“Feud: Capote vs The Swans” premieres 1/31/24

It looks good but it's Ryan Murphy.

Fuck you, R1. Show me what you can do. I can smell your old man stink from here.

A who’s who of has beens!

They’re all stars

I will be watching!

The book was awful. I tapped out after 30 pages.

Didn't Infamous cover this already?

Housewives?

How dare he?

Oh, a Ryan Murphy production. That means it will start out sort of good but then turn to shit fast, like all of his other projects.

Molly Ringwald? That’s a pleasant surprise.

Murphy does well with real-life stories. They give him a beginning, middle and end and force a focus. His original stories are where his ADHD makes everything go kerfluey.

Looking forward to this since the first season of "Feud" was so much fun.

I don't recognize Diane or Cloe Senvingy (sp)

who is the cast?

Naomi Watts as Babe Paley

Chloë Sevigny as C. Z. Guest

Tom Hollander as Truman Capote

Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill

Diane Lane as Slim Keith

Demi Moore as Ann Woodward

Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson

Treat Williams as Bill Paley

Ella Beatty as Kerry O'Shea

Joe Mantello as Jack Dunphy

Chris Chalk as James Baldwin

Didn’t Treat Williams die?

That cast is eldergay heaven.

No women of color??!

At the time of his death in June 2023, Trat Williams had completed filming his portrayal of Bill Paley—former head of CBS—on the second season of Feud, an anthology-docudrama series created by Ryan Murphy for FX. The show's eight episodes were directed by Gus Van Sant. It will premiere in January 2024.

The photo looks good, even if extremely photoshopped. But this a curious case where the majority of the real life women were more attractive than the Hollywood actresses playing them.

Chloe Sevigny, r12.

the real swans

Thanks OP. I can’t wait.

Tom Hollander as Capote

Naomi Watts as Babe Paley.

Any young men in the cast to satisfy the needs of Gus Van Sant?

"Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill"

The fuck???

R16, alas there were no Black Swans in Truman's gaggle.

I think Calista Flockhart is a good choice for Lee Radziwill.

Excuse me, PRINCESS Lee Radziwill!

Chris Chalk was very good in the "Perry Mason." Hope he gets some good gay scenes in this.

R27 agreed. Shes a good casting choice.

R28 I hope there aren’t any unnecessary gratuitous scenes.

I’m hoping for much gratuitous male nudity.

A big deal will be made of Bill Paley washing his mistress' menstrual blood out of the sheets to hide it from Babe Paley.

I will watch the fuck out of this. Who is playing Babe?

R32 Naomi Watts

How long before we get FEUD: Prince of Wales vs. Duke of Sussex ??

Thank you R33.

Lee Radzwill was 42 at tbe time of publication of the troubling article of Answered Prayers in Esquire (1975). Calista will be 60 nest year. And she looks nothing like her.

I guess Lee’s bitchiness caught up with her posthumously

R16 writes for TheGuardian

Murphy.

So it will be shallow, obvious, historically incorrect, low-brow, poorly directed and all flapdoodle.

R36 it’s 2023. It’s very easy to make a 60 year old look younger. Calista looks younger in general. If you saw her walking down the street you wouldn’t think she’s 60.

[quote] I’m hoping for much gratuitous male nudity.

God, not from Truman I hope! Even if it's just an actor, the thought remains horrifying.

Demi Moore? Yuck.

No Little Gloria?

[quote]Oh, a Ryan Murphy production. That means it will start out sort of good but then turn to shit fast, like all of his other projects.

Produced by Brad Pitt and directed by Gus Van Sant. Unclench.

[quote]Calista will be 60 nest year. And she looks nothing like her.

Movie magic, scroll down.

At least Diane Lane looks like Slim Keith, ex-Mrs. Howard Hawks and Mrs. Leland Haywood and by the '60's Lady Keith (she married a British banker) and Capote's Lady Coolbirth in "Answered Prayers."

[quote]Produced by Brad Pitt and directed by Gus Van Sant. Unclench.

But it's still Ryan Murphy, dear.

No Pamela Harriman?

Since many DLers believe they are CZ Guest circa 1965 this show will be generating many threads.

That’s what I said @R47 Missed opportunity for Christina Hendricks

[quote]That’s what I said @[R47] Missed opportunity for Christina Hendricks

Oh puhleeze, r49.

Who are The Swans of today's NY society? Do they still exist in the same way.

There are no Swans, we now have Harpies.

The shooting title was FEUD: CAPOTE AND HIS WOMEN. I like the new title much better.

That would be us, R51

Capote did what a lot of little, bullied sissies do: they glom onto the popular girls and become court jester for them. It's some protection from the fagbashers who don't want to anger the pretty girls. When he dropped out of high school he started partying in Manhattan with young debs like Oona O'Neill, Carol Marcus and Gloria Vanderbilt.

[quote]Capote did what a lot of little, bullied sissies do: they glom onto the popular girls and become court jester for them.

Hahaha. Me with the Matzoh Maids in my New Jersey suburb of New York.

I adore Chris Chalk.

ADORE.

The women, meh.

Written by Robbie Baitz. 🤔

[quote]No Little Gloria?

How GHASTLY?

[quote]Who are The Swans of today's NY society? Do they still exist in the same way.

Of course we do.

Tony and Pulitzer-nominated Jon Robin Baitz adapted the book for the screen and wrote all eight episodes; Baitz also serves as showrunner. It might actually be really good since Murphy didn't write it.

Wiki

Jessica Christ, how could I forget he wrote the Sally Field drama.

That's The Sally Field Programme, R63.

R64 Thank you for the correction. I want you in me, balls deep.

By 10:51 every Sunday, the Sally Field Programme had become the Sally Field Drunkathonne.

Poor John Norman. They mislabeled him as Sam Waterston.

Loved the Sally Field Programme for itself but also for the DL thread.

I miss a weekly broadcast, non-streaming prime time soap.

B&S was love-to-hate, can’t miss TV.

I'll be tuning in. Perfect little treat for cold February. I haven't seen Ryan Murphy stick the landing in a while. But I'll judge for myself if he does this time.

Ryan Murphy also teased that Jessica Lange has a role in this, though it’s being kept under wraps who she plays… any good guesses?

R70 Maybe Anne Woodward’s MIL?

R70 maybe she’ll play someone who whisper-acts everyone to an early grave.

This sounds promising and I loved Answered Prayers, so this is a will watch.

R70, I noticed in the imdb cast list, they have actors tapped to play Albert and David Maysles. Do you suppose Ryan is having Jessica reprise her role as Big Edie Beale, in scenes inspired by "That Summer"?

I can't wait not to watch!

Where's, "Feud: The Gabors"? They haaated each other. C' mon, Ryan!

A new poster of the Swans

Stinky Linky.

Chloe will never be a beauty.

"The Original Housewives" ugh, seriously?

[quote]Murphy. So it will be shallow, obvious, historically incorrect, low-brow, poorly directed and all flapdoodle.

I know, and I can't wait!

Molly Ringwald. It’s nice to see her get roles. But she’s a terrible actor.

[quote]Murphy. So it will be shallow, obvious, historically incorrect, low-brow, poorly directed and all flapdoodle.

It's being directed by Gus Van Sant, Max Winkler and Jennifer Lynch. Are they not good enough for you?

No Gloria Guinness? She was the best-dressed one.

At r20 link, CJ Guest had tragic, tragic ankles. Should have kept to maxi dresses.

CZ Guest in the best society photograph ever taken.

^^Excuse me?

Babe Paley wore dentures, which she is always hiding by a frown or holding something in front of her face. Destroys the whole illusion.

[quote] Murphy. So it will be shallow, obvious, historically incorrect, low-brow, poorly directed and all flapdoodle.

