Commemorating the 50th anniversary of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (the film),
Sloane Crosley penned the following for NPR:
Here is what you can't do anymore in New York: climb the Statue of Liberty's torch, gain access to Gramercy Park without a key, or sip a martini in The Oak Room at The Plaza Hotel.
Now here's what you can do — and just about every little girl in Manhattan knows it: You can always have Breakfast at Tiffany's.
It's a perfect combination that exists so long as the demand for jewelry stays as consistent as the demand for breakfast pastry. And today that pastry should have a birthday candle in it.
For today marks the 50th anniversary of Holly Golightly. Rather, it's been 50 years since Audrey Hepburn brought her to quixotic life in the award-winning film.
Novella Holly (the Holly of Truman Capote's novella) was introduced to the world in 1958. Therefore America's most beloved style icon has just a few more wrinkles on her. But who's counting? Especially when it's the movie that sticks. And I mean that literally. For every boy with a poster stuck to his dorm room wall bearing the image of John Belushi in Animal House, there is a girl down the hall with a Breakfast at Tiffany's movie poster tacked above her bed.
Now, at first glace, the human beings sleeping beneath these images have as much of a shot at dating each other now as John Belushi and Audrey Hepburn had when they were alive. Let that visual sit for a second. If a romance between them seems unlikely, the book is not to blame. It's those first images from the film.
You know that romantic sequence of events in which a taxicab pulls over on Fifth Avenue and releases a Holly Golightly into our imaginations? She's a vision, holding coffee in her gloved hand, engraved in our brains like letters on a ring from a Cracker Jack box. She is in the midst of the single most famous walk of shame in cinematic history.
Holly Golightly may have had a place at the fraternity house after all.
Yet when we think of Breakfast at Tiffany's, we choose not to recall the no-name slobs or minor league prostitution. Sure, those come to mind when we sit down and think about it. But today, you'll remember, is supposed to be a birthday party. A celebration.
And after 50 years of trickle-down iconography, we have come to know the guest of honor largely by her packaging. But remember — she is not so unlike the Statue of Liberty's torch or the gated Gramercy Park. Just because you can no longer get inside doesn't mean it's not there.
