Feud: Capote vs The Swans

This will slay…

They replay them, OP.

Once at a good hour then they replay them at around 10 or 11 local time.

There are two episodes tonight.

I just set my DVR to record the series.

10 PM ET on FX; 5 am tomorrow in HULU

NYT shat all over it—…as dull as dishwater.

That midget fag's tome will never be aired.

R5. You may be right.

Those ladies’ collective negative energy could bring down the Empire State Building.

Ryan, you’ve been warned!

[quote] NYT shat all over it—…as dull as dishwater.

I felt the same when I read Truman's original story but had no idea who the characters represented. Without that real-world information it's not all that interesting.

R7 Read the online Vanity Fair overview, or the many others out there.

They’re quick, fascinating reads and will get you up-to-speed.

So many terrific and tragic individuals…

Truman’s book was overlong.

I’m looking forward to it.

Yes r8 but when I read it the reveals weren't so readily available. I suspect much of the new viewing audience won't understand it's a 𝑟𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑎̀ 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑓, or if they did they wouldn't know who those people were in the first place.

I don't know OP, I smell "FLOP."

Younger generation of GAYS will not understand it!!

F A B U L O U S first two episodes !!

Naomi Watts will pick up a Golden Globe & Emmy for this.

Just Marvelous, attention to detail & exceeded my expectations. They even got Bills art collection right

So far Diane, Chloe and Naomi have the largest parts and all 3 are terrific. Jessica Lange plays Truman's mom. Calista Flockhart has little to do, and I had to remind myself that she's supposed to be Lee Radziwill and Demi appears to be out of the series now that her character has committed suicide. Hollander is excellent as Capote.

Best performance; Happy Rockefellers giant period blood clots all over Paley's bedroom- Oscar worthy.

How could Happy Rockefeller have bled so much in that short of an amount of time without passing out?

Hollanders performance is exquisite.

Loved the juxtaposition of Thanksgiving dinners; elegant, candle lit Palm Beach vs Southern California and the aghast expression on Trumans face without saying a word, we knew what he was thinking when he arrived.

Phyliss Diller was a fun, under utilized touch

Naomi Watts really looked like Babe Paley did in the 1950s in the Jamaica scenes.

The actress playing Jennifer Jones looked nothing like Jennifer Jones.

The biggest problem i see is that unlike "Bette vs. Joan," it's hard to care much about the characters. Babe Paley comes across like a sympathetic person, but the other swans are so cold and superficial, and Capote is such a vile piece of work here.

r7 correcting myself.

When I posted above I did not realize the program is using the subjects real names rather than the pseudonyms Truman hid them under in his story. So that issue is solved but how many Zoomers and Millennials know who the hell Babe Paley was .

The guy playing Truman is very good but not even Capote hit some of those high notes when he spoke.

“Suppose to”, OP? Really?

Russell Tovey is very good. He's simultaneously very sexy but also doughy and middle-class. You can see why Capote found him hot and the swans would think he would be inadequate.

It's fabulous! Truman is something else, and the women are outstanding. Get the Emmy speeches ready!

Looking forward to the rest of the series. I hope Demi returns in some flashbacks; she looks gorgeous. Calista will be back. Naomi, Diane, Chloe--love them.

Jessica Lange...brilliant as ever.

Another bomb from Ryan Murphy.

I love the superhomoerotic Versace Eros commercial they keep showing at the breaks. They know just who their audience is!

This one?

Would John O'Shea really have complained at Thanksgiving dinner about Joanne Carson's house being tacky? It seems fancier than anything he would have known.

This is one fucking good show.

It's crap.

r25

I thought the same thing; better choice of word would’ve been “weird” rather than “tacky” […”this weird Mexican themed thanksgiving”] etc something like that as we the audience & Truman know it’s a fucking tacky Mexican decorated house [circa early1980’s Taco Bell] but who made him an arbiter of taste all of a sudden ?

It’s SO SHOCKINGLY TRASHY that Capote would drag his closeted dumb-hung-full-of-cum trick outta the bathhouse and introduce him to Babe Paley, CZ Guest, Slim Keith ?!?!? Truman got off on those fancy bitches knowing who was filling his hungry whiny hole!! They weren’t impressed and in doing that he confused them with being gay men.

[quote] This is one fucking good show.

Nice try, Ryan.

I fucking LOVED it. LOVED. IT.

It was absolutely sumptuous. Two small quibbles. Why- WHY would they have CZ Guest say "Don't get it twisted?" And they had Truman mention 60 Minutes in 1955 and it didn't air until 13 years later.

But I adored it. I'm intrigued by this John O'Shea.

Calista is doing a fantastic job in her role as Lee. She really brings out Lee’s better qualities, all two of them.

[quote] And they had Truman mention 60 Minutes in 1955

You missed a time jump. It was then 1975.

R8 what book was overlong? It was a magazine article! The book was never completed—duh.

(r34) the book was published - as unfinished - in 1986

As I wrote: it was never completed. How as an I completed book too long?

I had no idea Jessica Lange was in this. That makes me want to watch it.

Tom Hollander is not charismatic enough to draw focus, not impressed with him so far.

They should have gotten this guy to play Capote

The scenes where Hollander goes on at length are annoying. Or rather, he’s annoying. I keep thinking, talk fucking faster, or be less monotone. It’s a fine line between portraying Capote and Beverly Leslie, and I think he’s doing well enough at that, but he’s not wowing me.

[quote]You missed a time jump. It was then 1975.

You're not correct. It was still the 1950s. He said it at the Selznick vacation house in Jamaica the first time he met the Paleys and told everyone at dinner the story of how Ann Woodward shot her husband.

[quote]How could Happy Rockefeller have bled so much in that short of an amount of time without passing out?

I guess no one else is willing to jump on this grenade, so: It's not like bleeding from an injury, it's what was the lining of the uterus.

I suppose you could also search DL for "Jill learns about periods."

For those who've read Le Cote Basque- the idea that Happy bled intentionally is a new wrinkle made up for the show, right? In my mind, it was always an accident. And it was only ever on the sheet and mattress.

Btw Tom Hollander is doing the Capote laugh just like Phillip Seymour Hoffman did.

I think Demi Moore as Anne is a bit of an odd choice, but her role is so small I guess it doesn’t matter much. Chloe as CZ is so good! She is my favorite. Chloe understands this culture; she used to say in interviews that she was a blue-blood from Connecticut.

Actually, now that I think about it Demi is perfect. She automatically gives NOCD vibes which is the whole point.

They're almost certainly going to bring Ann Woodward back in as a character since they keep playing around with the time scheme.

I'm curious, too, if we'll get to see the debacle of the televised "Laura" production Capote convinced Lee Radziwill to do which wound up being so humiliating for her. I'm sure we'll see stuff about the lawsuit Gore Vidal brought against him at the end of his life, and Radziwill's involvement in that.

I haven't seen the episodes yet. Is there a good opening credit design like for the first series?

r47: yes. It's done in the same style. The music is not as good, however.

The music during the opening credits is horrible, no idea what happened there.

Enjoyed the first two episodes, but there's something about the direction which feels quite sluggish. It's smooth, but also slow. Actually, quite swan-like, now that I think about it, so maybe it's apropos.

Lange turning up was such a delight, she's ageing gracefully, which is nice to see.

I'm loving the exploration of Truman adoring these ladies, but also being disgusted(?) by them and their lives. This is what DL often feels like, what with the love/hate thing we have going with the fraus of the world. The violent scenes were hard to watch, especially because I'm not used to seeing gay domestic violence.

Hollander is just tremendous, there's no other way to describe him in this role.

[quote]the idea that Happy bled intentionally is a new wrinkle made up for the show, right?

No, he says just before she leaves the room, he sees her face and can tell that she did it on purpose to punish him for his Jewish audacity.

Which is pretty silly, she could have just turned him down.

Except the blood stain as big as Brazil on the sheet Sidney Dillon was trying to dry in the oven was Marie Harriman's, not Happy Rockefeller's, regardless of what the show says.

Originally it was believed to be Nelson Rockefeller's first wife, Mary as he was then governor. But the story allegedly happened when Averill Harriman was in office before Rockefeller was elected. And while Mary Rockefeller was slim to the point of thinness, Marie Harriman fits Capote's description perfectly: “That’s why he wanted to fuck the governor’s wife,” Coolbirth says, “revenge himself on that smug hog-bottom, make her sweat and squeal and call him daddy.” Mary Rockefeller was not a hog bottom and I doubt she was the type Nelson could "make her sweat and squeal and call him Daddy."

Whoever it was, it wasn't Happy. Nor was Sidney all that happy if Capote's story is true. but no matter: when Babe showed up at the pied a terre, he pretended to be asleep in the bed, sans bottom sheet - still in the oven - and she didn't want to disturb him and left.

*

The only thing more tiresome than this series is you old fruits bickering about its minutia.

I thought it was really strange they had the governor's wife be Happy Rockefeller and then present her as a spiteful bitch the other swans despised.

Happy was famously known to be a pleasant person since she was a child (which is why she was given the nickname Happy in the first place).

And r53: dry up. If you don't like old fruits discussing historical minutiae about a historical miniseries, you have absolutely no business being here in the first place.

Minutia - just the one ? 🤭

Gays sure love watching crap.

I LOVE Diane Lane's Lady Slim Keith; she is my favorite "SWAN". Babe Paley is "way too needy" and only cared about herself (and Bill's $$$$$ and power). Lady Slim reminding Babe "that men never change", don't divorce him, get more artwork".

I was interested in the weird 60s and 70s jewelry Babe was sporting and then sharing with Slim Keith in her bedroom. It all looked like costume jewelry because the pieces were so large and almost none of the gems were faceted (they were all mostly cabochons).

[quote]The only thing more tiresome than this series is you old fruits bickering about its minutia.

You're *much* more tiresome, r53...

None of the threads you start are anything to brag about, r56

To R58, I noticed that too, my ex-Mom-in-law told me that last night. Mom told me that was the style way back in the day. She showed me her "Ceylon sapphires, cabochon style bracelet from a set" The sapphires look like "robins egg candy "set in platinum". She has 2 sets in Blue!!

R53 it's crazy that you're on the site at all, let alone clicked on a subject you consider to be "crap."

R41, When Truman ventures out to the terrace, we hear the waves crashing and later, Truman tells Babe that he saw Bill take one of the female dinner guests to a cottage on the property.

I believe that dinner scene was still 1955 at that island destination, though that house and dinner setting looked a little too sophisticated for an island abode.

If there was a time jump, why wasn’t the year shown on the screen as it was for other years?

Ann Woodward was not in the same league as the swans and I don’t believe they would attend her funeral.

FUN FACT

Both of the Woodward sons also committed suicide by jumping.

I never considered Lee Radziwill to be a part of that group. She was far too remote and her friendship with Truman was individual, not with those other ladies.

And Lee Radziwill never would be seen wearing that Pancho Villa sombrero that Calista wore at lunch after Ann Woodward’s funeral.

Was Babe Paley emotionally void? She had minimal relationships with her four children.

Not all mothers are maternal.

R59 still swanning around dearie?

Really, r68? Is that supposed to be a burn of some sort?

R66

Upper classes typically, still to this day, send their children as young as 10 to boarding school, have nannies that look after the children [Jackie & Lee both relied on nannies, boarding schools for their kids as well]. So Babe’s behavior wasn’t seen as cruel or atypical to others in her social class but to an outsider from the lower ranks [Truman], yes it’d appear she was “an awful mother” because middle class mothers are much more involved as they have no other option but to be.

Notorious interview with Capote

To R66, YES, she was emotionally empty!! When Babe's 4 children were not being raised by nannies& others, they were at her 1st husband's Stanley Mortimer home, who married Kathleen Harriman. FYI, her EVIL stepmother was Pamela Digby Churchill Heyward Harriman, who married Governor Averill Harriman, Kathleen's father, and was the widow of Leland Hayward, the Broadway producer who divorced Lady Slim Keith( my favorite Swan).

[quote]the Broadway producer who divorced Lady Slim Keith( my favorite Swan).

Cunts

I'm just glad to see these fabulous actresses working.

Amanda Burden, Babe’s daughter from a previous marriage, was rumored to be one of Ted Kennedy’s flings back in his prime.

Babe and Bill Paley leaving La Cote Basque.

In the 1975 Esquire Magazine issue that contained Answered Prayers, there’s mention of a POLAROID photo that falls out of a book and it depicts Bill Paley standing in shallow ocean water with his swim trunks pulled down and displaying a “mouth watering dick”.

r75

r76

Like mother, like daughter … these upper crust dames enjoyed their men HUNG…

Amanda Burden was being torn in half by Charlie Rose’s (notoriously) humongous white cock for 20 years.

Inspirational story of exemplary human beings. I'll be rooting for Babe's cancer.

I can’t find it on the Internet, but I remember seeing a candid shot of Babe Paley with four of her upper front teeth missing.

She obviously wore a bridge and she surprisingly allowed herself to be photographed smiling broadly without the bridge.