You're predicting a fictionalized television show about a feud among the members of mid-century café society will be shallow, obvious, and low-brow? Now I've heard everything!

All Truman knew was abandonment. So if it didn't come about naturally, he'd eventually instigate it- just to feel normal.

Notice how the "beauties" were slim, flat chested, flat butted, and thin lipped. Now we have Brazilian butt and huge implants and the trout pout.

^^They all smoked and lived on pills.

Will there be any reference to Harper Lee?

R63 Ryan did NOT write the Sally Field Programme.

I did.

[quote] Sally Field Programme.

Who the fuck is this? Sally Field? Never heard of her.

Glad to see enough people who are actually good love this material and will keep Murphy from ruining it.

He was a horrible boss to the Glee kids and a total sociopath for doing a virtual re-enactment of the Columbine High School library shootings in American Horror story. I try to avoid him unless I can't resist the subject matter.

Will this be 99% bullshit like the last season of Feud?

^^lets just see how it goes.

God knows certain DLers love those WASP bitches.

Yes.

In the image R76 posted every actress has been de-aged by at least 20 years and given the same impossibly long neck.

[quote]and given the same impossibly long neck.

Hence, "swans."

After Olivia de Havilland sued Murphy and LOST, I would have done the next Feud as Olivia de Havilland Vs Joan Fontaine. C'mon there's a juicy story there.

[QUOTE]"The Original Housewives" ugh, seriously?

I know... But it's actually good publicity to draw in viewers. They may be shocked by the incredible good taste and impeccable manners of a bygone era in contrast to the RH franchise and all its tackiness and vulgarity.

This production has to be a set designer's, costumer's, and hairdresser's dream.

Why Gus Van Sant? Is it possible Ryan Murphy got him confused with Todd Haynes? Hayes is known for femme-based dramas like May/December, Far from Heaven, Safe, Carol, Enlightened, and Mildred Pierce. Van Sant's style is more adolescent boy dramas.

Not a single trans womxn in the cast! I'm so triggered right now.

This is everything a leftie woke society will hate. Entitled White women, living privileged existences. Marrying for status in an era where women were finding a voice in the Second Wave of feminism.

Patronising a gay writer.

The Guardian will describe Capote as 'queer', as will every reviewer under the age of 40. If this was being produced in the UK, there would be at least one 'swan' changing ethnicity to give an actress of colour the opportunity. If they can do it with Anne Boleyn they can do it with Babe Paley.

They'd be presented as homophobes despite Capote doing a hatchet job on them.

The Who vs The Who-ers?

Their tattle tale behaviour is very much in keeping with the Real Housewives, so that aspect at least is appropriate to the tagline. Carrying stories told in confidence or heard through a third party and used as ammunition or simple boredom, we see this shit in all the RH franchises.

Chloë Sevigny, the Gen Z Jamie Lee Curtis

Was Nan Kempner one of the Swans?

The original swans were Lee Radziwill, Marella Agnelli, Gloria Guinness, C.Z. Guest, Slim Keith, Pamela Harriman, and Babe Paley.

Vanity Fair

R110 Did others join later?

Exquisite photo.

Will be interesting to see if Agnelli and Guiness get any airtime.

Does Joanna Carson count as one of the "swans"? She stuck by Capote till the end.

Molly Ringwald? Unfortunately, I find her difficult to look at.

Calista and her eating disorder means she can immediately identify with the swans. Throw in the older, more successful and wealthier husband and it's life imitating art for her.

I’m actually excited about this

Eight hours of Truman Capote...eeerrr YIKES!

R118 I am too. Really hoping it's going to be A/V candy, with the period they're working with, amazing interiors, clothes, hair and makeup, could be quite fun. That's not even affording for great bitchy storylines. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.

In an act of casting fearlessness, Gabourey Sidibe will be playing Lee Radziwill.

Will they cover his triumphant performance as Lionel Twain?

Which mid century New York socialite had that really OTT living room in her apartment all decked out in red? It looked like a furnace.

This all star cast screams for Geraldine Chaplin... as Diana Vreeland?

Thank you R124! It was Diana Vreeland's apartment I was thinking of. x

My googling gives me the hints that it’ll be playing on FX and the following day on Hulu.

How do you get to FX?

Practice.

r126 I dropped my cable, I just watch it the next day on Hulu

r123

Brooke Astor

Trailer's out.

Thank you for posting the trailer r130. It looks good. Mid-century NYC WASP socialites are DL catnip.

Lange is in the trailer but not credited.

All these great aging beauties... and also Molly Ringwald!

It's funny how many of these women started out as famous teen actresses: Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore, Chloe Sevigny (who started a little older than a teenager but played teenagers), Diane Lane... except for Calista Flockhart, they were all famous before they were 21.

Diane Lane was absolutely gorgeous as a young woman.

Girls, girls, come now and gather around. The trailer has arrived and it looks divine.

Tom Hollander has the voice down perfectly. I love when he says, "Wait. Go back. We're talking the governor's wildebeest wife??? That fat-ankled harridan..."

I hope we get to actually see "the governor's wildebeest wife" (Marie Harriman). She was far richer--and far more formidable--than any of the swans.

R115 Joanne Carson called herself a duckling, saying she wasn't elegant enough to be a Swan.

I like Watts, but Sigourney Weaver was the perfect Babe Paley in the film INFAMOUS with the wonderful Toby Jones as Capote.

You know when Naomi is going heavy dramatic when she dyes her hair dark or wears a dark wig.

Cannot fucking wait!

Also, apart from Chloe, who looks fat, cannot fucking wait!

Naomi Watts completely lack the regal poise of Babe Paley (agree Weaver seemed much better).

Conversely, while i complained above thread that Calista was miscast as Lee Radzwill, from the trailer, she look she looks like she will be one of the best things in this.

They had a wonderful Babe Paley for one memorable scene in the miniseries "Halston" two years ago. I had never seen the actress before, but she was perfect (though she only had a few lines).

I wasn’t impressed by what little was shown of Tom Hollander in the trailer. Especially considering how good Toby Jones was in the role.

[quote]Especially considering how good Toby Jones was in the role.

Was he chopped liver?

I love Toby Jones, but I actually think PSH was better in the role. Capote was hilarious and talented, but he was also an absolutely vicious little man, and Hoffman really captured that. Jones was too nice.

"Oh, I'm in honey".

Seems too contemporary a way of speaking for that era

R148 It looked like he had eaten Truman Capote.

Does Jessica play a frump dancing with Truman Capote? Stunning and brave.

Chloe Sevigne is utterly plain and completely charmless. How was she cast in this (or anything)?

Chloe was perfect for the show Big Love but I usually don't enjoy her in other parts

I guess Chloe is cast because of her status as a fashionista. Which is an odd contrast with the reality that she is best in plain, sardonic parts, like in The Act as Gypsy-Rose Blanchard’s suspicious neighbour.

As for Calista Flockhart she was been longing to make fat jibes for decades. Good for her for finding her vehicle.

R139 your point? Weaver is now 74. She can’t play it again.

It’s an interesting cast which makes me willing to watch it despite being burned out on Ryan Murphy. I like Naomi Watts a lot and am an absolute stan for Chloe Sevigny and Molly Ringwald, so I’ll give it a go.

I’m contacting PETA right now to boycott this show!!!! How could you even film a fight between Truman Capote and a bunch of defenseless, unassuming creatures like swans? He was a vile, little homosexual boy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes out that he was a ringleader on the cockfighting circuit too!!!!

Who is Chloe?

And poor old Molly. *giggles*

Nice to see they shoe-horned in someone Black. Just how involved was James Baldwin with a load of socialites?

Still, Madonna might now watch this.

Ella Beatty.

Great

Boss eyed and with a five-head. What's not to like?

R148 - It seems the expression I'm in or Include me in (or out) was used in the 1930s. Since the show is set in the 1960s it seems ok to use it.

