I read the novella a few years ago. Mr. Yunioshi is in the book, but his presence is very brief compared to the movie. I don't recall any of the "ethnic" humor in his book portrayal either. So he's in the original, but not as a comic relief character.
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Thank you for that confirmation, ElizabethJoestar.
So Mr. Yunioshi is in the book and thus Blake Edwards and George Axelrod had a "basis character" to do what they did.
It occurs to me that, given that Blake Edwards would soon indulge slapstick with Peter Sellers as Inspector Closeau in The Pink Panther of 1964 and then in a second movie, immediately give Clouseau the Asian foil "Kato" in A Shot in the Dark(ALSO 1964) and then move on to the mega-slapstick of The Great Race(1965),Edwards "debuted" his slapstick director persona in the unfortunate guise of Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi.
I remembered, posting on this board, that I indeed own a book about the making of Breakfast at Tiffany's. It is a rather short and slightly "offbeat" study of the making of the movie called "Fifth Avenue, 5 AM" (which was he place and time at which Audrey's "breakfast at Tiffany's" was filmed.)
The "making of" book covers a few things relative to Mr. Yunioshi(but I couldn't find a discussion of his being in the original novel.)
One is that Mickey Rooney was a long time show biz friend of Edwards and so that's why thought of Rooney for this Asian role. They had even been roommates at one time.
More bizarrely, Edwards and Paramount launched a "fake promotion" -- while Breakfast at Tiffany's was in production ---of a "famous Japanese comedy actor" who had agreed to play Yunioshi. This actor even had a full Japanese name and a "fake biography" of his screen career in Japan.
But it was all a ruse to spring Mickey Rooney as Yunioshi, and to fool the press for awhile with pictures OF Rooney in the part.
Thank you again for tracing Yunioshi to the original novel. I am thinking it is a novel I should try to obtain and read, now.
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ElizabethJoestar (946)
9 months ago
That promotion is certainly... interesting lol. Reminds me of the weird publicity for Ross Martin in Blake Edward's follow up to TIFFANY'S-- EXPERIMENT IN TERROR, where they kept the actor's identity secret until the end credits.
What's weird is that if I remember correctly, a lot of Yunioshi's antagonism towards Holly belonged to another character in the novel. I think it was a Spanish woman or something, but I could not find that character mentioned in any synopsis of the book online. It's been years since I read it and the book was very "interesting but not for me" so not much of it stuck in my mind.
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