cast like this. : )

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Police XYZ 1987

-
Image
 The last album of new material The Police put out was Synchronicity in 1983. It was not meant to be their last though. In July of 1986 the trio planned on recording another album. It not only didn't happen but all three members of the band say a new album is unlikely. Here then is an album that might have been. I chose songs from Sting's "... Nothing Like the Sun", Andy Summers' "XYZ" and a track by Stewart Copeland from the Wall Street soundtrack. In choosing the songs I picked mostly Sting songs as I presume that is how it would have been. Andy Summers performs on two of Sting's songs: The Lazarus Heart and Be Still My Beating Heart so I had to choose those. I eliminated the cover of Jimi Hendrix' Little Wing because I believe it would have sounded different if Summers and Copeland performed on it than how Sting did it. This is what I think the CD booklet and tray card would look like.
Read more

Raiders of the Lost Ark with Tom Selleck 1981

-
Image
 Since a new Indiana Jones movie is coming out I think it is good time to revisit the first one. However this is the one that almost was. Most people know Selleck was originally cast but there were a lot of changes before it was finally filmed. The synopsis on the back of the DVD cover above will cover some of them. I first heard about Toht's mechanical arm when I got the book "Raiders of the Lost Ark: the Illustrated Screenplay and page 87 had a storyboard drawing of a very different Toht than we know today.  The illustration I used for the front cover is from an old Playboy and I believe Joann Daly is the artist.
Read more

KISS Hot in the Shade 1989

-
Image
 Peter was the first to leave the group and The Monkees had to find a way to carry on....Sorry, wrong quartet. Even though Kiss has had a lot of members, some whom have been in the band longer than Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, there is something about having the original four together that excites the Kiss Army.  These songs are picked from the Kiss album Hot in the Shade and Ace Frehley's Trouble Walkin' which had Peter Criss on backing vocasl. Both albums had the song "Hide Your Heart", co-written by Paul Stanley. From Trouble Walkin' I chose the titular song, "Back to School" and Ace's version of "Hide Your Heart" for some extra Peter and Ace. The remaining songs I split between Gene and Paul. It seems like the competition between them would ensure of that. Critics have said that at 15 songs Hot in the Shade is a bit bloated. For this version I pared it down to the standard 10 songs total.
Read more