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[Jazz music]

[Clicks]

[Whirring]

[Recording plays]

Woman: [INAUDIBLE]

George Plimpton: Well it's so nice to hear your voice.

I'll tell you what I'm doing; you know I'm doing this

huge history of good old Truman Capote?

Woman: Yes?

Man: And the people that he knew and who talk about him either pro or con

they all seem to have their Truman stories.

Woman: Yes?

Man: And I was wondering if you could gather up some of your memories?

Woman: And one of the most seductive people I ever met.

Man: I thought he was a freak, absolute freak.

Man: One of the most lionized writers since Voltaire.

Man: It's a sleazy bit of work.

Woman: Oh he was wicked. He was fun.

Man: He was totally made out of drugs.

Man: It would feel like a candied tarantula.

Woman: It was still the naughty little kid in Truman.

Woman: I haven't had a good laugh since he died.

[Laughing]

George Plimpton: Do you think he's the writer of the moment?

Do you think Truman's going to be read by generations?

[Birds singing]

Kate Harrington: I'm Kate Harrington and I live in Sheridan, Wyoming.

[Car driving by]

When I was 13 years old I was basically adopted by Truman.

I met Truman in my mother's living room.

And Truman was invited by my father to come have dinner.

And he came in this big limousine

out to our little neighbourhood, about an hour outside of Manhattan.

[Car engine]

Kate Harrington: And of course all the kids came to look at the limousine.

I'd never met anybody who spoke like he did.

Um, and at first I had to run into the kitchen

and take a tea towel, and cover my face 'cause I laughed about his - the sound of his voice.

And then my mother reprimanded me hardly.

After that my father came home one day and said

I'm going to become his manager.

So we said oh that's great.

Wonderful, so we didn't think anything of it,

but he and my father became lovers.

They had an on and off relationship, very tumultuous.

My father had a lot of problems. He was an alcoholic.

When my dad left he left us with no money.

Truman's number was up by the telephone, and so I called him and said

do any of your friends need a helper this summer? I need to get a job.

Truman treated me like an adult

and just said OK, well why don't you come into New York

and we'll have lunch and discuss it?

[Upbeat music]

Kate Harrington: So I took money out of the cookie jar, played hooky,

got on the Long Island Railroad and went into New York. [Train whistle]

Truman told me how to do it because I was so young.

I gave the paper with the address to the taxi

and I went there to have lunch with him.

He said the only thing you can do at your age to make a good bit of money is model.

I thought that was a crazy idea because I had never thought of myself in that way.

He took me to Richard Avedon Studio [camera flash]

and just slowly, slowly, slowly my whole world began to change.

'Cause he opened up the doors of literature, dance,

art, music, fashion.

And meeting all kinds of accomplished people.

[Camera flash]

He always said he was writing a wonderful book about them.

Um, I used to get bored at the lunches

and so he told me once on the way there that what I should do

is sit in the booth and listen to the conversation of the people next to us.

And on the way home I could tell him everything they talked about.

It was sort of fun for him.

And ever since then when I go to restaurants

I kind of do that out of habit.

And I would write in my journal.

Truman Capote: Tell me are you a real writer? It depends on what you mean by real.

Well darling, does anyone buy what you write? [Laughter]

Not yet.

I'm going to help you she said. I can too.

Think of all the people I know who know people.

[Upbeat jazz music]

Fix me a drink darling, then you can read me a story yourself.

In America there is only one social class

that really matters in a cultural sense.

And that is the quote "high society of New York."

I mean you can be the richest

and most famous person in Boise, Idaho and it doesn't matter.

Unless you're famous in New York you're not famous.

These people took him up.

Truman saw everything and he remembered it.

Sooner or later he was going to put it down on paper.

Female interviewer: An assortment of celebrated people pay $50 to sip the bubbly

and exchanged small talk.

Mr. Capote was on hand for a benefit preview of his newest offering.

You're a part of the in-crowd. You're also referred to as the beautiful people,

do you know what that phrase means?

I don't think that any such thing really exists.

It doesn't mean anything. Does it to you?

Female interviewer: I don't know what it means.

Well I don't know then.

Maybe you could tell me.

[Laughs]

Thank you.

Kate Harrington: Truman started his day getting a cup of coffee

and sitting, and talking to gossip columnists.

He'd trade all the gossip and they would discuss all the happenings,

secrets and you know I'd hear him laughing hysterically

that kind of hilarious, guttural laugh.

[Laughing]

Oh well that wasn't in the thing...

[Laughter]

Sally Quinn: He was a fantastic gossip. He knew everything. So you could sit next to

Truman it was just a dream come true

because he would just you know? [Laughs]

Just spill it all out.

So you would just eat it up.

And thank god he [laughs] he never thought he wanted to write about me

'cause God knows what I told him. [Laughs]

And he was bitchy, but he was smart.

I really mean this.

Johnny Carson: Yeah?

That the less intelligent the performer is the better he is.

For instance Marlon Brando is an absolutely marvellous actor,

but he's so dumb it makes your skin crawl.

[Audience laughter]

John Richardson: He'd encourage you to come up with stories

which he would then make much more Trumanesque and-and bizarre,

and conversations with him were-were-were enormous fun

and had very little to do with the truth.

I can't remember exactly when I first met Truman because he was everywhere.

Any sort of big party you went to in New York I mean there was Truman.

You think you could cut that scene out? [Laughs]

Jay McInerney: New York for many of us is the ultimate destination.

The biggest stage that there is. In New York nobody cares where you came from.