I read that here years ago!! Car accident, I think!

See people, datalounge is good...the more you know OP!

“Did Babe Paley wear dentures?

She had secrets. Indeed. Babe had to deal with Paley's womanizing, her embarrassment about her front teeth and facial scars (she lost her front teeth in a bad car accident and had to wear dentures) and because she made sure she was always available to Paley, she ignored her four children as a result.”

[quote] because she made sure she was always available to Paley, she ignored her four children as a result.”

well, what's the use of mistresses if you have to always make yourself available? Doesn't he have some whore on call for that?

These ladies are our AMAZING role models! Does their wardrobe come in size 18?

First Feud was Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The were bitches but they were talented bitches. They were recognized as women of accomplishment in their profession. Swans is about a gaggle of no talent cunts who married well. Avatars of pointless bitchery. No wonder DL adores them.

[quote] So Babe’s behavior wasn’t seen as cruel or atypical to others in her social class but to an outsider from the lower ranks [Truman], yes it’d appear she was “an awful mother” because middle class mothers are much more involved as they have no other option but to be.

Amanda Mortimer Burden has said in interviews that her mother Babe Paley was particularly inattentive even by the standards of their social class. She just was fundamentally not interested in raising children. I think she was a better grandmother, though, than a parent .

[quote]—The Swans of Data Lounge

Speak for yourself, r83, I remain as sylph-like as I was in college. If you don't watch your figure...nobody else will.

Amanda was a pretty bride.

Here's a photo of Capote and his abusive and controlling lover John O'Shea.

As you can see, O'Shea was not nearly so well built nor as physically imposing as Russell Tovey (though Capote did boast about O'Shea's supposed enormous cock).

Treat Williams was born to play Nelson Rockefeller.

Lange looks like Wayland Flower's puppet, Madame. She also has trouble maintaining a Southern accent.

I had forgotten that Treat Williams had a high voice naturally, with is a bit at odds with his bearish appearance in this.

R88 more like O'Shit! The Swans were right about him.

Jessica Lange looked more like Joan Crawford in this than she ever did in Joan & Bette.

Lee Radziwill had one big thing the other Swans didn't get....Peter Beard's DICK

^ Sure Jan

Well I can't wait to see the recreation of the black and white ball.

R65, there was an 18 year age difference between Babe Paley and Lee Radziwill. Babe may have represented super-chic 1950s high society, but by 1962, when Truman first met Lee, she was a young, hip, jet setter with immediate access to the White House. I think Truman's friendship with Babe was already waning as he gravitated towards Princess Lee. And she stuck by him even after the Esquire article, ultimately betraying him around '79 during the whole Gore Vidal lawsuit fiasco.

The scene with Jessica Lange telling Truman it was time to take his life... that was harsh.

Treat Williams plays William Paley, not Nelson Rockefeller.

R99: I know that, but if they're going to include that harlot, Happy Rockefeller, it would have been better to cast Treat as Rocky and find someone else to play Bill Paley.

Treat Williams was born to play Lee Radziwill.

Well he'd be better than she was playing anything at all, r101.

Whatever the mess of the Jessica Lange scene was it was extremely watchable. She’s just a compelling performer. She just is. It’s why she is the Oscar winner of the whole lot.

Only Chloe comes close

Agree r103. Went on a bit, but she is very compelling.

I actually loved the Lange scene. She was phenomenal.

I disagree about who comes close, though. After Lange, Watts is the best actress in the cast, and then Lane. I love Chloe Sevigny, but she is always, always, always the same in every role.

always?

It's just so downbeat. And one-note.

I really enjoyed reading all this stuff years ago. Watching it dramatized is pretty boring. Not juicy at all.

I like what Demi Moore is doing with her voice (at least in the preview). Ever since General Hospital if have found that guttural aspect of her voice slightly hard to listen to, but it has smoothed out so much I did not recognize her.

My new drag name will be Unhappy Rockefeller.

Yeah, poor ole Happy seems to get the short end of the stick in this whole series.

Plug it up, Happy!

Didn't Nelson die on top of some poor bitch?

Yes, r113: her name was Megan Marschak, and she worked in his office. When he had his fatal heart attack he was on top of her, and instead of calling an ambulance right away, she called a female friend and they spent more than an hour trying to resuscitate him before they called 911. it was a big scandal (by that time he had recently been Vice President of the United States under Ford).

SNL began the Saturday after the scandal broke with Don Pardo announcing (in his extremely serious voice), "'Emergency!,' starring Megan Marschak, will not be seen tonight, so NBC can bring you the following special presentation..."

wow, thank you r114. Never heard that about SNL. That is hilarious.

The series is depicting the wrong Rockefeller wife. It was Nelson’s first wife Bill Paley was fucking, not Happy.

R114, In his will, Nelson left Meghan some expensive artwork and he paid for her condominium.

The family honored his requests and she has kept silent since 1979.

She would be 70 years old now.

[quote] The series is depicting the wrong Rockefeller wife. It was Nelson’s first wife Bill Paley was fucking, not Happy.

Actually, i don't think it was either.

I re-read "La Cote Basque, 1965" today, and "the governor's wife" is described as "pig-eyed," "somewhat porcine, a swollen muscular baby with a freckled Bahamas-burnt face and squinty-mean eyes; she looked as if she wore tweed brassieres and played a lot of golf," and also as "a Cretinous Protestant size forty who wears low-heeled shoes and lavender water."

Happy and Mary Rockefeller were both reasonably thin, and were neither of them ever a size 40. This sounds far more (as someone else posted above) like Mary Rockefeller's predecessor as the First Lady of New York, the formidable Marie Norton Harriman. Here's another photo of Harriman during her term as First Lady.

[quote]SNL began the Saturday after the scandal broke with Don Pardo announcing (in his extremely serious voice), "'Emergency!,' starring Megan Marschak, will not be seen tonight, so NBC can bring you the following special presentation..."

The ethos that produced throwaway lines like this was why the original SNL was so amazing. People who've never seen it don't realize how far the show has fallen.

was thinking that too r119. It's a cruel joke, but damn it's funny. And when's the last time that show did anything truly daring?

That sounds like a Michael O'Donoghue creation. Today's SNL cast would faint if asked to deliver some of his lines.

Another SNL opener from the 1970s:

In 1979, after delivering flop after flop for new TV series (like "Hello Larry!" and "Supertrain") to re-brand NBC, the newly hired CEO Fred Silverman decided to revive the network's peacock symbol (which persists to this day) with the bewildering promo tagline "NBC: Proud as a Peacock!" They were last in the ratings still, and so most people thought they had nothing to be proud about.

So SNL parodied it before an episode in this way, sung to the same tune and with the same animated imagery:

After Ellen Corby's stroke, the show began with "'Grandma Walton Tries to Tie Her Shoe' will not be seen tonight, so NBC can bring you the following special presentation..."

Nelson and Happy Rockefeller had two sons together.

Couldn’t they sue for the way their mother was falsely depicted?

Didn’t Olivia sue for the way she was depicted in the Bette/Joan “Feud”?

[quote] Didn’t Olivia sue for the way she was depicted in the Bette/Joan “Feud”?

Yes, and look what happened to her.

I believe R118 is correct. Bill Paley was definitely not fucking Happy Rockefeller.

r124: you can't libel the dead.

Once she died, Happy Rockefeller became fair game, even if what they're saying is inaccurate.

I’m sure Happy cheated on Nelson at some point; god knows he cheated on her and they were both married to other people when they started their affair. But she married Nelson in 1963 at age 36, and their sons were born in 64 and 67.

I know 1965 is the year of the fictional story, not necessarily the events that inspired it, but why fuck Bill Paley when you’ve already recently landed a older man who is even more powerful, wealthier and better looking? I’d imagine Happy was happier bedding some younger tennis or riding instructors when she needed to scratch that itch.

Well, I don't think it really happened r128, but I think the whole thing here is people are fucking each other mainly out of boredom. Why fuck Bill Paley? Cause he's there, you're there, why the hell not? Obviously these people aren't all in deeply meaningful love relationships. It's about getting the money and the status and then realizing how tiresome it all is, really.

Loved the shot of him watching the swans with his trousers flapping wildly in the wind, mirroring what he said about swans furiously paddling under the water.

Wonder whatever made someone think of casting Russel Tovey as the gay guy who insists "I'm not a fag".

I'll happily plead ignorance on the subject - but can women actually hold and release their periods at choice as the Governor's Wife (whichever governor it actually was) was meant to have done?

And I'll pick whatever Thanksgiving Carlos...uh...Diego is at.

r76 So that's a great beauty, is it?

A sort of beauty r130, a WASP model of style and perfection. Not some Hollywood beauty. Something else.

r131 So a beauty for their set. The same way people described Princess Margaret as beautiful but never actually said "for a royal".

[quote]And they had Truman mention 60 Minutes in 1955 and it didn't air until 13 years later.

Also, Babe in a 1968 scene says she just got off the Concorde, which didn't start flying until 1976. So yeah, a couple of outrageous mistakes that should have been caught by history consultants, assuming Baitz allowed any near his script.

Sort of r132, but I think more of an ideal in a very specific setting. I don't know why I'm finding it hard to put it into words, but a refinement, more than something more obvious or more universal.

[quote]That sounds like a Michael O'Donoghue creation. Today's SNL cast would faint if asked to deliver some of his lines.

Ha! Them and the rest of the country. He was brilliant but far too edgy for these sensitive times.

Years ago I read Megan Marshack did get Rocky dressed before she called a doctor but in her haste got his shoes on the wrong feet. This was noticed when they arrived.

damn, that would be such a nice touch for this show r136, although of course it's not at all about that, but now I kind of wish it were.

I liked it a lot, and thought Richard Lawson's review in Vanity Fair was a good take on it.

"Written by playwright-turned-TV-creator Jon Robin Baitz and largely directed by Gus Van Sant, Capote vs. the Swans allows itself some fun. This is, after all, a ridiculous milieu, this sozzled writer flouncing around with his ladies who lunch. A show that seems mostly intended for the ardent attention of gay men, Swans lets its core audience revel in the dark thrill of seeing Demi Moore, as Ann Woodward, hurl the f-slur at Capote in a fancy Upper East Side restaurant. Delicious! "

That's garbage, R138, hardly a review, basically a press release.

The AV Club review offered some actual criticism.

You mean it matches your opinion so obviously it's the "right" one

Just read La Cote Basque. The motive for the governor's wife doing what she did is quite different. In the show, it was revenge for having jilted her. In the story, at least in "Sidney Dillon's" mind, she did it because she was angry/disgusted that he gave her a flirty look. It was for him being so presumptuous. I understand why they changed it.

Another thing- Lee Radziwell is a character in the story, but he never mentions her by name. He keeps refering to her as Jackie Kennedy's sister- like so many times it seems like an intended slight towards her.

Made for fascinating reading in light of the show. But, I don't know how all that great it is. I can't see it as a chapter in a larger work. It seems like Truman was trying to be provocative, but I think it just comes off as dirty.

I thought the period story was odd. For one, that’s just not how women perceive their periods. Women don’t see them as disgusting, it’s just a fact of life. It would be embarrassing to bleed unintentionally, but it would never be used as an act of revenge. That’s just nonsense. Also, I’m assuming it had supposedly happened years before? Because all the women were post-menopausal age.

R142 I suspect that if it happened in real life, it was an accident. In the story, Sideny does get away with it, and the story was told originally BY Sidney to another mistress.

So maybe Paley got away with it, and Babe learned about it reading La Cote Basque. That would make her anger at Truman even more understandable.

I know Truman eventually got ahold of Bill to try to make amends with Babe. He just said "My wife is dying of cancer. I don't have time for this" and hung up on him.

Naomi Watts is excellent in this.

I wish Chloe’s character had held her ground more against Diane Lane. You get the feeling that if Babe and CZ had been left to their own devices, they would have forgiven him.

Maybe he didn’t deserve forgiveness though. Who knows.

Give a backstabber a second chance at your own risk

Still no TORRENTS to be found. Grrrrrrrrr

R133 doesn’t understand, or clearly missed, the frequent time jumps.

R148, Any and all “time jumps” were clearly labeled on the screen.

Ryan Murphy clearly played fast and loose with easily researched facts.

Mistakes were made.

Do watch more closely …

Do watch while sober, R150.

[quote]Just read La Cote Basque. The motive for the governor's wife doing what she did is quite different. In the show, it was revenge for having jilted her. In the story, at least in "Sidney Dillon's" mind, she did it because she was angry/disgusted that he gave her a flirty look. It was for him being so presumptuous. I understand why they changed it.

I read it yesterday too, and it's more than just a flirty look he gives her: he crudely propositions her out of the blue ("Excuse me, my dear, but do you want to fuck or not?") while she's making small talk to him. The Bill Paley character thinks she played the menstruation trick on him out of spiteful anti-Semitism: "She had mocked him, punished him for his Jewish presumption." Capote makes a lot out of his Jewishness and says the WASP establishment is always excluding the Paley character because of this.

