by Sam Kashner
I keep thinking what power a great writer has. All the things you write move people. It is a selfish thought—but if all you have written all your life was just training to write those seven lines which were only seen by me—and Jack—I am glad you became a writer.
Their friendship would last only a few more years, however. Unable to keep the details of his closeness to the First Lady to himself, he bragged that she had once invited him into her bedroom in the White House as she dressed for the evening. When that got back to Jackie, she dropped Truman. (That was something else that Jackie and Lee had in common—their ability to simply drop a friendship when they felt betrayed, and to speak no more about it.) So perhaps Truman’s great attentions to Lee—despite his genuine admiration of the Principessa—derived from an intention to get back at Jackie for having dropped him years earlier.
* * *
IN THE SUMMER of l965, Jackie began to throw off her widow’s weeds, going on skiing trips with Bobby Kennedy, who had turned to the beautiful widow to assuage his own grief at the loss of his beloved brother. The more time they spent together, the more rumors flew about a possible affair.
Three years after Kennedy’s death, Jackie had traded in her tasteful A-line dresses and demure necklines for miniskirts. Manchester observed that once she finally emerged from mourning,
she was photographed dancing, skiing, riding in a New Jersey hunt, cruising along the Dalmatian coast, greeting European nobility, and visiting Acapulco, the West Indies, and Spain . . .
The National Enquirer touted, “From Mourner to Swinger.” Women’s Wear Daily called her “the most elegant New Yorker and the most outstanding woman in the world” and gushed that she was now “one of the REAL GIRLS—honest, natural, open, de-contrived, de-kooked, delicious, subtle, feminine, young, modern, in love with life, knows how to have fun.”
Once again, Jackie was in ascendancy. So when the brilliant, sought-after Truman Capote preferred Lee to Jackie, it meant something. Lee was equally besotted with Truman, telling her friends that she felt closer to Truman than anyone else in her life, even her sister. To this day, she remembers Truman as “her echo,” describing him as “a great raconteur” and “the best company I’ve ever known. He could also be very generous, and sensitive to other people’s needs.”
Their friendship reached its apotheosis at Capote’s famous Black and White Ball.
After the spectacular success of In Cold Blood, Capote “had the golden touch,” wrote Gerald Clarke, “and was already looking forward to his next triumph, a party that would end the year as it had begun—with all eyes focused on him . . .” Held in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel on November 28, 1966, Truman’s Black and White Ball was inspired by the Ascot scene in My Fair Lady, with costumes designed in black and white by his friend Cecil Beaton. The invitation read “Diamonds Only” to ensure no emeralds or rubies would ruin his visual scheme. It was a masked ball thrown in honor of the recently widowed Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, but it was really thrown to show New York society who was at the hot white center of that world: Truman Capote. As Slim Keith said, “He wanted to give the biggest and best goddamned party that anybody had ever heard of. He wanted to see every notable in the world, people of importance from every walk of life, absolutely dying to attend a party given by a funny-looking, strange little man—himself.”
It was a huge success, attended by spectacular personalities who bridged show business, politics, society, and literature, including Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow (Frank wore a cat-whisker mask), Candice Bergen in rabbit ears, the glamorous Marella Agnelli, the Maharaja and Maharani of Jaipur, Lynda Bird Johnson trailed by a phalanx of Secret Service agents, and Tallulah Bankhead (after begging for an invitation as the two former friends were on the outs). But no one was more invited than Lee Radziwill.
“People talked about the ball for months in advance—what kind of mask would they wear; whom would they order their black or white dress from; whose dinner they would attend; who was or wasn’t invited,” Lee later wrote. “My spiral silver sequin dress was made by Mila Schon, who came from Milan to London several times for fittings, as well as to oversee the mask.”
After first dining with Bill and Babe Paley, Lee and Stas arrived at the Plaza’s ballroom. It took her breath away:
The elegance of the room was incomparable. The orchestra was impossible not to dance to, and everyone was at his best, full of expectation and ready to have a wonderful time. Lauren Bacall danced with Jerome Robbins and cleared the floor. Stas and I left with Truman and Henry Ford at 5:00 a.m. We were so elated, and wished it wasn’t all over.
