Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Truman Capote will be known forever for his classic works In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's. What he really wanted to be most known for was a novel that he never finished, a novel in which he betrayed his closest friends. The novel was titled Answered Prayers and on the subjects that were thinly veiled portrayals of the Manhattan high society women Truman called his swans. Women like Babe Paley, wife of CBS founder Bill Paley, Lee Radziwill, sister of Jackie Kennedy, and fashion icon and socialite Slim Keith.

Truman befriended these women, stayed in their massive estates, hung out on their yachts, delighted at their distant dinner parties. When Esquire published an excerpt of that novel in 1975, the swans were less than thrilled to have their dirty laundry aired in public by someone they thought was their friend. The story recounted an affair Babe Paley's husband had with the New York governor's wife, portrayed Slim Keith as a bitter divorcee who had lost her husband to another woman, and even claimed that Ann Woodward murdered her husband.

The fallout from the story was swift and seems to have caught Truman by surprise. Most of the swans cut him out of their lives and therefore out of the Manhattan social scene. In the final years of his life, Truman descended into addiction. He never finished the novel that cost him some of his longest friendships. All of this is recounted in the book Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer. The book was also adapted this year into the FX series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, which earned 10 Emmy nominations.

Laurence joins me now to discuss his book as part of our series, Women Behaving Badly, our tongue-in-cheek title for a look at the unruly women throughout New York history. Laurence, welcome.

Laurence Leamer: Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: What was the research process like?

Laurence Leamer: What was what?

Alison Stewart: What was the research process like for this book? Did Chipotle live behind journals, anything like that?

Laurence Leamer: It was very difficult because it was during the pandemic and the New York Public Library was closed, which had the Capote Papers. The Library of Congress was closed. I couldn't get Pamela Harriman's papers there. Other things were there. I wanted to go to Italy to talk to Marella Agnelli's family there. I couldn't go there. I wrote it basically based on research I could get, books I could get and Internet research. That was it. That's the dirty truth.

Alison Stewart: How are you able to sort through what was fact, what was gossip, and what was pure fiction?

Laurence Leamer: Because I'm very careful about that. I have to get-- I want two sources. I want to be sure if something's exaggerated, I'm not going to use it. If somebody says something, sometimes you don't know if it's true. They can say it, but they have the right to say that and to record what they said.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about defining a swan. What made a swan a swan in Truman Capote's eyes?

Laurence Leamer: Well, a swan is not-- Look, she's beautiful. Of course she's beautiful. She's very rich. She's elegant. She has a unique sense of taste. Yes, she has these incredibly expensive designer clothes, but she has her own sense of taste. She makes them her own, and she's witty and irresistible. There were very few women like that then and now, I'm afraid.

Alison Stewart: Of all the swans, who would you say was Truman's favorite?

Laurence Leamer: Babe Paley.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Why Babe Paley?

Laurence Leamer: He just loved her. He said he was one of the first ones she met. He was just so close to her and she told him everything. He was just this merciless gossip. If you would talk to him, Alison, he'd be your closest friend, and you'd tell him these secrets you don't want anybody to know, and then he'd go to somebody else and tell that secret to them, get secrets from them and tell them to somebody else. He was just this ugly kind of gossip. Great writer, but that was a negative part of him.

Alison Stewart: Well, let's talk about his beginnings, Truman Capote's beginnings. He's not someone who came from wealth. What were his early years life?

Laurence Leamer: Well, he was brought up in a small town in Alabama, and before that in New Orleans. His mother was socially ambitious. She came to New York and she met this accountant and married him. Truman had only a high school education. Imagine, and he wrote his first book, a bestseller, when he was 23 years old.

Alison Stewart: There he is, a man with high school education. Yet he fit in with the ultra wealthy. How did he do that?

Laurence Leamer: He just had this ingratiating manner. The fact is that he was a gay man in a time when he could be arrested for being gay, right. He was openly gay, and he just had this charm and this ability to entertain people. What he knew was he was invited to all these elite dinner parties, but he knew if he wasn't entertaining, if he didn't amuse these people, he would be gone. That was the reality of that world. He wasn't one of them.

Alison Stewart: Yes, he saw himself as kind of an interloper, maybe, into this high society world. Did he ever, ever become an insider himself?