I just don't think you can read any of this as stuff that necessarily actually happened. There may be an element of truth behind the event but Capote was infamous for ridiculously embroidering his gossip to make it more sensational (his greatest legacy as a writer, of course, is his blending of fact and fiction in "In Cold Blood").

If this really happened to Bill Paley, I'm sure the governor's wife just spotted the bed sheets and mattresses (not with "stains the size of Brazil"), and I doubt she consciously choose to menstruate excessively (I don't even know that women can do that). It was probably just an accident if it happened at all (especially given that in the story--told to the narrator third-hand--the governor's wife says nothing as to why she did it or even says that she's aware she did it.) . Capote was malicious, so he often ascribed malice to everyone else.

Nobody gets it right: Vanity Fair says it's Mary Rockefeller, "Rockefeller's second wife." She was his first wife. Happy Murphy was the second one.

But quoting from the novella, Dillon sits next to the governor’s wife at a dinner party, flirts with her, and invites her up to his New York pied-à-terre, at the Pierre, saying he “wanted her opinion of his new Bonnard.” After they have sex, he discovers that her menstrual blood has left a stain “the size of Brazil” on his bedsheet.

Who knows if any of what Capote wrote actually happened, but a blood stain "the size of Brazil" was what he wrote.

And, as above, the lady in question was Marie Harriman, the wife of former NY Governor Averill Harriman.

I though it was Marie of Romania

Perhaps it was the Countess de Lave

You mean "Mrs Buck Winston"!!

Any ladle's sweet that dishes out some gravy.

- Miriam Aarons

r66

Occasionally, over the years, Babe made parental gestures both grandiose and small. She arranged for Mainbocher, one of her favorite designers, to create a new uniform for the Westover School while Amanda was a student there. When Billie was nine, Babe dressed him for Halloween as a penguin in black felt and a white vest she had made herself-a feat that was duly reported in Women's Wear Dailu.

I will say it would be interesting if Andy Cohen did this to his housewives and spilt all the real dirt on

Luann

Lisa Vanderpump

Kyle Richards

Somehow…I feel like Bethenny would be spared somehow ala CZ.

Andy Cohen’s new short fiction “Viila Bianca, 2015” coming in next month’s Vogue.

[quote] Nobody gets it right

Several people in the thread above you (including me) have posted it's meant to be Marie Harriman.

I was the first to do so, R161, way back in 51. When I say "nobody" I'm referring to the error-filled article in VF.

Watching and I am OH

MY GAHD!

ENTERTAINMENT LAWYER 02/01 **4**

Mr. X: What former ‘80s teen actress who’s been having a bit of comeback lately playing the ex wife of a late night legend hasn’t been immune to stories emerging about what a horrible person she is? Talk about perfect casting. Molly Ringwald/Joanne Carson/Johnny Carson/”Feud: Capote vs. the Swans”

Could it actually have been Charles Nelson Riley that Bill Paley slept with? If you think about it, he would have left blood stains as big as Brazil…..

Informative doc

What stories are emerging about Molly Ringwald?

Here's the Brat Packer with some of the Swans

Yes, how is Ringwalk a horrible person?

DL icon Arlene Francis was so proud of her Black and White Ball mask, she wore it the following Sunday on WML?.

Lee and Truman - 1967.

R165 —Paul Lynne

OH FUKING DEAR!

[quote]Talk about perfect casting.

Was Joanne Carson an asshole?

r171

Thanks for sharing that.

I had no idea that Lee faced such tacky judgement (to her face = being asked not once but twice about her sister in a very brief interview). People really didn’t have tact in interviews around that period.

Not that Lee was known for being warm, friendly or approachable. She was well known for being haughty, a total snob, and as others have judged Babes parenting skills, Lee was also distant from her two.

[quote]I suppose you could also search DL for "Jill learns about periods."

Damn. Now I'm craving pizza bread.

I adore the wig on Naomi Watts. That hairstyle was just amazing.

I thought Chris Chalk was supposed to be in this, playing James Baldwin. But he's not listed in IMDB.

[quote] I thought Chris Chalk was supposed to be in this, playing James Baldwin. But he's not listed in IMDB.

He's in this in a later episode. imdb has not listed the complete casts of the later episodes yet.

One of Bill Paley’s frequent escorts after Babe died was Diane Sawyer, prior to her marriage to Mike Nichols.

I hope Halston makes a cameo appearance.

Apparently someone plays Peter Sellers in at least one episode -- does that have to do with "Murder By Death"?

Already shown, R180.

I've only seen episode 1.

A campy mess--entertaining enough to see once but not to rewatch. I wonder how they will pad this thing out, because they've essentially told the main story already. These women trusted their little mascot, forgetting that writers use what they know. Somerset Maugham famously used all the people in his life as characters and basically said "what did they expect". Of course, he was extremely wealthy and a great host, so they enjoyed his company. Truman had less to offer. Babe Paley comes off as tragic. I'm surprised Slim Keith doesn't have a little more subtlety.

[quote]These women trusted their little mascot, forgetting that writers use what they know. Somerset Maugham famously used all the people in his life as characters and basically said "what did they expect".

I believe Jackie Collins confessed to doing the same with 'Hollywood Wives'. Didn't she make many enemies back then once the book and mini-series was released (1983-84) ?

R174. She was being judged, not judge-ed.

He was as cunt. They were all pricks.

Not the makings of a great novel, much less a great movie.

[Quote] I wonder how they will pad this thing out, because they've essentially told the main story already.

I'm looking forward to the Black and White Ball

Late to the party. I love that poor treat Williams plays the cad (RIP)

Jacking off Truman capote is a repellent idea

For episode 1, is there much difference between 'The Director's Cut' and the network episode ? MY DVR recorded both, I haven't watched 'Director's Cut' yet.

R190, Why even bother watching the non-Director’s Cut?

R191 Because it is shorter than the Director's cut.

Sevigny is fug and can’t act for shit. And even though she’s apparently from a wealthy Connecticut family she always reads like trailer trash.

Watched the first two episodes. I like it, but something is missing; or I'm waiting for something, but I don't know what. Good performances.

I want to hear the 'Molly is a bitch' stories.

[quote]but something is missing; or I'm waiting for something, but I don't know what

A freewheeling patio number!

All the more reason NOT to watch it, R192.

[quote]Jacking off Truman capote is a repellent idea

We all have our price, dear.

apparently

Wacking off Truman Capote doesn't sound like fun.

abuse

Painful!

[quote] I'm looking forward to the Black and White Ball

Episode 3

Still.

R193 FWIW Chloe Sevigny has said in interviews that although she grew up in Darien Connecticut, they were considered the local bohemians as her father was an artist and there was no money. Her first job was sweeping the tennis courts in the country club that her father was too poor to pay to be a member.

Friends went to school with her and concluded that she gave off airs of “manor born” even if she wasn’t

Chloe always does read trailer trash. She would be brilliant as someone who got fired from Dollar Tree and found hope as the second shift register at Dairy Queen.

She always has a place at the Dairy Queen.

I'm enjoying it, but I agree I've no idea how they're going to stretch this out for eight episodes. Slim Keith is already beyond tedious.

The guy playing Babe's husband leaves a lot to be desired, in the acting department.

R209 . . .

[quote]In an earlier version, Dillon had been based on W. Averell Harriman; the woman he had been in bed with was his mistress, not someone he had lured home for a night; and the bloodstain she had left behind had been a mere spot, not a splotch the size of Brazil.

We may have been racking our brains for no reason.

At any rate, it was inevitable that this series would tear Datalounge apart.

Jimmy Dean predicted it.

Oh good r203. I was wondering, are they going to do it, before quickly realizing, How could they not?

Lauren Bacall and Jerome Robbins at the 1966 Black and White Ball.

FLAVVAH

They should have cast Chloe as Lauren.

How ‘Capote vs. the Swans’ Predicted Everything About 2024 Culture

How long can you listen to EJ and his analysis?

r210 Well, shit. Had I known that, I would not have complained.

R193 I critiqued some of her lines in another thread, but her delivery of them has been excellent. She's even got down a smug nose-tip dip that happens when someone is fully amused with themselves and lowers their upper lip. Demi is the coarsest, no doubt by design.

It would've most likely been impossible, but Cate Blanchett would've been an ideal Slim, even if she did put on wt as she aged more than, say, Radziwell

Ringwalds Joanne Carson is believable as a big tacky floppy bird that hasn't the grace of a swan, but is equally matched in size, if not taste.

I never knew Joanne Carson was an LA 'socialite'.

To R221, neither did Joanne Carson!!

Well either way, this whole "socialite" idea is impossibly vulgar. Who are these women?

Which one, R223? Brooke or the Mystic Rose?

The Mystic Rose, r224. Little Brooke, I fear, has backslid.

Chloe doesn't come off as trailer trash to me. I guess when I hear "trash" I think of a particular kind of Midwestern trash that I grew up around, and she's not it.

Is no one going to spill the beans on these rumors of Molly Ringwald's atrocious behavior over the years?

Is Molly Ringwald going to do anything in this?

[quote]LA 'socialite

Oxymoron

Candice remembers the Black and White Ball

Saw that on CBS Sunday Morning this AM, R230. Candice looks good, if a bit jowly.

That’s Katie in the pic😵‍💫

The expression is "to the manner [not 'manor'] born," Penelope Keith's sitcom notwithstanding.

slow night at the bathhouse..... or no budget for extras/backgroundplayers...

(they could've shared the Canadian background players in the Fire Island disco from Fellow Travelers!)

And while the production values and set decoration have been great, I was expecting to see a closeup of the nacreous layer of permacum.

All about Babe in 20 minutes...

[quote]slow night at the bathhouse

I imagine any steam room Capote was in would've quickly emptied

damn, r237, that is so perfectly bitchy I think even he would appreciate it.

The Capote enacted in this movie is a horrible person in the first two episodes. Why would anyone want to be his close friend or lover.

He also seems like an extremely annoying individual. I don't care what literary masterpiece you have written, if you are an asshole without any other redeeming qualities, nobody is going to want to hang out with you.

What exactly was Truman Capote offering that could not also be found in ... say, Tony Randall?

Boredom r239. Well, not sure about the lover part, that was partly cause John O'Shea was kind of a nutcase and may have been looking for fame or a new experience or who the hell knows.

But I do think a running theme through the lives of these women is boredom. Somebody entertaining in a world of stiffs and preening bastards is probably a godsend. Somebody who can take them out of themselves for a few hours a day. Somebody who they don't have to pose and model for, and pretend to be perfect for. Yes, I think they love that. He was fun in a way they just weren't used to, compared to always meeting the same damn people and the same damn types of people at every goddamn charity ball and art opening and gallery and restaurant and on and on and on.

People find assholes entertaining if they think they'll be spared, or at least if they think they'll only insulted in ways where they can laugh at themselves.

I’m reading Capote’s Women, the book on which the series is based. Here’s an excerpt:

“In the published story, Truman included a character named Dillon, a successful businessman clearly based on Bill Paley, and laid out the tawdry details of his supposed one-night stand with what was obviously the very real Marie Harriman. The story is told by Lady Ina, who had an affair with Dillon when she was young. He had asked her never to repeat the story, but oh well. . . .

The event in question had happened back in the late fifties, when Marie’s husband, Averell, was governor of New York. Lady Ina set the question out bold and straight: “Why would an educated, dynamic, very rich and well-hung Jew go bonkers for a cretinous Protestant size forty who wears low-heeled shoes and lavender water? Especially when he’s married to Cleo Dillon, to my mind the most beautiful creature alive.”

“Cleo Dillon” was, of course, a thinly veiled Babe Paley. And why Bill (or Dillon) would cheat on her with the governor’s wife was simple and direct: the Harrimans were the center of power and the epitome of the Protestant Establishment that had barred the Jewish businessman from its clubs and his sons from its schools.

As successful as Dillon was and as much as he had assumed a WASP identity, he was still a Jew banned from the Racquet Club, an exclusion that rankled him profoundly. If Dillon could just sleep with the governor’s wife, he would get even for all these brutal slights. “Whether he confesses to it or not, that’s why he wanted to fuck the governor’s wife,” wrote Truman, “revenge himself on that smug hog-bottom, make her sweat and squeal and call him daddy.

The businessman and his wife had a pied-à-terre at the Pierre. As relayed in “La Côte Basque 1965,” that was where Dillon[…]”

Dillon thought the governor’s wife had done this to get even with him. He had no time to worry about that. He had to get the sheets clean before his wife returned from out of town. The businessman did not finish until eight in the morning, when he fell asleep on the soggy sheets”

Here’s the rest of the paragthat got truncated:

“The businessman and his wife had a pied-à-terre at the Pierre. As relayed in “La Côte Basque 1965,” that was where Dillon brought the governor’s wife. There was only the marital bed in the small apartment. She insisted that he leave the lights off. It did not go well, and she was already dressed and leaving when he turned on the lights. As he looked down on the bed, it could have been the severed horse head scene in The Godfather—that was how bloody the sheets were. The governor’s wife was having her period.”

