Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
If you’re saying “Breakfast at Tiffany’s?,” yes! Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Though the film glosses over the rougher elements of Truman Capote’s novella, it makes clear that Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), an enduring symbol of glamour and elegance, is doing sneaky sex work.
Capote said that Holly Golightly was not “precisely” a sex worker, but was more like an “American geisha”: “She had no job but accompanied expense-account men to the best restaurants and night clubs, with the understanding that her escort was obligated to give her some sort of gift, perhaps jewelry or a check … if she felt like it, she might take her escort home for the night.”
At one point she explains that “any gentleman with the slightest chic will give a girl a $50 bill for the powder room.” That’s about $500 in today’s money.
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