The Troubled & Troublesome Truman Capote
TALENTED. COMPLICATED. CONTROVERSIAL. — Truman Capote is one of America’s most gifted and hard-working writers who ended up leaving more enemies than friends. / Library of Congress
YOU COULD ALMOST LOOK UP THE WORD, ‘QUIRKY’ in a dictionary and find Truman Capote’s picture there. He was superstitious. He never began, or ended, a writing project on any Friday. If he had checked into a hotel and the room phone had the number, “13” in it, he’d scamper out and change rooms.
Capote is famous for penning such modern classics as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. The latter? For six years, his good friend, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, helped him research and write it. In turn, Lee probably modeled one of her lead characters in Mockingbird — Dill Harris — after Capote. An emotionally damaged and lonely child, the impish lad, starting at the age of 5, went everywhere with a dictionary and note pad.
TRAGIC JET-SETTER — Despite touring with The Rolling Stones and rubbing elbows with some of the richest and most famous people on earth, Capote died leaving hundreds of thousands in debt, from various New York restaurants to Joanne Carson (Johnny’s ex). He even ended up owing a quarter-million on his funeral. / 1958 Public Domain
When he was a mere 11, he changed his name from Truman Streckfus Persons to Truman Garcia Capote in 1935. Of course, it wasn’t exactly an on-purpose move. His mother, who would commit suicide, remarried to a Cuban ex-colonel whose name was Jose Garcia Capote.
The neurotic young man was inducted into the armed services during World War II, but didn’t make the cut. He told a friend he was, “turned down for everything, including the WACS.”
Once in a 1978, the hard-living Capote showed up to an on-air interview completely drunk and was asked by host Stan Siegel: “What's going to happen unless you lick this problem of drugs and alcohol?” Capote’s answer: “Eventually, I mean, I’ll kill myself ... without meaning to.” His writing style? He mostly wrote lying down, surrounded by coffee, booze and cigarettes.
OF COURSE YOU HAVE J&B — The alcoholic Capote drank daily and one of his habits was to walk down the the corner liquor store. His favorite hard liquor was to ask for a bottle of “Justerini and Brooks” scotch, which is the official name for the famous J&B brand. If the clerk didn’t know what “Justerini and Brooks” stood for or said he didn’t carry that brand, Capote would walk out without buying anything and suffer all night from his choice. / Photo by Moscot
Capote was a jet-setter who feuded with a Who’s Who, from Gore Vidal to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Once, the 5-3 author arm-wrestled — AND DEFEATED — Humphrey Bogart on the movie set of Beat The Devil. He so offended American Poet Laureate Robert Frost that Capote lost his job at New Yorker Magazine over it. He hated that Audrey Hepburn was cast as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Though he had been friends with Harper Lee since their childhood days in Alabama, Capote tried to take credit for writing Mockingbird. He was stalked relentlessly by a young artist, whom Capote once described as, “one of those hopeless people you know nothing’s ever going to happen to.” The artist was Andy Warhol.
Capote is the seventh cousin, once-removed, to playwright Tennessee Williams.