I adore Tom Hollander and will brook no aspersions cast his way!

R160 oof.

[quote]Naomi Watts completely lack the regal poise of Babe Paley

Watts is all wrong for the part. She looks dead behind the eyes. Babe may have been just an expensive clothes horse but she had those expressive eyes

Naomi Watts career really went down the shitter. She was an A-list actress just a few years ago, but now seems relegated to TV projects by Ryan Murphy. Everybody thought she was going to be the next Nicole Kidman.

[quote]Naomi Watts career really went down the shitter. She was an A-list actress just a few years ago, but now seems relegated to TV projects by Ryan Murphy. Everybody thought she was going to be the next Nicole Kidman.

Jessica Lange won 2 Emmys with 7 nominations, A Golden Globe on 5 nominations, and a SAG on 4 nominations. Kathy Bates won an Emmy with 3 nominations, and had 2 Golden Globe nominations working for Ryan Murphy, ya dumb shit.

Despite Ryan Murphy. Any first time wins?

R166, Those actresses are much older than Naomi, dumb shit.

R168 what the fuck does age have to do with it?

Sweetie. Naomi is 55 years old. You’re speaking like she’s 30. Shes lucky to get roles at 55. If you know Hollywood you know what it’s like for a woman over 30.

Nicole Kidman is 56 and she still gets some of the best roles. I prefer Naomi to Nicole as an actress, and I wish she's get offered some of the roles that Nicole gets.

Naomi is working less since she got married. She's still in her honeymoon stage.

She’s also 55 and never the movie star Kidman was. Let’s not compare apples to oranges.

Yes but Nicole fucked up her face. Naomi has not.

Naomi was bigger than Nicole around the time of King Kong and The Ring.

No one saw either of those films because of Naomi. She was fortunate to be the lead in them. She almost quit acting before landing The Ring because she hardly got work and the work she did get was low pay. She was struggling. She landed The Ring and if it flopped she was done. Thankfully it was a hit and put her on the map but until then she wasn’t a name.

[quote]Nicole Kidman is 56 and she still gets some of the best roles. I prefer Naomi to Nicole as an actress, and I wish she's get offered some of the roles that Nicole gets.

A lot of Nicole's recent work has been for TV.

[quote] Nice to see they shoe-horned in someone Black. Just how involved was James Baldwin with a load of socialites?

If this were British TV, Babe Paley would be played by a Black actress.

Babe may be one of the better recognized swans but she's not central in this. The central swan is the one played by Demi Moore, Ann Woodward.

R70, et al, Jessica Lange is playing Katharine Graham, the guest of honor at Capote's famous 1966 Black and White Ball.

R143 and all the rest of you tedious naysayers, Naomi Watts is perfect to play Babe Paley. She has the poise, the beauty, is the appropriate age, and has the acting chops.

Not quite, R179. Moore is part of the ensemble. Watts is the female lead.

You're wrong, r179. Babe is the center of the story after Capote himself. The trailer even makes that quite clear.

R182, she's actually more the lead than the character of Capote. He's the male lead, obviously, but she is the central figure.

I just put 'Answered Prayers' on my Kindle, I haven't read it in years

^^It's actually a big disappointment. He just didn't know how to tell a good story anymore by that point in his career.

It's absolutely trivial compared to practically all the writing he'd done up the point of "Answered Prayers."

R178 I hesitate to give you more airtime but we heard your silly complaints earlier in the thread. Get over it. No need to repeat yourself.

r87: ???

I said nothing about Black actresses in this thread previously. You've mistaken me for someone else.

I will be curious if they make reference, at least, to the other swans who were close friends with Capote but who do not seem as if they will be directly depicted: Marella Agnelli, Pamela Churchill Hayward Harriman, Gloria Guinness, etc.

I was never clear if Kay Graham really qualified as a swan (probably not since she lived in DC). Capote threw his famous Black-and-White Ball in her honor, but she was a shy woman who was usually not interested in gossip and the jet set. I could never figure out if she and Capote had much to do with each other after the ball, or if it was just more of a one-time event.

R189, they were friends for years and he respected her. He also wanted to throw a big, splashy, high-society party and be the center of it all, but realized that he couldn't throw a party for himself, so decided to throw it in her honor, which was also meant to cheer her up. Her husband had committed suicide a short time befoe that.

A bunch of fags arguing til all hours over middle aged actresses.

Truman Capote lives on in you all.

In you, too, fag R191. You're here, after all, Miss Boys In The Band.

R191, the "fags" here are mostly talking about casting and characters and some history behind the story.

I cannot fucking wait for this.

Molly looks GREAT!

R189 not every friend of Capote was a Swan. They were a group of socialites in NYC who were both friends of his and each other (or acquaintances). This follows the OG group.

And no role for ne? Is this not the 21st Century?!

Or me?

And don't any of you vicious queens say my gorgeous husband looks as if he's smelling cookies!

Gabby, you're more of an emperor penguin than a swan.

]quote]He also wanted to throw a big, splashy, high-society party and be the center of it all, but realized that he couldn't throw a party for himself, so decided to throw it in her honor, which was also meant to cheer her up. Her husband had committed suicide a short time befoe that.

What could be more cheerful than a party after a successful suicide?

Loved Babe's movie!

Well, it worked, R200.

r198 why do women with ham hock arms insist on going sleeveless?

New trailer.

That music score alone is all that.

Naomi is one of the Executive Producers.

Or she wouldn't have signed.

Watch again, and listen to "That's what writers do" Hollander is doing Bette Davis NOT Capote.

Tom Hollander will be a guest Monday on the Seth Myers show.

Why does Chloe's hair look so stiff and wig-like?

You can lead a cow to culture but you can't make it look good.

Maybe cos it was the 1960s and every woman's hair looked like a wig.

Naomi also gets special credit for her Personal Costumer, Personal Make-Up, and Personal Hairstylist. The latter is also the show's Wig Designer.

Rather awkward interview with Tom Hollander on Seth Meyers

He’s an awkward little dude, isn’t he.

He doesn't give much eye contact.

WTF is Ryan Murphy wearing?

Naomi in Givenchy

Molly Ringwald looks like a western Madam.

Looks like we have a new Jordan Roth on our hands. And no-one wanted the original.

Also, drag queens are the new Stomp.

R216, It was to the point of bizarre! And I adore Tom Hollander (his sitcom "Rev" is terrific, in spite of Olivia Colman as his spouse [I don't like her]) and will watch anything he is in.

He didn't look at Seth, he didn't look into the camera, he didn't even glance at the audience. Tom just focused on some weird middle space!

The premiere pics seem to answer the question of Chloe's hair. She is wearing a wig in the show.

Molly's face is enormous.

When did Diane Lane get so busty?

Kids.

^^are her kids plastic surgeons?

R222, they're ALL wearing wigs on the show.

The pics at the link at R219 are fun--all the women look great. But eek! Ryan Murphy! He's only 58 years old! What happened to him? Booze? Drugs? Horrific!

Footage from premiere.

Was Harrison Ford there?

Diane Lane and Chloe on GMA.

Diane looks great!

Demi's premiere dress is pretty spectacular.

More premiere footage

Calista on GMA

Molly interview

Is poor Jessica still in a wheelchair?

[quote]Demi's premiere dress is pretty spectacular.

*Too* spectacular.

[quote]When did Diane Lane get so busty?

She stuffs extra frozen pea bags in her bra.

I suspect Wonder Bread is more likely, r239.

Tom Hollander was a guest this morning on "Kelly and Mark." He managed at times to make eye contact with Kelly when responding.

But interestingly, in the "Feud" clip they played, of Capote at a restaurant table with a "Swan," Tom avoided eye contact there!

Diane looks less busty on the GMA.

