Truman Garcia Capote ( / k ə ˈ p oʊ t i / kə- POH -tee ; born Truman Streckfus Persons ; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays are considered important works in literature. He is recognized as one of the founders of New Journalism, along with other writers such as Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe. His work and life story have been adapted into more than 20 films and television shows.

Capote had a difficult childhood because of his parents' divorce, time away from his mother, and frequent moves. By the age of 8, he wanted to become a writer, and he improved his writing skills throughout his childhood. He started his professional career by writing short stories. The success of his story "Miriam" (1945) caught the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, leading to a contract to write the novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He became widely praised for Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), a novella about a fictional New York café society girl named Holly Golightly, and In Cold Blood (1966), a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home. Capote spent six years writing In Cold Blood, with help from his lifelong friend Harper Lee, who also wrote To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).

Early life

Truman Capote was born at Touro Infirmary in New Orleans, Louisiana. His parents were Lillie Mae Faulk and Archulus Persons. He was sent to live in Monroeville, Alabama, where he stayed with his mother's relatives for about four to five years. He formed a close bond with his mother's distant relative, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, whom he called "Sook." Capote described Sook in his story "A Christmas Memory" (1956) as having a face "remarkable – not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind." In Monroeville, Capote was a neighbor and friend of Harper Lee, who later became a famous author and remained a lifelong friend. Harper Lee's book To Kill a Mockingbird may have been inspired by Capote, as the character Dill is based on him.

As a lonely child, Capote taught himself to read and write before starting school. At age five, he carried a dictionary and notepad, and he began writing fiction at age 11. He was nicknamed "Bulldog" around this time.

On Saturdays, he traveled from Monroeville to Mobile, Alabama, and once submitted a short story, "Old Mrs. Busybody," to a children's writing contest. He received recognition for his early work from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1936.

In 1932, he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her second husband, José García Capote. José was a former Spanish colonel who became a landlord in Cuba.

Capote said he began writing seriously at age 11. He wrote for about three hours every day after school, and he was very focused on it. He attended Trinity School in New York City, then St. Joseph Military Academy. In 1939, the Capote family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, where Truman attended Greenwich High School. He wrote for the school's literary journal, The Green Witch, and the school newspaper. When the family returned to New York City in 1941, he attended Franklin School, now known as the Dwight School, and graduated in 1942.

While still in school in 1942, Capote worked as a copy boy in the art department at The New Yorker. His job involved sorting cartoons and clipping newspapers. He was fired after angering poet Robert Frost. He later said he was glad to have the job because it helped him avoid college. He left the job to live with relatives in Alabama and began writing his first novel, Summer Crossing.

During World War II, Capote was called for military service but was not accepted. He later said he was turned down because he was considered "too neurotic."

Capote based the character of Idabel in his book Other Voices, Other Rooms on Harper Lee. He said Harper Lee's parents lived nearby, and she was his best friend. He also said that To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the same small town in Alabama where they grew up. After Harper Lee won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and Capote published In Cold Blood in 1966, the two authors became less close over time.

Writing career

Truman Capote started writing short stories when he was about eight years old. In 2013, a Swiss publisher named Peter Haag found fourteen short stories that Capote had written as a teenager. These stories were discovered in the archives of the New York Public Library. In 2015, Random House published these stories under the title The Early Stories of Truman Capote.

Between 1943 and 1946, Capote wrote many short stories, including "Miriam," "My Side of the Matter," and "Shut a Final Door." He won the O. Henry Award for "Shut a Final Door" in 1948 when he was 24 years old. His stories appeared in both literary magazines and popular publications like The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, and Mademoiselle. In June 1945, "Miriam" was published in Mademoiselle and won a prize for being the best first-published story in 1946. In 1946, Capote was accepted into Yaddo, an artists’ and writers’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. Later, he helped Patricia Highsmith, who wrote Strangers on a Train, get accepted into Yaddo.

In 1957, during an interview with The Paris Review, Capote explained his approach to writing short stories: "Each story has its own challenges, so you can’t apply the same rules to all of them. The right way to tell a story is the most natural way. A story is successful if, after reading it, you feel it is complete and can’t be imagined any other way, like an orange that nature made perfectly."

Random House, which published Capote’s novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (see below), used the success of that book to release a collection of his short stories titled A Tree of Night and Other Stories in 1949. This collection included "Miriam" and "Shut a Final Door," which had first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1947.

After A Tree of Night, Capote published a book of travel essays called Local Color in 1950. This book included nine essays that had been published in magazines from 1946 to 1950.

In 1956, A Christmas Memory, a mostly true story set in the 1930s, was published in Mademoiselle magazine. It was later released as a hardcover book in 1966 and has been included in many editions and collections since then.

