Last week I took a couple hours out of a day and put on Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  It had been forever, or as Holly Golightly would say, just simply forever, since I had last watched it. I think Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I think Audrey Hepburn sitting on a fire escape singing Moon River. It was the first song I learned to play on the piano. The first song that wasn’t a lesson. That was the perfect song in the perfect scene for that part of the movie. A frightened, sensitive girl playing the sure, knowing woman beginning to realize she might not be either of those people.

Audrey Hepburn sings “Moon River” in YouTube

You know Audrey was never meant to be Holly. The part was supposed to go to Marilyn Monroe. Say what you will, it would never have become a classic with Monroe, who would remove all doubts of Holly’s income source and turned Moon River into a parody of itself. That is if we even still had Moon River in the movie considering it was written specifically for Audrey Hepburn. But its title notwithstanding, this post is not about Audrey’s performance. Nope. It’s about 3 others and then some.

In order of appearance, those three are George Peppard, Patricia Neal, and Buddy Ebsen. Everybody knows George Peppard. Thanks to the A-Team. But everybody knew George even before the A-Team. He was the “name” to get people to watch the A-Team. But who was George Peppard, other than a name? The only movie I ever saw him in is Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Next comes Patricia Neal. Another name everyone knows, even before the coffee commercials.  Odd, I remember the coffee but not the brand that was advertised. Other than one other movie where she also plays a woman of questionable morals, I’d never seen her in any movie other than Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

And finally Buddy Ebsen. Best known as Jed Clampett and/or Barnaby Jones, he appeared in literally hundreds of movies and TV shows. Almost everyone identifies Buddy as the famous former stage and screen dancer. And yet, the only movie I ever saw Buddy play in is Breakfast at Tiffany’s. We could have counted Wizard of Oz but for his allergies to tin colored makeup.

It’s not odd that I watch a movie and have never some or even several of the actors in any other movie. It is odd that three famous people, names I know as well as my own, I had never seen in any other movie (or in Ms. Neal’s case, one other). A bunch of people that if you were to ask me, who were they, what did they do, even for knowing their names as well as my own, I know nothing of them. Couldn’t even write a mini-bio.

It had me wondering, some day when I’m not around anymore, and if my name should come up, will there be anything for anyone to remember, or will I have been perfectly type-casted as nobody special?

There are always people special to us in our own lives, but they will not always be here. They represent the one constant that never will change. Sometimes it takes a death for us to discover the value of life. How do we value it? You can read that in the latest Uplift, Today. Not negotiable.