Oh Jesus now Molly has a little dog too.

I've always thought "Lady Ina Coolbirth" a stupid name. It was a poor choice on Capote's part.

I like “Coffinbirth” better.

[As successful as Dillon was and as much as he had assumed a WASP identity, he was still a Jew banned from the Racquet Club]

Was that part of Babe's allure to Bill Paley? Her sister was married to Jock Whitney and their Long Island estates were next to each other (Kiluna Farm and Greentree). I read Whitney was one of those rare WASPs who was not anti-semitic and was able to get Paley memberships in some of the "restricted" clubs.

Her sister Betsey lived until the late 90s at Greentree, which was considerably more lavish than Paley's estate. And died still owning quite the art collection.

The Picasso alone, Garçon à La Pipe, fetched over $100 million.

I hope Ann Woodward's story is featured more in the next episodes. In fact, I'd rather they concentrated on just her and ditch the other "swans." I know Dominick Dunne wrote The Two Mrs. Grenvilles about her and then there was a movie with Ann-Margret and Claudette Colbert, but there was so much more to that story. It had everything - money, sex, murder, and suicide, eventually ending up wiping out an entire branch of the Woodward family tree. The best book about the Woodwards was Susan Braudy's "This Crazy Thing Called Love" which was really the last word. They should base a movie on it.

R251, It also had the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who were interviewed by the police because they had attended the same party as the Woodwards the night of the shooting, as were all the party guests.

I’ve read the book this series I based on. The book was amazing, the show not so much.

I’ve only watched the first episode, hopefully it will get better. I do not like the time jumps.

I feel the first episode could’ve done a better job introducing the characters. The general public most likely doesn’t know who these people are or why we should care.

Ah yes, R252, and weren't all the guests interviewed and quoted as saying Bill and Ann were "ideally suited" or something like that. The Duchess was fond of Ann Woodward, perhaps recognizing another successful "climber" stuck in an unsatisfying marriage. You can actually tour the murder house, now called the St. Pius V Chapel. It's actually just a small, rather ugly house, the "Playhouse" to the large Sunken Orchard estate. The Woodward's living quarters were relatively tiny.

I agree about the jumps in time. Would it have been so hard to just flash a year on the screen each time? Big fan of Naomi Watts and she does well but for me the whole thing plays like a 1980s d-list mini-series. Calista Flockhart looks amazing though.

They do flash a year on the screen each time. Are you reading DL on your phone while you watch?

[quote] Was that part of Babe's allure to Bill Paley? Her sister was married to Jock Whitney and their Long Island estates were next to each other (Kiluna Farm and Greentree). I read Whitney was one of those rare WASPs who was not anti-semitic and was able to get Paley memberships in some of the "restricted" clubs.

Babe had been famous even before her marriage when she was considered the most beautiful of the three Cushing sisters (their father was an eminent Boston society neurosurgeon). She was an editor at Vogue, and had married as well as her sisters had: Betsey had married first James Roosevelt, the son of FDR and Eleanor, and then Jock Whitney, the published of the NY Herlad Tribune. Her other sister Mary became the second wife of Vincent Astor.

Babe's first husband was Stanley Mortimer, who was incredibly handsome and the heir to a New York oil fortune. When they divorced, she was considered an incredible prize. Paley's marriage to her ensured he was allowed into the WASP establishment, although a very few things (like membership in the Racquet Club) eluded him because he was Jewish. He treated babe mostly as a trophy, and made her quit her editorship at Vogue after their marriage. He was hypercritical of her, which is why she carried around the golden notebook shown in the first episode even to dinners: so she could write down all her faults and try to improve them.

We know all that 257…. Why the repeat?

I'm sure the Woodwards lived in the mansion. The playhouse was a pleasure pavilion. Do I have this wrong?

To annoy you specifically, r258.

You failed.

Many of these women were socialites in New York "High Society", and they lunched in their little "cliques" at "La Côte Basque", a French restaurant in town. Several had estates on the "Gold Coast" of Long Island, which is on the North Shore, and which had been a prime location for grand estates at the turn of the century.

Very informative. And had they family money, R262? One wonders how it was feasible financially for them to lead idle lives of social activity.

C. Z. Guest's husband, Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, was a Churchill as in the Dukes and PM, and his mother was an American - Phips, whose father was partners in Carnegie Steel. He grew up in a huge mansion in London. $$$$$$£££££££££

Here's Capote who comes across well here, but Groucho is annoying. They briefly discuss Capote's 'The Grass Harp'

R265 Where?

[The playhouse was a pleasure pavilion. Do I have this wrong?]

Yeah. They lived in the playhouse which included a covered tennis court that they rented out to the Cinerama Corp.

well who lived in the mansion?

R268 The McCanns lived in the Sunken Orchard mansion (wife was a Woolworth). The Woodwards bought only the residential side of the Playhouse and approximately 25 acres including what had been the main entrance to the estate, now renamed Woodward drive it would only be used for the Playhouse.

R251 The Two Mrs. Grenvilles was a fucking awesome mini series.

To 270, the book "The Two Mrs. Grenville's" was fucking AWESOME!! GREAT MINISERIES TOO!!

It's my favorite Nick Dunne book, great, bitchy novel.

Here's Capote who comes across well here, but Groucho is annoying. They briefly discuss Capote's 'The Grass Harp'

Here R266

Next episode is Masquerade. In 1966, documentary filmmakers the Maysles brothers capture the events leading up to and following Truman's iconic Black and White Ball.

Why would the Duke and Duchess of Windsor attend a dinner party in such a squalid outbuilding?

Because they were squalid.

Masquerade trailer

[Why would the Duke and Duchess of Windsor attend a dinner party in such a squalid outbuilding?]

LOL. They wouldn't. The party was held at George F. Baker's place at Peacock Point, not far from the playhouse. Edith Baker was mother to Grenville Baker, Bill Woodward's closest friend and part time homoerotic fixation. (Dunne used his first name for his novel.) Poor Grenville was also shot and killed. You won't find anything about him on the Internet except for a Boys & Girls club named after him in Locust Valley.

R274, The party in question was held elsewhere.

I liked the one directors cut episode. Some of it was interesting, the extended scenes with Babe, worth watching. Why is there only the one?

They really should've introduced each woman through Truman in the first episode, hell, even using different actresses, could've been better, before telling their stories through their older selves, (First Wives Club made it work).

I did get my mother to watch, and she hadn't heard of many of these women, but after the two episodes she was all over YouTube, I'd imagine many other younger Boomers are doing the same. For her that was when she was a little kid, so major nostalgia factor going for this series.

As an elder gay of 72, I was well aware of each and every Swan.

I remember reading about someone asking Edith Baker (rich, rich rich) about what she talks to the Duke & Duchess about when they come to stay with her.... "Oh you know, where they've been, who they stayed with, and where they're going next."

[quote]he book "The Two Mrs. Grenville's" was fucking AWESOME!!

Oh, dear.

Actually........... you can find stuff on the Bakers and poor 27-year-old hottie Grenville if you look hard enough. The article gets it a little wrong. The Bakers place where Grenville died was in Tallahassee, not Palm Beach, and was called the Horseshoe Plantation, set on 11,000 acres.

Too Stanford Blatch-like.

Interesting side-note. Grenville Baker, like Billy Woodward, married below his "class," to a woman they called a "Mexico City girl." Like Woodward, Baker was planning on divorcing her. He changed his will to cut her out. The night he died, he had picked up a waitress ("a young divorced tavern car hop") who was with him in the jeep when he was shot and killed. They never solved the case and the Bakers, like the Woodwards, used their money to hush the whole thing up but it looks like the spurned wife may have paid someone to do the deed. Someone really should do a series about it. These "Swans" are boring in comparison.

That Masquerade clip is so short. Someone mentioned the Maysles. I hope it goes into Lee hoping it would be about her but having it end up being about the Edies.

Hair, makeup, costumes

That Lou costume designer is like someone doing an impersonation.

Grenville "Beans" Baker pic.

Ann Woodward was always jealous of her husband's oldest, and closest, friend. He was a hotter, richer catch than Billy was. Ann would taunt him: "Admit it Billy. You want a man in our bed!" He knew exactly who she was referring to. I mean Damn Beans!!!

Alicia they screwed you girl.

The Widow ("I was in Mexico City Bitches!"), on the right, next to her dead husband's sister paying their last respects to the prettiest boy on the North Shore.

Does anyone know if the mini-series The Two Mrs. Grenvilles is online anywhere? It's was probably the best mini-series of 1987, and is even harder to find than Sins and If Tomorrow Comes.

Following the Woodward trend...Eighteen years later, Grenville Baker's brother takes his own life with a shotgun at the same Fla. plantation. Bang Bang. Who says money doesn't buy happiness.....

^^make that 28 years later.^^

I trust that the nickname had nothing to do with flatulence, r289.

And then there were none. George F. Baker III, 66, dies in plane crash in 2005.

I used to work for an older attorney who represented a lot of the "Swan" families. He knew the Woodwards and the Bakers. I asked him about the high death rate among the very rich. He said he didn't know why, but if you read about an heir to a large fortune going down in a private plane it was probably suicide.

R292 the only place I’ve ever found it is this Russian site. It looks a little dodgy, but I’ve watched several movies that are downloaded here and never got any malware or hacks. Sorry don’t know of a “cleaner” link.

Awesome. Thank you!

That's only half the show though.

Yeah thanks R297! Right away you can tell it's better than anything Ryan Murphy has come up with lately.

R299 I think this is part 1.

I went back to re-read "La Cote Basque, 1965" last week, and that inspired me to finally read the rest of "Answered prayers," which I could never get through before.

It's amazing to me that Capote kept talking it up so much when it's so bad. He must have known it would be--it's not even well written. There's just no point to it. it's just gossip about café society types and gay-friendly celebrities like Tallulah Bankhead mixed in with details about sleazy mid-century sex workers.

There's also no way he could have stretched it into an entire cohesive novel. The three chapters have very little to do with each other, although they have the same protagonist (based on Capote but made to be taller and more attractive) and some of the same characters wander through each of the three stories.

The Two Mrs. Grenvilles was just as good as I remember it being. I know it had about 10 times the budget but the art direction and acting (imperfections and all) is on a whole other level compared to Feud.

THANK YOU TO R301 I just reread that book and now am going to watch the miniseries

Ann-Margret always walks like she has shit her pants.

Do alcoholic successful writers write good books decades into the boozing?

Now they would never cast somebody Ann-Margaret's age for that part, when she met him she was around 30 so A-M is too long in the tooth although she plays the part well.

???? most of the actresses in Feud are too old for their parts, too.

But r308 I don't think they are playing the young characters of themselves too?

The Princess Lee was in her early 30s in 1965. Flockhart is 59.

I didn't realize that r310

[It's amazing to me that Capote kept talking it up so much when it's so bad. He must have known it would be--it's not even well written.]

I think you're right It was terrible. But I don't think Truman honestly knew, or maybe he couldn't give back the advance. He gave the "La Cote Basque piece" to Larry Grobel, his biographer, who told him it stunk (in so many words), you will lose your friends, don't publish it. But Truman went ahead and the editors at Esquire probably figured, hey, it's his funeral, let's run it. By that time, Truman was worse off than Judy Garland, a fogged-out, pharmaceutical-ingesting nightmare with a vodka-soaked liver who couldn't perform anywhere near his previous personal best. Bitter and self-delusional. He broke Babe Paley's heart by publishing that disgusting piece. After Ann Woodward's death in 1975, Elsie Woodward had the last word... "Well, Ann killed Billy and now Truman has killed Ann so I guess that's that...."

Oh please, the Swans deserve no sympathy. They kept him around because he gossiped and bitched about others, anyone could've seen he'd do the same to them in time. Leopards Ate My Face scenario

Leopard-print on my face

Exactly, R313. They were all equally horrible cunts. And then one out-cunted them. He was also their minstrel gay. Their Jack McFairyland.

R307 Ann-Margret looks every one of her 45-plus years in Mrs. Grenville, but she plays a great floozie and deserved her Emmy nomination.

Claudette Colbert was 84 when she filmed, but still knows how to throw a sassy line or two. The one after she banishes Ann from society: "I'll have the seafood salad. Put a little extra vinegar in the dressing".

You don't have to take sides and be either Team Truman or Team Swans. They were all horrible people.

The Forgotten Swans

'Feud: Capote vs the Swans' features amazing fashion of legendary ball

The preview for tonight's episode has Ann Woodward being thrown out of the plaza after Capote insists loudly in front of other people, 'Show this murderess the door!"

That would NEVER have happened. He would have had his ass sued up and down for slander if he had said that in public in New York City, since Woodard had been absolved of murder. (The only actual time he implied to her she was a murderess was in Europe, and even then he didn't state it directly.)

