There's Something About Denny

One of Denny's better photographs...

All I can after looking at his photos is that whatever it was that he had, if must have all been under his clothes, because what I can see otherwise is completely underwhelming. Frankly in many photos he looked anemic.

^^^All I can SAY IS

It's all in this book.....

He was an exceptionally talented charismatic sociopath. A charismatic sociopath is able to read other people’s anxieties and weaknesses and project themselves as the solution to them. The most famous example is Trump.

JFC you obsessive freaks can find a way to insert Trump into any topic. This topic has nothing to do with that asshole.

Speaking of Trump-like characters, the book details Adolf Hitler's obsessive interest in Denny. Capote was convinced if Hitler had succeeded in bedding Fouts, WWII would have never happened. That Fouts boy had a magic dick.

He's slightly jolie laide.

Some people just have “It”, that unidentifiable magnetism. And “It” doesn’t have anything to do with looks.

It’s why you can have two actors of equal talent and one will get all the roles while the other struggles.

Many public figures are not great beauties but they have “It” magnetism that draws people to them.

Adolph was not a fag- and I'm the dame who can prove it!

From this picture, I totally get it.

Dying in his mid-thirties was a good career move. Bedridden and dissolute at the end, he didn't have to go through the agony of the once-beautiful kept boy aging into oblivion.

A different time and different tastes. I see no evidence of an inspiring beauty to the rich and powerful.

[quote] He famously invited Truman Capote to Paris by sending a blank check and a ticket to him with one word: "Come!" after seeing the writer's supine photograph on the back of "Other Voices, Other Rooms."

And when Truman arrived and Denny saw that he was a midget with a high pitched lisp and a grating personality, he sent him back on the next boat. Steerage class.

Dying young is definitely a good option for the stunning boys who live off the largess of admirers. A friend had that certain something besides supreme good looks. I was his less-attractive sidekick and watched as wealthy gay men whisked him off for trips, bought him designer clothing, luxury cars and million dollar homes. He hardly had to do anything and they didn't live with him...it was presented to him in the hopes of spending a little time with him. BUT....as he made it into his 40s and then his 50s, the men were less wealthy though still enamored. In the end, around the 2008 recession, one balked at buying him a new SL Mercedes, which erupted into a fight and found the still handsome boy cast out on the street, homeless, trying to scrounge up a friend to take him in, but they'd all been dropped along the way and were of no help. Quelle horreur!

I spy, with my little eye, a Ryan Murphy production waiting to happen.

It actually would make a great movie/mini-series.

Fouts was a junkie.

Yes R16, interesting, but who would play Denny?

I've never seen him in anything so based on looks alone I'd say Ryan Gosling.

F18 Austin Butler?? Maybe?

Sorry, that was for R18 ^^^

Did Denny and Scotty Bowers ever cross paths?

[quote]Did Denny and Scotty Bowers ever cross paths?

Doubt it. Fouts died in 1948.

What is known is that [Fouts] was born and reared in Jacksonville Florida. From age fourteen he worked in his father's bakery by day, and prostituted himself at night, taking advantage of the wealthy tourists who breezed through town. One of these men, a German cosmetics tycoon (and a Baron), whisked Fouts (age sixteen) to Berlin to be his lover. This is where Fouts began to be passed around by gay European royalty and became "the most expensive male prostitute in the world" (Fouts' quote). His confirmed lovers include Lord Evan Morgan, actor Jean Marais, King Paul of Greece, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, The Shah of Iran, millionaire art dealer Peter Watson (who gifted Fouts a masterpiece by Picasso), and a young Aristotle Onassis (whom Fouts, with the help of a young sailor, robbed blind). He even screwed Lena Horne! (free of charge) According to Fouts, one major figure who wished to get into his pants was Adolph Hitler. They met around 1930 and Hitler propositioned him over dinner. Fouts rebuffed his advances, claiming that he couldn't afford his services. This feels like a tall tale, but part of me wants it to be true. Capote later wrote: "If Fouts had slept with Hitler, as Hitler wished, he could've saved the world from the Second World War." He had a Southern charm that bordered on impudence. His manner and looks didn't impress everyone (Gore Vidal said Fouts was "good looking in a cadaverous way"), but he sure made an impact on most who met him, an allure that doesn't come off in photographs (he looks more ordinary than you'd expect). Fouts, or characters based on him, appear in the works of Capote, George Plimpton, Gore Vidal, Paul Bowles, and Christopher Isherwood. He was nearly broke when he dropped dead at age thirty-four from a heart defect.