After the gala, they went to have breakfast—not at Tiffany’s, but at the Brasserie on Park Avenue.
The one person who didn’t attend the party was Jackie Kennedy.
Jackie was of course invited and had selected an elaborate mask designed by Halston, who nearly had a nervous breakdown fulfilling orders for $600 masks for Truman’s guests—but Bobby Kennedy, now a senator from New York already nursing presidential ambitions, had asked her not to attend. He feared it would create bad press for him if Jackie were to be seen at such an extravagant event while men were dying in Vietnam. In fact, the journalist and sportswriter Pete Hamill weighed in with a damning piece in the New York Post, contrasting the frivolity of the Black and White Ball with gruesome scenes from Vietnam.
So Jackie stayed home, but Lee—resplendent on Truman’s arm in a fabulous mask—shined like the princess she knew herself to be, Stas trailing behind them.
During the filming of In Cold Blood, in Kansas, Truman’s thoughts turned to how to help Lee find her rightful place in the world. What trumps politics, he thought, but movie stars! He and Lee had both loved going alone to the movies in the middle of the day, watching the big screen in a nearly empty theater, a habit Lee still enjoys five decades later. On paper, Truman’s scheme seemed inevitable. Lee was beautiful. She looked good in clothes. Since her days at Miss Porter’s, she’d always wanted to take center stage. More important, Truman had the connections, both in theater and in Hollywood, to launch his beautiful swan. He got Laurence Olivier’s and John Gielgud’s agent, Milton Goldman, to represent her.
“Truman fell in love with me,” Radziwill reminisced in 2014, elegantly smoking one of her thin cigarettes in her Manhattan apartment, a rueful smile playing across her lips. “He thought there was nothing I couldn’t do, and that I must go into the theater and I would be the perfect Tracy Lord,” the madcap heroine of Philip Barry’s comedy of manners about Main Line society, The Philadelphia Story, a role made famous on-screen by Katharine Hepburn. “He would arrange it with such taste. He was convinced that I could do this.” When she hesitated to follow in the footsteps of Katharine Hepburn, Truman had said, “‘You’ll act rings around Kate!’ Truman could be a magnificent liar,” she added with a laugh, “but nonetheless he did give me the courage to go on [the stage].”
Despite Lee’s affairs with Nureyev and Onassis and the cooling of their marriage, Stas was still very much in the picture, as Lee continued to divide her time between New York, London, and Turville Grange. Unfortunately, Stas was “violently against” her going on the stage, Lee recalled: “He said, ‘You have everything in life, a perfect life. Why do you want to go out and get criticized? Why?’ I said, ‘Because I’ve always wanted to do this.’ There were so many things I couldn’t do when my brother-in-law was president. Can I do this, can I do that? One had to be . . . well, why can’t I do this now?”
Truman became obsessed with showcasing his favorite swan, arranging almost every aspect of the production. Remembered Lee, “Truman pushed and pushed, in spite of my husband being so against it. Truman could be so ‘Honey, you have to have George Masters. He’s the greatest makeup man in history! Jennifer Jones spends eight hours with him a day.’ I said, ‘Forget it. I’m not spending more than an hour, maximum, with him.’”
At Truman’s insistence, Masters flew to New York from Los Ange
les to meet with Lee. “So,” Lee continued, “George Masters arrives from LA. The first thing he does is throw all the shoes in my closet out the window and says, ‘You can’t look like a typical little society girl, so I’m throwing all this stuff out.’ That was pretty devastating when I came back to my room and found most of my things thrown on the floor.” He then decided that she needed to lighten her hair. “You’ve got to be a blonde; your hair is much too dark,” he told the princess.
“I began to get terrified,” Lee recalled.
Lee had appeared in plays at Miss Porter’s as a teenager—most memorably, Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It with You—and she had studied singing in Paris, so this plan did not come out of nowhere. She began taking lessons in breathing, moving, and extending her whispery voice to prepare for the role. The insouciant, privileged, spoiled socialite Tracy Lord seemed tailor-made for Lee, but only on the surface: Lee didn’t identify with her at all. “She has none of the feelings I understand, of sadness, despair, or of knowing loss,” Lee later said.
