Mercer and Mancini wrote the song for Audrey Hepburn to fit her vocal range. Initially, the lyrics started, "I'm Holly, like I want to be / like Holly on a tree back home ..."; however, they were later changed to fit the theme of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's.[5]
Although an instrumental version is played over the film's opening titles, the lyrics are first heard in a scene where Paul "Fred" Varjak (George Peppard) discovers Holly Golightly (Hepburn) singing them, accompanied by her guitar, on the fire escape outside their apartments.
There was an eruption of much behind-the-scenes consternation when a Paramount Pictures executive, Martin Rackin, suggested deleting the song from the film immediately after a very successful San Francisco preview. Hepburn's reaction was described by Mancini and others in degrees varying from her saying "over my dead body" to her using somewhat more colorful language to make the same point.[6]
Hepburn's version was uncredited in the original movie soundtrack. Instead, an album version recorded by Mancini and his chorus was released as a single and became a number 11 hit. In different versions, Joel Whitburn's Top Adult (Contemporary) Songs reported the song as a #3 or #1 easy listening hit, due to unpublished charts in Billboard. Only months after Hepburn's death in 1993 her version was released on an album titled Music from the Films of Audrey Hepburn. In 2004, Hepburn's version finished at #4 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
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