[quote]According to Fouts, one major figure who wished to get into his pants was Adolph Hitler. They met around 1930 and Hitler propositioned him over dinner. Fouts rebuffed his advances, claiming that he couldn't afford his services. This feels like a tall tale

Of course it is. Hitler needed an interpreter for English speakers. Did Fouts know excellent German? Because if he didn’t, are we to believe that a politically rising Hitler made homosexual advances through an interpreter? That would be extremely risky.

The Shah of Iran? Really?

"He was a strumpet". I love that word.

[quote]What is known is that [Fouts] was born and reared in Jacksonville Florida. r24

Everntually, he was "reared" all over the world.

If we had a time machine, young Jude Law could play Denny.

Why did Jude play so many hustler parts, anyway?

Maybe for similar reasons beautiful women play prostitutes?

[quote]Why did Jude play so many hustler parts, anyway?

A girl’s gotta eat.

Who is the modern equivalent of Denny?

His restaurant chain lives on at least - and say what you will, the French toast is delicious.

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I’ve got the perfect casting.

Ebon Moss-Bacharach

You might have to shoot him with a filter for the younger scenes.

40 years ago, Brad Pitt was the new Denny.

There's a lot of pictures miscredited as him. I think the picture at r11 is Jean Marais. The Peter Lorre looking guy is actually Peter Watson.

R36 is correct

Reminiscent of a young JFK.

He had to have some sort of talent you can't see with the eye. Either he had a love muscle the size of a Clydesdale, or a poonanny that could clamp onto a socket wrench and remove lug nuts from a Sherman tank.

Maybe he also had that talent of making you feel like you're the only person in the room. Clinton, who was not handsome, was considered sexy and charismatic because he had that quality.

Reincarnated today as DL's legendary Denny of the rolling suitcase, winding his way through the streets of NYC in search of love and an overnight crash pad.

Better Denny Fouts than Denny Hastert

"I've been undressed by kings....."

I guess you had to be there.

R44, read r36. That's not Denham Fouts

R45 Actually I think that might be him. Some of the others aren't.

Oops that is Peter Watson sorry.

Left to Right: Jean-François Lefevre-Pontalis, French poet; Jean Marais, French actor, director and artist; and Denham Fouts, American prostitute and socialite, in costume for Comte Etienne de Beaumont’s “Racine”

I love it. "American prostitute and socialite"

I guess there was something about him one could only see in person because he's not all that great looking in photos.

[quote] The Shah of Iran? Really?

Not the one you're thinking of. His father.

OMG, r20! I had the same thought, but figured, no, it's DL, best not to mention!

Well Jean Marais could get it - that's for sure!

And R11 is not Jean Marais - but he's hot.

Agreed with everyone above - I guess the market for male whores was very small back then OR he had a massive dick. Probably the latter.

Some people don't photograph well - but I'm not seeing anything extraordinary.

There's got to be one good picture of Denny out there. In the book, he's described as being "about the most beautiful boy anybody had ever seen. His skin always looked as if it had just been scrubbed; it seemed to have no pores at all, it was so smooth." Truman Capote found that "to watch him walk into a room was an experience. He was beyond being good-looking; he was the single most charming-looking person I've ever seen." Even in decline, someone wrote: "When he had gauged well his anesthetic dosages, he was that rare individual who drew others into his orbit, who raised the sun and the moon and the stars for them whenever they were with him. Intelligent, humorous, charming, he made whoever he was with feel as if they were the center of his universe. For those with Denny, everyday was a special day, a holiday, a day of wonder. Like all gigolos, and perhaps chameleons, he simply longed to please, which is to say to do his job well."

[quote] There's got to be one good picture of Denny out there.

There is, and it's linked at r11.

[quote]Even in decline, someone wrote: "When he had gauged well his anesthetic dosages, he was that rare individual who drew others into his orbit, who raised the sun and the moon and the stars for them whenever they were with him. Intelligent, humorous, charming, he made whoever he was with feel as if they were the center of his universe. For those with Denny, everyday was a special day, a holiday, a day of wonder.

No wonder that it's MARY! that we loooooove...

If that's not Truman Capote quoted at r55, it's someone sure trying to sound like him.

R54 if you put that photo at R11 into google search it comes up as a photo of the (hot) photographer Ernst Haas.

On the other hand, that bitch Gore Vidal described him as "cadaverous."

R57 - that's why that article is so fucking confusing. Why is a straight photographer's picture in there then?

