truman capote

Many moons ago...like maybe 38 years (give or take a few months here and there), my father and his fourth and last wife, Olga, had a little house in La Quinta, Ca. a desert area that is near Palm Springs. La Quinta had been a kind of retreat for many many people who loved the desert but wanted to be outside of Palm Springs, in a quieter more secluded atmosphere....See, there is Palm Springs, then Cathedral City, then Palm Desert and then, La Quinta....as the crow flies.
Back in 1962...before they were married, Daddy Joe and Olga had come to Los Angeles to visit and then went down to La Quinta where they stayed at the only Hotel that was there at that time...the La Quinta Hotel...a famous and very beautiful one-story hotel built I believe in the 1920's....They loved the area. After they were married they decided somewhere along the way that they would find a little house to buy, and then they would spend the winter months there...Connecticut and New York being too cold for DJ.


But, that first time that they traveled to La Quinta they told other guests---people that they met at the hotel---that Olga was his daughter (don't ask)...Daddy was a very old fashioned man and didn't feel comfortable about meeting people while traveling with a woman who was not his wife, so it was easier to say she was his daughter. (In fact he married his third wife for that very reason….he was traveling to France and was going to meet some “important people”…that was really funny because practically every ‘important’ man that he might meet in Franc had a mistress and wouldn’t have thought anything about it….) So, they had rented one of the 2 Bedroom cottages that the La Quinta Hotel had available to carry out this father-daughter deception....
I'm not going to go into this part of the story right now...maybe at another time....except to say that they gave up the "daughter" deception when suddenly one of his "real" daughters, me, refused to go along with this scenerio because I lived here in L.A. and I really did not want to attempt to carry on that lie with people who I would undoubtedly most likely might see again.....this problem was therefore resolved.

So eventually, some years later, they found a brand new little house that was near the La Quinta Hotel, and DJ bought it and the two lots on either side of it to insure privacy and to insure that nobody could build too close, because he did not want any neighbors that might be noisy….This particular area was very very new at the time and in fact there weren’t that many houses that had been built yet….(Now, of course, all these years later I am assuming it is completely filled up….I doubt there would be any lots to buy.) It really was a wonderful little house….two bedrooms, a large living-room-kitchen-dining area all in one sort of, a lovely small pool, and that was it....and it was surrounded by the beauty of the gorgeous montains that one sees everywhere in the desert. A perfect desert getaway house…easy to take care of and easy to close up and leave when they were ready to go back east after the winter months were over….Daddy used the second bedroom as an office and that is where guests like myself would stay when visiting overnight or for the weekend or longer.

They always had a very active social life wherever they went….Daddy being an interesting man and interested in many many things, too…So, often they would have made ‘dates’ with people and I was included in whatever these 'dates' were during those times when I would drive down to spend a few days with them. And it was always very interesting for me, especially interesting if they had a connection to show business or the art world…It might be a party or a gathering at some place, like The Palm Springs Museum, or perhaps a small dinner party at someone's home or a luncheon.

It was one of those times that I was there for a few days that Daddy & Olga had been invited to lunch at Truman Capote’s home in Palm Springs. I was excited about that because of course I admired him tremendously as a writer. I had read the book ”In Cold Blood”, and had seen the film of course, too....and I thought that the book was a masterpiece of writing. I was not alone in that thinking by any means...this book took the literary world by storm and Capote made the cover of Time Magazine among others....You have to remember that at the time Capote wrote this book, no one had really ever written a book quite like it…that now seems very hard to believe because that type of book has been written hundreds of times since….but at the time he was the first and it was ‘new’ and it was stunning, and the quality of the writing was just superb, in every respect.

