Breakfast at Tiffany's- Page 2

[Smaxie]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 3:22am

Actually, Breakfast at Tiffany's closed IN town, not out of town. David Merrick closed it in previews at the Majestic Theatre. For a notorious flop, I think there's some very striking music in it. I'm quite fond of a lot of the score.

[MCfan2]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 11:58am

I have the CD as well, and believe me, Faith Prince does anything but an Audrey Hepburn impersonation. I have only two problems with the recording. Number one, John Schneider doesn't have enough to do. (Admittedly, I'm a big fan of his, but I would think most people would agree that six songs out of 33 -- especially when one of his songs is only 10 seconds long -- is a little sparse for a male lead.) Number two, as someone mentioned earlier, the CD includes all or nearly all songs from two or three different versions of the show, which means you get lots of repetition. For instance, we get three songs from Sally Kellerman telling us about what a bad girl she is, three songs from Hal Linden telling us what Holly used to be like, etc. I understand that they wanted to share as much material as they could with an audience that never got to see the show, but it's still a bit too much.

But aside from those flaws, there's a lot of good music in this one, and I recommend it.

Updated On: 7/12/06 at 11:58 AM

[Smaxie]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 12:19pm

No pleasing everyone, I guess. I think the chance to hear all of the discarded numbers is one of the best virtues of the Breakfast at Tiffany's recording.

[MCfan2]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 12:41pm

Oh, it's mostly pleasing. (I sound like "The Princess Bride," don't I? ) I like the recording and listen to it fairly frequently. It's just that, by the time we get to "Good Girls Go to Heaven," I'm usually thinking, "All RIGHT, already, I heard you the first two times!"

[Flahooley]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 5:52pm

Since the Albee/Merrill version is pretty much dead...and in my opinion, rightly so, what are the possiblities a new team taking crack at doing a muscial version?

How do the rights to somthing like this work? Can there never be another attempt at stage musical version of BREAKFAST?

[SallyBrown]

Posted: 7/12/06 at 11:27pm

Yeah would they need the rights of the original novel by Capote or the screenplay of the film?

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 9/4/12 at 10:22pm

Richard Chamberlain speaks about the show

[After Eight]

Posted: 9/4/12 at 10:54pm

I love the score.

So glad the cd preserves the songs from the different versions.

[nasty_khakis]

Posted: 9/4/12 at 11:41pm

I know the comments are 6-7 years old, but I agree this would work if it were entirely reworked to be closer to the Blake Edwards/Audrey Hepburn movie instead of the Capote novel. I remember people freaking out that Anna Friel straight play adaptation had her as a blonde even though Holly is blonde in the original source.

[fredric47]

Posted: 9/5/12 at 12:05am

Forty Six years ago, I was all excited about the opportunity I was about to have in seeing "Holly Golightly," which was the name of "Breakfast at Tiffany's when it tried out in October 1966 at Philadelphia's Forrest Theatre." I remember that all of the Saturday matinee tickets were long sold out when my godmother, who was taking me to see the show as a 14th birthday present, had to purchase our orchestra seats through a ticket scalper who charged her $10.00 a piece plus whatever his service charge happened to be. I thought that was a lot of money to spend on a show back then. I was a tremendous fan of Mary Tyler Moore's through her association with "The Dick Van Dyke" show on TV. Richard Chamberlain was someone I knew from "Dr Kildare" on NBC. I hadn't seen the film "Breakfast of Tiffany's yet when I saw the musical. It was considered too adult for me as a 9 year old when it was released in 1961. I later saw the film repeatedly on TV and love it a lot. I did read the original Truman Capote novela, which I recall is nothing like the film version that George Axelrod wrote. Well the show wasn't as bad as many I saw in my youth when Philadelphia was a major pre-Broadway tryout town. As someone else said, the problem was with the libretto and not Bob Merrill's score. I also thought that Mary Tyler Moore was miscast. If the show had been done a few years later, Bernadette Peters would have been ideal in the role of Holly Golightly. Richard Chamberlain was more impressive. The other Saturdays of the run I used to hang out at the Forrest stage door waiting around for the actors and creative team to show up to get their autographs. I easily got Richard Chamberlain's autograph, but I never once saw Mary leave or arrive at the stage door. I later learned that The Forrest has a tunnel between the theatre and the separate building that houses the dressing rooms across the alley from the back of the house. She was going out the front entrance to the theatre wearing her dark glasses; but at the time, I never figured that was her escape route. Director and Librettist Abe Burrows was very avuncular and upbeat when I spoke to him at the stage door. Michael Kidd, who did the choreography,told me before I saw the show not to expect the dancing to be anything like the routines had had done the previous year for Julie Harris's Broadway musical debut, "Skyscraper," which I had seen in New York and had an element of fantasy about them. I love the 2CD set recording of "Breakfast at Tiffany's, which gives me a chance to remember the songs I heard in Philadelphia in 1966 as well as the musical numbers that were written for the Boston and brief Broadway preview period that I never had heard until the recording. I think that it would be interesting to see a one time evening of songs from and anecdotes about the misfortunate attempt at making a musical of "Breakfast at Tiffany's, which Richard Chamberlain could co-host with Sally Kellerman. I doubt that Mary Tyler Moore would want to have anything to do with it since it would bring back too many painful memories.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/5/12 at 12:06am