Got me R59. The mystery deepens. Here's another description of Denny arriving in New York City from Jacksonville as a teenager: "It was there, in New York City, that Denny first awakened to his extraordinary powers. He experienced the surprise, then intoxication, of having all heads turn his way whenever he walked into Jimmie Daniels nightclub in Harlem, one of his favorite haunts. Walking along a city street, people stopped and stared. Wherever he went, everyone was gazing at him, watching him, listening to whatever he said, flattering him, fussing over him, following him. doting on him. Even though he had achieved nothing, he commanded every room he entered. Everyone seemed flustered when first introduced to him and looked at him with an intensity both frightening and affirming. And after those first long looks he would begin receiving invitations to bars, to dinners, to Broadway shows, to opening night parties, personal tours of museums, weekends at vacation homes, trips to Europe. Wherever he was taken, he was always treated. A heady experience for a teenager from the sticks who had known only rejection, of being expelled from school, thrown out by his family, who had the most menial job, no higher education, no family connections. Suddenly, artists, musicians, actors, producers, executives, diplomats, royalty were his friends. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, for nothing, he was the center of attention, center stage. And loving it.

[quote]Everntually, he was "reared" all over the world.

Hilarious. I'm dead.

So fascinating that this came up in DL. I just found out around Christmas that I'm distantly related to this guy by marriage. (Two of my first cousins are married to men from an old Florida family, and they are directly related to Denham Fouts). Also my former boss in Florida was related to him through her grandparents, who were Denhams. As I told them all when I discovered this, it's nice to have a handsome rogue in one's family tree. Most of us have horse thieves and cattle rustlers among our ancestors, so there's no charm in that.

"studied medicine at UCLA"

Hmm. Did he earn an MD? Seems unlikely. "I'm in Doktor Skool" seems to be a classic M.O. for the male hustler.

Roxanne Pulitzer got her start in the same way. She was 16 and also from Florida. Jumped in that limo and never looked back.

[quote]Hmm. Did he earn an MD? Seems unlikely.

I read in the book (highly recommended btw) that this was when he was hanging with Christopher Isherwood in L.A., where Peter sent him to escape the war in Europe. Denny tried to discipline himself, started a novel which he soon gave up and, decided that instead of following Isherwood's "yogi," eating clean and doing hatha yoga, that he would rather explore the motivations of the mind through psychiatry. He gave it up when he moved back to Europe where he settled back into his life as "the adored" and loaded up his opium pipe.

R60 - I don't know. All of this sounds way over the top. People would stop in their tracks and stare? People would fuss over him?

I mean - you would think that some of that would come off in his pictures.

In terms of sleeping with a lot of high-profile men - the gay world was VERY small back then with secret parties and get togethers. You'd only need to know one high-end gay men and soon you'd be rubbing shoulders with many of them in the same circles.

We all know what 'fresh meat' is among middle-aged and older gay men years ago. It just sounds like a lot of hype - or beauty standards were very different back then.

I mean Jean Harlow was supposed to be this over-the-top beauty and she really was meh with a pig nose and tons of makeup.

R66 Yes, way over the top, lol. The thing is, I'd agree with you, if there hadn't been so many reputable names among his admirers. He had to have SOMEthing. Capote, Vidal, the richest of the rich homos of yesteryear, and royalty (dammit!) can't be wrong. So how come we can't find one decent photograph of the guy that shows even a glimmer of what these esteemed judges of man flesh attest to? Well, his best years were from the 1920s until the 1940s, so there's that. Still, considering how many artists he knew/fucked, you'd think there'd be like a nude painting or something for us all to genuflect in front of.

R67 - that's why I think he had to have a huge dick AND was extremely charming, which people attest to.

Personality goes a LONG way - look at Pamela Harriman. She fucked and married the best and...well, she was pretty, but she didn't stop traffic.

Seduction is all about how you make a person feel and how you carry yourself - and I firmly believe that person becomes more and more attractive in the target's eyes.

You can't buy it and it's extremely hard to develop it. It's charisma on steroids.

My only thought is this.

When I was in college I was introduced to what I thought was the most beautiful girl in the world, or at least the most beautiful I had met in person.

She was dark haired, bright-eyed, had a flawless complexion and a tidy figure.

But whenever I saw a photograph of this person she seemed completely uninteresting. Not ugly, but nothing special.

She had about her a chatoyance, a grace, supple way of seeming to promise something - something poetic, something mysterious, as if she was the gateway to an entire world of people like her.

