Truman Capote | |
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Truman Capote by Jack Mitchell |
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Born | Truman Streckfus Persons September 30, 1924 New Orleans, Louisiana, United States |
Died | August 25, 1984 Los Angeles, California, United States |
(aged 59)
Occupation | Artist/ Writer |
Period | 1943–84 |
Literary movement | Southern Gothic |
Notable work(s) | In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany's |
Partner(s) | Jack Dunphy |
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Influenced
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Signature |
Truman Streckfus Persons (September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984), known as Truman Capote ( /ˈtruːmən kəˈpoʊtiː/),[1] was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.
Capote rose above a childhood troubled by divorce, a long absence from his mother and multiple migrations. He discovered his calling by the age of 11, and for the rest of his childhood he honed his writing ability. Capote began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of one story, "Miriam" (1945), attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, resulting in a contract to write Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). Capote earned the most fame with In Cold Blood (1966), a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home, a book Capote spent four years writing, with much help from Harper Lee, who wrote the famous To Kill a Mockingbird.[2] A milestone in popular culture, it was the peak of his career, although it was not his final book. In the 1970s, he maintained his celebrity status by appearing on television talk shows.
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Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he was the son of 17-year-old Lillie Mae Faulk and salesman Archulus Persons.[1] His parents divorced when he was four, and he was sent to Monroeville, Alabama, where, for the following four to five years, he was raised by his mother's relatives. He formed a fast bond with his mother's distant relative, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, whom Truman called "Sook". "Her face is remarkable — not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind," is how Capote described Sook in "A Christmas Memory". In Monroeville, he was a neighbor and friend of author Harper Lee, who wrote the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, with the character Dill being based on Capote.[3][4][5]
As a lonely child, Capote taught himself to read and write before he entered his first year of schooling.[6] Capote was often seen at age five carrying his dictionary and notepad, and he began writing fiction at the age of 11.[7] He was given the nickname Bulldog around this age,[8] possibly a phonetic reference and pun of "Bulldog Truman" to the fictional detective Bulldog Drummond popular in films of the mid-1930s.
On Saturdays, he made trips from Monroeville to the nearby city of Mobile on the Gulf Coast, and at one point he submitted a short story, "Old Mrs. Busybody", to a children's writing contest sponsored by the Mobile Press Register. Capote received recognition for his early work from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1936.[9]
In 1933, he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her second husband, Joseph Capote, a Cuban-born textile broker, who adopted him as his stepson and renamed him Truman García Capote. However, Joseph was convicted of embezzlement and shortly afterwards, when his income crashed, the family was forced to leave Park Avenue.
Of his early days, Capote related, "I began writing really sort of seriously when I was about 11. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or the piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day, and I would write for about three hours. I was obsessed by it." In 1935, he attended the Trinity School in New York City. He then attended St. Joseph Military Academy. In 1939, the Capote family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and Truman attended Greenwich High School, where he wrote for both the school's literary journal, The Green Witch, and the school newspaper. When they returned to New York City in 1942 he attended the Franklin School, an Upper West Side private school now known as the Dwight School, graduating in 1943.[10] That was the end of his formal education.
While still attending Franklin in 1943, Capote began working as copyboy in the art department at The New Yorker,[10] a job he held for two years, before being fired for angering poet Robert Frost.[11] Years later, he reminisced, "Not a very grand job, for all it really involved was sorting cartoons and clipping newspapers. Still, I was fortunate to have it, especially since I was determined never to set a studious foot inside a college classroom. I felt that either one was or wasn't a writer, and no combination of professors could influence the outcome. I still think I was correct, at least in my own case." He left his job to live with relatives in Alabama and begin a first novel, Summer Crossing.[12]
Capote and his Monroeville neighbor, Harper Lee, remained lifelong friends. He based the character of Idabel in Other Voices, Other Rooms on her, and was in turn the inspiration for the character Dill Harris in Lee's 1960 bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Capote once acknowledged this: "Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Harper Lee's mother and father, lived very near. Harper Lee was my best friend. Did you ever read her book, To Kill a Mockingbird? I'm a character in that book, which takes place in the same small town in Alabama where we lived. Her father was a lawyer, and she and I used to go to trials all the time as children. We went to the trials instead of going to the movies."[13] Later, Lee was his crucial research partner for In Cold Blood.