Laurence Leamer: Not ultimately, because it takes three generations to become a real gentleman or a lady and to have this behavior integral to you. It wasn't integral to him, but he was a writer, and writers get their best revenge, and the best revenge was going to be this book, Answered Prayers, which is going to be a masterpiece that was going to tell the story of the rich in mid-century America.

Alison Stewart: Yes. You write about this group, that they were an elitist group of people. You write how people like C. Z. Guest really believe that their wealth was the result of God's will and that they were better than, her language, they were better than poor people.

Laurence Leamer: She was unique in that way. She was the worst in that respect. Such an incredible snob.

Alison Stewart: Did Truman share the belief in any way?

Laurence Leamer: No, because he probably thought-- but he was a product of the meritocracy in one of the fields that-- you know, if you're a great writer, you don't have to PhD from Harvard. Right. That's what he was. He had this incredible talent.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with Laurence Leamer, author of the book Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era. It was the inspiration for the Emmy-nominated series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. We're speaking with Laurence as part of our series Women Behaving Badly, tongue-in-cheek. Why would you invite Truman to your dinner parties on your vacation?

Laurence Leamer: Because he was so charming. Because he was full of the latest gossip. He had stories nobody else knew. He was irresistible as a guest.

Alison Stewart: Do you think these women viewed him as a real friend?

Laurence Leamer: Yes. Yes. In a way. In the way that gay men often befriend sort of socially elite women. Okay? There's a natural affinity there. That was the kind of friendship it had. Some of them trusted him more than others. I mean, Slim Keith knew not to tell him certain things because she knew what he was like. She knew what he would do with what she told him, but Babe totally trusted him. Her husband was a philanderer. She was creating this illusion for herself.

Imagine when she was 17, she was in an automobile accident. Her face had to be redone. She lost her teeth. She wore false teeth that she put in every morning when she got up. She slept in a different bedroom from her husband, and he wouldn't even see her until she was totally made up.

Alison Stewart: You write about that, that their job was to be beautiful, that their job was to present a certain way.

Laurence Leamer: Yes. To show that their husband, this was something that their husband had that was valuable. It was like a painting they could have put on the wall.

Alison Stewart: When you think about Truman, what the definition of friendship was to Truman Capote, what was it? Did he consider himself a good friend?

Laurence Leamer: I think he did until he betrayed them. He didn't really realize what he had done. He'd say these terrible stories about them and think that they would just forgive him and go on. That's not the way the world works.

Alison Stewart: Do you think, do you really think that he was gathering all this material on all of these people and there wouldn't be a reaction from these people once it came out?

Laurence Leamer: Because he had that writer's-- you can never trust a writer.

Alison Stewart: She said-- [laughs]

Laurence Leamer: Present company excepted. Anyway, because they're just, whatever you're saying, they're listening to it and they're going to use it, and that's what he did.

Alison Stewart: How did the women's husbands respond to Truman being so very present in their lives?

Laurence Leamer: It was great. He was gay. They didn't have to worry about him sleeping with their wives. The perfect person to have around your wife.

Alison Stewart: Were any of them friends with him as well?

Laurence Leamer: Yes. Well, William F. Paley really liked him and liked being around him more than any of the others.

Alison Stewart: They often thought when he came aboard that it was actually Truman who was coming aboard. Truman the president, not Truman Capote?

Laurence Leamer: No. When they first met.

Alison Stewart: Tell us that story.

Laurence Leamer: The Paleys are going to Jamaica in their private plane. Another guest, and he said, "Do you mind if I bring along Truman?" Of course, Paley thought, that's the former president of the United States, Harry S. Truman. When Truman arrives on the-- this little tiny guy with this scarf that goes down to his ankles and gets on, William Paley couldn't believe this and was upset.

Alison Stewart: What changed his mind about having him there?

Laurence Leamer: Because just how charming he was. There was nobody like him. I mean, that world is totally gone. There aren't dinner parties like that anymore.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Laurence Leamer, author of the book Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era. It's the inspiration for the Emmy-nominated series Feud: Capote vs The Swans. In reading your book, it seems that some of these women were unhappy with their lives, despite all the money in the world. What did Truman Capote observe about this gilded cage, these golden handcuffs that the women felt trapped in?