Nobody cares you know really even where you went to school

or who your parents are. They just want to know you know how entertaining you are.

[Ominous jazz music]

What are you doing tonight?

Narrator: Call it New York call it whatever you like. The name hardly matters.

Entering from the great reality of elsewhere

one is only in search of a city.

A place to lose or discover one's self.

To make a dream wherein you prove you're not an ugly duckling,

but wonderful and worthy of love.

As you thought sitting on a stoop,

planning your search for a city.

Woman: Why?

His first book at the age of 23 he was -

it was you know a beautiful little coming of age novel

set against a rural background.

A small southern town.

I think somebody - one reviewer called it the Fairy Huck Finn.

[Laughs]

Just about as explicit as you could be back then I guess in a book review.

[Upbeat jazz]

Narrator: Radclif eyed the boy over the rim of his beer glass.

He had his notions of what a real boy should look like.

And this kid offended them. He was too pretty, too delicate and fair-skinned.

Each of his features was shaped with a sensitive accuracy.

A girlish tenderness softened his eyes which were brown and very large.

His hair cut short was streaked with pure yellow strands.

George Plimpton: Well he was rather a spectacle wasn't he?

Nothing ever like him on the American scene really.

I mean a very astonishing figure. Did you invite him to your house often?

[Upbeat jazz]

Jay McInerney: For many years George's parties

were the literary centre of New York City.

George had given me my break and he was taking me around and introducing me to everybody.

And of course inevitably I got to Truman who was very friendly shall we say? [Laughs]

There was a little bit of groping involved, but he was easily fended off you know,

he was playing the aging queen.

You know early success is a bit of a curse.

You can get locked into an image, a persona

which is based on the public's first glimpse of you.

In my case it was the coke-snorting. Night clubbing protagonist of my first novel.

In his case this effete, elfin little southern boy.

Norman Mailer: We lived a block away from one another.

♪ Broadway, Broadway everybody's happy. ♪

♪ Hanging where the nights are brighter than day ♪

♪ All along Broadway.

Colm Toibin: Every gay life in those years took courage.

So much self-invention, so much care, so much work.

So much looking in the mirror

thinking who in the name of God is this that I'm looking at?

Or everyone did

and I think that fed him, and nourished him as a writer.

It wasn't as though he was seeing himself in television, or in the movies,

or represented in any other way.

There was no one in the mirror when he looked.

So then he could represent himself in an entirely new way

with full honesty, full disclosure.

Well this is who I am. I am your local gay.

There has to be one, and I am he.

[Sad piano music]

Narrator: He swished the lavender curtains apart.

Joel's image floated on the looking glass.

His formless reflected face was wide lit

as if it were a heat-softened wax effigy.

It was a strong feeling you know with I don't know

the sort of book crowd that Truman wasn't entirely serious perhaps.

[Reporter speaking in French]

Jay McInerney: There was a sharp divide between high culture and low culture.

And yet Truman kind of straddled that border.

Truman Capote: Would you like me to read a scene from Breakfast at Tiffany's?

[Audience applauds]

Jay McInerney: Most people say him as the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Truman Capote: "I've got the most terrifying man downstairs"

she said stepping off the fire escape into the room.

"I mean he's sweet, but he isn't drunk, but let him start

lapping up the vino and oh God quel beast!

If there's one thing I loathe it's men who bite."

She loosened a grey flannel robe off her shoulder

to show me evidence of what happens if a man bites.

[Moon River plays in background]

Sadie Stein: We all think of Audrey Hepburn now

and of course you read the book and it's completely different.

She's a barely legal teenager from Appalachia or something

and quite openly a prostitute. Makes no bones about it.

And is a strange combination of manipulative and used by the world.

The book is a lot grittier. There's much less of a facade of glamour.

Of course it doesn't have the love story.

What do you think? This ought to be the right kind of place for a tough guy like you.

Garbage cans, rats galore.

Scram! I said take off!

George Plimpton: Oh yeah?

Announcer: Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly searching for love in the big town.

Jay McInerney: I think there's a lot of Truman's own mother in Holly Golightly.

Truman's mother was like Holly from a small southern town.

She was also a bit of a courtesan.

Kate Harrington: Truman's childhood was in some ways heart-breaking.

His mother abandoned him and left him in rural Alabama,

and he got to stay with these couple of aunts

and he - his cousin was his dear friend who he called Sook.

She probably had some developmental problems.

So she saved him.

Narrator: Spoons spin around in bowls of butter and sugar.

Melting, nose-tingling odours saturate the kitchen

and drift out into the world on puffs of chimney smoke.

We are cousins,

and have lived together as long as I can remember.

We are shy with everyone.

Other people inhabit the house and frequently make us cry.

We are not too much aware of them.

Colm Toibin: All of those relationships are distant.

He's brought up in this household

where there's no possibility of either mother or father.

Orphanhood, in other words he was brought up

by the same people who'd brought his mother up.

And so I mean you just imagine

that you know that it's the second generation of people who come from broken marriages.

He said to me once how do you think I felt living there?

I'm little but I'm old.

Kate Harrington: He said here's this little gay, sawed off man.

I guess 'cause he means he was so short. He said it was dreadful.

Come on. [Mischievous music]

Jay McInerney: Truman shared a childhood with his aunts, and with his buddy Harper Lee

in the small southern town which was later immortalised not only by Truman,

but also by Harper Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Kate Harrington: Harper Lee was someone who he loved.

In To Kill a Mockingbird he's that little, annoying boy who lives next door.