Lee was of course a novice, so Truman thought it best to open in a small theater-in-the-round in Chicago. The play was set to open at the Ivanhoe on June 20, l967, for a four-week run.
* * *
THEY CHECKED INTO penthouse suite 1705 of the Ambassador East hotel in Chicago for the hurried rehearsals, with George Masters complaining about Yves Saint Laurent being brought in to design all of Lee’s costumes. New York society hairdresser Kenneth was flown in from New York to do Lee’s hair, and of course Truman was on hand to orchestrate the three-ring circus, coaching Lee and calming her nerves, while dancing backstage to his favorite records on a portable phonograph.
Dr. Max Jacobson came by to give the exhausted cast and crew vitamin B12 injections. Someone calling herself Cabala Woman read the cast’s fortunes over the telephone, telling Lee that the signs were “very promising for theater work.” The forbearing Stas, who valiantly accompanied Lee throughout the whole undertaking, smoked and drank throughout the ordeal, while George Masters kept calling him “Princie.”
“So, all that didn’t help my nerves at all for opening night,” Lee reminisced. “George Masters was so excited that Rudolf Nureyev was coming that he almost lost his mind. He did dye my hair blonde, and he made me a nervous wreck by the time it opened. Then he spent the day on opening night, dressing [to impress] Nureyev, in an absolutely snow-white suit. I sat in my dressing room waiting for him, until Rudolf came backstage and just held me in his arms. I was weeping. Rudolf ignored Masters completely.”
Lee wore Yves Saint Laurent’s costumes so well that with each new entrance, in each new ensemble, Lee and her wardrobe were met by approving oohs and aahs from the audience. The costumes were indeed stunning: “I will always remember the very heavy white crepe dressing gown he designed for Tracy when she was carried to her room, somewhat the worse for wear,” Lee reminisced.
Even though Lee had insisted on using “Lee Bouvier” in the credits instead of “Princess Lee Radziwill,” the four-week run was sold out, and the first-night audience was brimming with bold-faced names. But when the play finally opened, Lee found herself alone on the stage, frozen with fear.
“I remember so well,” Lee continued. “It was a theater-in-the-round, so no curtain, and the first scene opened with Tracy trying to write a letter. I could not move [my hand] to the end of the page. I was totally paralyzed.”
There was some resentment on the part of the cast because Lee had been elevated to a starring role with so little training. And they had a point. Though she looked beautiful, she failed to command the stage. She later explained, “It’s hard for someone raised in my world to learn to express emotion. We’re taught early to hide our feelings.” The reviews were mixed—ranging from “Miss Bouvier’s Bravado Shines” to “Lee Lays Golden Egg”—yet the audience loved it. They knew exactly what to expect—glamour and eye candy and proximity to stars—and they got what they came for.
“I got terrible reviews,” Lee recalled decades later, “but I really believe they were written before the play opened. I don’t know why the press blew it up so . . . I couldn’t understand it. You know Dina Merrill? She was a great heiress. Her mother was Marjorie Merriweather Post. She didn’t have any of that [criticism], and she was always in films and movies. I couldn’t understand why I was getting this barrage.”
Another disappointment accompanied Lee’s theatrical debut. Despite the celebrity audience, there was one empty seat, in the third row, and it was reserved for Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.
Jackie, who disapproved of Lee’s new venture, was in Ireland and had decided not to cut short her visit. She had taken Caroline and John Jr. to Dunganstown, the ancestral village of the Kennedys, which Jack had visited with Lee in his final summer. She toured the Waterford glass factory, where she ordered chandeliers for the Kennedy Center, now under construction in Washington, DC.
Her choosing to remain in Ireland could be interpreted as not wanting to steal Lee’s thunder or as a sign of her disapproval. Or could she have been envious? She had once told Gore Vidal, “I’d love to act. Do you think it’s too late?” She had even thought of doing a screen test for Paramount, but as usual, the Kennedys wouldn’t allow it. But Jackie, sainted by her widowhood, had become a kind of movie star in her own right, as Vidal later observed: “a silent star of unmade films, her face on every magazine cover almost to the end.” William Manchester, too, had described Jackie as appearing like a “great, tragic actress” when he first met her soon after Kennedy’s assassination.