At some point in the 1940s, Capote wrote a novel about a summer romance between a socialite and a parking lot attendant in New York City. He later said he had destroyed the manuscript, but in 2004, it was discovered that a house sitter had saved it from the trash in 1950. The novel was published in 2006 by Random House under the title Summer Crossing.

As of 2013, the film rights to Summer Crossing had been bought by actress Scarlett Johansson, who planned to direct the movie.

The success of "Miriam" (1945) caught the attention of publisher Bennett Cerf, who offered Capote a contract with Random House to write a novel. With a $1,500 advance, Capote returned to Monroeville, Alabama, and began writing Other Voices, Other Rooms. He continued working on the manuscript in New Orleans, Saratoga Springs, New York, and North Carolina, and completed it in Nantucket, Massachusetts. The novel was published in 1948. Capote described it as "a poetic explosion in highly suppressed emotion." The story is partly based on his childhood in Alabama.

Years later, in The Dogs Bark (1973), Capote wrote: "The story follows thirteen-year-old Joel Knox after his mother’s death. Joel is sent to live with his father, who abandoned him at birth. Arriving at Skully’s Landing, a large, old mansion in rural Alabama, Joel meets his sullen stepmother Amy, a flamboyant transvestite named Randolph, and a girl named Idabel, who becomes his friend. He also sees a mysterious "queer lady" with "fat dribbling curls" watching him from a window. When Joel finally meets his father, he is shocked to find him paralyzed after an accident. Joel runs away with Idabel but gets pneumonia and returns to the Landing, where Randolph helps him recover. The final paragraph suggests the "queer lady" is Randolph in his old Mardi Gras costume."

Gerald Clarke, in Capote: A Biography (1988), wrote that Other Voices, Other Rooms became a New York Times bestseller and stayed on the list for nine weeks, selling over 26,000 copies. The book’s promotion and controversy made Capote famous. A 1947 photograph of Capote by Harold Halma, used on the book’s cover, caused much discussion. Some saw the image as suggestive, and it led to both praise and criticism. The photo influenced young artist Andy Warhol, who admired Capote and later created artwork inspired by him.

When the photograph was reprinted in magazines and newspapers, some readers found it amusing, while others were upset. The Los Angeles Times described Capote as looking "as if he were dreamily contemplating some outrage against conventional morality." The novelist Merle Miller criticized the image at a publishing event, and it was parodied in Mad magazine. The photo also appeared on the cover of a book by Max Shulman, who copied Capote’s pose. A Broadway revue and a film later featured a skit based on the photograph. Random House used the image in advertisements, and large prints of it were displayed in bookstore windows.

In 1952, Capote adapted his 1951 novella The Grass Harp into a play of the same name. The play later became a musical in 1971 and a film in 1995. He also wrote the musical House of Flowers (1954), which included the song "A Sleepin’ Bee."

In the fall of 1952, film producer David O. Selznick hired Capote to help write the script for Terminal Station. A few months later, in early 1953, John Huston hired Capote to work on the script for Beat the Devil.

Death

Truman Capote died in Bel Air, Los Angeles, on August 25, 1984. The coroner's report stated that the cause of death was "liver disease, along with blood vessel inflammation and drug use." He passed away at the home of his longtime friend Joanne Carson, who was the former wife of Johnny Carson, a late-night television host. Capote often appeared on Johnny Carson's show. Gore Vidal commented that Capote's death was "a wise career move."

Capote was cremated, and his ashes were divided between Joanne Carson and Jack Dunphy. However, Dunphy later claimed he received all the ashes. Carson kept the ashes in an urn in the room where Capote died. In 1988, the ashes were stolen during a Halloween party along with $200,000 in jewelry. They were later found six days later in a curled-up garden hose on the back steps of Carson's home and returned. The ashes were reportedly stolen again during a production of Tru, but the thief was caught before leaving the theater. Carson purchased a crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

After Dunphy died in 1992, both his and Capote's ashes were scattered in 1994 at Crooked Pond, near Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor, New York, on Long Island, close to Sagaponack. This location was chosen because money from Capote's and Dunphy's estates was donated to the Nature Conservancy, which used it to buy 20 acres around Crooked Pond, called "Long Pond Greenbelt." A stone marker marks the spot where their ashes were scattered into the pond. In 2016, some of Capote's ashes, previously owned by Joanne Carson, were sold at an auction by Julien's Auctions.

Capote also owned property in Palm Springs, a condominium in Switzerland that Dunphy used seasonally, and a primary home at 860 United Nations Plaza in New York City. Capote's will stated that after Dunphy's death, a literary trust would be created to fund literary prizes, fellowships, and scholarships using income from Capote's works. This included the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin, honoring both Capote and his friend Newton Arvin, a professor who lost his job after his homosexuality was revealed. The Truman Capote Literary Trust was established in 1994, two years after Dunphy's death.