Tom on Kelly and Mark

Am not loving Naomi's Veronica Lake peekaboo.

Naomi Watts and Tom Hollander on GMA.

Until i saw this, I thought "the governor's wildebeest wife" referred to the fearsome Marie Harriman, not poor nice Happy Rockefeller.

That Bill Paley had extramarital affairs with TWO New York governors' wives!

Chloe is the homeliest swan of them all.

[quote] Chloe is the homeliest swan of them all.

Actually, i think poor Molly is. But Chloe is second homeliest.

I think when we first see the comparison pics it was pointed out that Chloe was the least like her counterpart. It would have been better to get someone like Gwyneth to play C. Z. Guest

This is a good piece from the NYTimes that explains in a nutshell the story behind the mini-series--who these women were, why they accepted Truman Capote as a confidant for so many years, and how he betrayed them.

The pic shows that Naomi is too short to play Babe, as she was too short to play Diana.

It's hard to imagine anyone besides you and a tiny number of outraged elderly queens will care whether or not the actress playing Babe Paley is tall enough for the part, r250. That's pretty esoteric.

Agree completely, R251. What a silly and stupid "criticism."

Jessica is playing Clare Booth Luce.

Who plays Jackie On Assistance?

[quote] Who plays Jackie On Assistance?

Kim Kardashian.

Can anyone with a NY Times account please copy and paste the article R249 links? I signed up for an account like a dumbass and now they want to charge me. Fuck that, no way.

Calista

Truman Capote Cashed In on His Friends’ Secrets. It Cost Him Everything.

The rarefied social circle that embraced Capote, and eventually banished him, is up for re-evaluation in the new television series “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans.”

In 1979, five years before he died and four years after his exile from the Upper East Side’s social cockpit, Truman Capote appeared on a talk show as a friend of the common man. The host, David Susskind, remained unpersuaded. “You are always on people’s yachts” and in “great mansions on Long Island,” he pointed out. “The thing in Spain with the Pamplona bull runs.” Come on.

Capote gave up, reverting to a defense of his affection for the moneyed class. It had come to define him as much as his written work, the output of which had notoriously stalled after the publication of “In Cold Blood” in 1966. “I like rich people,” Capote said, “because they aren’t always trying to borrow something from me.”

The joke sprang from the underbrush, inadvertently poignant. If Capote was not on loan, he was there — at the most rarefied parties and dining halls, as the favored guest at Cap Ferrat — to be bartered. The terms of the exchange were relatively simple: his wit and company, his brocaded stories and dazzlingly foul mouth, traded for the devotion of the thin, beautiful, unhappily married women, up and down Fifth Avenue, who were still wearing white gloves past Stonewall and Woodstock, past Watergate and the fall of Saigon.

This world and the writer’s place in it has come up for re-evaluation with the arrival of “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” an eight-part television series on FX. The impressive cast includes Naomi Watts, Demi Moore and Diane Lane as women who contained their subversions to bed, sleeping with men who were not their husbands, and to lunch with Truman — “Tru” — Manhattan’s most celebrated gay confidant.

Whatever implicit contract existed among them was violated to very unhappy consequence in 1975, with the publication of Capote’s “La Côte Basque, 1965” in Esquire magazine. A short story that bears almost no adherence to the form, it was meant to exist as a chapter of “Answered Prayers,” the novel that famously went unfinished.

At just under 12,000 words, the story is all chatter, plotless and full of vulgar cruelties. Capote had betrayed his friends who, perhaps naïvely, did not think of themselves as material. And he had done it in service of a piece of literature that in language and sentiment reads like a set of story-meeting notes for an episode of “As the World Turns.”

Those closest to him were the angriest — Babe Paley, the wife of the CBS chairman William Paley, and the former model Slim Keith, whose identities were barely concealed. Some women, like Gloria Vanderbilt, were named outright. Esquire paid Capote $25,000 for the story, but the cost to him was incalculable, beginning with his expulsion from a world he seemed to value above all others and ending with a descent into the drug and alcohol addiction that took his life at the age of 59.

“His talent was his friend,” as Norman Mailer put at the time. “His achievement was his social life.”

There is a challenge to watching “Feud” from the vantage of a culture in which exposure is in such blood-sport demand, in which billionaires come at you on social media with book-length accounts of their narcissistic wounds. It is the work of understanding how valuable discretion remained to a certain group of people in New York in the middle of the 1970s, as the city and country were unraveling. What might seem like virtue can also read as oblivious self-regard.

It was actually the women who stood outside Capote’s immediate circle who were held up for the most damning and misogynistic appraisal in the Esquire story — for example, the character known as “the former governor’s wife,” someone who had had an affair with William Paley. Capote calls her “somewhat porcine,” then “a homely beast” and then “a cretinous Protestant size 40.” While Mrs. Paley might have conceivably leaned into the schadenfreude that would come from such a description of her husband’s mistress, she was instead activated by the humiliation. She died of lung cancer in 1978 never having spoken to Capote again.

The greatest emotional damage seemed to accrue to Ann Woodward, a showgirl of the World War II era who had married into a prominent New York banking family. She was only an acquaintance of Capote’s and one he did not especially like. In the fall of 1955, Mrs. Woodward shot and killed her husband at their estate in Oyster Bay, in the middle of the night, believing that he was a burglar.

A Nassau County grand jury determined that it was an accident. Capote decided it was not, even though someone eventually pleaded guilty to trying to rob the Woodward house on the night of the shooting. The tragedy had receded, but “La Côte Basque” sent it right back into circulation 20 years later, with an account of a woman, “Ann Hopkins,” whom Capote characterizes as “brought up in some country-slum way,” an ex-call girl and bigamist who murders her husband after he discovers that they were never technically married and she realizes she would end up with more money as a widow than as a divorcée.

In mid-October, just as Capote’s story was set to drop, Mrs. Woodward killed herself in her uptown apartment. While she had had a difficult life and there was no way to know why she did it, many speculated about the correlation.

Esquire editors had no sense of the impact “La Côte Basque” would deliver. “They just didn’t know what they had,” Alex Belth, who curates the magazine’s archive, told me recently. This was clear in the choice of cover for that issue, which featured the comedian Rich Little.

When Esquire bought the story in the summer of 1975, it was reasonable to assume that it would not resonate. There was a lot going on. In June, police officers started showing up at New York airports to hand out “Welcome to Fear City” pamphlets, which warned the newly landed not to take public transportation or walk around after 6 in the evening. On Oct. 17 came the morning news that the city would face bankruptcy in a matter of hours if it could not come up with the $453 million it owed creditors. The national unemployment rate was around 9 percent.

It would have been easy to forget, two years after the birth of People magazine — at a time well into the sexual revolution when formality had been widely decommissioned, when union leaders were celebrated, when the once-dominant social hierarchies were being democratized, when Elaine’s supplanted established French restaurants as the place to be seen — that “society,” in the most sclerotic sense, persisted no matter how irrelevant it seemed beyond a very narrow field.

“Feud,” written by the playwright Jon Robin Baitz and directed by Gus Van Sant, relies almost entirely on interior shots, presumably because the realities of the outside world would seem confoundingly intrusive, jeopardizing the possibility of sympathy for the grievances and obsessions of people who seemed to have so little engagement with it. Capote may have alienated his friends unintentionally, believing that they would find his account of their banter hilarious. Or that at least they would be game enough to forgive him if offended.

It was also possible that he wrote the story as an act of revenge. The portrayal of the women in such shallow terms conveyed the attraction-repulsion to big money that generations of literary figures have had. As much as Capote craved the attention of these women, he saw them ultimately as indifferent, terrible mothers.

Regardless of Capote’s motivation, the story around his painful banishment, already the subject of books, documentaries and a library of reported pieces, endures. At its heart it suggests the limits of a certain kind of inclusion. As a bounder, you might make it to the top, but really you’re always on probation. Capote used to pride himself on being able to see so many things at once, observing lives and worlds from every angle. When he missed, he couldn’t live with his error.