She had a lovely voice, was always flawlessly dressed, had a certain forcefulness of character and was sharp, witty and a good conversationalist.

There was no way to show what she looked like in real life via a picture.

I assume this young man was much the same way.

I don't doubt that Denny Fouts was attractive, and that he must have been very seductive and sexy. But he clearly benefited from an inflated reputation. He was a natural figure for both Isherwood and Capote to write about because they both loved hustlers and escorts, and the entire idea of someone who was the paid companion to kings and princes and shahs and millionaires (and who knows how much of that was true?) fulfilled their fantasy of there being a Most Desired Gay Man in the Whole Wide World, a fantasy which would have been very powerful for both of them, especially Capote (who was obsessed with sex and with exclusiveness).

Also, much of this wild over-the-top prose about Fouts being so beautiful that people would practically pass out on the street if he walked by is classic Capote exaggeration and hyperbole. Capote was well-known for "embroidering" wildly on the truth--he loved mixing fact with fiction (which is why he wound up as one of the main progenitors of the non-fiction novel with "In Cold Blood").

R69 She sounds like one of Capote's swans.

Still, even if Denny had that kind of "je ne sais quoi' without outstanding looks and it does sound like Denny had "It," I don't know if he'd have had the kind of life he led without being exceptionally handsome, in the gay world at least where looks matter.

R71, I confess I don't know enough about Capote's swans to confirm that. I will say that she was an electrifying presence (still may be, for all I know - she moved to LA and I haven't seen her for years).

R70 - good observations. Also though - I think there can be a 'oh yeah? wonder what that's all about' thing that can happen.

Denny sleeps with a couple of famous high-end gays, then others go 'well, if it's good enough for them, let me try it'. It feeds off of itself.

Charm, self-promotion, marketing - I mean, really, at the end of the day, be it man or woman - it's still a mouth and a hole.

What's the difference between a streetwalker and a call girl? About $1000 - and a feeling of 'class' They're both whores who've been pounded by hundreds or thousands of men.

Chatoyance?

LOL R75. I had to look up that word when I saw it....

"The property of some minerals to exhibit a wavy, luminous band with a silky lustre, reminiscent of the eye of a cat."

Nice.

[quote]What's the difference between a streetwalker and a call girl? About $1000 - and a feeling of 'class' They're both whores who've been pounded by hundreds or thousands of men.

Which is why I was completely believable as America's highest priced call girl in "Nuts"!

R75, an illusion of opulence observed in some jewels.

Capote's tendency to exaggerate beauty was well known among his friends. In his oral biography by George Plimpton, there's repeated pattern where he would start seriously seeing a guy and tell all his friends about how the man was a paragon of handsomeness, and then they'd meet the guy and it would turn out to be just an ordinary looking guy. (This happened with John O'Shea and also a working-class guy Plimpton's book wouldn't name who fixed air conditioning in planes or something.)

Similarly, many people on DL have been amazed that in photos Babe Paley was not quite the flawless goddess Capote would sometimes make her out to be... she was a lovely woman, especially compared to many of the other women of her sphere, but she was absolutely not the Aphrodite he constructed in his imagination.

There was quite a bit of Blanche DuBois in Truman Capote: "I don't want realism, I want magic!"

Denny Fouts was prettier and better in bed than Jackie O!

Truman Capote was 5'3", lost any mediocre looks and body he had early in his life, and spoke with a high voice and a lisp. Beauty to him was anything tall and thin and glamorous - stuff he wasn't and would never be.

Some of the swans may not have been extreme beauties - but when you're thin and wear expensive GORGEOUS clothes with great makeup and big hair - it creates an amazing effect.

Truman was SOUTHERN.

We’re all like that. Looking for things to be larger than life.

I get it. The combination of good looks and a great personality make for a dynamite kept boy. Denny sounds like he had startling good looks and a riveting personality. I think it's also the ability to make the other person think he's the most important person in the room. They bask in your reflected glory. I wrote about that guy I knew at R15 and I can kinda see how he had that same type of magic. It's really something to watch a friend be taken up like that, to have all that money and adoration just thrown at him. But I don't think it would have happened if he didn't have the face. . .and the body. He looked like a young Warren Beatty. And the guys who adored him were in the minor leagues compared to the types Denny was pulling. So I figure there's probably some picture of Denny out there, locked away, that provides evidence of his physical perfection. But I don't see it on the Internet.

Capote had different taste in men. Newton Arvin!

John O' Shea with Capote.