Good morning. My you're up mighty bright and early.

Well I've been up since 4:00.

Calpurnia: 4:00?

Oh yes, I always get up at 4:00. It's in my blood.

You see my daddy was a railroad man till he got rich.

Now he flies airplanes.

One of these days he's just going to swoop down here at Maycomb,

pick me up and take me for a ride.

Colm Toibin: I mean people kept letters from him.

There are two early letters both of which I love.

One to the novelist Thomas Flannigan

who is a schoolmate and just a letter saying

all the lies I have been spreading about Thomas Flannigan are untrue.

I promise never to say anything about him to anyone again.

In other words that already aged 10, 11, 12

he was known as someone who made things up and caused trouble.

And he also was known as someone

who could switch identities and wanted to do so.

And the other is to his father.

Narrator: As you know my name was changed from Persons to Capote, and I would appreciate

that in the future you would address me as Truman Capote.

As everyone knows me by that name.

Announcer: Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.

[Whistles]

Kate Harrington: Truman's mother went to New York.

Won't you join me?

Kate Harrington: She was very pretty and she finally captured a rich man, Joe Capote.

I'd marry you for your money in a minute.

Would you marry me for my money?

In a minute.

Kate Harrington: Truman's mother asked Truman when he was in his teens

to come live with Joe Capote and her. And Joe adopted him.

Jay McInerney: Truman's mother was someone who wanted to

achieve success in the city, and in fact did.

She actually lived on Park Avenue for a while and made a splash as a hostess.

Kate Harrington: Later in his life in the 50s

Nina had a very sad end where she killed herself.

So - and Truman always said that, that was the thing that he drank over.

He would say to me I watched my mother die in my arms.

I don't know if that's true, but I - that's what he said.

I mean Truman used to always say

don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Sadie Stein: His mother did not accept him.

Despite his celebrity, despite his brilliance

was never happy about his sexuality.

But to have a parent commit suicide,

especially one with whom you haven't had a good relationship,

that's one of the most traumatic things that can happen to someone at any age.

And...

you don't get resolution for that.

Dotson Rader: He was embittered by his mother. She essentially tossed him out.

I don't know how old he was four, five, six something like that.

And I don't think he ever forgave her for that.

And I think it's the reason he had this terrible need to be loved.

And I don't think Truman ever thought he was loved.

I'm serious I don't think he ever found it.

Hello Carole how are you? Nice to see you again. Well here we are.

♪ "The Girl From Ipanema"

Kate Harrington: He loved Babe more than the others.

And I only say that because he talked about her the most.

Narrator: Isn't it true that an impression of coldness accompanies perfection?

Might it be that what you feel is actually fear?

It is as much fright as appreciation which causes the stabbed-by-an-icicle chill

that for a moment murders us when a swan swims into view.

Truman Capote: I come from St. Teresa;

more tears are shared over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

And I thoroughly believe that to be a great truth.

♪ "The Girl From Ipanema"

Dotson Rader: Women ruled New York society.

At the very top of high society

were some extraordinary looking women

who had great grace, intelligence,

and most importantly great taste.

Sadie Stein: The effort was visible, and the money that went into it was visible.

And I think some of that artistry,

the literal putting on of masks and costumes

must have very much appealed

to someone as naturally theatrical as Truman Capote.

These women were brought up in a world of polish and shine.

Although we were probably doing the polishing and shining.

Someone I know in fashion had her handbags polished by her French maid Yvonne.

Yvonne ironed how $5 bills.

So if she needed to catch a taxi after dinner she'd have a crisp $5 bill.

This is the kind of thing that creates the legacy of style.

And it is permanent. It is a style that goes forever.

And it's aspirational. It is totally aspirational.

Truman opened up these gates to this sort of paradise he prepared for himself.

Colm Toibin: His letters are amazing. If he goes on a boat with five people

he has a vicious thing to say about each of them. Oh her last doctor said no more face lifts.

Or the man who had his face lathered by 10 year old boys every morning.

It's just disgusting and you know, everyone's disgusting. Everyone's boring him.

He's in Greece and he says the only words of Greek he's learned

is "go away fat girl. Go away fat boy."

Dotson Rader: You don't break into that world; you're taken up by that world.

Because the chief problem

that rich people face is the endemic boredom

of living in a social ghetto.

Because one class of people all think the same way.

All who have the same desires, all who have roughly the same amount of wealth

and they bore each other silly.

[Upbeat jazz music]

Dotson Rader: Can you imagine the dinner parties he was invited to,

if he didn't go how boring they would be?

He was expected to perform and perform he did.

Oh God, didn't you ever hear this story?

They had him as the entertainment.

Which must've been exhausting for Truman on some level

to always feel like you had to be on,

but I think he thought it was a small price to pay to get to live that life.

So watch out. [Laughs]

[Water splashing]

Well in those days homosexuality was not acceptable.

There were very, very few people who were out.

But there were you know people used to call them walkers you know?

That - a lot of women would have gay men take them to parties and that sort of thing.

And everybody sort of knew who was and who wasn't, but no one ever discussed it.

I'm sure their husbands did. The word pansy was flying around Park Avenue.

Straight people or as we call them breeders

looked at Truman like they looked as effeminate gay men.

Objects of contempt and ridicule.

Loel Guiness: Gloria loved him. She stayed with him a lot.

I used to say it's bedtime, off you go because he'd talk all night.

Yes pa, off he'd go.

Truman had thought of himself as a master.

And then it becomes clear to him that they think of him as a servant.

And that was a blow.

