10 Extremely Uncomfortable Moments In Classic Movies

3. Breakfast At Tiffany's - Mickey Rooney's Massively Racist Character

In many ways, the 1960s were a completely different planet. You could smoke on a plane to your heart’s content, have as many pints as you liked before driving home, and teachers could dole out a light beating to unruly children.

Another thing you could acceptably do in the 60s is stick possibly the crudest racial stereotype ever into a movie and get away with it.

That’s exactly what happened in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, and over fifty years after it came out, Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of Mr Yunioshi is an intensely uncomfortable watch. He pushes all the most offensive, cartoonish clichés of the Japanese to the fore, complete with oversize teeth, taped eyelids and an outlandish Asian accent - "Miss Go-right-ry!". He’s like a World War 2 propaganda caricature come to life.

At the time, it was somehow deemed OK, with a New York Times review said Rooney’s “bucktoothed, myopic Japanese is broadly exotic."

Thankfully, society as a whole has bettered itself, at least in this case. A 1996 Berkeley University study called it out for exactly what it was: "one of the most egregiously horrible 'comic' impersonations of an Asian in the history of movies".