FIFTH AVENUE, 5:00 AM AUDREY HEPBURN, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S AND THE MAKING OF A CINEMATIC MYTH, SAM WASSON

Audrey Hepburn was—and remains—one of Hollywood's most iconic stars. However, the image many of us hold of her (exquisite, delicate, fragile) is quite far from reality. In Fifth Avenue, 5:00 AM, Sam Wasson finally introduces us to the woman of flesh and blood behind the little black Givenchy dress that turned the world upside down in 1961. This first cultural chronicle of the making and filming of Breakfast at Tiffany's reveals little-known details about the creation of this cinematic classic and the literary work and real people who inspired it. Truman Capote desperately wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the lead and to reserve the role of narrator for himself; George Axelrod's screenplay underwent numerous changes due to censorship; Blake Edwards filmed several endings; the studio wanted to cut "Moon River"; Audrey herself was reluctant to participate in the film because she was worried it would ruin her career. With a colorful cast, including Edwards and Capote, Colette, Edith Head, Mel Ferrer, Hubert de Givenchy, Henry Mancini, Billy Wilder, and, of course, Audrey Hepburn, the director of The Big Goodbye immerses us in 1950s America, before Woodstock, the pill, and the Women's Liberation Movement, when a not-quite-virginal young woman named Holly Golightly shook the country, forever changing fashion, film, and even American sexuality .

• Hardcover with dust jacket
  
• 264 pages. 14 x 21.5 cm.
  
• Cover by Julia Puche