[Wind blowing]

[Laughs]

[Upbeat jazz music]

Colm Toibin: He didn't get a story. He was out of his own world.

He would lose himself in his own world.

And that story seemed to him Kansas.

It was so far away from what he was doing that it sort of woke him up.

Truman Capote: In Cold Blood is the story of these six people

who died together November 15th, 1959

and my book is the story of their lives and their deaths.

Jay McInerney: He steps entirely outside his world, his comfort zone, and even his genre.

He called it a non-fiction novel.

But until that moment novels had been [laughs] precisely fiction.

Once you blend fiction and non-fiction things get a little slippery you know?

It is dangerous.

This is the new adventure of mine; this experiment is what I call the non-fiction novel.

Colm Toibin: He did a thing that journalists do which is to engrace yourself with people

whom you don't know, who you hope never to see again

but you want to be their best friend

just now because you need to get something from them: a quote, a story.

The difference with Truman Capote was that he did it over a six year period

and that he did it to most of Kansas.

[Birds singing]

Sadie Stein: There's so much speculation about the degree

to which Capote manipulated his subjects especially in In Cold Blood.

That he became very close to Perry Smith

to exhort personal confessions from him to enliven the narrative.

Truman Capote: This is a picture of Perry and these were taken

the very day he was captured and went to prison.

See there they were taken during the course of my very first interview with him.

Colm Toibin: Harper Lee who was there says

the minute he appeared and Truman Capote saw him

he had something that matched, something that worked. It was a sexual thing.

Of course it upped the whole business of his book

because he was writing a book about a sort of figure

that he had come to want.

Which do you think? That's the picture of Perry I think is the best.

Colm Toibin: It's possible to say that he went into the story

with his own Cold Blood.

He was using his charm to get close to all these people.

But he was also emotionally involved.

Be very, very careful how you read this story. He was needy too.

Perry was a strange and difficult boy,

but we became very um, very,

very close too and very intimate sort of

an intense sort of friendship.

Don't know if friendship's exactly the word, but some kind of very intense relationship

having to do with his total loneliness.

And of course because of my work.

His own face enthralled him. Each angle of it induced a different impression.

It was a changing face and mirror guided experiments

had taught him how to bring the changes,

how to look now ominous, now impish, now soulful.

A tilt of the head, a twist of the lips

and the corrupt gypsy became the gentle romantic.

Man: I really think you've written a masterpiece here.

Well, thank you. You'll get a much better dedication

[laughs] because of that sweet thing.

Announcer: A book about this crime by Truman Capote

became a worldwide bestseller.

Now a motion picture brings this book to the screen.

[Gunshot]

Colm Toibin: He wrote too many letters to too many people

in the months beforehand saying

he needed a goddamn execution to end this book.

Saying the stays of execution have to stop.

Meaning these people have to die.

Colm Toibin: This was one side of him you know

he really just needed his book and he didn't care about anything else.

But I think we have to allow for something else to be there too.

It's absolutely clear to me that it wasn't as simple as Cold Blood on his part.

That there was fright of where he had got himself.

Perry was going to die in this horrible way,

in this public way.

You can say to this day that nobody has done a real live murder story as well,

with such an amount of immediacy and clarity, and attention to detail,

and sort of coldness.

This may have been the real Truman Capote.

The rest of the time is just fun, lunch, dinner. Self-invention.

Only person who knows me will be the reader of this book.

[Slow jazz music]

André Leon Talley: In Cold Blood propels him into a world of achievements,

and a world of wealth.

So Truman Capote gave arguable

the only important ball in the 20th Century.

And it is still legendary.

They all met here at the great ball room that we're - the Plaza.

So this was a moment in time. It was a bigger than life event.

As a young black man sitting in North Carolina about to graduate from high school

I immediately ripped the pages of Vogue Magazine out and put the whole thing up on my wall.

[Upbeat jazz music]

My entire room was wallpapered in Vogue pages.

The New York Times did the most unprecedented thing. They published the entire list.

So if you said oh, I was invited to the ball but I decided to go on a vacation

you'd be caught out. You'd be busted and that's what I loved the most.

♪ I'm in with the in-crowd and I go where the in crowd goes. ♪

♪ I'm in with the in-crowd, and I know what the in-crowd knows. ♪

♪ Anytime of the year, don't you hear? ♪

Reporter: All the ladies are wearing masks on Truman Capote's order's

and the inky wretches of the press on his orders also

are being kept at a discrete distance from the guests outside this door.

The people arriving here have come from Rome, from Hollywood,

Venice, Paris, Washington, San Francisco, London

just to go to a party.

540 or so have dressed,

and coiffed, and masked themselves, and presented themselves at the Plaza

for the honour of serving themselves at Truman Capote's bar and saying they were here.

♪ Anytime of the year don't you hear... ♪

Sadie Stein: Maybe that had always been the pathos of his childhood dreams.

Being somewhere grand, having all the most beautiful, important people in the world

in costumes and Venetian masks.

[Flash bulb]

As people made their appearances

Truman like a 12 year old clapped his hands,

jumped up and down saying oh you're my favourite.

Oh, you're the most beautiful. Oh you are the best.

Oh yours is the most successful

to every person that walked into that ball.

My first impressions were coming into the Plaza Hotel.

The New York gossip press was behind barricades.

[Camera shutters] It's the beginning of the celebrity culture in America.

My most memorable moment was dancing with Luciana Pignatelli,

the Princess. She was wearing in the middle of her forehead

a large jewel rented for an unconscionable amount of money.