Portraits of a Swan - Zac Posen: The Inspiration

"Why tell the truth when you can tell a story?" -- Ryan Murphy

Zac sounds like a moron.

Nothing has ever been gayer in human history than Zac Posen in that clip above commenting about how vissshiousss actual ssswansss are!

"Show this murderess the door". Even if it never happened, it's hilarious and sounds like something Capote would say.

It's very cruel. What could she have done to make him say it?

This show is severely lacking. I'm watching now, and it drags on and on. The more I watch the more I despise TC. He was obviously a user, and those women were clueless.

Truman and Babe Paley are talking about invitations to the Black& White Ball..."It must have a crisp edge."

Seriously, shoot me in the fucking head.

R308, Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea near the end of his writing career and that is the only book of his I truly love.

It happens.

But I think there's alcoholics and then there's Capote. A different level of drunk.

It's weird that the Maysles brothers would ask Babe Paley in 1966 about "gay men"--they would be far more likely to say "homosexuals."

It's weirder still that Lee Radziwill would pronounce "guillotined" as "GILL-uh-teened." But then again, last week, Babe Paley pronounced the name of the perfume Calèche as "KAL-uh-SHAY."

Where is the thread for the new episode??

The dramatic liberties they took were so heavy handed, such as all the women telling the Maysles brothers they thought the special guest of honor would be then, and then pretending afterwards they didn't think that at all, as if they had forgotten they had been filmed earlier. That was ridiculous. So was the idea the Maysleses would let Capote scrap the entire documentary after they had filmed and edited it all and that they would not put up a fuss.

The only really funny thing in the whole episode was the depiction of poor Katherine Graham as nervous and absolutely terrified at the Ball, and then looking aghast when Capote explained for the camera how her husband had killed himself.

The acting is much better than the writing. Flockhart, Watts, and especially Hollander are first-rate. Sevigny is not doing anything she doesn't always do, but she's so vastly entertaining in that terrible wig. Lane was very good this episode, but they desperately need to give her character more back-story. and motivation--so far she's pretty much just a hard mean bitch.

[quote]r57 I LOVE Diane Lane's Lady Slim Keith; she is my favorite "SWAN".

Yes. She actually married a succession of interesting men (Howard Hawks, Leland Hayward, etc.), not just money machines. I seem to recall her as being the most naturally down to earth, too.

Love the series but tonight's episode was disappointing. I'm a massive fan on the Maysels, and this is just not how they operated. They used only one camera, for starters.

Though I loved Jerome Robbins and Betty Bacall dancing. That was fun.

Truman arguing with Slim about his inviting “Pamela Harriman” to the Black and White Ball.

Another sloppy mistake.

Pamela did not marry Averell Harriman until 1971, five years after the ball.

Joanne Carson was not invited, yet the series has her attending.

At least it gave us a memorable exchange.

Joanne: Where’s Johnny?

Truman: Probably fingering one of the coat check girls.

In order to shame those who had pretended they’d received invitations, Capote leaked his guest list to the press. The day after the party, the New York Times printed all 540 names.

Here is the complete guess list to theMasked Black & White Ball: Mr and Mrs Gianni Agnelli, Count Umberto Agnelli, Edward Albee, Mrs W Vincent Astor, Mr and Mrs Richard Avedon, James Baldwin, Miss Tallulah Bankhead, Cecil Beaton, Mr and Mrs Harry Belafonte, Marisa Berenson, Candice Bergen, Mr and Mrs Irving Berlin, Sir Isaiah and Lady Berlin, Mr and Mrs Leonard Bernstein, Mr and Mrs Benjamin Bradlee, Mr and Mrs William Buckley, Mr and Mrs Richard Burton, Prince Carlo Caracciolo, Lord Chalfont, Dr and Mrs John Converse, Noël Coward, Mr and Mrs Walter Cronkite, Mr and Mrs Sammy Davis Jr, Oscar de la Renta, Marlene Dietrich, Elliott Erwitt, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Mrs Marshall Field, Mr and Mrs Henry Fonda, Joan Fontaine, Mr and Mrs Henry Ford 2nd, Mr and Mrs John Kenneth Galbraith, Greta Garbo, Ambassador and Mrs Arthur J Goldberg, Mr and Mrs Samuel Goldwyn, Henry Golightly, Hamish Hamilton, Ambassador and Mrs W Averell Harriman, Mr and Mrs William Randolph Hearst Jr, Mr and Mrs Henry J Heinz 2nd, Miss Lillian Hellman, Elizabeth Hilton, Horst P Horst, Christopher Isherwood, Maharajah and Maharani of Jaipur, Senator and Mrs Jacob K Javits, Lynda Bird Johnson, Philip Johnson, Senator and Mrs Edward M Kennedy, Mrs John F Kennedy, Mrs Joseph P Kennedy, Senator and Mrs Robert F Kennedy, Alfred Knopf, Mr and Mrs Joseph Kraft, Mrs Patricia Lawford, Mr and Mrs Irving Lazar, Harper Lee, Vivien Leigh, Mr and Mrs Jack Lemmon, Mr and Mrs Alan Jay Lerner, Mr and Mrs Alexander Lieberman, Mr and Mrs Robert Lowell, Mr and Mrs Henry Luce, Shirley MacLaine, Mr and Mrs Norman Mailer, Mr and Mrs Joseph Mankiewicz, Mr and Mrs Walter Matthau, Mr and Mrs Robert McNamara, Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon, Mr and Mrs James Michener, Mr and Mrs Arthur Miller, Mr and Mrs Vincent Minnelli, Mr and Mrs Samuel I Newhouse Sr, Mrs Stavros Niarchos, Mike Nichols, Lord and Lady David Ogilvy, Mr and Mrs Gregory Peck, George Plimpton, Prince and Princess Stanislas Radziwill, Mr and Mrs Jason Robards Jr, Governor and Mrs Nelson A Rockefeller, Philip Roth, Baroness Cecile de Rothschild, Baron and Baroness Guy de Rothschild, Theodore Rousseau, Mr and Mrs Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Mrs David O Selznick, Mr and Mrs Irwin Shaw, Mr and Mrs Frank Sinatra, Steve Sondheim, Sam Spiegel, Mr and Mrs John Steinbeck, Gloria Steinem, Mr and Mrs William Styron, Mr and Mrs Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Ambassador and Mrs Llewellyn E Thompson, Penelope Tree, Mr and Mrs Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, Mrs T Reed Vreeland, William Walton, Mr and Mrs Edward Warburg, Andy Warhol, Mr and Mrs Robert Penn Warren, Mr and Mrs John Hay Whitney, Mr and Mrs Billy Wilder, Tenessee Williams, Mr and Mrs Edmund Wilson, Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Darryl Zanuck.

R336, Arlene Francis and Martin Gabel are not listed, yet there are photographs of them arriving.

Murphy isn’t exactly historically accurate. Look at the Hollywood series - it was mostly fan fiction.

Babe Paley sounded like a shallow idiot when she went on and on about stationary.

All the swans getting angry and saying “Turn off the camera!” in various scenes was irritating. This episode was disappointing. It felt very disjointed.

R339 Her stationary bike?

We were taught in grammar school that stationery is spelled with an “er”, like the word paper.

Looks like I'm the shallow idiot! Thank you r341 and r342

We are ALL shallow idiots, r343.

That's what makes the Datalounge so wonderful!

Marisa Berenson would have been about 18 at the B&W Ball.

‘Feud: Capote vs. The Swans’ Director on Dramatic Liberties Taken for Black and White Ball Episode

Babe Paley was basically just a social climber. As one of the Cushing sisters, she was part of an effort by a Bostonian to launch daughters into NY Society which would have been amusing to the upper crust of both places. Her father was a very prominent (nationally) physician, but also a provincial from Ohio, although he had roots in small town Massachusetts.

The cast on Drew Barrymore.

Not sure about Naomi's big shoulder pads on Drew.

I cannot watch Drew, too much second hand embarrassment.

r336

[quote]Steve Sondheim

Quite surprised by his name being there, was Sondheim a typical high society guest?

Capote did not just invite high society types to the B&Ball--he wanted to mix things up and invite everyone he thought was worth inviting. So he invited theater people like Sondheim and Jerome Robbins and Hal Prince as well as literary people like Marianne Moore and William Styron, and also people in government and business. He even invited some of his friends from Kansas from when he stayed down there to research In Cold Blood.

EJ's review of Episode 3

That line about deliberate cruelty was obviously written by Tennessee, not Truman. Weird mistake.

R332 Mine too, and an interesting backstory.

Swans related piece from the Tatler re: Lady Keith, tactical marrier.

Dumb question - Did Tom Hollander gain a bunch of weight to play TC? I'm asking because his face and those jowls look really natural, not like glued-on facial appliances.

I read the novel The Swans of 5th Avenue (well, skimmed it), and in it Slim goes through some (comparably) hard financial times after one of her divorces. Babe or someone goes shopping with her and buys her an extravagantly expensive negligee/peignoir set to wear for a new lover.

That made me like those two characters more.

^^ the point being, Slim couldn’t afford to buy it for herself…

No shit

Truman knew you can't have a good party without expatriate British royalty like Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

The latest episode seems like talkie filler.

R361 it was a cool idea, a fictional "long lost" Maysels Bros movie. The execution of it left much to be desired. Beyond it being in black & white, no effort was made to replicate the Maysels style. Surprised me, since Gus Van Sant attempted his own versions of Psycho and Chimes at Midnight (My Own Private Idaho )

Jon Robin Baitz remembers late actor Treat Williams

R362 here. I did like the scene with Jessica Lange. That was strong.

Are one or both of the Maysles brothers gay?

Truman kept hitting on one of them in the episode.

FUN FACT

Truman’s longtime partner Jack Dunphy, played by Joe Mantello in “Swans”, was once married to Broadway dancer Joan McCracken, who later married Bob Fosse.

R366, and Bob Fosse fucked Jessica Lange, who plays Truman's mother in "Swans."

Did Joe Mantello dodge a bullet?

It was Babe Paley who convinced Bill to cancel CBS shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, even though they were still successful.

Babe was embarrassed by those shows and thought they were not worthy of being broadcast on CBS.

John Turturro could play Jon Robin Baitz.

[quote]It was Babe Paley who convinced Bill to cancel CBS shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, even though they were still successful.

No, it was Fred Silverman, who joined CBS in 1970 as programming head. He envisioned a slate of urban-oriented programming, including the upcoming All in the Family and the already airing Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Babe didn't make programming suggestions. She wasn't abreast of the network development slate.

I liked the first two episodes. I'm halfway through episode 3 and it just isn't hitting.

R371, Bullshit. Babe complained to Bill that she was tired of being teased at parties about the lowbrow programming on what was known as The Tiffany Network.

Of course she didn’t execute the cancellations, dickhead, but she put the bug in Bill Paley’s ear.

The above has been printed numerous times over the years.

If Babe were so embarrassed by the Beverly Hillbillies, you'd think she might've said something before its eighth season.

The dumb sitcoms made shitloads of cash for CBS, its shareholders, William Paley and Babe.

Babe's concerns were shopping, lunching, smoking, and spending money.

R365 both Maysels were straight.

Oh dear, r375.

Babe was a huge fan of "Gunsmoke" and saved it from cancellation. That's the only instance where I've ever read of her influence.

Silverman recognized that advertisers were more interested in affluent, younger, metropolitan audiences than the people who watched the rural shows. It was a good business decision for CBS.

This week’s episode was fantastic!

[quote] Babe was a huge fan of "Gunsmoke" and saved it from cancellation. That's the only instance where I've ever read of her influence.

Yes. Gunsmoke being a one hour program, two half hour shows had to be sacrificed to make room. Gilligan's Island and Run Buddy Run.

I thought the first two were much better.

The writing is so strange. I can't see how they could have attributed the "deliberate cruelty" line to Capote rather than Williams--you'd think someone in the writers' room would have caught that.

Also, it seemed so unlikely that babe Paley would go on and on about choosing the best stationery in front of the camera: in real life, she might have believed all those things she said about it, and even said it privately to Truman, but she never would have been so vulgar as to talk about it while documentary cameras were trained on her.

It's also weird to me we see almost none of the other swans. We did at least get to see Pamela Hayward last night (who later became Pamela Harriman), but we still haven't seen Marella Agnelli and Gloria Guinness, not to mention non-swans in high society who were there like Brooke Astor and Pat Kennedy Lawford. Maybe they worried they would have too many society women, people wouldn't be able to keep them all straight.

[quote] Truman arguing with Slim about his inviting “Pamela Harriman” to the Black and White Ball.

Did they actually call her that last night? I thought they just referred to her as "Pamela." They were very clear she was married at the time to Leland Hayward (whom we actually saw with he at the buffet table, complaining about the chicken hash).

They said Harriman. Very odd.

[quote]R369 It was Babe Paley who convinced Bill to cancel CBS shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, even though they were still successful.

If Eva Gabor ever ran into Babe in a dark alley…

[quote]R382 she was married at the time to Leland Hayward (whom we actually saw with her at the buffet table, complaining about the chicken hash.)