Personal life

Truman Capote was openly gay. Even though Capote did not support the Gay Rights Movement, his honesty about his own sexuality and his encouragement for others to be open helped him play an important role in the fight for gay rights. In an article titled "Capote and the Trillings: Homophobia and Literary Culture at Midcentury," Jeff Solomon describes a meeting between Capote and Lionel and Diana Trilling, who were well-known New York intellectuals and literary critics. During this meeting, Capote questioned Lionel about his recent book on E. M. Forster, which did not mention the author's homosexuality. Solomon explains that Capote challenged the Trillings' role as critics who valued literature as a way to promote social justice and address prejudice.

One of Capote's early serious relationships was with Newton Arvin, a professor at Smith College who won the National Book Award for his biography of Herman Melville in 1951. Capote dedicated his book Other Voices, Other Rooms to Arvin.

Capote was in a long-term relationship with Jack Dunphy, another writer. In his book Dear Genius… A Memoir of My Life with Truman Capote, Dunphy describes Capote as both a deeply loved partner and a person who became increasingly focused on success and struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. They lived separately, which gave them independence while allowing Dunphy to avoid the pain of seeing Capote use drugs and alcohol. Their relationship became a friendship after Capote's story "La Côte Basque, 1965" was published in Esquire in 1975, but they remained connected. Dunphy was named the main beneficiary in Capote's will.

In 1973, Capote met John O'Shea, a married banker from Long Island, who became his business manager and lover. Their relationship was difficult because both men drank heavily. O'Shea reportedly became verbally and emotionally abusive when drunk.

Capote was often seen with Bob MacBride, a computer engineer for IBM and sculptor. In The Andy Warhol Diaries, Capote's friend Andy Warhol referred to MacBride as Capote's boyfriend and noted in a 1978 diary entry that MacBride had left his wife and children. MacBride described their relationship as a "bond of brothers rather than of lovers." They met in 1972, but Capote stopped seeing MacBride after meeting O'Shea. Capote reconnected with MacBride in 1978.

Capote was known for his unique, high-pitched voice and unusual way of speaking. He often claimed to know people he had never met, such as Greta Garbo. He also said he had relationships with men who were believed to be heterosexual, like Errol Flynn. Capote socialized with a wide range of people, including writers, critics, business leaders, philanthropists, celebrities, and members of high society in the United States and abroad. He had a long-standing rivalry with writer Gore Vidal, which led Tennessee Williams to comment that it seemed like they were competing for a prize. Capote admired authors like Willa Cather, Isak Dinesen, and Marcel Proust but gave only mild praise to other writers. However, he praised journalist Lacey Fosburgh for her book Closing Time: The True Story of the Goodbar Murder (1977).

Legacy

A permanent exhibit at Monroeville, Alabama's Old Courthouse Museum focuses on Truman Capote's childhood. The exhibit shows his life in Monroeville with his Faulk cousins and how those early years influenced his writing. It includes photos, letters, and personal items that describe Capote's early life. Jennings Faulk Carter donated the collection to the museum in 2005. The collection includes 12 handwritten letters from Capote to his favorite aunt, Mary Ida Carter (Jennings' mother), written between the 1940s and 1960s. Many items in the collection belonged to Capote's mother or Virginia Hurd Faulk, Carter's cousin, with whom Capote lived as a child.

The exhibit includes many references to Sook, a family member. Two items are especially popular with visitors: Sook's "Coat of Many Colors" and Truman's baby blanket. Truman's first cousin said that as children, Truman and his cousin could always find Sook in the dark house on South Alabama Avenue by looking for the bright colors of her coat. Truman's baby blanket is a "granny square" blanket Sook made for him. The blanket was one of Truman's most valued possessions, and friends said he rarely left home without it, even during travels. For example, he took the blanket with him when he flew from New York to Los Angeles to visit Joanne Carson on August 23, 1984. According to Joanne Carson, when Truman died at her home on August 25, his last words were, "It's me, it's Buddy," followed by, "I'm cold." "Buddy" was the name Sook used for Truman.

Capote on film

One of the movie's strengths is taking viewers back to the past and into nature. Early scenes show Joel leaving his aunt's home to travel across the South by old bus and horse-drawn carriage. These moments make viewers feel the strangeness, wonder, and nervousness of a child leaving a familiar place to go somewhere very far away, where even asking for directions is needed. The land Joel travels through is described as very rich and full of life, making it easy to imagine the smell of the soil and the sky. Later, when Joel plays roughly with Idabel, a tomboyish neighbor who becomes his best friend (a character based on the author Harper Lee), the movie clearly shows the experience of children playing outdoors.