Waltzing her around the dancefloor I could see these two heavyset gentlemen

moving in time with the music.

They were sent by the jeweller, heavily armed Pinkerton men

to keep their eye at all times on the jewel.

Not on Luciana, on the jewel.

There are many enchanted kingdoms.

Mark Twain wrote "a society that is the sum

of its vanity and greed is not a society at all.

It is a state of war."

And that is the society of Truman Capote

is putting on stage in the enchanted kingdom at the Plaza Hotel.

And the state of war that exists outside of the magic kingdom

is for the moment a temporary truce.

[Whimsical music]

George Plimpton: That's right.

[Flash bulb]

[Upbeat jazz music]

Truman Capote: For the first hours of it before the unmasking

anybody can dance with anybody they want to,

or talk to anybody they want to. It's a completely free thing.

And by the time the unmasking come you've made a lot of new friends.

[Laughs] And that was the point.

Lewis Lapham: It worked wonderfully. It's the same kind of feeling

you get if you're asked to go on a talk show

and there you are in the green room with the famous actress,

and the dog trainer.

And we are a band of brothers. Temporary, temporary.

Of course when we got away from the green room

then we're very happy to knife each other in the back.

Dick Cavett: I didn't get invited to his famous masked ball.

[Laughs]

I first met him on my show.

He has managed to become a darling of the Beautiful People,

so he conducts that life and also manages to get his work done.

Would you welcome please Truman Capote right here?

He would kind of swing out onto the stage

and go like that [claps]

and I thought well this is going to be interesting.

[Excited brass music]

You want to try the hat?

No I can't - I don't need a hat with three balls.

I'm just an average person. [Audience laughter]

I remember watching Truman on stage at Madison Square Garden

with Mick Jagger centre stage

doing his version of grooving.

[Rolling Stones playing in the background]

I remember thinking is this what a writer should be doing?

A whole evening standing on stage while Mick is enthralling the audience.

The people would say it's Truman Capote, it's Truman Capote. Capote, you could hear it.

Truman Capote: A typical one of my notebooks.

Kate Harrington: He had a really hard time.

He would get up rather early and go into his room.

And he would write for about three hours.

But the day to day life with him was incredibly calm and pleasant.

He was delightful. He was very nurturing.

We didn't have too many groceries.

We ate out all the time.

He had canned soup, raw shrimp, and tab soda.

And a lot of vodka in the freezer.

[Upbeat disco music]

Dotson Rader: Near the end of the 60s things began to lighten up for gay people.

A lot of it had to do with protests over the war.

The police had other things to worry about.

You could go to a gay bathhouse and not be afraid the police were going to come in.

Truman and I used to go bar cruising.

Bars became very specific in the appetites they were seeking to welcome.

Prison theme or registry of lollipop with the other sailors.

And this was true of bath houses. They became like little theatres

only they were sexual theatres.

I thought it was fun and then you combined that with this incredible flood of drugs.

I mean eye popping it was unbelievable you couldn't - it was hard to accept.

And Truman found it fascinating.

I found it fascinating because Truman and I shared one thing that we were both voyeurs.

All writers are voyeurs.

[Motorcycle revving]

John Richardson: Truman didn't want to go to respectable nightclubs.

He wanted to go to all kinds of bad places.

[Motorcycle revving]

I mean one which Truman absolutely loved was a lesbian bar

where the lesbians were all in leather.

They all had motorcycles. And the girls were very lively, and they liked Truman.

He got some kind of response from them, and everybody was roaring with laughter,

and he knew just how to sort of get them to as it were perform for him.

And they went along with it.

I think his writing was affected slowly, slowly

because he began to care more about meeting all kinds of people than writing.

And that's why Jack Dunphy his long-time lover

shifted away from Truman.

Truman was drawn to all manner of people.

I mean just the fact that he fell in love with my father

you know who's like this guy from the Bronx, this Irish guy from the Bronx

even though he lived in Long Island.

O'Shay was a banker.

He was vice president of some bank out in Long Island.

And Truman said he met him when he went to open an account.

He was asked that you need a place to deposit money,

and Truman said well I don't know about money but I take deposits.

And Truman said at that point he - he went down on Jack O'Shay

and [clears throat] and as they say [laughs]

he was over the rainbow. So... [Laughs]

Point of fact he'd met him at the East Side Sauna, it's a bath house.

Kate Harrington: I was so happy for my father with regard to his meeting Truman.

Because he seemed happy for the first time in his life.

And I was so, so crushed when the same problems he had -

his violence, and his alcoholism, and his cruelty

he was - he had a cruel side my father -

began to manifest in Truman's life. I was crushed because I had -

my fanciful idea that it was only because he was gay and he was unhappy um, in our home

wasn't the truth.

[Car engine]

They were driving along highways at night-time and they got into a fight.

He slugged Truman and then opened the door and shoved him out of the car.

Truman didn't know where he was and he said I saw this little light in the distance

and I walked, and I walked and I went off into this, and I knocked on the door.

And I said please help me, help me.

And this man opened the door and he looked at me and he said oh my God you're Truman Capote!

He slammed the door in my face. [Laughs]

Hey, don't you think that's a good likeness? In his younger days, his younger days.

Well it's taken from a gentleman old Avedon photograph. [Laughs]

Reporter: How long ago Truman?

Truman Capote: That photograph? [Laughs] It was seven, eight years ago.

He's more handsome now than then. [Laughs]

Truman Capote: I can see something extremely clearly in another person.

All their motivations, and what's making the whole thing turn around.