Thank you thank you R258/261! How very nice of you to post it. Much appreciated! XOXO

R256 mooches off others who do pay for a NY Times subscription.

And then R256 asks others to do the work of cutting and pasting.

[queens]why they accepted Truman Capote as a confidant for so many years, and how he betrayed them.

Gee a raving queen betrays his fag hags. Would never happen. It should be classified as sci-fi!

That Maureen Dowd profile of Calista Flockhart at r257 is hilarious.

Flockhart is at great pains to portray herself as "jes' folks," and then admits she often goes flying in private jets (piloted by her husband) and that her idea of down-market shopping is Nordstrom's.

r265, I said "how he betrayed them"--I did not say "why he betrayed them."

So fuck off.

In the future, r256 r262, use this to render paywalled links readable. Just post the link in the box. It doesn't work for all links, but it works for a lot of them.

[quote]Actually, i think poor Molly is.

She is not! She looks great.

The "Swans" told secrets to a professional writer.

They knew what Truman was when they sat down.

[quote]but realized that he couldn't throw a party for himself.

Why the hell not?

Chloe looks like fat white trash, still.

[quote]Chloe looks like fat white trash, still.

[italic]Rich[/italic] fat white trash. From Darien.

[quote] Rich fat white trash. From Darien.

An Aryan, from Darien!

[quote]The "Swans" told secrets to a professional writer.

[quote]They knew what Truman was when they sat down.

And they had every right to withdraw their friendship after he did.

Or do you think they were somehow honor-bound to stay friends with him after he had embarrassed them? It's not like he had crafted great art out of their secrets.

Chloe's latest film is Bonjour Tristesse which sounds kike an update of Summer Lovers from 1982.

^ LIKE - OMG so sorry

I agree that Naomi Watts looks wrong for Babe Paley. She and Demi Moore should have switched roles.

I'm interested in the Ann Woodward story. I just listened to a podcast about her shooting of her husband (which inspired "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles"), and I believe her story. She said she was awakened by her dog barking and thought she saw a prowler (who had been breaking and entering homes all over Long Island's Gold Coast at that time), so she grabbed her gun and, in the dark, shot at a man outside her husband's bedroom. It came out later, after they caught the prowler, that he was indeed at their house that night, was on the balcony, and heard the gunshots.

Bonjour...?

It was a novel first.

No, "Bajour," R279.

[quote]It was a novel first.

Yes, see r279.

You think we watch videos?

Well, yourt loss. The "interview" with Françoise is amusing.

^ your

BONJOUR!

Did I assert any of that, r275?

NS, SHERLOCK. People can end friendships ANY DAMN TIME THEY WANT.

It's their "Shocked. SHOCKED." reaction to which I clearly was alluding.

BONJOUR TRISTESSE is a remake of a 1958 Otto Preminger film with David Niven, Deborah Kerr, and Jean Seberg, based on a novel by Francoise Sagan.

Capote proved beyond doubt that some gay men are the greatest misogynists of all.

R289, he wrote sympathetically about women--the character of Holly Golightly begs on behalf of a poor female who wants more than she was born into.

Sook, the character in "A Christmas Memory"? Extraordinarily sympathetic on Capotes part.

These women were fair game. His writing of them was cruel and shallow, but remember, more than a few of them called him (and Vidal--looking at you, Lee Radziwill): "Fag."

And, as Capote reminded us, "A faggot is a homosexual gentleman who has just left the room."

This looks like fun, this show, and its eminently shallow nature is a tonic.

Ryan Murphy has been unusually quiet during the launch of this. Is it because he doesn't want to be asked questions about Angelica Ross?

Who, R291?

So much to take in....

Chloe Sevigny has been cast in something...

Chloe Sevigny is playing a female character....

Did they get Goop to play Titsie Beaumont?

R292, the trans actress from Pose and AHS who accused Murphy of allowing racism and transphobia on his sets.

Meh.

[quote]Chloe is the homeliest swan of them all.

Chloe Sevigny has a face like a foot r246. Perhaps watching her scenes in the actual series won’t be so bad, but she’s painful to behold in the cast photos. Swan, my ass.

Molly talks about Feud in the interview in this thread.

Naomi on Fallon mentions Feud from 4.35.

Fallon said he also had Chloe on the show but I can't find a clip.

Found it. Feud from 4.45.

I just KNEW this show was going to trigger a convergence of DL's elder camp gays and the theater queens and, well, here we are. Just look at all the cat fighting going on in this thread and the fucking show hasn't even premiered yet. "She was HER friend but didn't have to be HER friend, bitch!", "Fuck YOU! Babe was TALLLLLER than her, it's an injustice!" .... "Her new film is a piece of SHIT, I hate her she's a witch!"..... rinse, repeat......

MARY!

Mission Accomplished!

R302, what's really going to be annoying is when all the Gen-Zers suddenly become experts on Capote etc. from watching a TV show.

See also "I saw it on The Crown so it must be true!"

R304 - LOL! They'll become 'experts' and then commence attempting to cancel Capote and all the "Swans" due to some perceived social injustice they committed 60 years ago. You know it's coming.

Chloe is giving off a Babs Bush after Ozempic vibe.

Surprise Chloë Sevigny who performed real oral sex on screen is so embraced.

And on a Conservative, anti-pornography Republican, no less!

The Wiki on Robbie Baitz says he and Joe Mantello were "romantic partners" from 1990 to 2002 but that's not true. They only lasted a few years and had split up when Joe's career success far exceeded Robbie's by 1995, if not even earlier.

Watch for handsome young men in sweater vests. They are a key feature of every Ryan Murphy series that takes place prior to 1965.

Gallo doesn’t sound terribly bright.

Speak for yourself, cunt R3.

The Matchy-Matchy Glam Styles of Manhattan’s Society Swans in ‘Feud: Capote vs. The Swans’

Link to Esquire's La Côte Basque, 1965, Capote's excerpt that started it all. Apologies if this has already been posted. The thread is 313 replies and I didn't have it in me to scroll through all the posts.

I think the opening about the cowboy beating off is pretty edgy publishing for 1975.

After seeing a couple of trailers, I’ll give this a whirl. It’s light scandal and great clothes, so it’ll be fun to look at. Let us all pray to the great server in the sky that the scripts don’t end up “Murphy’d”.

R315 Wish in one hand....

[quote]It’s light scandal and great clothes

Don't forget...the hair

Diane Lane. Tom Hollander. I'm all in.

I think this will come off better than some of Murphy's other projects like the Davis/Crawford Feud because the characters and their histories, despite their famous names, aren't nearly as well-known as Bette and Joan. I don't think most of us have a particularly iron-clad pre-conceived version of who they were. Of course, there's always Capote himself and we do think we know who he was.

We'll see.....

The OG swan!

Wong, r320

I love that Jennifer Aniston Steve Cokarujuku looking person to Bjork's right.

I love Tom Hollander's last role on The White Lotus, though I wish they'd some how figured out a way to work in Jennifer Coolidge as Capote's sidekick/faghag. There's a line from the Swans trailer, something like "you look haggard...and fat" and that instantly makes me think of DL!

Molly

I don't remember her jaw and chin being so strong, though she did have a little underbite/pout when she was young. I wonder if she had some surgery that affected her facial proportions.

^^facelift and fillers

Molly looks horrible at r324.

Worked with Molly a bit in the late 90s and early 2000s. She was an entitled cow. No grace, Really didn't care for her.

r328 = Lillian Gish

Plus she’s a shitty actor.

I got such a charge out of R329's byline.

Who was the youngest “swan” during this time?

Sorry, not byline but the post itself. I was entertaining the notion that R328 was LG.