Whatever her true feelings, Jackie sent a “pretty little mauve box” to Lee on opening night with her wishes for “extravagant luck,” but she missed Lee’s entire four-week run.
As for Lee, it hadn’t been a total disaster. Life magazine put the radiantly smiling thirty-four-year-old Lee on the July 14, 1967, cover, for an article titled “The Princess Goes on Stage” (where the pull quote appeared, “Girls who have everything are not supposed to do anything”). Though the critics mostly panned her, the fashion editors continued to love her. Diana Vreeland arranged a ten-page fashion layout featuring Lee for the fall fashion issue of Vogue, bringing in the celebrated Bert Stern to do the shoot.
“Lee was like Marilyn Monroe to work with,” the photographer recalled about that photo shoot. “Very sexy. Very sweet. I was surprised at how beautiful she was when I photographed her.” Compared to photographs of Lee during her trip to India and Pakistan with Jackie several years earlier—in which Lee seemed too coifed, too careful, too repressed—Lee now glowed with confidence and a sense of freedom.
Lee presented an unsinkable spirit in both Life and Vogue, undaunted by the negative reviews, and in fact she made plans to appear in another high-profile production, again arranged by Truman. She would take on the title role of Laura, in a two-hour movie of the week filmed in London for ABC, to air on January 24, 1968. (Gene Tierney had played the haunting film noir heroine in the 20th Century–Fox film; at the height of her career, the actress had had a brief affair with the young John Kennedy.) Truman Capote himself wrote the adaptation, with David Susskind producing; Farley Granger costarred in the role of the smitten detective (played by Dana Andrews in the l944 film); and wry, waspish George Sanders played the wry, waspish columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb’s role in the movie).
Despite the sometimes nasty reviews for The Philadelphia Story, Lee was excited about this new venture. “I wish we could begin tomorrow—it’s going to be marvelous,” she wrote to Truman from London. Susskind had arranged for Laura to be filmed in London to accommodate Lee, who had returned to 4 Buckingham Place. Stas grumbled the whole time, prompting another letter from Lee to Truman: “I was so happy to get your letter,” she wrote, “except that it made me weep because I miss you so much & need you to make life worthwhile.” Out of gratitude for her friend who saw great potential in her, Lee had a Schlumberger cigarette box sent to Truman, with the engraved inscription, “To My Answered Prayer, wi
th love, Lee. July 1967.”
But this substantial production foundered on Lee’s delicate shoulders; she just wasn’t ready to carry an entire film on live television, unable to step out of herself to entirely inhabit the character. The reviews, again, were not kind. She moved like a specter through the two-hour production, again wearing her wardrobe beautifully but expressing little emotion. “Reduced to a stunning clothes horse,” is how the television critic of the New York Times reviewed it. Time magazine described her as being “only slightly less animated than the portrait of herself that hung over the mantel.” As another writer expressed it, Laura was “widely watched, ferociously criticized.” John Davis noted, “Few people, however, made allowances for the fact that, although it was an advantage in some respects, it was a disadvantage in others to be the sister of someone as famous as Jacqueline Kennedy.”
One wonders in retrospect, however, if Truman’s urging Lee to jump unprepared into two iconic starring roles was evidence of conflicted feelings he felt toward the Principessa. Lee’s good friend Ralph Rucci believed that the flamboyantly gay writer “was in love with her, totally in love with her. And because he couldn’t psychologically handle that he had to hurt her, which is so twisted and unfortunate.” In trying to elevate her, Truman instead held Lee up to public ridicule.
Nonetheless, Lee was offered other roles, including a small part in Rosemary’s Baby. “I did turn down, afterwards, a film with Sean Connery, and before that, a chance to go to the playhouse in Arizona with Maureen Stapleton. She was a brilliant actress, so I thought I could really learn something,” Lee reminisced. But Stas had had enough. “He said, ‘I’ll never let you see the children,’ so I couldn’t do that. What a shame having gone through all that and now not being able to continue. A terrible shame.”