And do it with great objectivity.

And I hope compassion.

Sometimes not so compassionate.

But if I were to reverse the whole thing around on myself I can't do it.

Jay McInerney: He just embarrassed his role as the celebrity and he became

more of a talk show guest than he did a working writer.

[Big band music]

Well there was a moment on my show

I asked him in effect why do you hang out with all these fancy folks?

And he actually said way back in the events of his life I'm writing about them.

I was going [INAUDIBLE] that these people are my material.

Ah you're there...

And when I now make my forays occasionally it's just to check up.

Is admitting this now on television likely to reduce the number

of invitations you'll get because people will be a little afraid?

Oh everybody knows what the book is about.

No one's going to be the least bit annoyed with me unless they've been left out.

That's probably it.

He must have known that there was danger in all of that.

He talked about his great book you know which of course I'd been hearing about for years.

We had - we all had you know? The book was called Answered Prayers, a great society novel.

And he'd been allegedly working on it since before the publication of In Cold Blood.

Answered Prayers was supposed to be Truman's masterpiece.

He compared himself to Proust, to Remembrance of Things Past

the great masterwork of modernist literature. [Page flipping]

Proust wrote about Parisian high society and the aristocracy of France in his time.

And this was the terrain that Truman was exploring.

He was on the yachts, he was on the private planes, he was on the private islands.

He was privy to the secrets, and the gossip.

I think there was a lot of hope that Truman would pull off something Proustian.

[Paper tearing and then being crumpled]

[Upbeat jazz music]

George Plimpton: Shallow?

André Leon Talley: It was a society he knew.

He was in the inner sanctum of the Agnellis.

He was on the boats.

He was with Babe Paley. He thought he could just change the names

and people won't recognize her.

Bad judgment.

Narrator: Babe Paley had only one fault. She was perfect. Other than that she was perfect.

George Plimpton: Why?

George Plimpton: Oh my, nan.

Piedy Lumet: Oh my dear.

Dotson Rader: When I first met her there wasn't any warmth at all.

Your feeling was who the hell does she think she is?

But with Truman she was very different. She relaxed.

She laughed. They had fun together. It was fun. They were -

you're sitting having lunch with them and somebody says something and they just look at each other.

They don't say anything. They just look at each other and then they start laughing.

Like kids sitting in the children's table

giggling about what's going on at the adult table.

And I thought it was very sweet.

I don't know anyone Truman was with who had that kind of unlimited acceptance with.

And I think that's why he was happy with her. Because she loved him, and he loved her.

What Truman thought he was doing and I think felt justified in doing

was taking the lid off a bowl of shit.

Dick Cavett: Don't you have a book about to appear?

Now for a couple of years we've been waiting for Answered Prayers

and have you turned it over to the publisher yet?

No. I refer to it now as my posthumous novel.

Because either I'm going to kill it, or it's going to kill me.

[Upbeat jazz music]

No matter what happens I'm going to publish a big part of it this coming fall.

Okay, we'll take a short break and we'll be right back...

He finally wrote something that cost him mortally.

This book exposed unspeakably

private things about very, very famous people.

♪ Broadway, Broadway everybody's happy... ♪

[Music cuts off] [Glass shatters]

George Plimpton: That's right, that's right.

It was these thinly veiled identities of people he knew. Stories about their lives.

And outrageous things that people told him in secret,

and it was about these cafe society people that he had known,

these jet set people and he basically told all their secrets.

Dotson Rader: I didn't know that anyone was upset by this magazine.

Two days later I go to this party at Josh Logan's.

Josh Logan's this big director - movie and theatre director in New York.

And his wife's name is Netta Logan.

And who was this sort of a barrel of an Irish cow.

And I - and I go in and barrelling at me across the room

yelling how dare he? How dare he?

Is Netta yelling and literally she's going like this how dare he? How dare he?

And I said what are you - ah, you know what I'm talking about! And she was going on about Truman.

How could he do that? How could he do that? How could he do that to Ann? How could he do that to Ann?

And that's how I found out about it.

Ann Woodward is a blond showgirl and she married old, old New York money.

One day her husband was shot to death.

In Truman's account of it Anne set him up.

Narrator: She grabbed the shotgun and shot what she thought was a prowler.

Only it was her husband with a hole through his head.

You don't think it was an accident?

Come out of the trenches boy, the war's over.

Of course it wasn't an accident.

She killed David with malice.

She's a murderess. The police know that.

Leonora Hornblow: So they say.

[Pills clattering]

Dotson Rader: As a writer I should probably be proud because it shows that

what you write actually can have an effect.

[Sad piano music]

Dotson Rader: She had a terrible marriage. Bill Paley, Mr. CBS

he was famously a womanizer.

Announcer: They undressed in the dark.

None of his tricks caught her fancy.

She lay there like a missionary outraged by sweating Swahilis.

Dill couldn't come.

He felt as though he were sloshing around in some strange puddle.

He felt sticky and strange as though covered in blood.

As he was. So was the bed.

The sheets bloodied with stains the size of Brazil.

As a woman reading it you're like is that even physically possible?

Menstruation is as normal as breathing, or sleeping.

Sadie Stain: What was wrong with her? Was she haemorrhaging?

Clearly this is somewhat exaggerated.

Also was that considered a thing that you would insult someone

by having sex with them when you're? [Laughs]

Sadie Stein: He puts in so much detail about how incredibly unattractive the woman is.

Even by the ungenerous standards of this story the description of her is particularly cruel.

