How Audrey Hepburn Became a Style Icon

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" turned Audrey Hepburn into a style icon. The actress would be most remembered for her role as Holly Golightly, but Truman Capote, the author of the novella from which the film was based from, favored someone else.

"The book is more authentic," said Capote biographer Gerald Clarke. "The movie is a confection - a sugar and spice confection."

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" was about the pursuit of the American Dream, but in the case of Golightly, something happened along the way. There was a sense of disillusionment, even cynicism, if one would think of Capote's background. Some would wonder if Capote, who grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, saw himself in the young heroine. Like Holly, he willed himself, teaching himself to read and write before he entered his first year of school. But Holly didn't have the drive, or seemed not to. There was ambiguity, which made the book quite special. All great books would be noticed by Hollywood, and this one wasn't an exception. By the time the novella was about to be adapted to the big screen, Capote was a somebody. He wanted Marilyn Monroe to portray Holly Golightly.

There were similarities between Holly and Marilyn, Norma Jeane Mortenson in real life. The latter would be a star, but there was tragedy behind her success. Her death, sadder than it seemed to be, turned her into a legend. Monroe doesn't like to be typecast as a bombshell, such that she became a disciple of the Method Acting. But Martin Jurow and Richard Shepherd, the producers, and Paramount Pictures chose Hepburn instead. Holly was depicted as less genuine, due to circumstances. It was no different with Marilyn. But not Hepburn, who would have turned 85 on May 4.

"She was just a normal person. That's what she would say to all the biographers when they approached her. She'd say, 'You're not going to do a biography, because my life is basically boring and there's nothing to tell,'" said Sean Ferrer, Hepburn's son.

"She grew up as a hungry kid, abandoned by her dad, then there was the war and she had nothing, and had to go to work. She tried to be a ballet dancer and couldn't get that dream going, so she had to take the next job, and here we are. The beauty of it is, without knowing the details and the decisions that went through her mind every day, what you see on the screen is the person that she was. It wasn't a put-on. It wasn't just the way she was on screen, and at home she was something else. I think that's the reason why people relate to her."

The film version turned out to be different, even flawed. But Blake Edwards, the director, did something that would make moviegoers overlooked it. The opening scene showed New York's Fifth Avenue, where the cab stopped. The cab door opened, where a girl in black Givenchy dress stepped out and went to gaze into the window of Tiffany's. It was the movie's most memorable scene, an ode to style and desirability. Hepburn became a legend.