Wasn't Nan Kempner a Swan?

No R334 she was of a slightly later generation than the Swans. She knew Capote socially, but was not all that close to him.

Nan Kempner, Pat Buckley, Annette Reed (later de la Renta), Chessy Rayner, and Mica Ertegun were part of the next generation right after the Swans and Truman was already somewhat of a hot mess by then. Those ladies favorite pet gays were people like Jerry Zipkin, John Richardson, and Bill Blass.

In fact, Capote actively hated Nan Kempner and went around calling her “That bitch friend of Jerry Zipkin”.

This was in the late 1970s when Truman was sort of on the fringes of the Warhol, DVF, Studio 54, and Halston crowd in which Nan was a well established and very well loved figure. There are some great anecdotes about this in Bob Colacello’s book HOLY TERROR: ANDY WARHOL CLOSE UP including one where Nan’s husband, Tommy Kempner, tells Bob that if he hears one more time about that “alcoholic loser” Truman badmouthing Nan he’s going to punch him the face.

Every gay I know is talking about this show.

The Women of ‘Feud: Capote vs. the Swans’ Are Birds of a Feather

Thank you r336 for explaining things. I would love to see a limited series about Nan Kempner!

As long as Ryan Murphy didn’t write the source material, then I’m excited for this.

There was a recent interview with Molly and Demi, and Molly’s head looked twice as big. It was disturbing like the Elephant Man.

Film at 11.

Marella Agnelli, by some estimations the most elegant Swan of all, is glaringly missing from the cast which is a shame. But, then again, Truman didn’t trash her in La Cote Basque… or I think even mention her, right?

NPR loves the show.

The AV Club did not.

Los Angeles Times

The Hollywood Reporter

NYTimes

My "DUH! 💡" moment just now. Had to see the word in print to "get it":

Soignee. "Swans."

Did C.Z. Guest love to-ast?

Where can I watch this if I don't have FX?

Hulu will stream it a day after it airs, r351.

[quote] Nan Kempner, Pat Buckley, Annette Reed (later de la Renta), Chessy Rayner, and Mica Ertegun were part of the next generation right after the Swans

Also:

Anne Bass

Susan Gutfreund

Mercedes Kellogg Bass

Gayfryd Steinberg

Claudia Cohen

SPY Magazine used to love making fun of those women in the late 80s and early 90s.

Estee Lauder, Brooke Astor, and Judith Peabody were also wealthy women "of a certain age" in that specific social world, but SPY didn't make nearly as fun of them as they did the others--mostly because Lauder was genuinely accomplished, and Astor and Peabody were genuine active philanthropists who tried to actually do good with their money (the others mostly used philanthropy as an excuse to give big swanky benefits).

TV Insider's Matt Roush:

"The cold shoulder is mightier than the pen in the dazzling new edition of Ryan Murphy’s Feud anthology. Tom Hollander (The White Lotus) stars in an uncanny impersonation of author Truman Capote, whose celebrity status and barbed wit made him a favorite of New York high society, represented by the ultra-rich “swans” (played by an A-list team including Naomi Watts, Chloë Sevigny, Calista Flockhart and Diane Lane). When he publishes a fictionalized exposé of their most scandalous secrets, the ladies who lunch shun their gay confidante, sending him into a self-destructive spiral of alcoholic angst. Launches with two episodes."

[quote]A sample revelation: One character, thinly disguised as Babe Paley, discovered her husband scrubbing his mistress’s menstrual blood out of the bedroom carpet, an incident graphically depicted here.

I don't think the AV Club reviewer read the story.

I have been looking forward to this all day.

Fortunately my overpriced cable package is good for something and gives me FX.

R343 - she was in the film Infamous and played by Isabelle Rossellini.

Maybe could have been played here by Meg Tilly?

From THR:

[quote]There’s a very good episode related in pseudo-verité monochrome as the Maysles Brothers document Capote’s legendary Black and White Ball

I hate this. That crowd would *not* have been OK with documentary cameras following them around.

[quote]there’s a rather awful hour that plays as Disney’s Hall of 20th Century Queer Literary Icons, in which Capote and James Baldwin (Chris Chalk, better than the material) wander around spouting Capote-esque and Baldwin-esque bon mots

How dreadful.

The Maysles did the film short, "With Love From Truman," which led to them being invited to the Black and White Ball. I doubt they documented the event, so the Feud creators are merely taking artistic liberties by amalgamating the two events.

[quote]I don't think the AV Club reviewer read the story.

In the actual Capote story, the Paley character has to scrub the menstrual blood off the hotel bed sheets, but that never made any sense: why wouldn't he just have the staff come to take them away (or if he was afriad of that, just throw them into the trash and then pay for them when he checked out)? in the Tv show the previews make it look like they've changed it so that "the governor's wife" menstruates on the carpet rather than the sheets, and Bill Paley has to scrub that out, which would make more sense.

The problem with Capote's "all-true" tall tales was that he rarely thought through the logic of them very well.

[quote] Marella Agnelli, by some estimations the most elegant Swan of all, is glaringly missing from the cast which is a shame.

They're also (apparently?) not including some of the others among Capote's most famous swans, including Gloria Guinness, Gloria Vanderbilt (trashed for her vapidness in "La Cote Basque, 1965") and Mona Bismarck (who gets her own chapter in [italic]Answered Prayers[/italic]).

I guess they are leaving off Agnelli, Guinness and Bismarck because they were so often in Europe and not NYC, and maybe they're leaving off Vanderbilt as Murphy's personal favor to Anderson Cooper. Or maybe these women will be in cameos: I don't know.

R353, don't forget Blaine "Prettier than Ivana" Trump!

[quote]Nit-pickers will argue over the veracity of Hollander’s accent and mannerisms

You bet your ass we will!

Sounds like a Ryan Murphy classic: great cast, gorgeous sets, hair and clothes, intriguing premise, weak script, huge historical inconsistencies, too long for what it is. All his trademarks.

Big question: in the story "La Cote Basque, 1965," who is "the governor's wife" Bill Paley fucks who menstruates all over the sheets?

I've heard it rumored before to have been either Marie Harriman (who actually would have been wealthier than the Paleys), who was First Lady of New York from 1955 to 1958. She does fit the description of a "fat-ankled... wildebeest of a wife" (see link), but I cannot imagine her and Paley sleeping together.

I've also heard before "the givernor's wife" could be Mary "Tod" Rockefeller, who was the First Lady of New York from 1959 until 1964, when she divorced Nelson Rockefeller on grounds on mental cruelty. I could more easily see it being her than Harriman--she could have had the affair with Paley to get back at Rocky, who like Paley was a serial pussyhound.

Hmmm...

The clips from the series, though, make it sound like "the governor's wife" will be claimed to be Happy Rockefeller, who was first lady of New York from 1963 to 1973. While it's true that Happy was the governor's wife in 1965 (When "La Cote Basque, 1965" takes place, of course), she had just married Rockefeller, and while I have no problem believing he was already sleeping around on her by then, I just don't see her doing at that point so early in her second marriage. (Rocky was a bastard, but Happy was a pretty nice person.)

Also, in the mid 1960s she was hardly a "wildebeest" or likely to be called "fat-ankled," both of which descriptors would suggest she was overweight, which Happy wasn't then (see photo of the Rockefellers on their 1963 honeymoon).

My guess is "the governor's wife" in the story is most likely to have been Mary Rockefeller, Happy's predecessor, but I wonder if any of you know for sure.

I’ll watch but the reviews are pretty lukewarm.

In [italic]Infamous[/italic], Babe (Sigourney Weaver) relates the story has having found bleached sheets. She was horrified that she might have fired the maid over this "mistake." Somehow she found out it was her husband trying to clean up after this disaster.