His daughter wrote that LH adored (and existed exclusively on) “white foods” - chicken hash, potatoes, rice, milk, ice cream etc. I don’t know if it was due to ulcers or personal taste, but he loved chicken hash.

Maybe Truman’s just sucked.

Was Ann Woodward actually at the ball? Seems wrong...

I’m quite sure Anne wasn’t there in any capacity.

[quote]—(Why do I know this??)

I don't know, r385, I'd forgotten that. But I haven't read Haywire in decades. Maggie died in 1960.

I remember that Brooke Hayward had a story about Pamela Hayward stole Brooke's Pearl necklace that her mother left her, and Pamela never gave them to her.

Haywire is a wonderful book!! Pamela was a super thieving, lying cunt, but her daughter-in-law got her back at the end.

Yes. The story was Margaret Sullavan was a cutthroat card player, and would particularly always win at Hearts. A group of Hollywood people would play every week. With her winnings, Sullavan would add a real pearl each week to her young daughters’ necklaces, then finished them off with diamond clasps. The girls were too scared to ever wear them.

After Sullavan’s death, Brooke was in charge of looking after these necklaces. Pamela saw them rattling around in Brooke’s dresser drawer and said, “These are VALUABLE! You have to store them RESPONSIBLY!”

So Pamela offered to store them in her own closet’s built in vault, where she had a huge jewelry collection - then when Brooke asked for the necklaces back years later they were gone. Pamela said she had no idea what arrangement Brooke was talking about.

I must have missed something, but how did you know it was Bacall and Robbins dancing at the party? I can barely recognize some of the main characters from one episode to the next (Joanne Carson and Lee Radziwill especially).

Of course it was Bacall and Robbins.

Such flavuh in their footwork.

R391 only because in many articles I've read it's mentioned as one of the highlights of the Ball. I knew immediately it was them.

I'd have been interested in seeing some of the real world society stars who didn't get the great party invitation

Thanks, R394. I've known about the ball for years, seen pictures, etc., but don't remember ever hearing that tidbit since I didn't do any in-depth reading on it.

R386, She was not and neither was Joanne Carson.

I highly recommend a mid 90s movie based on the life of Babe Paley. It really shows the “real” Babe that all of us in NY society circles knew.

[quote] This week’s episode was fantastic!

Really? So they completely re-cast it and hired an entirely new writing and directing team?

R138

Vanity Fair doesn't seem to care that all that never happened.

Vanity UN-fair.

'Capote vs the Swans' is more of a 'Capote met the ducks' sorta thing in this new FX series.

It's all dwindled down to made up, mundane stuff.

Oh well...

One of the most entertaining things is watching certain posters here trying to convince us that the Swans were these great beauties...but just apparently that kind of beauty which doesn't show in photos or video.

Princess Lee Radziwill NEVER mingled with those other women.

R401 and you were expecting…?

Brooke Astor, Lee Radziwill, Slim Keith

Not Very-Slim Keith

FIFY

Slim Keith spent her final days in a wheelchair.

Lauren Bacall documents Slim’s demise in her book “Now”.

R405, That was obviously a public event. You won’t find any photos of Lee and the Swans together privately.

R404

To answer your question, I wasn't really 'expecting' anything but I was hoping for something about Capote that was true. I don't really have a clear answer for you, but then again, nobody expects the inquisition ;)

[quote]r403 Princess Lee Radziwill NEVER mingled with those other women.

She’s in the TV series because she appears in the Esquire chapter, “La Cote Basque.” There, she’s lunching with Jackie at another table, and is gossiped about.

Her character seems rather superfluous, here.

r410 God that place looks tacky

See that room? Way in the back? That’s where all of you DLers would stashed at lunch….no one would even see you.

Did everyone assume Slim was an indiscreet gossip after the book came out given that her character was the one spilling all the secrets?

R410, Lee Radziwill is in the series because Truman was obsessed with her until they had a falling out when she refused to support him in the lawsuit Gore Vidal filed against him.

It was at that time when Lee referred to Truman and Gore as “a couple of fags” to columnist Liz Smith.

“She was always a close friend of Truman Capote’s. But then Capote got embroiled in that ridiculous libel suit with Gore Vidal over his claim that Vidal had been drunkenly kicked out of the White House. Lee is the one who told Capote the story, but when it ended up in court, she threw him to the wolves. All she had to do was tell the truth. But she refused, and Truman lost the lawsuit, which devastated him. During the trial, as a last-ditch effort, he asked me to call her and beg her to testify. And you know, Truman had done everything for her. He even tried to help her start an acting career. But when I called her and said, “Lee, you really must testify for Truman,” she said, “Oh, Liz, what do we care; they’re just a couple of fags! They’re disgusting.” I was so stunned, I just hung up. I’ve never spoken to her since.“

[quote]R411 God that place looks tacky

It’s cuter in closeups:

[quote]R414 Lee Radziwill is in the series because Truman was obsessed with her until they had a falling out when she refused to support him in the lawsuit Gore Vidal filed against him.

Yes, of course you’re right. I was focusing too much on the Esquire piece. I forgot they presumably have more to cover.

Is Lee the one who said Capote had “a voice so high that only a dog could hear it”?

R404

I was thinking about your question (I know it was rhetoric, more or less, though).

I guess I expected something more along the line of The Capote Tapes, which is far more interesting and better done. But I do think it could have been better had it just stuck to the real story.

I can read fiction anywhere. Capote was better than fiction.

R416 does not match up to R410. It looks off. Oeuf!

She was a horrible person, but at least Princess Lee was more of a real blue blood than social climbers like Slim Keith and Babe Paley.

My thoughts after seeing the first two episodes:

Hollander is very fine as Capote. It is a strangely cold (and brave) performance.

Naomi Watts as Babe Paley is better than I expected in decorative terms. She does very good in some moments but her speech at the end of episode 1 is cringe. And i dont buy her as a doyenne of the supper rich.

Diane Lane and Chloe Sevigny are either horrible actresses or very miscast, i suspect the latetter.

Having said all this i am enjoying it very much. The first ten minuets were very good in showing(not telling us) the charisma of capote (something absent in Saltburn) and his friendship with babe, so that the betrayal is understood later on.

The absence of Marella, the first swan of all, is a crime. Maybe she appears later?

While enjoyable, what is missing is the realization that these people were at the top of society at the time. It is a show that takes for granted a lot of information from the viewer. Not a bad thing per se.

Lee is kind of pathetic in how she floundered through stabs at various careers - acting, decorating, sex slave to Ari Onassis…

R420, Lee was a gold-digging hooker, just like the rest of these women.

Truman lived vicariously through them, he wanted to be a skinny legend, married to a rich straight man.

R411 - It is interesting to see photos of older high end places NYC. Some still look incredibly glamorous - like the Rainbow Room in the 30s, or La Fonda del Sol in the 60s. Others like this and Top of the Sixes look really ordinary.

[quote]at least Princess Lee was more of a real blue blood than social climbers like Slim Keith and Babe Paley.

The Bouvier girls were social climbers too. Not that they had much choice, with that mother.

R422, Yeah, but she also had Peter Beard in his prime.

Peter Beard married a Cushing daughter, then married Cheryl Tiegs, it's about the only good thing Lee Bouvier ever did in her life was fuck Peter Beard. And breed a Prince and a Princess when she married a Radziwill. She was the original Housewhore of NYC. Lee never got over her jealously of her sister Jackie.

Lee and Peter many years later.

Lee looks like a drunken duck with high hair and a turkey neck-Peter looks like a WASP drunk, a party animal who fucked his way through life, but he had talent (and took nice pictures& discovered Iman). Lee thought her shit didn't stink, even when she got older& had that turkey neck with that fallen face.

R421 "Hollander is very fine as Capote. It is a strangely cold (and brave) performance".

I think so too. He absolutely captures Capote. Of course I'm no judge of actors I don't know much about the finer points of acting but he seems to embody him without becoming a cartoon, which I can imagine with a character like Capote would not be too hard to do. He has depth.

What bothers me, and your points about the importance of the 'Swans' not being pointed up, "While enjoyable, what is missing is the realization that these people were at the top of society at the time. It is a show that takes for granted a lot of information from the viewer" how powerful they really were. They did kill off an important person in Capote, as far as his contribution to the world of fine literature.

I don't know if Capote would have finished his book, he was very indulgent and squandered time but I think he really was seeking to make an important insight into the unseen world of the elite and their unusual lives. His Black and White Ball was kind of a prop to this end. “I think [a story] is everything,” he says, “but it’s not all fun and games. We’ve been talking about society, but I’m interested in what it all means, really, to be important.”

I keep thinking back to his image of the swans looking graceful but hidden beneath the water their feet paddling madly to stay afloat. That the pressures they bore, the stresses, were tremendous. What appeared to be crafting a cruel, gossipy look inside their lives may not have been so much as like a realist painter he was trying to paint the minute details, the dark and the lights, to show their struggle. That is why I objected to the scene at the Ball where he tells of Ann Woodward she is a murderess and then throws her out of the ball. It never happened and it creates this vision of Capote that is not true. (Although I have read some have said he was cruel at times). But he never did that and so it changes the direction of his person for the viewer and colors the character in an insincere way. Blinds us to the direction of his artistic vision.

Maybe it was too much for the privilege and protected Swans to be exposed. Maybe they did not understand the art of it or see themselves in that way, did not appreciate a big bright light put on them revealing all. I can't decide, what was his goal. Was he tending more to an expose for the shock of it or was he really trying to show those madly paddling feet, the immense struggle. A real study of their lives. It's hard to believe he would betray his beloved Babe tossing her away for a dime novel, a penny dreadful. The completed book not being anywhere has forever shrouded that in mystery.

He was a very fine writer and it destroyed him when they shut him out. He was never the same and decended into what appears to be a hellish existence of booze, drugs and sex as if he were desperately trying to blot it all out over there at Studio 54. He lost meaning to his life when he lost his writer's grasp. I think many know this but for me it's new, a revelation and horrifying to see.

That ball needed Edie Beale in her homemade wrap skirt.

r430 Seriously? He bitched and gossiped about them because he loved them? You're seeking depth where there is none. I mean, god, we're talking about someone shattered because he could no longer go to fancy parties.

Everyone is so unlikable in this. I mean EVERYONE is a miserable cunt, especially Truman. The only likeable one is the incestuous mother and she’s dead.

Seriously R430 you don’t know if he would have finished the book? Everyone else knows: he didn’t! They didn’t hurt him—he did it all to himself…slo-mo suicide.

Capote did no more and no less than all writers (hopefully) do: he wrote what he knew. He was a guest in that world, he listened and watched, and he wrote it all down.

If his hostesses didn't know what he was doing or might do with the juicy tidbits they put on his plate, it's on them: they had only themselves to blame. If they hadn't told him he couldn't have repeated what they said. That the swan's educations didn't allow for the fact that when two people know something it's not a secret anymore is evidence of their failings, not his.

[That line about deliberate cruelty was obviously written by Tennessee, not Truman. Weird mistake.]

Thank You!

Deliberate cruelty

"Deliberate Cruelty," the book.

The book sucked, R438.

"

Too many details, both in the book and news reports and reviews are wrong.

Capote’s “Bang Bang” name for her wasn’t coined at a deb party, as above, but in St. Moritz.

To be picked up in the 1942 Studillac mentioned in the book would be an impossibility as the car was based on the 1953 Studebaker coupe powered by a 1953 Cadillac engine.

Woodward overdosed on Seconal, not cyanide.

No one put her purchases in the back seat of her 1955 Thunderbird as Thunderbirds only seated two people then and didn’t have a back seat until the 1958 models came out.

There’s more, but one true fact seems a bit odd: that Ann was voted “The prettiest girl in radio.” Is that a back-handed compliment or what?

Diane Lane on Live with Kelly and Mark

She may have gone too much with the hair dye.

"Portraits of a Swan: The Fashion Show"

So much more sumptuous in color. We only got to see all but one in black and white.

Oy that queeny voice.

[quote]If his hostesses didn't know what he was doing or might do with the juicy tidbits they put on his plate, it's on them: they had only themselves to blame.

Except that Babe thought he was a true friend and trusted him. At some point you have to trust people to form a genuine friendship. And, if it was as off-hand to Truman as, what did they expect? kind of thing, he wouldn’t have tried to reconcile with Babe. Her friendship mattered to him and you don’t do that to someone you genuinely care about.

I just find Zac Posen adorable at r442, queeny voice or not.

But the one thing is at r442 Posen refers to Nina Capote as "Nina Foch." How could no one have caught that?

It would be like referring to Babe Paley as Babe Ruth, or Slim Keith as Slim Whitman.

Thank you, r446, I thought I misheard.

He says Nina Faulk. Was Lillie Mae known as Nina?

R448, Yes.

I was a Swan too.

R450, Foch you!

Only vaguely, tangentially related, but I didn't realize Cobina lived to be 90, dying in 2011.