Hepburn's Holly is the perfect example of an actor being almost completely wrong for a role but making it work classically on her own terms. After the movie, it may be hard for an audience to accept anyone unlike Hepburn. But Holly in the book is much more like Marilyn Monroe, who, not surprisingly, Capote had wanted for movie.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/5/12 at 12:19am

As JC pointed out, Albee was brought in to re-write the book. Hiring Albee to write a musical based on Breakfast at Tiffany's really says everything about the production.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/5/12 at 12:22am

And wow--I knew the live recording, but had NO idea it was given a studio recording ten years back. I guess since that was after Not Since Carrie was written, I just never thought to check. And now I see it goes for $50 on Amazon...

[tazber]

Posted: 9/5/12 at 6:39am

WARNING:

Do not buy this from Footlight Records.

I made the mistake of ordering it for $40.00, which I figured was ok because it was out of print and a double cd set.

Here's what I got:

A sloppy CD-R with "BKST/TIFF" scrawled in magic marker on the actual cd. A photocopy of the booklet.

Worst of all, there were only 2 tracks. Meaning all the songs from the first cd were complied into one track called CD1 and the all the songs from the second cd were complied into one track called CD2.

As if that wasn't bad enough, they burned the second cd (Act II) first. So the first track, "CD1" was actually the second act.

And since there were no individual song listings I didn't know WTF was going on because I thought the Entr'acte was the Overture.

In their defense they did allow me to send the cd back and refund my money.

But it was very dispiriting, not only because I didn't get the recording but because Footlight Records used to be so good.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 9/5/12 at 9:09am

Dick Van Dyke & MTM - Carolina in the Morning

[newintown]

Posted: 9/5/12 at 9:36am

It's been said over and over and over and over, but clearly some people need to keep hearing it: if you try to adapt a perfect source, you're going to end up with a flawed imitation.

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" is a terrific novella and a gorgeous movie. No one is going to make anything remotely comparable by trying to turn it into a musical.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 9/5/12 at 12:03pm

I like the movie (aside from the yellow face), but it's annoying that the reverence for the film makes it hard for people to accept different takes on the material.


"Okay, so if Truman Capote's original story Breakfast at Tiffany's had a soundtrack, it probably wouldn't have been Henri Mancini's vacuum-packed elevator hit "Moon River" but an irreverent, uptempo version of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," preferably pounded out on a piano by Nina Simone. And, sure, Capote's original choice for Holly Golightly was Marilyn Monroe, even if a more appropriate choice would've been something along the lines of The Pajama Game's pompadour-sporting Doris Day by way of Melina Mercouri. (To say nothing of the immortal Warhol superstar who likely got her name from Capote's fictional character: Holly Goodlawn.) So every last hint of pansexuality appears to have been tucked away by scripter George Axelrod into the mottled fur of Holly's gender-neutral "Cat." So what? Blake Edwards's discontent-but-charmed portrait of a long-lost New York state of blithe is, like most Blake Edwards films, narratively scattershot but reliably fixated on the cinematic chemistry of social relations in a mod (and post-mod) era, which invariably boil down to genders and the extent to which individuals ascribe to their assigned sex roles. As Holly, Audrey Hepburn has about as much edge as a Tiffany diamond replica made of tapioca, and her nondescript accent (product of a cross-European upbringing) couldn't hail a cab to save her life, but what better way to foreshadow her character's incredibly mundane past as a fugitive from the land of Hee-Haw Honeys?"

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/breakfast-at-tiffanys/1977

[Fantod]

Posted: 12/29/14 at 4:19am

Thought I'd bring this back to say that the score is available on Amazon Digital for about $18

http://www.amazon.com/Breakfast-Tiffanys-Premiere-Recording-Merrill/dp/B00N5EJOGO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1419844597&sr=8-2&keywords=breakfast+at+tiffany%27s+cast

I'm listening to it now, and wow is it long. I think the score is pretty good, and has some excellent songs (The Party People, Good Girls Go to Heaven), but the decision to record every single song written for the musical was a mistake, and the songs that aren't as good aren't exactly distinguishable from other shows written from the era. Worth a look if you're interested.

[tazber]

Posted: 12/29/14 at 6:16am

Oh wow, thanks Fantod!

As you can see from my comments a few posts up I've been trying to find a good version of this for awhile.

Good looking out.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 12/29/14 at 11:02am

Albee rewriting this leads to the question: Why not make a musical of Virginia Wolf?

That would be interesting.

[Ado Annie D'Ysquith]

Posted: 12/30/14 at 4:13pm

Do fans of the original book tend to like or dislike the Audrey Hepburn movie? I have a friend who despises the film but loves the novel, so I was wondering if she was in the minority or not.

[Fantod]

Posted: 12/30/14 at 7:18pm

They are just really different. The novella is a mood piece and not so happy, while the movie is an adorable 60's romantic comedy. They are both great in my opinion. If you haven't read the novella, I would highly recommend it.