I imagine Babe had tons of sheet sets, would she really have noticed if one was missing? Maybe she ghosted Truman because it was such a ridiculous story to make up. I also wonder why the Paleys had both an apartment and a hotel suite in Manhattan.

It's interesting how these women almost all went by childish nicknames.

Babe Paley's real first name was Barbara.

C. Z. Guest's was Lucy.

Slim Keith's was Nancy.

Lee Radziwill's was Caroline.

Happy Rockefeller's was Margaretta.

I guess that's what all wealthy WASPs did back then. The rich WASPy men of that era as adults also often used dorky childish nicknames (Kip, Flip, Topper, etc.).

Have any escorts ever come forward on DL who fucked Capote?

[quote]but that never made any sense: why wouldn't he just have the staff come to take them away (or if he was afriad of that, just throw them into the trash and then pay for them when he checked out)?

From the original article, as linked to by r314:

[quote]“Poor Dill didn’t realize the extent of his difficulties until he’d stripped the sheets off the bed and found there were no clean ones to replace them. Cleo, you see, used the Pierre’s linen and kept none of her own at the hotel. It was three o’clock in the morning and he couldn’t reasonably call for maid service: what would he say, how could he explain the loss of his sheets at that hour?

The Swans ? More accurately The Harpies.

Continuity problem: the Concorde didn’t begin service until the mid 70s.

^

That's typical of Murphy productions. One of the reviews says the Truman character references "60 Minutes" years before it went on the air.

Naomi sounds like she’s doing an Irish accent at times.

[quote]One of the reviews says the Truman character references "60 Minutes" years before it went on the air.

Yep - Truman references 60 Minutes during a dinner set in 1955.

It didn't debut until 1968.

So stupid.

The last Feud was 99% bullshit, with Ryan even using a fake meme from a Joan Crawford parody site (Bette has BO letter, a parody of Bette in the film “The Anniversary”). Joan never had her teeth taken out, nor did Bette ever have an affair or bail out a homosexual. They turned it into another third wave woke feminist bullshit series. I’m sure this one will be no better.

Naomi Watts is a good actor, but, beauty-wise, she isn't in the same league as Babe Paley and it distracts me.

We're really pretending Babe Paley was some great beauty?

R379 it’s called the Transatlantic Accent and was prominent in upper class WASPs of the past.

Naomi looks gorgeous. The hater needs glasses. She momma beautiful

R384 I know the transatlantic accent. She’s not very good at it. She’s doing it with an Irish lilt, pronouncing some of the r’s in an Irish way.

I don’t hear anything Irish.

Jack Dunphy running to Babe every time Capote gets himself in trouble and guilting her to forgive him and be there for him is pissing me off. Truman was a grown man who lacked any self control and when faced with consequences for his actions acted like a victim and baby, and Jack only enabled that. Please already.

Babe owed nothing to Capote or Jack for that matter.

Because there is no Irish lilt to Watts' accent. She's great, and she's actually more beautiful than Paley. She's the heart of this series. She's very good.

R389 agreed. I don’t hear any Irish lilt to her accent and she looks so beautiful! Shes also amazing in the role.

I loved the side by side comparison shots to the two Thanksgiving dinners happening. Dare I say I would much rather be at Joanne’s bohemian type dinner than Babe’s? Judge me all you want.

Chloe is looking more and more mannish as she ages. I almost think she looks like a drag queen in this.

I found her to be great though r391

Hollander is outstanding. Really great performance

I. have seen the first episode, and it is awful. I was looking forward to it. So disappointed

I like the contrast between the west and east coast.

OMG, it just dawned on me Hollander was Saffy’s almost husband.

I’m not impressed with Tom Hollander.

Oh, well then, R397.

[quote] Because there is no Irish lilt to Watts' accent. She's great, and she's actually more beautiful than Paley.

Of course the extremely pretty Naomi Watts is more beautiful than Babe Paley. Which is why elsewhere on DL present day, botched, Demi Moore was suggested as a better fit for the role.

To modern audiences, Babe Paley had hulking shoulders, a mannish jaw, a witch’s nose and Nancy Reagan’s hair.

Sigourney Weaver was better, if just as Hollywood-beautiful as Watts, casting in Capote.

That is a woman, r369?

For those of you old queens who have forgotten. Goggle: DOCUMENTARY VS MELODRAMA

[quote]I’m not impressed with Tom Hollander.

Would you prefer Xaviera???

[quote] nor did Bette ever have an affair

She most certainly did, R381--on her very first husband. She admitted as much.

oi, there are 2 threads now

Was surprised by the coarse language on a regular channel.

We need a thread on this show that doesn't include the 1960's social diary-obsessed elder camp queens. You bitches are making any discussion about the actual show completely miserable.

Then you should vamoose, r406. Because no one is going to change what they post to suit you.

Calm down old nelly R406. It's "pointless bitchery", remember? Don't worry, nobody's going to prevent you from posting endless Golden Girls threads and discussing, ad nauseam the body height and shoe size of mid-twentieth century New York socialites. Continue to wallow in it with pleasure.

I think Tom H. Is terrific!

MARY!!!!!!

It's more engaging than anything Murphy has done in awhile. Knowing the characters isn't necessary, they're pretty captivating in anonymity.

The time jumps feel inorganic and totally Murphy, so that is what it is, but the show seems to be trying to lay out as much context as possible to 'explain' his self destruction.

BTW, haven't even finished the first episode, but totally enjoying it so far.

Miss Jessica Lange showed up in the second episode, playing the specter of his mother, Lillie Mae Faulk, who by all accounts was a mean, social-climbing, bitch of a woman, who dumped him off with country kin so that she could hobnob with the well-heeled in the big city. In this series, she apparently is the subconcious force that drives Truman to take down the swans and the social elite as either vindication for her or because the swans reminded him of too much of her.

It’s neither. The swans made him feel lesser than just as his mother felt about the upper social class who rejected her.

Moi said it best.

Does Warhol show up in this? He truly had Truman's number.

"Have any escorts ever come forward on DL who fucked Capote?"

They all died from bleaching their eyes, cocks and mouths.

Funny that, r373!

I take it that was Phyllis Diller at Joanne Carson's Thanksgiving dinner?!

Fuck off, r406/r408.

It broke my heart a little to see the handsome Treat Williams. RIP, handsome....

R411 the time jumps are necessary and I prefer it to them starting in the 60s and then slowly getting to what he did in 1975 after a few episodes in a consecutive order. They went straight to the point while also showing us the relationships he had with the women etc.

I enjoyed it a lot. Episode 1 and 2 are essential to watch back to back. Everyone keeps bringing up episode 1 but not episode 2. If you didn’t watch both episodes don’t even comment yet.

R404 we know. You started another thread despite this one having over 400 comments because you’re a desperate jobless loser who wants to be the only one posting on here. You don’t belong here and certainly don’t fit in.

The majority of that thread is one person.

Happy Rockefeller was hilarious. This is already a tour de force and Hollander will be winning awards. Can't wait to see next week.

I feel Naomi Watts is incredible also. I found Sevigny funny

If you didn’t watch both episodes don’t even comment yet.

R421 gives the order.

R421 I have completed both episodes now. I disagree regarding the time jumps all being necessary. I know they hit it off quickly, but that type of intimacy doesn't sprout by the end of dinner. There should've been a slight build to the level of confidence Babe shared with Truman, which in the first episode, was too quick. She would've been slower to thaw, especially with SUCH an outsider. There's no real context as to why Lee has a horse in this race either, and I did enjoy the show so far. Though I think it could have been slowed a bit for the sake of getting invested into each character. Loved the dichotomy of Thanksgiving on each coast, Ringwald was well appointed in her role. Naomi is a great Babe, just too warm (although, for the sake of likeability, understandable), she's 'perfect' in the role otherwise.