It's like he's trying to hurt, and shock in every single way he can.

Sally Quinn: One response was [gasp] how disgusting.

And the other was [gasp] how could your friend do this to you?

[Thunder cashes]

Narrator: A short, sinister man who looks exactly like Truman Capote

is preparing a fiendishly ingenious crime.

The victim is here at this very table, at this very moment.

And so too ladies and gentlemen is the murderer.

[Screaming]

Is he dead?

We touch nothing. We're all experienced criminologists.

Dick Cavett: The backlash from the individuals was wicked.

About a year ago you published a thing in Esquire. It's a work of fiction.

No it's not.

Well it's not is it? [Laughs]

Who - what friends did you lose if I may be so bold?

No, no three friends that I really liked. And it was -

they were very, very good, very close friends of mine and...

Dick Cavett: It kind of ruined him. It almost was sort of suicide.

Nobody would have known if they hadn't stood up and said I'm so angry.

How dare he say that about me!

It's fiction for God's sake!

Good lord I mean what is wrong with these people? Talk about a lack of sophistication.

If it had been written about me I'd say wonderful story,

who is he possibly writing about? [Laughs]

Sadie Stein: Answered Prayers is an early template for reality TV.

Like the pettiness, the interpersonal stuff. Knowing this cast of characters.

Not really thinking it has larger meaning except in a pop cultural way.

I do think it's a precursor to a lot of what we now are living with.

Dick Cavett: I remember his saying once what are they upset about?

I was a writer. Did they think I was with them because they were so interesting?

[Instrumental jazz music]

Babe said for Christ's sake don't talk to me about Truman.

And then eventually she'd say well all right let's talk about Truman.

Well what's happening now?

Kate Harrington: She's the only one he cried over their friendship ending.

That's why I think he loved Babe the most. Because he spoke about her forever, until he died.

I think he really, really never got over the fact that she disappeared from his life.

The main body of people who he had lunches with, and who he called first thing vanished.

Only CZ Guest stuck by him.

Kate Harrington: I would go to this place called Studio 54.

[Party chatter] [Upbeat disco music]

Once Truman said there's a new place and we have to go.

It's a night club and it's fabulous, and you're going to love it.

Truman was one of the great favourites there oh my gosh.

There was a huge crowd outside.

And little Truman would get out of his limousine

and the guys would see him and make a big path for him

and be like come on Truman. Come on in.

And in you'd walk to this inner sanctum.

André Leon Talley: It was dazzling. It was almost the Black and White Ball.

Except it was public.

It was very upbeat and positive. You felt good at 54.

Kate Harrington: I just sat and kind of watched it all.

Like it was in a movie.

I would stay until he'd make me go home.

So I never saw the real crazy, excessive whatever may have happened after midnight.

André Leon Talley: It was the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah.

People having sex, drugged out of their minds and you'd just have to step over them.

They didn't even know who they were having sex with.

You had to just gaze at the moment of ebullient life.

Narrator: On these evening patrols Joel had witnessed many spectacles.

A girl waltzing stark naked, an old lady dropped dead while puffing out candles on a cake.

And most puzzling of all two grown men in an ugly little room kissing each other.

Dotson Rader: One of the things that made Studio 54 attractive

is you could get cocaine there.

And I mean you didn't pay for it.

It's totally integrated both sexually and ethnically you know?

Boys and boys, girls and girls, girls and boys, mules and fire hydrants. Anything goes.

Kate Harrington: Even though he had so much fun during that he was also beginning

a terrible, terrible addiction to prescription pain medicine.

So that photo of Gloria Swanson and I

where Truman's basically passed out

is indicative of some of the sad things that were going on.

He would come out of it, and go back into it.

He would function and then he would fall apart.

Because I had experience with my father

I knew how to be the adult and look after the adult who was acting like a child.

Where were you last night?

Well I haven't actually been to bed for about 48 hours. I mean you know I...

How come?

Somehow got here today just...

Kate Harrington: I was just going to take care of Truman the way he took care of me.

When I say I'll do something I do it.

Yes sir.

I really, really do it. I'm you know?

Jay McInerney: At the end he unravelled. And he unravelled on TV.

One appearance in particular where he clearly came directly from Studio 54 drunk,

and coked out of his gourd. He was making a spectacle of himself.

Is that you have had a history of alcoholism.

Jay McInerney: It was a terrible thing to see.

How are you coming along with the problem of drinking?

Dotson Rader: Truman had been in and out of rehab.

And as I walked in the room he looked oh hi Dotson.

And he said just a minute I have to take my pills -

Antabuse - I have to take my pill.

They have to see you take it, and he took the pill.

And the nurse left and she shut the door

and he goes works every time. [Laughs]

And he said oh, you want a drink? The bar's over there. [Laughs] It's true.

John Richardson: I was walking near my apartment and I suddenly saw Truman a little aged dwarf

carrying a huge plastic bag full of I don't know what. Bottles and things which were clanking.

[Water pouring] He looked like a beggar. And I said Truman!

Come back and have a cup of tea with me. [Tea pouring]

I got him in. he's very wobbly.

Sat him down and went to put a kettle on.

But by the time I'd made the tea

Truman had emptied a bottle of gin

which I think was half full

and was drunk to start with, but this time he was blind drunk.

And there I was looking an idiot with a little tray with a little pot of tea and so on

and I said look I've made this for you. No interest at all.

And so off he went into the dusk.

I was taking...

Dick Cavett: One program he seemed ill on the show.

And there was a phrase he kept using.

