BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S to play the Cort — Page 2

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.

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.

---

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,

---

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!)

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

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