[quote]In 1938, Wright was romantically linked with Prince Philip of Greece, who later married Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. The two met in Venice in the year they both turned 17 and enjoyed activities together there for three weeks, after which they spent a week in England "dining, dancing, and walking London's streets, hand in hand."

Posen does say Faulk, although the closed captioning says "Foch."

She was never actually known as "Nina Faulk"--she was born Ellie Mae Faulk (called "Millie" by her family), then became Ellie Mae Persons when she married Truman's biological father Arch Persons, and it was only when she married Joe Capote in 1932 and took his last name that she changed her first name from Ellie Mae to Nina.

[If his hostesses didn't know what he was doing or might do with the juicy tidbits they put on his plate, it's on them]

They badly misjudged him. Little Tru sold out his friends before with the very first thing he wrote. I thought I read somewhere that he used to pass out printed gossip sheets when he was like seven or something... and no one in the neighborhood trusted the little shit. Truman was "Miriam."

R434 There are those who say they saw the book. Joanne Carson had him writing in her place because it was a place he could write without being bothered.

Kate Harrington, daughter of John O'Shea, the boyfriend he picked up in the bathhouse and made his manager, became his surrogate lived with him in his 22nd floor UN Plaza apartment in New York during the height of his fame that offers a new insight into his life behind the glitz and glamour.

She said, ‘Babe (Paley) was the the only one he cried over the friendship ending. He spoke about her until he died, I don’t think he ever got over her'. He did care for her. He loved her. Joanne Carson, who was with him when he took his last breath said he was saying something about Beautiful Babe and Answered Prayers.

"Sick and exhausted, Capote traveled to Los Angeles in August 1984 to stay with longtime friend Joanne Carson, the second wife of late-night TV host Johnny Carson. On August 25, Carson entered her guest bedroom to find Capote struggling to breathe with a weak pulse. She said the author uttered the phrases “Beautiful Babe” and “Answered Prayers,” but he died before paramedics could arrive to help". Biography authors and writers

"To this date the full manuscript of Answered Prayers has never been found with some calling it a great literary hoax. But Kate insists there are piles of yellow lined pads of his writing hiding somewhere waiting to be discovered.

‘He would get up early and write for three hours a day. He was incredibly calm and pleasant.

‘He wrote in yellow lined pads and had so many pads lined up. I don’t know what happened, but I do believe he had one (a finished book).’"

From Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, whose 2018 novel, "Swan Song" :

"The rest of the circle cut him out. “He was devastated” Greenberg-Jephcott says. Reports from the time say he spent his days indoors in his Manhattan penthouse, curtains shut to the world, sobbing on his bed and repeating the words, “I didn’t mean to, I thought they’d come back.”

"After Capote’s death, it didn’t take long for the hunt for the missing manuscript to begin. An incomplete version of it, Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel, was published in 1986, comprising the three chapters that had been published during Capote’s life. But history attests there was more: Joanne Carson, who was with Capote when he died, said she’d read the three remaining chapters in the early Eighties. What’s more, Capote had given her a key to an undisclosed safe deposit box on the morning before his death, saying, the chapters “will be found when they want to be found”.

"There are similar alternative claims: of people seeing, or even holding, the manuscript. Capote would take it to parties, show it off and give readings, but never let anyone see beneath the title page. “It could have just been 600 blank pages after that,” says Greenberg-Jephcott, “he would orate, as if he was reading.” But people heard the same passages repeatedly read, and Capote had planned out the novel extensively. It’s fair to believe that a considerable amount, if not all, of Answered Prayers did exist.

Fascinating. These threads far outpass the interest of the actual series

I read that Ian Fleming created the character Felix Leiter after Billy Woodward. The two of them spent some time together and became fuckbuddies, er friends. Fleming dedicated "Diamonds are Forever" to him.

Fun fact: In the "Murder by Death" scene, the movie's director, Robert Moore, is briefly depicted. Robert Moore played Phyllis's gay brother on MTM. He died of AIDS in 1984.

R458, He also survived directing Bacall in Woman of the Year.

R458, Moore played the crippled queen in “Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon”.

I know that none of you can see it while we are actually in it, but the show we are watching is going to go down as one of the all time great miniseries. It’s that good.

I’m trying to savor every morsel and just take it all in.

[quote]The Two Mrs. Grenvilles was just as good as I remember it being. I know it had about 10 times the budget but the art direction and acting (imperfections and all) is on a whole other level compared to Feud.

I was honestly so disappointed with the casting of Ann Margaret I never watched the whole thing through. I love the book; it’s such a fun read. But Ann Margaret looked like an aging Vegas showgirl. In the book Ann was able to elevate her looks through careful grooming and refining her taste. It’s part of the fun as you read it. How she gets everything so wrong in the beginning— from how she dresses to how she throws a party—but catches on quickly. Plus, Ann was older than Billy, but she didn’t look [italic]aged[/italic]. At least not until later. So as someone said above, Ann Margaret just looked too long in the tooth for me. Plus, she’s not someone who can fake elegance.

Who is Ann Margaret?

Annie also played Pamela...

R462, Ann Woodward was 39 when she shot Billy Woodward.

Ann-Margret was 45 when the miniseries was filmed.

My understanding of it was that Truman and Lee’s friendship was separate from his friendships with the other Swans, and she wasn’t close to them.

I mute the TV when Russell Tovey comes on. I find his acting and his dialogue annoying.

I wonder if we are going to see Truman’s new friends, the Warhol/Studio 54 crowd, in an upcoming episode. Truman ended up writing a column for Interview, until he submitted a piece that was a list of all the people he hated, with “Princess Lee” written over and over again.

When Andy was a creepy illustrator in New York in the early 50s, he had a crush on Truman. Somehow, he found out where Truman’s mother lived, and he started spending time with her, until she drunkenly threw him out of her apartment, calling him a “creepy faggot who needs to leave my son alone.”

[quote]Ann Woodward was 39 when she shot Billy Woodward. Ann-Margret was 45 when the miniseries was filmed.

R465 are you agreeing with me or do you feel that AM’s age was not significantly older than the real life Ann? Because for me, it’s less about her actual age than how she looked.

I want to read the Capote column that’s a list of people he hates!!

Bob Colacello published it in his memoir Holy Terror.

If I remember correctly it was just a list of 100 random people, places and things, with every third entry being “Princess Lee.”

This is what Colacello wrote about the list:

Monday, July 10, 1979, was the first time we asked Truman to change so much as a comma. His August piece had arrived that morning. It was titled "Nocturnal Turnings: or How Siamese Twins Have Sex," and it showed the effects of drinking on Truman's work. It was essentially Truman interviewing Truman -- the Siamese twins -- about everyone he didn't like, which is just what he did when he was drunk, make hate lists. This list read:

Billy Graham Princess Margaret Billy Graham Princess Anne The Reverend Ike Ralph Nader Supreme Court Justice Byron "Whizzer" White Princess Lee Werner Erhard The Princess Royal Billy Graham Madame Gandhi Masters and Johnson Princess Lee Billy Graham CBSABCNBCNET Sammy Davis, Jr. Jerry Brown, Esq. Billy Graham Princess Lee J. Edgar Hoover Werner Erhard

(See pages 409-413, Holy Terror.)

Page 415 includes this, about Truman's end:

I last saw Truman in Los Angeles in 1982. He was with Lester Persky and we met at the El Padrino Bar in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. He was already soused when I arrived, at about hour in the afternoon, and berated me bitterly for going to a dinner at Betsy Bloomingdale's with Jerry Zipkin. When he died two years later, I went to his memorial at Town Hall in New York. Aside from C. Z. Guest, Lynn Wyatt, and Jan Cushing, the social set was conspicuously absent. So was Andy.

Madame Gandhi definitely belonged on such a list but how could he have hated Sammy Davis (unless maybe it's the Jewish thing) ?

R471 and what did Jerry Brown do to him to earn his wrath?

R472, 1979 was when the media was referring to Jerry Brown as “Governor Moonbeam”.

Masters and Johnson?

How many DLers will name their kids (or pets) Babe now?

I want a little matching set of twins, who I’ll call Tru and Babe.

Yes, R474.

I know who they are, R476. Why did Capote hate them?

[quote] the social set was conspicuously absent. So was Andy.

Andy, you cunt.

Masters and Johnson did gay conversion therapy until 1977 or so.

[quote]Ann Woodward was 39 when she shot Billy Woodward.

Allegedly.

[quote]How many DLers will name their kids (or pets) Babe now?

I had an Aunt Babe who named her dog Bimbo.

Growing up, the woman living next door went by Babe, even though her first name was Mary.

[quote]Ann Woodward was 39 when she shot Billy Woodward.

[quote]Allegedly.

Okay, okay, she was allegedly 39.

Gore’s ex-stepfather, Hudie Auchincloss, was Jackie and Lee's stepfather. Gore grew up for a bit in a Auchincloss mansion, Merrywood, moved out after the divorce, and then Lee moved in when her mother married the Auchincloss.

So socially the same strata with connections by marriage and mansion(s). Why would Lee side with the disgraced fag over Gore who could be considered "family".

As far as I remember.

R484, Gore was banished from the White House and basically the Kennedy family by Bobby Kennedy after he observed Gore place his hand on Jackie at a private White House gathering in an “inappropriate” manner.

Gore publicly badmouthed the Kennedys repeatedly after that and the incident was the basis for the Vidal/Capote lawsuit filed by Gore after Truman related the incident in a printed interview.

Gore liked to claim it never happened and Truman wanted Lee, who was there, to testify for him but she refused and their friendship was over.

Truman lost the lawsuit and had to issue Gore a public apology.

I think the reason Gore sued Truman is because Truman (surprise!) embellished the story and had Gore being grabbed by the lapels and thrown out of the White House, like a drunk being tossed out of a nightclub by a bouncer.

When Lee didn’t testify, Truman did his infamous interview on The Stanley Siegel show, revealing all of the gossip Lee had told him over the years about her sex life.

Why would anyone give Truman personal information, he did nothing but gossip and he had a vindictive streak. What did these women expect?

Bitches had it coming! **hic**

I'm having dreams about Truman and I haven't seen the show yet.

Episode 4 robot promo

There are numerous stories about that evening in the White House. Even Vidal has told it more than one way.

Lee talks about Truman Capote and the Rolling Stones

were the brothers lovers?

Yes, but not with each other R493

Peter Beard aged like milk. And that documentary on him and lee was dull as fuck.,

Lee . . .

Truman’s ashes are entombed with Joanne Carson’s ashes at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Wow, guess they were that close

Was Lee ever On Assistance?

Can we call them The Marvelous Messrs. Maysles?

The dirt that Truman dished about Lee on Stanley Siegel was embarrassing for The Princess, I hope we get to see it.

She tried to seduce William F Buckley by asking him for “spiritual advice,” then called him a queer when he rebuffed her.

Also, she told him her then fiancé, Newton Cope, a hotelier in San Francisco, was “no great catch, except maybe in a provincial town.” Lee called off the wedding to Cope moments before it was supposed to happen-People magazine had gone to press with the story that they married.

Lee was in a bad place at the time-I believe Jackie forced her to go into AA and would drive her to meetings and would wait outside for her in the car.

Lee was broke from the early 70s until she married Herbert Ross.

To R499, Lee might have been on assistance. Jackie didn't Lee anything in her will and I think she made a comment about it in her will. She left Lee's daughter& daughter-in-law stuff but "none 4 u Lee".

To R501, she had terrible taste in men, except for Peter Beard.

R502, Lee’s first husband, Michael Canfield, was fine.

Why is Gloria Vanderbilt not included? They were friends until he made her look like an idiot in “La Cote Basque 1965,” walking by one of her ex-husbands (and the father of two of her kids) and failing to recognize him. She dumped him too.

Anderson Cooper talked about Truman when he was doing press for that documentary he made about his mother, and he did not like Truman.

I would love to hear Cornelia Guest’s opinion on her mother’s depiction in Feud, as well as her insights on the other swans.

Lee’s first husband, Michael Canfield, was handsome.

R502, Lee’s first husband, Michael Canfield, was handsome.

Michael Canfield was rumored to be the illegitimate son of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and the drug-addicted party girl/socialite, Kiki Preston.

Lee gets candid with Nicky Haslam.

I wonder what really happened at the White House that night, with Bobby Kennedy and Gore Vidal and Jackie. Bobby Kennedy was famously an asshole, especially in those days, but it just seems such a weird overreaction to Gore, who was gay and pretty much a brother to Jackie, for touching her "inappropriately." The fuck did he think was going on there, cause it wasn't about hitting on the First Lady.

R509, Bobby probably had a few drinks in him.

R509, Why didn’t Jackie speak up and extinguish the Bobby/Gore dispute before it escalated?

I don't know r511. Maybe she was just shocked that Bobby was being so ridiculous, or maybe there really was some fight between Bobby and Gore that got turned into this other thing?

Maybe she didn't give a fuck.