Between 1943 and 1946, Capote wrote a continual flow of short fiction, including "Miriam," "My Side of the Matter," and "Shut a Final Door" (for which he won the O. Henry Award at the age of 24). His stories were published in both literary quarterlies and well-known popular magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, Harper's Magazine, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner[14] and Story. In June 1945, "Miriam" was published by Mademoiselle and went on to win a prize, Best First-Published Story, in 1946. In the spring of 1946, Capote was accepted at Yaddo, the artists and writers colony at Saratoga Springs, New York. He later endorsed Patricia Highsmith as a Yaddo candidate, and she wrote Strangers on a Train while there.
During an interview for The Paris Review in 1957, Capote said this of his short story technique:
Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right."Paris Review". http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4867/the-art-of-fiction-no-17-truman-capote. Retrieved November 15 2011.
Random House, the publisher of his novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (see below), moved to capitalize on this novel's success with the publication of A Tree of Night and Other Stories in 1949. In addition to "Miriam," this collection also includes "Shut a Final Door". First published in The Atlantic Monthly (August, 1947), "Shut a Final Door" won an O. Henry Award (First Prize) in 1948.
After A Tree of Night Capote published a collection of his travel writings, Local Color (1950), which included nine essays originally published in magazines between 1946 and 1950.
Some time in the 1940s Capote wrote a novel set in New York City about the summer romance of a socialite with a parking lot attendant.[15] Capote later claimed to have destroyed the manuscript of this novel; but twenty years after his death, in 2004, it came to light that the manuscript had been retrieved from the trash back in 1950 by a house sitter at an apartment formerly occupied by Capote.[16] The novel was published in 2006 under the title, Summer Crossing by Random House.
The critical success of one of his short stories, "Miriam" (1945) attracted the attention of the publisher Bennett Cerf, resulting in a contract with Random House to write a novel. With an advance of $1,500, Capote returned to Monroeville and began Other Voices, Other Rooms, continuing to work on the manuscript in New Orleans, Saratoga Springs (New York), and North Carolina, eventually completing it in Nantucket, Massachusetts. It was published in 1948. Capote described this symbolic tale as "a poetic explosion in highly suppressed emotion." The novel is a semiautobiographical refraction of Capote's Alabama childhood. Decades later, writing in The Dogs Bark (1973), he commented:
The story focuses on 13-year-old Joel Knox following the loss of his mother. Joel is sent from New Orleans, Louisiana, to live with his father who abandoned him at the time of his birth. Arriving at Skully's Landing, a vast, decaying mansion in rural Alabama, Joel meets his sullen stepmother Amy, debauched transvestite Randolph, and defiant Idabel, a girl who becomes his friend. He also sees a spectral "queer lady" with "fat dribbling curls" watching him from a top window. Despite Joel's queries, the whereabouts of his father remain a mystery. When he finally is allowed to see his father, Joel is stunned to find he is a quadriplegic, having tumbled down a flight of stairs after being inadvertently shot by Randolph. Joel runs away with Idabel but catches pneumonia and eventually returns to the Landing where he is nursed back to health by Randolph. The implication in the final paragraph is that the "queer lady" beckoning from the window is Randolph in his old Mardi Gras costume. Gerald Clarke, in Capote: A Biography (1988) described the conclusion:
Other Voices, Other Rooms made The New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for nine weeks, selling more than 26,000 copies. The promotion and controversy surrounding this novel catapulted Capote to fame. A 1947 Harold Halma photograph used to promote the book showed a reclining Capote gazing fiercely into the camera. Gerald Clarke, in Capote: A Biography (1988), wrote, "The famous photograph: Harold Halma's picture on the dustjacket of Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) caused as much comment and controversy as the prose inside. Truman claimed that the camera had caught him off guard, but in fact he had posed himself and was responsible for both the picture and the publicity." Much of the early attention to Capote centered on different interpretations of this photograph, which was viewed as a suggestive pose by some. According to Clarke, the photo created an "uproar" and gave Capote "not only the literary, but also the public personality he had always wanted." The photo made a huge impression on the 20-year-old Andy Warhol, who often talked about the picture and wrote fan letters to Capote.[17] When Warhol moved to New York in 1949, he made numerous attempts to meet Capote, and Warhol's fascination with the author led to his first New York one-man show, Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote at the Hugo Gallery (June 16 – July 3, 1952).[18]
When the picture was reprinted along with reviews in magazines and newspapers, some readers were amused, but others were outraged and offended. The Los Angeles Times reported that Capote looked "as if he were dreamily contemplating some outrage against conventional morality." The novelist Merle Miller issued a complaint about the picture at a publishing forum, and the photo of "Truman Remote" was satirized in the third issue of Mad (making Capote one of the first four celebrities to be spoofed in Mad). The humorist Max Shulman struck an identical pose for the dustjacket photo on his collection, Max Shulman's Large Economy Size (1948). The Broadway stage revue New Faces (and the subsequent film version) featured a skit in which Ronny Graham parodied Capote, deliberately copying his pose in the Halma photo. Random House featured the Halma photo in its "This is Truman Capote" ads, and large blowups were displayed in bookstore windows. Walking on Fifth Avenue, Halma overheard two middle-aged women looking at a Capote blowup in the window of a bookstore. When one woman said, "I'm telling you: he's just young," the other woman responded, "And I'm telling you, if he isn't young, he's dangerous!" Capote delighted in retelling this anecdote.
In the early 1950s, Capote took on Broadway and films, adapting his 1951 novella, The Grass Harp, into a 1952 play (later a 1971 musical and a 1995 film), followed by the musical House of Flowers (1954), which spawned the song "A Sleepin' Bee". Capote co-wrote with John Huston the screenplay for Huston's film Beat the Devil (1953). Traveling through the Soviet Union with a touring production of Porgy and Bess, he produced a series of articles for The New Yorker that became his first book-length work of nonfiction, The Muses Are Heard (1956).
Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (1958) brought together the title novella and three shorter tales: "House of Flowers," "A Diamond Guitar" and "A Christmas Memory." The heroine of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly Golightly, became one of Capote's best known creations, and the book's prose style prompted Norman Mailer to call Capote "the most perfect writer of my generation."
For Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's was a turning point, as he explained to Roy Newquist (Counterpoint, 1964):
The "new book," In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences (1966), was inspired by a 300-word article that ran on page 39 of The New York Times on November 16, 1959 (reproduced below). The story described the unexplained murder of the Clutter family in rural Holcomb, Kansas.
Fascinated by this brief news item, Capote traveled with Harper Lee to Holcomb and visited the scene of the massacre. Over the course of the next few years, he became acquainted with everyone involved in the investigation and most of the residents of the small town. Rather than taking notes during interviews, Capote committed conversations to memory and immediately wrote quotes as soon as an interview ended. He claimed his memory retention for verbatim conversations had been tested at "over 90%".[21] Lee lent Capote considerable assistance during his research for In Cold Blood. During the first few months of his investigation, she was able to make inroads into the community by befriending the wives of those Capote wanted to interview. Capote recalled his years in Kansas when he spoke at the 1974 San Francisco International Film Festival:
In Cold Blood was published in 1966 by Random House after having been serialized in The New Yorker. The "nonfiction novel," as Capote labeled it, brought him literary acclaim and became an international bestseller.
