Capote

by Gerald Clarke

  Hearing the commotion from her house in Nyack, Carson McCullers, who was not among the chosen, became increasingly agitated. She had bitterly resented the success of In Cold Blood, and she was so tortured by the prospect of a second Capote triumph that she began talking about giving a party of her own, but bigger and better in every way. “I’ll invite Jacqueline Kennedy,” she told her cousin Jordan Massee.

  “Do you know Jacqueline Kennedy?” Massee inquired.

  “No, but she’ll come. I’ll see to it that she comes. And if she comes, you can be certain everyone else will come.” Ill and an invalid—she was to die less than a year later—Carson did not give a ball. But the following March she did have an ambulance deliver her to the Plaza, where she celebrated her fiftieth birthday as a steady stream of admirers came to her suite to pay court.

  Truman did not stop at dictating the makeup of his own party; he arranged the preball dinners as well, pairing hosts and guests like a general placing his regiments along the line of battle. “He ordered his friends to give preliminary dinner parties,” said Glenway Wescott, “and he told me whom I had to have.” He changed those guest lists too, juggling names from one group to another. The Haywards were given a show-business contingent that included Claudette Colbert and Frank Sinatra and his new wife Mia Farrow; the Paleys were presented with the Deweys, the Agnellis and Cecil, who had made a special trip from England to see what his My Fair Lady design had inspired. Kay and Joe Meehan—he was a leading figure on Wall Street—were assigned some of their society chums, including Elsie Woodward, the mother of poor Bill, whose shotgun death had caused such a scandal in 1955. And Glenway was entrusted with such eminent geriatrics as Thornton Wilder, Katherine Anne Porter, Virgil Thomson, Anita Loos and Janet Flanner, who had been The New Yorker’s Paris correspondent since the twenties. In her excitement at being asked, Katherine Anne forgot that she had heartily disliked Truman ever since their summer at Yaddo. “The pimple on the face of American literature,” she had called him. Now, cooing to Glenway, she declared, “Oh, I like Truman. I always have.”

  For a few tense weeks, however, it appeared that Glenway’s Rich Amelia (minced veal) might never leave the oven. Wilder said he would be in Berlin on November 28, and a variety of ailments finally confined Katherine Anne to her house in Washington. Flanner, who was preparing to fly in from Paris with the first long dress she had purchased in nearly thirty years, was ruffled because Natalia Murray, her best friend and New York hostess, had not received her expected invitation. Flanner asked Glenway to drop Truman “a blackmailing note” saying that unless Murray came, she would not come either. “Without her,” said Flanner, “it is inconceivable that I should go and dance with a merry heart—I don’t dance at all anymore, actually.” Glenway did as he was bidden and was soon pleased to report that she could keep her long dress and plane ticket. “Piping away like Blake’s little devil in the cloud,” he told her, Truman had sworn that Murray’s invitation had merely been misplaced. “He sounded innocent,” Glenway said, “and in any event, having had our way, we’ll never know. My general principle about him is that it isn’t necessary to like him as much as one admires him.”

  Others of the appointed dinner hosts doubtless witnessed similar scenes of comedy and consternation. “This city’s normally blasé social set is flapping like a gaggle of geese over a not-so-private party being thrown by author Truman Capote for 500 guests here Monday night,” a reporter for The Washington Post wrote a few days before the momentous night. “The magic Capote name—immortalized by his recent blockbuster nonfiction book, In Cold Blood—coupled with a guest list that reads like Who’s Who of the World, has escalated his party to a social ‘happening’ of history-making proportions. The New York newspapers are calling it variously the party of the year, the decade or the century.”

  Indeed, nearly everyone in the five boroughs seemed to be watching the flutter overhead. When Herb Caen, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, arrived at Kennedy Airport, a cabdriver noticed his wife’s feathered headpiece and said, “Hey, you gonna go to Truman’s party, huh?” Guests came from all parts of America—eleven from Kansas alone—as well as from Europe, Asia and South America.

