Truman Capote’s Unanswered Prayers
By Carol L. Wright
If you, like many, watched the recent FX mini-series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, you saw a depiction of one of the mid-twentieth century’s best known American writers, Truman Capote (nee Truman Persons). He was born in New Orleans in 1924, abandoned at the age of four by his father, and intermittently sent to live with his alcoholic mother’s relatives in Monroeville, Alabama. A young tomboy, Nelle Harper Lee, lived in Capote’s new hometown, and although she was two years younger than Capote, they shared an interest in writing and, what Lee later called, the “common anguish”[i] of troubled childhoods. (Lee’s mother suffered from what is now believed to be bipolar disorder.)[ii] The pair remained close into adulthood despite Capote’s mother moving with him and her new husband, Jose Garcia Capote, to New York City in 1932. But in looking back on his youth, he said, “My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely.”[iii]
As an adult, Capote was short in stature (cited as 5’3” or 5’4”, depending on the source), with a high-pitched voice and idiosyncratic personality. He was an acute observer of life, with sharp recall of all he had observed. He laid out the wounds of his childhood in his writing. His first novel, the quasi-autobiographical Other Voices, Other Rooms,[iv]was published in 1948 to critical acclaim and included a character modeled after Harper Lee.[v] He followed that with several other novellas, short stories, and novels, eventually publishing a novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s,[vi] in 1958 which was made into a movie starring Audrey Hepburn in 1961.
He was hailed as a genius, and as his celebrity inflated, so did his image as an ostentatious gay man, a heavy-drinking partygoer with a self-destructive streak. He savored the spotlight and inveigled himself into New York society, befriending a cadre of New York socialites, his “Swans,” and learning their scandalous secrets. Among his society intimates were several of the most prominent women in the city, including Lee Bouvier Radziwill (sister to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), Barbara “Babe” Paley (wife of media mogul William Paley), Gloria Guinness (formerly known as Countess Gloria von Fürstenberg-Herdringen), and showgirl and radio actress Ann Woodward (who was suspected of murdering her wealthy husband). To be a Swan, one had to be rich, beautiful, and amusing to Capote. And Capote was amusing to them. He was flamboyant, selfish, and outrageous. His wealth paled in comparison to theirs,[vii] but with such wealthy friends, he lived a lavish lifestyle.
Seeing Capote’s early success, Harper Lee moved to New York in 1949 to write and work in a variety of day jobs. In 1960, she published her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which included a character, Dill Harris, who was modeled after Capote. It spent 98 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award before being made into a movie starring Gregory Peck in 1962. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning three.[viii]
From the authors’ depictions of each other, one could believe that Harper Lee was the stronger and braver of the pair, while Capote was the reserved, fragile one who needed protecting. Perhaps that is why, soon after sending her manuscript to her publisher, Lee followed Capote to Kansas to help him to research what he dubbed his “nonfiction novel” about the brutal 1959 home invasion and murder of a farm family.[ix] She spoke with witnesses who related better to the small-town Lee than to the odd New Yorker Capote. With the help of her 150 pages of notes, Capote wrote what became perhaps his most memorable book, In Cold Blood, published in 1966. Despite the literary license Capote was said to have employed, the book pioneered the modern True Crime genre and was made into a 1967 movie, which was nominated for four Academy Awards.[x] His deviations from fact bothered Lee, but Capote was an unequaled fabricator. She later wrote to a friend, “I don’t know if you understood this about him, but his compulsive lying was like this: If you said, ‘Did you know JFK was shot?’ He’d easily answer, ‘Yes, I was driving the car he was riding in.’”[xi]
In his self-centered fashion, he failed to acknowledge Lee’s contributions to the book. Lee would later be quoted as saying that it was Capote’s drinking and misery that ended their friendship, but it appears jealousy played a large role. She is reported to have said, “I was his oldest friend, and I did something Truman could not forgive: I wrote a novel that sold. He nursed his envy for more than 20 years [until his death].”[xii]
But Lee was not the only loved one whom Truman used badly. His long-time lover, Jack Dunphy, a writer and Broadway dancer/actor, was ten years older than Capote and was reserved where Capote was extroverted. They withstood these differences by living in separate homes. Capote knew his many affairs and drug and alcohol excesses strained their relationship, yet he expected to be forgiven and loved, even when he was unloving and unlovable.[xiii] Eventually Dunphy found it too difficult to stand by and watch Capote’s self-destructive tendencies take him over.
