Truman Capote's 'danse de triomphe'
Three new books examine our obsession with the famous, from the ' 50s to today.
By MARY JANE PARK
Published January 21, 2007
He labored over the guest list for months, adding and editing names in a simple composition book with a stippled black-and-white cover. On the front cover, he wrote, simply: "Dance."
It was 1966. Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which he called his nonfiction novel, had been published to great acclaim. It was the story of the brutal murders of members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kan., in 1959, and of the two men who were hanged for their slayings.
The New Yorker magazine printed several chapters in the months before the hardcover book was released, and Capote himself had fueled the frenzy for his book over the years he reported it. On Sunday, Jan. 16, 1966, author Deborah Davis reports in Party of the Century, more than 24 newspapers reviewed his book.
At last, Capote had the money to pay for a lavish party, and the dance he had in mind was a celebration of his triumph. Even the audacious Capote recognized that such a self-centered gesture was inappropriate and out of the question.
He considered his Swans, the fashionable, wealthy, see-and-be-seen coterie of society women who had taken him under their wings: Marella Agnelli, Gloria Guinness, C.Z. Guest, Pamela Harriman, Slim Keith, Babe Paley and Lee Radziwill. As Davis describes them, "They were women of a certain age, mature beauties who had spent decades turning themselves into works of art." The winsome Capote had invited their friendship and confidence, but he could not choose among them.
His guest of honor would be Katharine Graham. The Washington Post president was a plainer bird than the usual flock with which he surrounded himself. She was a New York outsider. And Kay Graham was an important media executive and Washington host who introduced him to political and intellectual luminaries.
Rumors about Capote's Nov. 28 ball began to spread. Well-placed items in magazine and newspaper society columns tantalized those who longed to be among his 540 favorites. He chose the Grand Ballroom at New York's Plaza Hotel for its beauty and relative intimacy.
The invitations, printed by Tiffany & Co. one of Capote's early novels was Breakfast at Tiffany's, specified black tie/black mask for men and "White dress/White mask/fan" for women.
Capote's Swans and dozens of other women went into high gear, commissioning ball gowns and masks from designers who ranged from Adolfo, Dior, Givenchy and Halston to Betsey Johnson. They borrowed jewels and crowded into jet-set hair salons.
Capote wore a simple tuxedo suit and an unembellished black mask he claimed to have bought for 39 cents at FAO Schwarz.
Decor focused on greenery and candlelight; Capote famously said that his guests were the only flowers necessary in the Plaza ballroom. Taittinger champagne was the beverage of the evening, 450 bottles of it. There were two bands: Peter Duchin's sophisticated, traditional music for social dancing, and Benny Gordon's Soul Brothers for livelier action.
Party of the Century is social biography, an intimate look at numerous bold-face names of the mid 1960s. Initially, the book flags as Davis introduces key subjects, but she must: Two generations later, many of the personalities have faded from view.
Davis does not ignore the more serious issues of 1966, and there were many: "The war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, women's liberation, and the unprecedented coming of age of 70-million teenagers, many of whom were eager for a revolution, created an atmosphere of discontent and instability," she writes. "The night of the party, there was a great contrast between the glittering and carefully ordered world inside the ballroom and the simmering social and political revolution outside."
In the decades since, newspapers, magazines and other media outlets repeatedly have revisited Capote's remarkable party, "searching for reasons why the event was a cultural and sociological benchmark."
Davis' well-researched insights into that evening seem to offer this theory: Capote was at his zenith in 1966, and perhaps American society was as well.
Mary Jane Park is a Times staff writer. She can be reached at park@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8267.
THE BOOK
Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and his Black and White Ball
By Deborah Davis
John Wiley & Sons, 293 pages, $24.95