  “The ladies have killed me,” said Halston, who had been busy for six weeks designing the masks for which he charged as much as six hundred dollars. One woman, he said, had come in eight times, taking an hour each time to have hers fitted. “I think I’ve lost my mind, and it’s just too much,” added his rival, Adolfo. By the twenty-eighth, the furor had reached Kenneth’s, Manhattan’s elite hairdressing salon. Arriving that afternoon, Kay Graham automatically went to the second floor, where ordinary customers were sent, rather than the third, where the smart set went. “But I didn’t know Kenneth, didn’t know anybody,” she said. “I had never really done my hair much. I had never made up my face. I hardly knew how to do it! We didn’t lead that kind of life in Washington. Then, while I was on the stairs, a wonderfully funny, Cinderella-ish thing happened.

  “‘Oh, Mrs. Graham,’ one of the hairdressers said. ‘We’re all so busy with this Black and White Ball! Have you heard about it?’

  “‘You won’t believe it, but I’m the guest of honor.’

  “‘You are? Well, who’s doing your hair?’

  “‘I don’t know. I was just trying to find out.’

  “‘Kenneth has to do it,’ she said. And so I went to Kenneth himself. But I had to wait while Marisa Berenson had curls placed all over her head. I was the last one in and the last one out.”

  Many of those expensive coiffures unraveled a few hours later, in a chill, end-of-November rain—Truman had arranged everything but the weather. As the Caens were leaving the Regency Hotel for their dinner, the bell captain whispered, “Boy, is this town full of phonies. Do you know there are people hanging around here in black-and-white clothes who ain’t even going to Truman’s? Whoo—eeee!” At Eleanor Friede’s, where soft background music was playing on the radio, a newscaster interrupted to say that crowds were already beginning to gather outside the Plaza to watch the guests arrive. Eleanor’s group, mostly editors and publishers, were amused, but still did not realize how fascinated people were by what seemed, after all, like only a dance. Truman and Kay Graham had drinks at the Paleys’, then went to the Plaza for a supper for two, in the suite he had taken for that purpose. But they also were late, not arriving until 9:10, and had time only to enjoy a few bites of caviar before taking up their posts at the ballroom door, alongside a man in white tie and tails, who was to announce each guest to them.

  Television cameras had been set up in the lobby, and almost two hundred still photographers and reporters jostled for position, stepping on the delicate toes of every fashion columnist in the city. Security guards had been stationed in the kitchen to keep out gate-crashers, and black-tied and black-masked detectives waited to mingle and watch for jewel thieves. A dozen Secret Service agents came along to look after Lynda Bird Johnson; like it or not, Truman was forced to endure the boredom of Government agents. Four bars had been set up to dispense four hundred and fifty bottles of Taittinger champagne, and chefs were preparing a simple midnight buffet: chicken hash, spaghetti bolognaise, scrambled eggs, sausages, pastries and coffee. (As such things go, Truman spent relatively little on his fete: about sixteen thousand dollars, part of which he was able to deduct from his taxes.)

  At 10:15, the ballroom was all but empty. Onlookers began to mutter that there were more reporters and photographers than guests, and it appeared that Pamela Hayward might have been right in fearing “that with all the publicity, the party might flop.” But that, of course, was an impossibility. At 10:30 masked faces began emerging from the rain. “Your names, please,” intoned the man in the white tie and tails, who then turned to Truman and Kay and announced, “The Maharajah and Maharani of Jaipur.”

  The masks did not actually hide many faces, but then, despite Truman’s fantasy, they were not really supposed to. Many of the women, like Marella A
gnelli and Rose Kennedy, attached theirs to elaborate feather headdresses. Others wore fur around their eyes. Candice Bergen’s mask was topped by giant rabbit ears; Frank Sinatra’s had cat’s whiskers. Mrs. John Converse, Gary Cooper’s widow, wore black velvet, from which sprouted a gardenia tree bearing live blooms. Breaking Truman’s rule that men wear black, Billy Baldwin had engaged a Tiffany craftsman to make him a golden unicorn’s head. “Oh, Billy, that’s fantastic!” exclaimed Truman. Princess Luciana Pignatelli had also cheated by painting her mask on her face. She made up for it, however, by attaching to her feathered headdress a sixty-carat diamond, which bobbed above her pretty nose like a piece of bait on a fish line.