O'Shea two-fisting it in that picture. He looks half-crazed.

r86, that's the same facial expression Jennifer Holliday used to have at the end of Act I of "Dreamgirls" when she'd hit that final note in "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going."

See @7:57.

"Love, love ya baby! Love, love ya, child!

'Cause baby baby baby you're driving me wild!"

I just had a flashback of watching the pixie-like Capote two-stepping across Times Square's GG Barnum's disco floor with a tall, buxom blonde woman in the late 1970s, each of us with not a care in the world.

Life was, and remains, good.

Fouts is from the German Pfautz.

A social circle or even a culture will nominate paragons of attractiveness and desirability and many people will go along with it. Everyone is cosplaying, after all. Several above in this thread noted the psychodynamic and literary utility of a young man to whom some fancy gays have access, being ALSO a young man coveted by exotic royalty and kings of commerce. Or so the gays say....

Another picture

Would anyone look twice at Robert Downey Jr. or Keanu Reeves if they didn't have charisma?

Also remember that culture was different back then. Today, we’re bombed with millions of images through electronics. Back then, they may have been attracted to someone who was average just because they didn’t have much to compare them to.

After all, men were attracted to Mae West and Marlene Dietrich, both of whom were more about allure than beauty.

[quote]Capote was convinced if Hitler had succeeded in bedding Fouts, WWII would have never happened.

This is presumably an example of Capote's high IQ on display? Pity he wasn't advising Winston Churchill.

O'Shea in R85's picture is a dead ringer for Hugh Laurie.

When I read OP's post and then googled him - I was really surprised by how average he looked. Not unpleasant but slightly above average.

[quote]This is where Fouts began to be passed around by gay European royalty and became "the most expensive male prostitute in the world

This reminds me of John Mullaney as Julian, a "pass around party bottom."

Jacksonville's Favorite Son

Sorry. I just find it amusing that this boy is from that town.

Standard issue twink. I don’t buy any of these claims for a second. Shah of Iran. Give me a break.

For anyone looking for other books about Denny and his contemporaries, this biography of Peter Watson - "Queer Saint - is the best of the bunch. Watson was Denny's main man, the giver of gifts and adoration without end.

Is the story of Fouts' life THAT scandalous? Or that popular? The book's titled "The Best Kept Boy in the World" by Arthur Vanderbilt.

My library has a copy but it does not circulate: Reading Room Only.

Excerpt below

Hitler found him rooty tooty fresh and fruity.

Capote had the weirdest education. He went to Dalton (the same school Anderson Cooper attended) in NYC for his high school years, thanks to his stepfather's money, but he cut classes all the time, and then he didn't go on to college. He read around, but mostly shorter stuff (as several people note in the Plimpton biography, he always claimed to have read Proust but no one thought he actually did based on how he talked about it--he thought it was just sexy gossip about rich people). So I'm not at all that in the end he thought world wars could have prevented if Hitler had just been properly laid. I think he just didn't know anything about politics.

My first boyfriend was like that. An femme-ish artist who was a Narcissist and a sociopath, at 20 he became pals with all the rich players who adored his eccentricity. He took from them, sometimes stole from them, and gave little back besides his company. Watching the Truman Capote series I was reminded of him by Truman himself. There are people in the world who exude a kind of charm that attracts wealthy and influential people regardless of how fucked up they clearly are.

This is basically Andrew Cunanan's story too... on a much smaller scale. He was sociopathic and charismatic, and he was very good looking and had a beautiful body when he was young. So he was able to hook up with some incredibly rich men before he went nuts.

Don't forget that Fouts had a thick, Southern accent. I've often crushed on ordinary guys with sexy accents. For me, it's Brits, but I can imagine that for others, I can imagine the allure and charm of a Southern gentleman. And I don't think he was hung. Probably a talented bottom.

Denny was a bit of pedophile. He liked 'em between 14 and 16.

He doesn’t look unlike Truman in the dreamy photo. Maybe he wasn’t photogenic.

Compared to "The Best Kept Boy in the World," "Queer Saint" is the better book. Cecil Beaton was good looking back in the day and he had it real bad for Watson, who "loved him like a friend." The book covers the Bright Young Things of the 1920s at Oxford and the how Watson's country estate was the setting for Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited." All the characters in the book were Watson's contemporaries and poor Cecil Beaton harbored a deep love for Watson which went unrequited. And then Watson met Dennie Fouts and fell hard, sending Beaton into a deep depression.

Cecil in the 20s.