A feud between Capote and British arts critic Kenneth Tynan erupted in the pages of The Observer after Tynan's review of In Cold Blood implied that Capote wanted an execution so the book would have an effective ending. Tynan wrote:
We are talking, in the long run, about responsibility; the debt that a writer arguably owes to those who provide him—down to the last autobiographical parentheses—with his subject matter and his livelihood... For the first time an influential writer of the front rank has been placed in a position of privileged intimacy with criminals about to die, and—in my view—done less than he might have to save them. The focus narrows sharply down on priorities: does the work come first, or does life? An attempt to help (by supplying new psychiatric testimony) might easily have failed: what one misses is any sign that it was ever contemplated.[23]
In Cold Blood brought Capote much praise from the literary community, but there were some who questioned certain events as reported in the book. Writing in Esquire in 1966, Phillip K. Tompkins noted factual discrepancies after he traveled to Kansas and talked to some of the same people interviewed by Capote. In a telephone interview with Tompkins, Mrs. Meier denied that she heard Perry cry and that she held his hand as described by Capote. In Cold Blood indicates that Meier and Perry became close, yet she told Tompkins she spent little time with Perry and did not talk much with him. Tompkins concluded:
True crime writer Jack Olsen also commented on the fabrications:
Alvin Dewey Jr., the investigator portrayed in In Cold Blood, later said that the last scene, in which he visits the Clutter's graves, was Capote's invention, while other Kansas residents whom Capote interviewed have claimed they or their relatives were mischaracterized or misquoted.[25]
Another work described by Capote as "nonfiction" was later reported to have been largely fabricated. In a 1992 piece in the London Sunday Times, reporters Peter and Leni Gillman investigated the source of "Handcarved Coffins", the story in Capote's last work Music for Chameleons subtitled "a nonfiction account of an American crime". They found no reported series of American murders in the same town which included all of the details Capote described – the sending of miniature coffins, a rattlesnake murder, a decapitation, etc. Instead, they found that a few of the details closely mirrored an unsolved case on which investigator Al Dewey had worked. Their conclusion was that Capote had invented the rest of the story, including his meetings with the suspected killer, Quinn.[26]
Capote was 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm) tall[27] and openly homosexual. One of his first serious lovers was Smith College literature professor Newton Arvin, who won the National Book Award for his Herman Melville biography in 1951. It was to Arvin that Capote dedicated Other Voices, Other Rooms.[28][29]
Capote was well known for his distinctive, high-pitched voice and odd vocal mannerisms, his offbeat manner of dress and his fabrications. He often claimed to know intimately people whom he had in fact never met, such as Greta Garbo. He professed to have had numerous liaisons with men thought to be heterosexual, including, he claimed, Errol Flynn. He traveled in an eclectic array of social circles, hobnobbing with authors, critics, business tycoons, philanthropists, Hollywood and theatrical celebrities, royalty, and members of high society, both in the U.S. and abroad. Part of his public persona was a longstanding rivalry with writer Gore Vidal. Their rivalry prompted Tennessee Williams to complain: "You would think they were running neck-and-neck for some fabulous gold prize." Apart from his favorite authors (Willa Cather, Isak Dinesen, Marcel Proust), Capote had faint praise for other writers. However, one who did get his favorable endorsement was journalist Lacey Fosburgh, author of Closing Time: The True Story of the Goodbar Murder (1977). He also claimed an admiration for Andy Warhol's The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B & Back Again.
Now more sought after than ever, Capote wrote occasional brief articles for magazines, and also entrenched himself more deeply in the world of the jet set. Gore Vidal once observed, "Truman Capote has tried, with some success, to get into a world that I have tried, with some success, to get out of."[30]
In the late 1960s, he became friendly with Lee Radziwill, the sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Radziwill was an aspiring actress and had been panned for her performance in a production of The Philadelphia Story in Chicago. Capote was commissioned to write the teleplay for a 1967 television production starring Radziwill: an adaptation of the classic Otto Preminger film Laura. The adaptation, and Radziwill's performance in particular, received indifferent reviews and poor ratings; arguably, it was Capote's first major professional setback. Radziwill supplanted the older Babe Paley as his primary female companion in public throughout the better part of the 1970s.