  In a gesture that hinted of reverse snobbery, the host himself proudly announced that he had paid only thirty-nine cents for his simple Halloween mask. Hearing that, Alice Roosevelt Longworth was even prouder to say that she had bought hers for only thirty-five cents. Whatever they cost, most were removed long before midnight. “It itches and I can’t see,” complained Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt.

  At 11 o’clock, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, was asked if it was a good party. “It’s too early to tell how it’s going,” he judiciously answered. “History is made after midnight.” So it was, and most of those who were there talked about it afterward the way they might have a cherished childhood Christmas. There were no spectacular scenes, but there were dozens of memorable ones: Lauren Bacall and Jerome Robbins holding the floor to do one of the best dance numbers since Top Hat, the daughters of three Presidents exchanging White House anecdotes, Kay Graham dancing with one of the doormen at the U.N. Plaza, who thanked her for the happiest night of his life. “It was always shimmering,” said David Merrick, the Broadway producer, who was not usually given to praising other people’s productions. “It was never still, nor was there a static moment.” Even Jack, who had resisted coming, had a good time. “It was formidable vraiment,” he told Mary Louise Aswell, who had elected to stay home in New Mexico. “Extra!”

  Across the country the party made front-page headlines. “Splendor Runs Over at Capote Ball of Decade,” said the Houston Chronicle. “Capote’s Big Bash Was Just That,” added the Fort Lauderdale News. Some who had not been there grumbled that such frolics had also attended the fall of the Roman Empire. Pete Hamill wrote an outraged column in the New York Post that contrasted what Hamill thought were silly comments from the merrymakers with grisly scenes from the Viet Nam War. A soldier in an Army training camp sent a letter to Time objecting to being called upon to protect “this fat, lethargic, useless intelligentsia.” To which another correspondent, who said he had spent seven years on active duty, responded: “So Truman Capote had a blast. So what? Must we read the trite analogies about the Roman Empire and the U.S. every time somebody has a [party]?”

  Truman himself heard few complaints. One came indirectly from Gloria Guinness, who said that she had made a terrible mistake in adorning her elegant neck with not one, but two heavy necklaces, one of rubies, one of diamonds. Their combined weight had exhausted her, she said, and she would have to stay in bed all the next day to regain her strength. Another came from an actress who had taken a handsome stranger home for the night. She had assumed that he was also a guest, but when she woke up in the morning, she discovered, to her vocal dismay, that he was just one of the detectives in black tie.

  “So?” Truman inquired. “What’s wrong with that? You had a good time with him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I did.”

  “Well, then, what are you complaining about?”

  On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Joe Meehan’s friends lined up to quiz him about what had happened. A few days later Russell Baker, the resident humorist of The New York Times, said that “sociologists are still debating whether it was the most important party of the Twentieth Century.” Baker’s own thought was that “writers surely will experience an instant inflation of self-esteem from the knowledge that one of their colleagues has seized Mrs. Astor’s former role as social arbiter.” Diana Trilling, an amateur sociologist herself, declared the party “a very complicated social moment in this country’s life.”

  Those who study such things agreed that something important had occurred—exactly what, no one could say. The Museum of the City of New York assembled masks and souvenirs, which were placed alongside memorabilia from such other social moments in the city’s history as George Washington’s first inaugural ball and a gala tribute to General Lafayette in 1824. Also taking her cue from My Fair Lady, Suzy Knickerbocker, the gossip columnist, all but burst into song when she told her readers: “He did it. He did it. We always knew he’d do it—and indeed he did.”

  44

  “YOU might say Truman Capote has become omnipotent,” declared Women’s Wear Daily, and for several years he very nearly was. His party did not fade from memory; it became a legend, magnified by the hyperbolic atmosphere of the sixties. Every subsequent ball was compared with his, and magazine or newspaper profiles of famous people often noted if they had been on the guest list, which was the irrefutable proof of their importance. So great was Truman’s reputation—“his name has a magic ring to people today,” Kay Meehan told a reporter—that his mere presence virtually guaranteed the success of any event he attended. “Anything he does, everyone sort of gravitates to,” said Jan Cowles. He no longer received invitations; he received beseechments: come to lunch, dinner, cocktails, anything—but come.