Laurence Leamer: Well, one of the great pleasures in life is learning that someone who's richer and better looking than you are is unhappy. That's one of the pleasures of reading this book, that these people had everything and they were unhappy. What I've learned, not just from this, but from my entire life and 20 books I've written, is don't be jealous of anybody. You don't have any reason to be jealous. This society works by creating this illusion of this place. If we could only get there, we'd be happy. Well, guess what? That place doesn't exist.

Alison Stewart: Were the swans, did they have friendships with each other? Real friendships?

Laurence Leamer: Yes. Yes, they did. They were close to each other. They weren't jealous of each other.

Alison Stewart: Were they as close with one another as they were with Truman, or was it a different vibe, actually?

Laurence Leamer: It was a different vibe.

Alison Stewart: Explain.

Laurence Leamer: Well, Truman created the illusion with each one that he was their closest friend. With these women, they were just, they would go out to lunch. There were ladies at lunch. They enjoyed each other's company, but it wasn't with that degree of intimacy, most of them.

Alison Stewart: To be honest, though, it wasn't just men who had the affairs. Many of the women had affairs outside of their marriage. Was it accepted for women to have affairs as it was for their husbands?

Laurence Leamer: Not of that era, no. No way.

Alison Stewart: Why did they do it?

Laurence Leamer: I guess because they enjoy it, but most of them-- I'm trying to think. I mean, Pamela Harriman had, and she would have been a grand courtesan in the Renaissance. She just went from man to man, wealthy man to wealthy man. She was not married when she was doing-- She didn't do that when she was married. I don't think most of them-- I'm going down, I'm looking at the list and thinking, but most of them-- Slim Keith had an affair and divorced her husband, but most of them didn't.

Alison Stewart: Reading through the book, it struck me how they remarried and got divorced and remarried and got divorced. How were attitudes towards divorce different for 'elite' women versus the average woman?

Laurence Leamer: No. I came from a little town upstate New York. A divorced woman was a scarlet woman. You didn't want her in your house. You were afraid she'd take over your husband. Right? These elite women had-- It's a totally different world. The thing we have to realize is they were celebrated. There were these columns that were immensely popular where they told the stories of these women and the way they dressed. I and believe in. I'm 82 years old. In 1962, I worked for the What Cheer Patriot-Chronicle in Iowa.

The young men in high school wore white t-shirts and jeans, and they wanted to join their, they wanted to become farmers like their father. The young women, they went to Sioux City, to JC Penney's, and they bought these versions of the kind of clothes the Swans wore. They came home and they wore those clothing. You knew looking at them that there were going to be a lot of unhappy marriages.

Alison Stewart: Babe Paley is the first person that you profile in the book. It seemed like Truman Capote and Babe had a special relationship, and yet it was Babe that truly, really ended up betraying the most in this novel. Why do you think it was Babe's marriage that Truman decided to go after?

Laurence Leamer: I don't think he--

Alison Stewart: You don't think he meant to?

Laurence Leamer: I don't think he thought that way. I think he [unintelligible 00:14:43] , "What is the best story?" He just took the best stories. He didn't care who they were. He was going to tell their stories. He could have fictionalized these things a little bit so it wasn't so obvious, but he didn't want to do that.

Alison Stewart: He seemed like he felt like they had something in common, Babe and Truman. What would Truman say that he had in common with Babe?

Laurence Leamer: Well, they were both outsiders in a way, despite everything that people loved Babe, and she would walk into La Côte Basque and she knew that she was a presence. She would look neither right nor left because she knew everybody was looking at her, but she still always felt an outsider.

Alison Stewart: It seems clear, we said it clearly, that he was an unrepentant gossip. He just was. Did that reputation ever get him in trouble before the short story?

Laurence Leamer: Not really, because that was what got him entre to these, into these homes, to these parties, that he was such a gossip. People wanted to hear his latest gossip. It's really strange because great writers often like some measure of gossip, but not like this. I mean, he just was just a terrible indulgence.

Alison Stewart: It was also really personal. It was also really personal.

Laurence Leamer: Yes, well, he was, in some ways, he was a nasty person.

Alison Stewart: One thing that came through in the book is how much the experience of writing In Cold Blood changed Truman. How is he a different person after following that case for so many years?