On November 28, 1966, in honor of The Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, Capote hosted a now legendary masked ball, called the Black and White Ball, in the Grand Ballroom of New York City's Plaza Hotel. It was considered the social event of not only that season but of many to follow. The New York Times and other publications gave it considerable coverage, and Deborah Davis wrote an entire book about the event, Party of the Century (2006), excerpted by The Independent.[31] Different accounts of the evening were collected by George Plimpton in his book Truman Capote.[32]
Capote dangled the prized invitations for months, snubbing early supporters like fellow Southern writer Carson McCullers as he determined who was "in" and who was "out."[33]
Despite the assertion earlier in life that one "lost an IQ point for every year spent on the West Coast," he purchased a home in Palm Springs and began to indulge in a more aimless lifestyle and heavy drinking. This resulted in bitter quarreling with his life partner, Jack Dunphy, with whom he had shared a nonexclusive relationship since the 1950s. Their partnership changed form and continued as a nonsexual one, and they were separated during much of the 1970s.
Capote never finished another novel after In Cold Blood. The dearth of new writing and other failures, including a rejected screenplay for Paramount's 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, was counteracted by Capote's frequenting of the talk show circuit. In 1972, Capote accompanied the Rolling Stones on their 1972 American Tour as a correspondent for Rolling Stone magazine. He ultimately refused to write the article, so the magazine recouped its interests by publishing, in April 1973, an interview of the author conducted by Andy Warhol. A collection of previously published essays and reportage, The Dogs Bark: Public People and Private Places, appeared later that year.
In July 1973 Capote met John O'Shea, the middle-aged vice president of Marine Midland Bank on Long Island, while visiting a bathhouse. The married father of three did not identify as homosexual or bisexual, perceiving his visits as being a "kind of masturbation." However, O'Shea found Capote's fortune alluring and harbored aspirations to become a professional writer. After consummating their relationship in Palm Springs, the two engaged in an ongoing war of jealousy and manipulation for the remainder of the decade. Longtime friends were appalled when O'Shea, who was officially employed as Capote's manager, attempted to take total control of the author's literary and business interests.
Through his jet set social life Capote had been gathering observations for a tell-all novel, Answered Prayers (eventually to be published as Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel). The book, which had been in the planning stages since 1958, was intended to be the American equivalent of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time and a culmination of the "nonfiction novel" format. Initially scheduled for publication in 1968, the novel was eventually delayed at Capote's insistence to 1972. Because of the delay, he was forced to return money received for the film rights to 20th Century Fox. Capote spoke about the novel in interviews, but continued to postpone the delivery date.
Capote permitted Esquire to publish four chapters of the unfinished novel in 1975 and 1976. The first to appear, "Mojave", ran as a self-contained short story and was favorably received, but the second, "La Côte Basque 1965," based in part on the dysfunctional personal lives of William S. Paley and Babe Paley, Capote's friends, generated controversy. Although the issue featuring "La Côte Basque" sold out immediately upon publication, its much discussed betrayal of confidences alienated Capote from his established base of middle-aged, wealthy female friends, who feared that the intimate and often sordid details of their ostensibly glamorous lives would be exposed to the public. Another two chapters, "Unspoiled Monsters" and "Kate McCloud", appeared subsequently; intended to form the long opening section of the novel, they displayed a marked shift in narrative voice, introduced a more elaborate plot structure, and together formed a novella-length mosaic of fictionalized memoir and gossip. "Unspoiled Monsters," which by itself was almost as long as Breakfast at Tiffany's, contained a thinly veiled satire of Tennessee Williams, whose friendship with Capote had already become strained.
