Breakfast at Tiffany's, Capote's latest draft flies to the auction

(ANSA) - NEW YORK, AUG 06 - Holly Golightly, with the smile of Audrey Hepburn, has been one of the most iconic characters in the history of cinema for almost 60 years. Would it have been the same if, instead of being called like this, the heroine of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" had answered Connie Gustafson's more prosaic name? The latest typewritten draft of Truman Capote's short story that inspired Blake Edwards' eponymous film proves that irresistible Holly was baptized in extremis, on the eve of her going to press.
    The document, studded with corrections by Capote's hand, was beaten by Sotheby's for £ 378,000, more than doubling the starting estimate. The biggest change from the 93 typed pages is that of the protagonist's name.
    According to Sotheby's literature expert GabrielHeaton, a Gustanfson would not have had the same lasting impact as Golightly: "It could have worked for a young bride who escaped from her marital obligations in a rural Texas town, but she sank if attacked by a girl from world in Manhattan ". One who, to put it in Capote's words, had to be "a symbol of all those girls who came to New York who for a moment turn around in the sun. I wanted to save one of these girls and preserve her for posterity".
    And posterity has been. From that lean novel of the thirty-year-old writer friend of Harper Lee - to publish it in 1958fu the magazine "Esquire" after "Harper's Bazaar", which had bought it in a closed box, sent it back to the sender - BlakeEdwards drew a romantic comedy that remained immortal thanks to Hepburn, his string of pearls and Hubert de Givenchy's "little black dress", but also because of that name: Holly as the holly, festive and pungent, Golightly which means "to go lightly", just like its owner who, between a cat and a croissant, the New York of the forties hungry for life has been sailing ever since. (HANDLE).