I had also loved “Breakfast At Tiffany’s, which was 180 degrees away from “In Cold Blood”….and also, I had loved the film of “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, though Capote wasn’t that happy with it from what I had always read, But for audiences, it was a wonderful wonderful film---another treasured performance by Audrey Hepburn. So, this was a thrill for me to be included in this ‘lunch at Truman’s’….His desert retreat was in Palm Springs and though I don’t remember much about the house except it was lovely and comfortable and almost had a tropical feel like Florida because of the foliage surrounding it, particularly as you entered----there was, as I recall, a kind of outer front door that led to this walkway which then led to the actual front door of the house itself and that was the ‘tropical’ part. When we arrived, Capote’s House Man answered that outside door and we could hear music playing as we entered….it was the song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”, by Burt Bacharach….and as we passed the windows of the house in this tropical walkway there was Capote dancing and singing to this music that filled the house….This is an image I will probably never forget…he seemed so happy and enjoying himself as he danced around….unaware, it seemed, that people had arrived. We were the first to arrive, a family trait this being ‘on time’….(If you were invited for 12 o’clock, you arrived at 12 o’clock!) There was no such thing as being 'fashionably late' in my family....we were always early-to-on-time, and that is still the case with all of us to this day.

I don’t remember a great deal about that lunch except that his then great great friend Slim Keith was there and I believe there were a few other people too, but there were only eight or ten of us all together, as I recall. Capote was at the head of the table at one end, (I was seated next to him to his right) and he had put my father at the other end of the table, with Slim Keith to his right.…

I remember thinking at the time about all the different people my father had met throughout his life, and wondered had there ever before been anyone in his life quite like Truman Capote. I don’t think so….But Daddy Joe seemed glad to be there and though I don’t think they saw each other much socially except for Palm Springs, DJ seemed very interested in Capote and seemed engaged by all the other people who were there as well.

In retrospect one cannot help wondering about all that happened in Truman Capote’s life as the years went on….The many people that he not only offended but in some cases, completely devastated when that first excerpt from “Answered Prayers” appeared in Esquire Magazine in 1975.
This was a book he had been writing and working on for years and years….the first book after “In Cold Blood”. In fact, the only book after “In Cold Blood” and the further fact is that this book was never finished, so therefor, it was never published.

The excerpts that appeared in Esquire pretty much rocked the New York Social World and all of the many people Capote had been close to like Slim Keith, felt completely betrayed and pretty much stabbed-in-the-back and all of those friendships ended very very badly. Capote was pretty much barred from any and all of those people’s lives and because of that his life became a very different one from the period of 'The Black and White Ball'. Others much closer to this situation have written in depth about this and there has been an incredible amount of speculation by just about every important literary person of that time as to why he would have written such an obvious and horrible indictment of people who were supposedly his dear friends. And this speculation ran to questions which included things like these: Was the writing of these chapters which were published the most self-destructive act ever ever??? Was Capote trying to prove how truly unworthy a person he really was…..Etc., Etc.....And of course, I have no treal idea and anything I might say wouldn’t even have any validity at all. I do know that many of us saw Truman Capote's decline happen before our eyes on television, We watched as he deteriorated into a drunken and drug filled life appearing on different late night talk shows….often appearing as if he was in a kind of stupor….this was very sad to see….this very brilliant man who for whatever reason destroyed all the close caring relationships of his life in New York and then ultimately never finished this book. Some people have said that there never was 'a whole book'. But his great friend Joanne Carson believes the complete manuscript does exist and that it is in a Safe Deposit box somewhere. She believes this because she found a key that had no identifying marks on it to tell what bank it might belong to and surmised that Truman's manuscipt must be in that Safe Deposit Box. Certainly parts of it did exist, and those parts were the ones published in Esquire. But nothing else of that book ever appeared in print.

I am very anxious to see this new film about Truman Capote….the one with Toby Jones and Sandra Bullock called “Infamous”.
From what I have read and heard it sounds like a not quite as cold evaluation of this very talented man as the previous film “Capote” was….it covers some slightly different material including some of the ‘swans’ he was so close to, like Slim Keith. That is what he called these women….

I try to remember more about that day at lunch and visualize the relationship as I saw it that afternoon between Capote and Slim Keith….truthfully I have no distinct memory of that except I know it was a good relationship…..warm and caring and obvious that they really really liked each other a lot. I think if it been anything else I would have remembered that. But I remember very clearly the particular rendition of “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” that he was playing and dancing to as we arrived that day because it was THE Popular one of the day….And every time I hear that song to this day, the picture of Truman Capote dancing and singing around his home…seemingly very happy and content with his life and his lot at that time….comes to my mind….I see him in his colorful Hawaiian shirt, and wearing some kind of tropical loking casual summer hat. And I remember that that day, he was happy.

That’s what I remember all these years later.


More To Come.....