  “There’s a little secret to charity benefits these days,” wrote a society reporter for The New York Times. “It’s called Truman Capote. Mr. Capote is considered by many to be a 64-inch, 136-pound magnet, particularly attractive to the gilded people who count when it comes to fashionable fund raising. His name on an invitation to just about anything, even if it costs money, is as potent as a Rockefeller signature on a check. There is just about no chance that it won’t be honored.”

  Among ordinary, ungilded folk his name was equally potent. Like most other things, fame can be measured, and his was now on the level of a movie idol or a rock star. He was as sought after by the television talk shows as he was by Manhattan hostesses, and nearly every public move he made was considered newsworthy by national magazines. He had not given a ball; he had presided over his own coronation. He was Truman, Rex Bibendi—King of the Revels.

  Every monarch needs a consort, and he had his, Jacqueline Kennedy’s younger sister, Lee Radziwill. They were together so often that a woman friend wrote to complain: “I don’t want to see another picture of you holding Lee Radziwill’s hand. I want you to hold my hand.” Suzy Knickerbocker jokingly chided him in her column: “Somebody has got to tell Truman that Lee Radziwill can’t have him ALL THE TIME. There’s only one Truman and we saw him first.” Their jealous finger-waving did no good. Truman was besotted, as enamored of “Princess Dear,” as he called her—she was married to a former Polish prince—as he was of Babe. “I love her,” he gushed. “I love everything about her. I love the way she looks, the way she moves, the way she thinks.” Writing in Vogue, he said, “Ah, the Princess! Well, she’s easily described. She’s a beauty. Inside. Outside.”

  Although she was less effusive, Lee felt much the same about him. “He’s my closest friend. More than with anyone else, I can discuss the most serious things about life and emotional questions. I miss him terribly when I’m away from him. I trust him implicitly. He’s the most loyal friend I’ve ever had and the best company I’ve ever known. We’ve always been so close that it’s like an echo. We never have to finish sentences. We just know what the other one means or wants to say. I feel as if he’s my brother, except that brothers and sisters are rarely as close as we are.”

  It was easy to see why he appealed to her; he was the man of the moment. It was harder to understand why she appealed to him, and many searched in vain for the extraordinary qualities that made him prattle like a moonstruck adolescent. She was stylish and undeniably lovely: slim, dark-haired, and favored with eyes
that were, to use his words, “gold-brown like a glass of brandy resting on a table in front of firelight.” Even so, she did not seem to belong in his pantheon of goddesses: she lacked Babe’s stellar presence, Gloria Guinness’ transcendental chic, Pamela Hayward’s fabled charm. Lee seemed, indeed, to have no clear sense of her identity, possessing nothing like the cast-iron egos of those formidable females. Just the reverse; she appeared to be spoiled—even he admitted that—and rather shallow.

  But those who were puzzled by his infatuation did not judge her by his standards. He saw her through the eyes of a novelist; he viewed her, as he did all those he enshrined, as a character in a work of fiction. Seen from his perspective, she was a modern Becky Sharp for whom fate had chosen an exquisitely poignant torture: her childhood rival—her sister, Jackie—had grown up to be the wife of a President and the most celebrated and admired woman in the world.

  Lee’s father, John Bouvier III, had been a darkly handsome, blue-blooded wastrel—“Black Jack,” he had been called—who had squandered his inheritance and cheated on his wife even during their honeymoon. After their divorce, her mother had married Hugh Auchincloss, who was boring but safe, rich enough to provide his wife and two stepdaughters with all the perquisites of the privileged class, including estates in both Newport and Virginia. Having learned her own lesson the hard way, the new Mrs. Auchincloss taught her daughters one simple rule: marry money. And they did, Jackie spectacularly well, Lee a little less so, marrying first Michael Canfield, whose father was a well-known publisher, then Stanislas Radziwill.

  Though he was not Kennedy-rich, Stas Radziwill (who, as a naturalized British subject, had no real claim to his Polish title) had made enough money in London real estate to provide her and their two young children with an exceedingly comfortable life: a three-story Georgian town house near Buckingham Palace, staffed by a cook, a butler, two maids, and a nanny; a Queen Anne country house with a huge indoor swimming pool near Henley-on-Thames; a twelve-room duplex on Fifth Avenue; vacations in Portuguese and Italian villas.