I seem to be going through this terrible haze of pain.

And I said to him one day I said will you cut that out, stop it.

Dick Cavett: I thought he might get up and have to leave.

And he just laughed you know?

Haze of pain is a good phrase though. The writer was still at work yeah.

Narrator: Let's order something that takes forever so we can get drunk and disorderly.

Say a Soufflé Furstenberg could you do that?

The maître d' tutted his tongue.

Soufflé Furstenberg is a great nuisance, an uproar.

An uproar said Lady Ena is exactly what we want.

Jay McInerney: It seems to have been almost a literary hoax in a way.

You know certainly he meant to write it, but

I really - I don't think there's any evidence that anything existed

except the few published excerpts.

Excerpts of a novel that doesn't exist. [Laughs] That's a good one.

Kate Harrington: He wrote on yellow lined legal pads, and he wrote by hand.

He didn't typewrite anything.

So he had so many pads lined up

and so I just assumed as the pile grew

that he was in fact finishing his book.

I don't know what happened to the manuscript,

but I do believe that he had one.

He would tell me that it was just wonderful, and wicked,

and people were going to be so surprised.

And I know some people think the whole thing was a lie,

but it couldn't have been because he was sitting there writing, and writing,

and writing something.

Yeah, I think he completed the book. He said he completed the book.

I mean I don't know if you can find a source that says Truman told me he didn't complete the book.

I don't know, Truman told me he'd completed the book. I thought the book was done.

It was one of his really best friends says that he gave her a key to a safety deposit box.

And indicated that the novel was in there.

But I have no idea what safety deposit box it fits.

There are millions of those things around.

And I don't know how you ever would tell.

4 million, 4 million 200,000, 4 million 400,000.

Maybe 20 years from now, 30 years from now suddenly it's - someone will find it

[clears throat] and you'll have to pay a pretty penny to get it.

But do I think it exists? Yeah.

It may show up in an auction someday, who knows?

Auctioneer: Anyone wish to give more telephone bids?

Someone probably bought it like they buy art

thinking well maybe 10 years from now darling,

this will be worth something.

Just like the de Kooning we bought. [Laughs]

All done? [Hammer fall]

Reporter: When he died at the age of 59

Capote had not finished what he called his final

and most important book Answered Prayers.

The book was about life among the unhappy rich

where Capote spent much of his time. [Sad piano music]

Dotson Rader: When he writes about the rich or the powerful

contempt just bleeds through him.

The most beautiful writing is about people that don't have any money.

Who aren't famous, who aren't celebrated. That's where you see Truman's heart.

George Plimpton: Yes.

[Tape spinning]

[Sad piano music]

Oh, well then you - how can you come here

and talk to me about it?

Jesus, we've been having this big discussion here based on

something that I thought he had this intimate knowledge.

[Laughter]

Dick Cavett: What is heaven for Truman Capote?

I think he probably felt he was in it for a time.

Ballsy little guy.

André Leon Talley: I have Truman's sofa.

The sofa that he was photographed on in Brooklyn.

And I bought some little ornaments for the table.

Little matchstick holders and lots of little things like that.

[Pop]

What I wanted to buy but I regret that I didn't

was a box of cookies.

Truman had gone through his entire life with

ginger cookies made by Aunt Sook.

They were little gingerbread men dried and desiccated.

His Aunt Sook's gingerbread cookies went with him everywhere.

So extraordinary that his childhood meant so much to him.

These things mattered you know?

Kate Harrington: Truman had a composition style notebook.

He just said if you want to live with me you have to write about your life.

So I said well why? And he said because your life's about to change

and it's the only way you'll hold onto who you really are.

So I always think of that with him.

[Sad instrument music]

♪ I didn't know what time it was. ♪

♪ Then I met you, oh what a lovely time it was. ♪

♪ How sublime it was too.

♪ I didn't know. I didn't know what day it was. ♪

♪ You held my hand warm like the month of May it was. ♪

♪ And I'll say it was grand.

♪ Grand to be alive, to be young, to be mad, to be yours alone. ♪

♪ Grand to see your face, feel your touch, hear your voice. ♪

♪ Say I'm all your own.

♪ I didn't know what year it was. ♪

♪ Life was no prize.

♪ I wanted love and I hear it was shining out of your eyes. ♪

♪ Oh eyes and I know what time it is now. ♪

[Jazz guitar solo]

♪ Grand to be alive, to be young, to be mad, to be yours alone. ♪

♪ Grand to see your face, feel your touch, hear your voice. ♪

♪ Say I'm all your own.

♪ Oh I didn't know what year it was. ♪

♪ Life was no prize.

♪ I wanted love and here it was. ♪

♪ Shining out of your eyes.

♪ Oh eyes, and I know what time it is now ♪

♪ And I know what time it is now. ♪

♪ And I know what time it is.

♪ I didn't know.

♪ I didn't know what time it was. ♪

♪ I didn't know. I didn't know what time it was. ♪

♪ I didn't know. Didn't know what time was. ♪

♪ Oh, I think I know.

♪ I think I know what time it is. ♪

♪ I think I know. I know I know what time it is yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ I know what time it is.

♪ I got the time. I got the time. ♪

♪ I know what time.

♪ I know what time. I know what time it is. ♪

♪ Finally I know what time it is. ♪

♪ Finally I know what time it is. ♪

♪ I got the time.

♪ I got the time, I know.

♪ I know what time it is yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ♪

♪ I know what time it is.

♪ Ooh, I know what time it is. I know what time it is. ♪

♪ I know what time it is.