In the late 1970s, Capote was in and out of rehab clinics, and news of his various breakdowns frequently reached the public. In 1978, talk show host Stanley Siegal did a live on-air interview with Capote, who, in an extraordinarily intoxicated state, confessed that he might kill himself. One year later, when he felt betrayed by Lee Radziwill in a feud with perpetual nemesis Gore Vidal, Capote arranged a return visit to Stanley Siegal's show, this time to deliver a bizarrely comic performance revealing salacious personal details about Radziwill and her sister, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Andy Warhol, who had looked up to the writer as a mentor in his early days in New York and often partied with Capote at Studio 54, agreed to paint Capote's portrait as "a personal gift" in exchange for Capote contributing short pieces to Warhol's Interview magazine every month for a year in the form of a column, "Conversations with Capote". Initially the pieces were to consist of tape-recorded conversations, but soon Capote eschewed the tape recorder in favor of semi-fictionalized "conversational portraits". These pieces formed the basis for the bestselling Music for Chameleons, published in 1980. Capote underwent a facelift, lost weight and experimented with hair transplants. Despite this brief interregnum, Capote was unable to overcome his reliance upon drugs and liquor and had grown bored with New York by the beginning of the 1980s.
After the revocation of his driver's license (the result of speeding near his Long Island residence) and a hallucinatory seizure in 1980 that required hospitalization, Capote became fairly reclusive. These hallucinations continued unabated and medical scans eventually revealed that his brain mass had perceptibly shrunk. On the rare occasions when he was lucid, he continued to hype Answered Prayers as being nearly complete and was reportedly planning a reprise of the Black and White Ball to be held either in Los Angeles or a more exotic locale in South America. On a few occasions, he was still able to write. In 1982, a new short story, "One Christmas", appeared in the December issue of Ladies' Home Journal and the following year it became, like its predecessors "A Christmas Memory" and "The Thanksgiving Visitor", a holiday gift book. In 1983, "Remembering Tennessee", an essay in tribute to Tennessee Williams, who had died in February of that year, appeared in Playboy magazine.
Capote died in Los Angeles on August 25, 1984, aged 59 from liver cancer.[34] According to the coroner's report the cause of death was "liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication".[35] He died at the home of his old friend Joanne Carson, ex-wife of late-night TV host Johnny Carson, on whose program Capote had been a frequent guest. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, leaving behind his longtime companion, author Jack Dunphy. Dunphy died in 1992, and in 1994 both his and Capote's ashes were scattered at Crooked Pond, between Bridgehampton, New York and Sag Harbor, New York on Long Island, close to where the two had maintained a property with individual houses for many years. Capote also maintained the property in Palm Springs, a condominium in Switzerland that was mostly occupied by Dunphy seasonally, and a primary residence at the United Nations Plaza in New York City. Capote's will provided that after Dunphy's death a literary trust would be established, sustained by revenues from Capote's works, to fund various literary prizes and grants including the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin, commemorating not only Capote but also his friend Newton Arvin, the Smith College professor and critic, who lost his job after his homosexuality was exposed.[36]
After his death, fellow writer Gore Vidal described Capote's demise as "a good career move".[37]
Capote's childhood is the focus of a permanent exhibit in Monroeville, Alabama's Old Courthouse Museum, covering his life in Monroeville with his Faulk cousins and how those early years are reflected in his writing. The exhibit brings photos, letters and memorabilia together to paint a portrait of Capote's early life in Monroeville. Jennings Faulk Carter donated the collection to the Museum in 2005. The collection includes 12 handwritten letters (1940s–60s) from Capote to his favorite aunt, Mary Ida Carter (Jennings' mother). Many of the items in the collection belonged to his mother and Virginia Hurd Faulk, Carter's cousin with whom Capote lived as a child. The exhibit features many references to Sook, but two items in particular are always favorites of visitors: Sook's "Coat of Many Colors" and Truman's baby blanket. Truman's first cousin recalls that as children, he and Truman never had trouble finding Sook in the darkened house on South Alabama Avenue because they simply looked for the bright colors of her coat. Truman's baby blanket is a "granny square" blanket Sook made for him. The blanket became one of Truman's most cherished possessions, and friends say he was seldom without it — even when traveling. In fact, he took the blanket with him when he flew from New York to Los Angeles to be with Joanne Carson on August 23, 1984. According to Joanne Carson, when he died at her home on August 25, his last words were, "It's me, it's Buddy," followed by, "I'm cold." Buddy was Sook's name for him.