Not that anyone’s required to accomplish anything, but Lee seemed like a fairly aimless, almost nondescript person. What did she ever do? At least her sister refurbished the White House.

[quote]What did she ever do?

She invented Post-its.

She just always reminds me of this bit from SNL’s Roseanne Roseannadanna about one night at Elaine’s:

“Anyways, I’m sittin’ there, lookin’ at the menu when what comes out of the bathroom but Princess Lee Radziwill. You know, that classy lady that no one’s really sure where she’s the princess of? Well, she was dressed up like a doll in this slinky basic black dress and she’s got real skinny arms with expensive jewelry hangin’ off of ’em.But then I noticed that Princess Lee had a little teeny-tiny piece of toilet paper stickin’ to the bottom of one of her Gucci shoes. She — listen to this — she was just walkin’ around, up and down, with that little piece of toilet paper just trailin’ behind her, wouldn’t fall off! And the more she walked, the dirtier that toilet paper got. And things started stickin’ to it. There was a fuzzball, a hair, gum, a bug. There was even some fettucini alfredo and a piece of Romaine lettuce! Well, let me tell you that I, Roseanne Roseannadanna, started to lose my appetite.And I yelled, ‘Hey! Princess Lee! Take that toilet paper off your shoe! What are you tryin’ to do? Make me sick?’”

Maybe he was touching Bobby inappropriately?

I miss Gilda.

Lee and Jackie were each, in their own way, fetid and mercenary women.

I think Lem Billings, who was the Kennedy family’s official gay sidekick, was involved in the Gore/RFK mess.

Arthur Schlesinger’s diaries were published in 2007 or so, I believe he wrote about if.

“But the feud expanded in the 60s, after Vidal had been – according to Capote, in an interview with Playgirl – tossed out of the White House by Bobby Kennedy because he was “drunk and obnoxious”. In fact Kennedy had taken offence at Vidal’s apparent intimacy with Jacqueline Kennedy – the first lady was distantly related to Vidal by marriage – and the writer had left in a huff. Vidal sued Capote over the remark, and Capote countersued. The legal case dragged on with Vidal winning in the end, though Capote had no money by then, so it was a Pyrrhic victory.

Their wrangling continued until Capote, ill from his abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs, died in the late summer of 1984. When Vidal’s editor called from New York with news of his rival’s death, Vidal remarked after the briefest pause: “A wise career move.”“

Gore and Truman were such cunts. Gore used to call drug addled Tennessee Williams, imitating Truman’s voice, and say shitty things to poor Tennessee, who thought Truman was saying it and would then get mad at Truman.

[quote]What did she ever do?

The Princess dabbled in acting and interior design.

She did what she did, for reasons well known to her.

Well, this is a pretty full documentary on the swans but if you have time to listen. It's pretty interesting.

I suspect Jackie left Lee out of the will because she had given her lots of money in her lifetime and saw that Lee couldn’t be trusted to not spend it all rather than managing it. So she instead gave money directly to Anthony and Tina, knowing they’d be more responsible and also that they would most likely use some of it to provide for Lee.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was agreed that JFK Jr. and Caroline would discreetly use some of their inheritance to help Lee financially as she aged. Jackie knew there were enough family connections that Lee wasn’t going to be destitute… and that it was better that way, since it safeguarded against Lee potentially blowing through a direct inheritance in a matter of just a few years.

Lee liked her couture. She would have squandered any inheritance in a single fashion season.

Better to keep her on a weekly allowance of $40 a week, or whatever. A small but steady income she could count on.

Lee was relatively financially secure when Jackie died. She had the job at Armani (which at least gave her free clothes and travel), and she was married to a successful film director with a Hamptons estate. Maybe that’s why she didn’t leave her anything.

that is cruel r522, but not gonna lie, also kind of funny.

As I understand it, which ain't much, but that won't stop me, people generally like Mike Canfield and just sort of had to put up with the Missus.

Diane and Naomi quiz each other

That Mickey Mouse scoring under them is annoying. Like we have to be told how fun this is.

Siblings do not generally inherit from one another, people. It would be stranger for Jackie to have included Lee than it is for her to have excluded her.

R533, And yet, she bequeathed to her sibling’s children.

Leaving to one’s nieces and nephews is pretty standard. If my wife predeceases me, that’s where my money is going.

r537 - I'm *not* in the will, ElderLez?

Look at Babs… Roz won’t get a penny.

Not one PENNY!

If l ever acquire a Sarah Conventry Parure Doris-LaChat I will most certainly leave it to you.

(Would Muriel respond to the estate attorney though?)

Thank you ElderLez...I'm hoping for *Midnight Magic*.

Witch!

I'm assuming that's a typo, r542.

Starting now to watch my taping of tonight's episode and they open with the Doctor telling Babe about the peach pit therapy for cancer. This was the same quackery that killed Steve McQueen when he relied on that in Mexico rather than legitimate medical treatment.

Very sweet episode. It's funny they entitled it "It's Impossible" (after the Perry Como song... not after the Nelly O'Hara song) because so many things in the episode were impossible to have been recorded. There's no record of Lee Radziwill giving Slim Keith an ultimatum to stop fucking Bill paley during Babe's radiation treatment (I dont even think it's been recorded that Keith and Paley were having an affair then); there's no record of Babe forgiving Bill Paley for his infidelities; there's certainly no record of Babe and Truman having a bittersweet reunion on the streets on NYC after the Esquire story. Maybe that was the point of the episode--to envelop everything in an impossible rosy mist of "what ifs."

After numerous attempts to reach the Paleys after the Esquire article was printed, Truman finally got through to Bill one day.

Bill cut the conversation short by saying “I have to hang up, I have a sick wife to attend to”.

Ouch!

R545: THey really only had enough material for the first two episodes. Everything now is padding.

is there a thread on Pamela Harriman? She needs one

She WAS a whore

R548, John Kerry was her “companion” until Senator Heinz died in that plane crash and he saw greener pastures in the form of Teresa.

Good move for John Kerry, Teresa Heinz was worth over 750 million dollars after the Senator's plane went splat!! That's not including the Family stock.

That was her money, the boys got huge trust funds& massive stock options from their dad.

To R549...Pamela was a WHORE with a very classy accent. Big olde whore, but she did alright for herself. Ambassador to France, major Democratic fundraiser for the Party and Bill Clinton& Al Gore 2 presidential campaigns.

My old client used to say about Pamela Harriman," U can't make a Silk purse out of a Pigs ear." She did say that Pamela had the "best facelift ever" on a woman her age.

The ending scene was beautiful and should have been the ending of the series. Why did they do it now instead of the finale?

Because creating a compelling narrative with a satisfying arc is above Ryan Murphy’s pay-grade R553

The scene for those who might have missed it. It really is touching

I also thought Joe Mantello was great in his big scene with Hollander, explaining why he stuck with him, and Calista Flockhart also had her best scene when she had lunch with Diane Lane and explained what's what.

Lee Radziwill was trying to figure out how to Fuck Bill Paley& all that CBS money. Lee LOVED 2 things in life...1-herself and 2-MONEY.

However, it was a very good scene between Lee and Slim; Lee was not a caring person.

I was shocked at that scene of him running into Babe Paley on the street. She never once saw or spoke to him again.

Interesting article below about that daughter who came to see him and who he introduced to Richard Avedon. She ended up LIVING with him, and later had a daughter she named TRUMAN!

My heart broke seeing Treat Williams in that dance scene...and the dedication to him -

The Beatty spawn who played Kerry/Kate Harrington looks a little like DL fave Aunt Shirley.

Naomi's transformation into Babe.

[quote]“But with Babe, there was no footage available that I could find, recordings or visuals, so trying to create a voice and her physicality was, you know, something that I had to invent through a multitude of wonderful photographs.

Given her stature, I find that surprising.

The Capote Tapes is way better than Feud.

Overall, liked 3/4 episodes. The problem with this series is the content in the first two. There should have been two episodes to showing each individual meeting of the various Swans and Truman. Then held off on the everyone turned on a dime hating him, without knowing why some ever liked him, or what bc they haven't given the others a background, and with this group that first impression moment was everything. Then we get the fall of Truman, by the end of episode 1!

This episode was more entertaining than the ball, but so far the first two episodes are the best. Hopefully the next episode is going to be at the least interesting. Having him and Babe essentially make up, in episode 4, is another example of the abysmal pacing in telling this story.

I think the scene was so moving because all of us have experienced heartbreak where we would love to have a lovely moment one last time with that person and hug them goodbye.

R562

Hey, thanks! I wanted to watch that (again) but have to pay for it other places. I found the tapes great and yes, because it is true it's fascinating.

When it comes to fiction I find I hold back. It feels like I'm walking on thin ice and if I let myself get really 'involved' I'm going to find I'm disappointed, or like 'falling through the ice'.

I liked episode 4 a lot. Will they actually do anything with Molly Ringwald? Truman in this episode was - true to life - often annoying, but still endearing. Sad to see him abused, and abuse others in turn (if not physically). Joe Mantello was good in his scenes.

I think we will be treated to the whole Lee Radziwill "Laura" debacle sooner or later.

I found this past week's episode the slowest in the series. However, Naomi Watts still shines in every scene she's in.

Naomi will be up for an Emmy for this part and may very well win it.

[quote] Given her stature, I find that surprising.

She was endlessly photographed, but she was not properly speaking a public figure, so she gave almost no speeches nor interviews.

You have to remember: except for CZ Guest, these women did nothing with their lives. They just wore clothes well, and were photographed doing such.

I understand that, r570, I just thought with her being Mrs. Paley there'd be *something* out there.

Anyone know who was the actor playing the fellow patient with the compulsive disorder who Truman said was hung like a Pegasus?

Hung like a Pegasus.

Thanks, R573.

R573, An alternate pic.

I watched The Capote Tapes. thanks for the above link. Joanne Carson seemed to be missing from it.

Joanne Copeland Carson was not a true Swan.

She was just an old whore

R577, Would a true Swan wear a shower cap on her wedding day?

I’m sure the decision to entomb Joanne’s ashes with Truman’s was her decision.

Did she have the cooperation of his family to do that?

Joanne Carson seemed a bit off... When Truman died, he (reportedly) was sleeping in some backroom off Joanne's kitchen, as if he were the hired help. Poor Truman, enamored with skinny rich women till the end...

Joanne Carson was wife #2, from 1963-1972. Article says Capote's ashes were divided between her and Jack Dunphy. She also auctioned off a bunch of his stuff later in 2006 (note the stained couch).

Johnny Carson married a bunch of different women who all had the same name. Must’ve made it easy to remember.

Carson was married to Jody Wolcott, Joanne Copeland, Joanna Holland and Alexis Maas. 2 is not a bunch R583

I used to eat at Marco's on Santa Monica Blvd all the time. Marco would sit and gossip with me. Once, he discreetly pointed out "Mrs. Joanne Carson." I wish I'd talked to her.

Joanne talks about Truman

R586 Okay, that took me back. I grew up in Massachusetts and hadn't seen the interviewer, Eileen Prose of WCVB, in years!

Joanne looks more like Diane Lane than Molly.

R587, Eileen has posted many of her “Good Day” interviews on YouTube.

Since next episode with bring in James Baldwin, my guess is we will see other celebrities from Capote's life, most notably Gore Vidal (they can't do Capote's eventual otal estragement from Lee Radziwill without him), and I hope also Harper Lee and Jacqueline Susann.

I would love to see as he gets more and more addled from booze and pills if they'll also bring in the ghost of his elderly relative Nanny Rumbley Faulk, aka "Sook," who played with him as a child in Alabama and figures into his story "A Christmas Memory."

Oh god… I wonder who could accurately portray J Susann . None of the previous ones have really been like her.

A younger Lauren Bacall might be okay. Or a drag queen.

Sharon Stone is too pretty, but she has that directness.

What’s sad about Susann is she’d already been diagnosed with cancer when success came to her. She’d failed at a lot of things previously.

I just want to note the adorable tricolor cavalier King Charles spaniel that Babe has in episode # 4.

“I need more wine”

Did EVERYONE chain smoke back then? Seems like a very low class thing to do. And I doubt a society lady like Babe would ever refer to them as "a pack of smokes."

[quote] Did EVERYONE chain smoke back then?

Yes.

Yes, everyone did indeed chain smoke back then, it's only considered a low/working class habit these days.

yup, everyone did. ashtrays were sometimes fancy objets darts because it was so common

R595, in the 1960's-70's, cats smoked.

This is going to sound strange, but I love the scenes of domestic abuse. Or rather, I'm fascinated by them. They're shot so casually, it's exactly what they're like in real life. My mom would mouth off to my dad just like Truman, fully knowing a smack was coming eventually. It was perversely exciting for her, about the only thing that could still get her juices flowing. They were both alkies back then, so don't feel too bad for her.

I'm so glad I'm forever single and the only domestic violence I experience is cruel self-talk on a daily basis.

Will the series include Truman’s feud with Jacqueline Susann after he went on the Tonight Show and said she looked like a truck driver in drag?