10 Worst Examples Of Hollywood Whitewashing
6. Mickey Rooney As Mr Yunioshi (Breakfast At Tiffany’s, 1961)
Breakfast At Tiffany’s is such a legendary movie that anyone seeing it for the first time today will no doubt be delighted by the very funny screenplay and charmed by the very charming Audrey Hepburn, but also surprised by just how unforgivably racist the character of Mr Yunioshi is.
Yunioshi is Holly Golightly’s upstairs neighbour, and becomes highly exasperated by Golightly’s behaviour at various points in the film – because apparently being exasperated at young people is what all old Japanese men are like. As Yunioshi, Mickey Rooney bumbles around in the most painfully exaggerated make-up you’ll ever see, and with an accent that’s even worse.
Most people involved in the film didn’t take too long to express their regrets, with director Blake Edwards wishing he’d never cast Rooney, and producer Richard Shepherd even claiming to have been against it at the time. Rooney, however, never seemed to understand what had been done wrong. Different times, eh?