Laurence Leamer: Well, first of all, look, you can't be a great writer unless you're emotionally involved with what you're doing. To go out to Kansas and tell these stories, these two murderers in this world, that he could have gone to Tibet. Tibet wouldn't have been more exotic than Kansas, but he went there and he befriended one of the murderers, maybe had an affair with him, but he totally got involved with him. Any writer, when you finish a book, you get depressed, but it was so much more. Plus the fame that came with it, all the money. It just was beyond measure what he had.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Explain the level of fame that Truman Capote experienced after the publication of In Cold Blood.

Laurence Leamer: Well, the greatest example of this is his party, the Black and White Ball that he had in 1966 at the Plaza Hotel, which actually, this January, for the premiere of the series, that that ball was replicated. That was the most fabulous party of the era, where he invited all these celebrated people from all different fields of life, and he was the center of it.

Alison Stewart: You know, as you said, Truman didn't really think the stories were going to add up to that much. What did he want for the goal of the novel? What he wanted to achieve with Answered Prayers?

Laurence Leamer: He wanted a great-- He wanted to be like Edith Wharton, who to me, is just this incomparable writer about the rich. Some people thought, oh, you can't write a great book about the rich. Why not? You can write a book about anybody if you do it right. That's what he was going to do. He was going to be a masterpiece. He could have done it. Now, what I would have done, if I were his friend, I'd say, "Truman, you can't do this. You got to write his block. What you got to do is you got to go back and you've got to tell the story of your failure to write this book. That will be a great book."

Alison Stewart: What were the consequences once the Esquire article came out? What were the consequences of having the Swans cut you out socially in New York?

Laurence Leamer: Because it just wasn't the Swans. Everybody started to turn on him, and that's the way America works, right? You're here, you're a big deal, and suddenly, for some reason, everybody turns on you. It happens again and again.

Alison Stewart: Aside from Truman's helping the Swans to see their own problems, the '60s and the '70s were a time of immense change in American culture. It was the birth of the Feminist Movement. How did the Swans navigate the change?

Laurence Leamer: They simply weren't part of that. The only one. Gloria Guinness wrote a column for Harper's Bazaar which dealt with the themes of the change in women. She was quite brilliant. She wanted to write a novel. She could have done many things, but her husband didn't want her to do it.

Alison Stewart: Well, did their status change? Did their cache changed in the '70s?

Laurence Leamer: Well, that whole world disappeared. That world was for one generation. I mean, women wouldn't do that any longer. It's considered self-indulgent and kind of worthless, nobody would do that anymore. Still, the dress. I mean, when the series, the series was so successful, in part because people love dress. They love to look at it and they love to feel it and be part of it.

Alison Stewart: How did the Swans' social rejection of Truman Capote contribute to his downward spiral?

Laurence Leamer: Well, that was the crucial thing. He began to drink and take drugs and totally dissipated himself.

Alison Stewart: How did it affect his career?

Laurence Leamer: Well, he couldn't write. His most creative act in his last years was to pretend he was writing. His longtime lover, John Dunphy, said that Truman would be in the bedroom leaving through movie magazines, and he's on the phone telling people he's writing his book. He wasn't, he just couldn't write anymore. He was totally blocked for all kinds of reasons. Devastating thing to happen to a relatively young writer.

Alison Stewart: The book was nominated. The TV show Feud: Capote vs The Swans. 10 nominations. Tom Hollander's work as Truman Capote, Naomi Watts and the portrayal of Babe Paley. What did you appreciate about the book? About the TV show?

Laurence Leamer: First of all, what I appreciate is, first of all, it wasn't paint by numbers. They took a lot of big chances in this, okay. James Baldwin. 1 hour is with James Baldwin and Truman. Well, James Baldwin hardly knew Truman. That was all totally made up. There were other things that were kind of, I disagree with. I admired that they took these [unintelligible 00:21:02] for something that probably cost $70 million or $80 million. They took these artistically daring things. Okay.

Alison Stewart: Laurence Leamer is the author of the book Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era. It's an excellent read. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, she's here. She has a new book out. She's storming the country on behalf of Kamala Harris' presidential campaign. She'll join me next.

 

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