Capote's childhood experiences are captured in the 1956 memoir "A Christmas Memory," which he adapted for television and narrated. Directed by Frank Perry, it aired on December 21, 1966, on ABC Stage 67, and featured Geraldine Page in an Emmy Award-winning performance. The teleplay was later incorporated into Perry's 1969 anthology film Trilogy (aka Truman Capote's Trilogy), which also includes adaptations of "Miriam" and "Among the Paths to Eden." The TV movie Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, with Patty Duke and Piper Laurie, was a 1997 remake, directed by Glenn Jordan.
In 1961 Capote's novel Breakfast at Tiffany's about a flamboyant New York party girl named Holly Golightly was filmed by director Blake Edwards and starred Audrey Hepburn in what many consider her defining role, though Capote never approved of the many changes to the story, made to appeal to mass audiences.
Capote narrated his The Thanksgiving Visitor (1967), a sequel to A Christmas Memory, filmed by Frank Perry in Pike Road, Alabama. Geraldine Page again won an Emmy for her performance in this hour-long teleplay.
In Cold Blood was filmed twice. When Richard Brooks directed In Cold Blood, the 1967 adaptation with Robert Blake and Scott Wilson, he filmed at the actual Clutter house and other Holcomb, Kansas, locations. Anthony Edwards and Eric Roberts headed the cast of the 1996 In Cold Blood miniseries, directed by Jonathan Kaplan.
Neil Simon's 1976 murder mystery spoof Murder by Death provided Capote's main role as an actor, portraying reclusive millionaire Lionel Twain who invites the world's leading detectives together to a dinner party to have them solve a murder. The performance brought him a Golden Globe Award nomination (Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture). Early in the film it is alleged that Twain has ten fingers but no pinkies. In truth, Capote's pinkie fingers were unusually large. In the film, Capote's character is highly critical of the detective fiction of the like of Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett.
In Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977), there is a scene in which Alvy (Allen) and Annie (Diane Keaton) are observing passersby in the park. Alvy comments, "Oh, there's the winner of the Truman Capote Look-Alike Contest." The passerby is actually Truman Capote (who appeared in the film uncredited).
Other Voices, Other Rooms came to theater screens in 1995 with David Speck in the lead role of Joel Sansom. Reviewing this atmospheric Southern Gothic film in the New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote:
Also, in 1995, Capote's 1951 Novella The Grass Harp which he later turned into a 1954 play was made into a film version with a screen play by Stirling Silliphant and directed by Charles Matthau, Walter Matthau's son. This story is somewhat autobiographical of Capote's childhood in Alabama.[38]
Capote's short story "Children on Their Birthdays", another look back at a small-town Alabama childhood, was brought to film by director Mark Medoff in 2002.
, this film was commissioned by National Educational Television and shown on the NET network. Truman Capote: The Tiny Terror is a documentary that aired April 6, 2004, as part of A&E's Biography series, followed by a 2005 DVD release.
In 1990, Robert Morse received both a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for his portrayal of Capote in the one-man show, Tru. In 1992, he recreated the performance for the PBS series American Playhouse and won an Emmy Award for his performance. In 1994, actor-writer Bob Kingdom created the one-man theatre piece The Truman Capote Talk Show, in which he played Capote looking back over his life. Originally performed at the Lyric Studio Theatre, Hammersmith, London, the show has toured widely within the UK and internationally.
Louis Negin also appeared in a Toronto production of Tru,[39] as well as portraying Capote in 54 (1998). A reference is made to Capote as just having had a face lift, and the song "Knock on Wood" is dedicated to him. Sam Street is seen briefly as Capote in Isn't She Great? (2000), a biographical comedy-drama about Jacqueline Susann.