Meanwhile, Capote lived in a social whirl. He hosted an extravagant “Black and White Ball” in the Plaza Hotel in 1966. Invitations were so sought after that some A-listers who were not invited crashed the party. Some were publicly and humiliatingly expelled by Capote for daring to come.
By the 1970s, Capote’s life had become a carousel of nights at Studio 54, lunches at the posh “La Cote Basque” restaurant with his Swans, appearances on television talk shows, excessive drinking, smoking, and drug abuse, all leading to time in rehab, only to go around again. But, as a writer, he knew he needed a new publication to sell. Until In Cold Blood, Capote had written fiction based on his own life’s observations and experiences. Without Harper Lee there to help him research another nonfiction book, he reverted to his previous process. And what he knew and had observed was the lives of his Swans.
He signed a contract with Random House for what he boasted would be his masterpiece titled “Answered Prayers.” But now living a life of dissipation, he missed deadline after deadline. After some time, critics began questioning whether the book was even real, so Capote decided to prove that it was. In November 1975, his story, “La Cote Basque 1965,” appeared in Esquire magazine. The characters and events were ill-concealed. Despite Capote’s assurances that his Swans were “too dumb” to “know who they are” in the story,[xiv] they and all of New York society recognized themselves. Because of Capote’s betrayal of their trust, the Swans excised him from their social circle.
Once again, Capote expected to be forgiven, loved, protected. But, alas, his sins caught up with him. While he continued to tell his few remaining friends he was making great progress on “Answered Prayers,” he found it difficult to remain sober. By 1984, his health failing, Capote left New York to work on his novel in California as a guest of Joanne Carson (an ex-wife of The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson). While there, he died at age 59 of liver disease and drug intoxication.[xv] He had never reconciled with Harper Lee nor the Swans, and, while they had drifted apart, he left most of his estate to Jack Dunphy.[xvi]
The lonely child had died a lonely man. And despite his protestations, his “masterpiece” was never completed.[xvii] As he once said, “Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.”[xviii]
[i] https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/harper-lee-truman-capote-friendship-jealously
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/truman-capote
[iv] This novel is full of angst, with the only bit of light being the character of Idabel Thompson who was a fictionalized version of his childhood friend, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee returned the favor by basing the character of Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird on Capote.
[v] https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/harper-lee-truman-capote-friendship-jealously
[vi] Holly Golightly, Capote’s heroine, was modeled after Carol Matthau’s personality. Capote had met and befriended her at age 13. https://matthau.com/carol/biography.html
[vii] https://www.distractify.com/p/truman-capote-net-worth-at-death#:~:text=Truman%20Capote%27s%20net%20worth%20at%20the%20time%20of,creation%20of%20an%20annual%20prize%20in%20literary%20criticism.%22
[viii]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee
[ix] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_family_murders
[x] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Cold_Blood
[xi] https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/harper-lee-truman-capote-friendship-jealously
[xii] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/arts/in-harper-lees-letters-books-fame-and-a-lying-capote.html#:~:text=Ms.%20Lee%20wrote%20that%20Mr.%20Capote%E2%80%99s%20drinking,and%20misery%20soured%20their%20friendship.%20Jealousy%20ended%20it.
[xiii] Leamer, Laurence, Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era, Putnam (2021).
[xiv] Ibid.
[xv] https://www.distractify.com/p/truman-capote-net-worth-at-death#:~:text=Truman%20Capote%27s%20net%20worth%20at%20the%20time%20of,creation%20of%20an%20annual%20prize%20in%20literary%20criticism.%22
[xvi] https://www.distractify.com/p/truman-capote-net-worth-at-death#:~:text=Truman%20Capote%27s%20net%20worth%20at%20the%20time%20of,creation%20of%20an%20annual%20prize%20in%20literary%20criticism.%22; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dunphy#:~:text=Though%20they%20drifted%20more%20and%20more%20apart%20in,Capote%20had%20separate%20houses%20in%20Sagaponack%2C%20New%20York.
[xvii] For a more complete biography see Gerald Clarke’s Capote: A Biography, Simon and Schuster (1988). Films about Truman Capote include Capote (2005) starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Infamous (2006) with Toby Jones and Daniel Craig. Feud: Capote vs. the Swans from FX can be streamed on FXNOW, Hulu, and other streaming services.
[xviii] https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/truman-capote