Director Bennett Miller made his dramatic feature debut with the biopic Capote (2005), in which Capote was played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Spanning the years Truman Capote spent researching and writing In Cold Blood, the film depicts Capote's conflict between his compassion for his subjects and self-absorbed obsession with finishing the book. Capote garnered much critical acclaim when it was released (September 30, 2005 in the US and February 24, 2006 in the UK). Dan Futterman's screenplay was based on the book Capote: A Biography by Gerald Clarke (1988). Capote received five Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. Hoffman's performance earned him many awards, including a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, an Independent Spirit Award and an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Infamous (2006, directed by Douglas McGrath), which stars Toby Jones as Capote and Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee, is an adaptation of George Plimpton's Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career (1997). On the DVD commentary track, director McGrath admits to the occasional scene being compiled and drawn together by using the truth and blended with his own "imagination" of how the actual story evolved.
Michael J. Burg played him three times: in The Audrey Hepburn Story; The Hoax, in deleted scenes; and ABC-TV's short-lived Life on Mars (2009). Burg also appeared as "Williams" (i.e.: Tennessee Williams) in the film Capote.[40]
Year | Title | Type/Note |
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1945 | "Miriam" | Short story; published in Madmoiselle |
1948 | Other Voices, Other Rooms | Novel |
1949 | A Tree of Night and Other Stories | Collection of short stories |
approx. 1949 | Summer Crossing | Novel; posthumously published 2006 |
1950 | "House of Flowers" | Short story; the first chapter was published in Botteghe Oscure in 1950 and in Harper's Bazaar in 1951 |
1950 | Local Color | Book; collection of European travel essays |
1951 | The Grass Harp | Novel |
1952 | The Grass Harp | Play |
1953 | Beat the Devil | Original screenplay |
Terminal Station | Screenplay (dialogue only) | |
1954 | House of Flowers | Broadway musical |
1955 | Carmen Therezinha Solbiati – So Chic | Short story ( Brazilian jet-setter Carmen Mayrink Veiga ); published in Vogue in 1956 |
1956 | The Muses Are Heard | Nonfiction |
1956 | "A Christmas Memory" | Short story; published in Mademoiselle |
1957 | "The Duke in His Domain" | Portrait of Marlon Brando; published in The New Yorker; Republished in Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker in 2001 |
1958 | Breakfast at Tiffany's | Novella |
1959 | Observations | Collaborative art and photography book; pictures by Richard Avedon, comments by Truman Capote and design by Alexey Brodovitch |
1960 | The Innocents | Screenplay based on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James; 1962 Edgar Award, from the Mystery Writers of America, to Capote and William Archibald for Best Motion Picture Screenplay |
1963 | Selected Writings of Truman Capote | Midcareer retrospective anthology; fiction and nonfiction |
1964 | A short story appeared in Seventeen magazine | |
1965 | In Cold Blood | "Nonfiction novel"; Capote's second Edgar Award (1966), for Best Fact Crime book |
1968 | "The Thanksgiving Visitor" | Short story published as a gift book |
Laura | Television film; original screenplay | |
1973 | The Dogs Bark | Collection of travel articles and personal sketches |
1975 | "Mojave" and "La Cote Basque, 1965" | Short stories published in Esquire |
1976 | "Unspoiled Monsters" and "Kate McCloud" | Short stories published in Esquire |
1980 | Music for Chameleons | Collection of short works mixing fiction and nonfiction |
1983 | One Christmas | Short story published as a gift book |
1986 | Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel | Published posthumously |
1987 | A Capote Reader | Omnibus edition containing most of Capote's shorter works, fiction and nonfiction |
2004 | The Complete Stories of Truman Capote | Anthology of twenty short stories |
2004 | Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote | Edited by Capote biographer Gerald Clarke |
2007 | Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote | Published by Random House |
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