The jewelry exchange was a bit odd when Keith was manipulating C.Z. but another creatively licensed twist. As with Langes presence, it feels very much a Ryan Murphy project.

I actually liked it a lot, all but the Lange appearance. Her scene was too long. She kept going and going.

R426 they’re trying to cover it all, plus the before and after of 1975 in 8 episodes. He’s gonna have to skip around.

R428 I never said it should be linear, but rather too many jumps, spanning too far and now we have 6 more hours of Capote self destructing, and Babe will be dead by the end of the third episode at the rate they're going. And the Lange moments, they're going to overplay her part in all of this, if episode 2 was any indicator.

Jennifer Askew was Jennifer Jones.

R427 - You know Ryan told Jessica to do whatever she wanted.

My gay friend was out after 10 minutes because he said Naomi Watts as Babe Paley mispronounced the Hermes perfume Caleche. Outrageous!

I think the scene with Lange as the mother very well done and the writing was good in that scene in particular.

Get a new gay friend, r432.

R432 and in the preview for the next episode they show Lee pronouncing the Ls in guillotine. Oh, dear!

Bill P. should have used cold water. And is no-one caring that that's the late, great Treat Williams?

Demi on stephen Colbert

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

Demi on GMA.

R436, meet R420.

You are right to admonish, r440. I'm usually pretty good about reading here. 😊

Demi repeats the same lines but the second interview at least spares us the sight of her demon rat.

Vanity Fair cast test.

R443 Oh, VF is still publishing?

That Vanity Fair test was surprisingly fun. Even Ryan Murphy pops in. Still can't get over how good Diane Lane looks.

They all look good. And are around the same age.

[quote]Still can't get over how good Diane Lane looks.

Her skin care routine involves a bag of frozen peas.

My take after watching the pilot:

Hollander is killing it.

Watts is near perfect.

Demi was, well, Demi. She tries reealll hard.

Diane Lane hasn't been given enough just yet.

The pacing was wonky and all over the place. As one expects from Murphy.

I liked it overall. Off to watch episode two.

I think the governor’s wife was the Harriman babe. She looks like someone who hates sex.

Agree r228 drag is the new Stomp.

We've not been told yet what Capote said about Lee Radziwill and Slim Keith in "La Cote Basque, 1965." Unless you had already read the story, you would just think they were acting mostly on a whim to be supportive of Babe by freezing out Capote, and you'd wonder why they couldn't be more magnanimous like CZ Guest (who actually does not come up in "La Cote Basque") is trying to be.

Radziwill was mentioned by name in the story but was in no way singled out for abuse or ridicule. She was just mentioned. She maintained her friendship with Capote until they had a falling out in the late 1970s over Gore Vidal's lawsuit for libel, when she reneged on providing testimony on behalf of Capote and called them both "fags."

Slim Keith was considered to be the basis for the main female character in the story--the louche, crude gossip Lady Ina Coolbirth. Neither C.Z. Guest nor Marella Agnelli were mentioned in the story.

Why is the retard on that other thread posting over and over? He’s posted near 80 times.

Oh, if this is the proper thread I hope you won't mind me shamelessly reposting my post from the imposter thread then:

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.

I enjoyed the first 2 episodes. Such a shame Treat Williams isn't alive to enjoy it, he is doing a good job.

R454 this is the first thread and had 452 replies (before yours). How the fuck wouldn’t you know this is the “proper” thread? The retard (if it isn’t you) keeps posting over and over on it. It’s legit mostly just him speaking to himself. And he always does that. It’s weird as fuck.

r455 I was going to ask what the fuck your problem is, but given your use of the word 'retard' I'm guessing you're the Jacob Elordi loon, in which case the problem is clearly a deep and massive mental illness.

Nothing is going to kill this thread quicker than your presence.

R456 wtf. No, I’m not the Elordi look RETARD. You’re literally replying to yourself over and over on that other thread. Remember what happened the last time you did that. I would tone it down.

r457 Yeah you are, and you just proved it. Go on, your next move is to claim you're in contact with Muriel, and then threaten you're going to sue me, and all kinds of bullshit. It was about two or three months ago that you said you were getting me banned. How'd that work out for you?

If you want people to post in this thread, you need to shut the fuck up, or people will opt for the other one.

I'll tell you what appalled me:

Tom descending the bath house stairs barefoot! Yikes!

Ha, r459, I thought the same thing. Marble stairs in a steamy environment, whatever could go wrong!

Can you imagine how many queens would congregate at the bottom so they can get an up-towel view as each guy came down?

R458 lmao 😂retard. I’m the one who says that because it’s true.

I just took time to go look at the Elordi/Mescal troll and not once have they ever claimed that to you. God. GET A JOB STUPID RETARD 😂😂😂😂😂 and you just made a thread about Mescal pretending to be Mescal troll. But you wanna talk shit? Loser with NO JOB living off your family because you’re a CRIMINAL and mental handicap, you don’t don’t belong here babe. You don’t. You don’t fit in with us.

[quote] Naomi Watts is a good actor, but, beauty-wise, she isn't in the same league as Babe Paley and it distracts me.

Yes, how ever will you be able to jerk off with seeing an unattractive woman on your screen?

This show is a complete misfire.

Are they gonna show up to Truman’s death? Truman died at Joanne Carson’s home.

Speaking of Joanne, she schmoozed NBC top brass in NYC and got Johnny Carson “The Tonight Show”. Something that is never acknowledged. And when no one else would talk to Truman Capote and he became very ill, she took him into her home in LA. She looked after him until he died at her home. Everyone else shunned him until death.

r461 Let's just review what happened here tonight, shall we? You complained about other people posting in the other thread, so I posted here instead of that thread, and in exchange you accused me of being someone else and called me an ableist slur. Why exactly do you think people are choosing to post in the other thread? And now you're accusing me of stuff I never did, because you think every other poster on DL is actually the same person using different accounts.

But hey, since you apparently know so much about me, tell everyone my name. Aww, now you're going to need to come up with some bullshit excuse as to why you can't do that, because you're so idiotic that you never once think ahead as to how you'll respond if someone calls you on your moronic claims.

I am addicted to watching the Vanity Far test. There are some hilarious moments.

R465 no. It’s not other people replying in it retard. It’s the ridiculous alts from one psycho replying over and over. Insane how you just don’t cut the shit. You’re a grown man.

r467 And my name is...? I'll pick an easier one, shall I? My IP address? Location? Email address? Go on, just one piece of the vast amount of documentation you've been claiming to have on me, and basically every other DL user who disagrees with you about any little thing.

R468 yup. Spoken like a retard. Posting that info would be illegal. Unlike you, I don’t commit crimes on the internet. Crimes that could not only easily take you down but your families well being also.

Learn your place.

r469 Hardly illegal if you've been given permission, and I do give you permission. Go right ahead.

R470 not how it works. Again, you’re uneducated. Please go take some classes

r471 Thank you for proving, once again, that you're full of shit.

R472 no. I’m just an EDUCATED man. Criminal. You really shot yourself in the foot when you messaged a certain former meteorologist claiming shit without anything to back it up. You thought his lawyers and my lawyers weren’t gonna trade notes? We have the DMs, the accounts you used and where the accounts were created. You are a JOKE. And that’s all I can say on the shit that’s gonna happen to you.

r473 You're not even a man, much less educated. Remember back in r461 where you were claiming you never made any threats to sue me, etc, and were denying even being that user? Haha, literally can't even keep your own bullshit stories straight.

But yes, I'm oh-so-scared of your imaginary lawyers and your imaginary lawsuit over imaginary DMs.

R474 lmao. Such a low rent retard. No job. No education. Living off family. A sex offender. Gonna go down for lying about a serious crime. I feel sorry for your family.

r475 Yes, but enough about you...

R476 oh honey. Your constant deflecting doesn’t change the facts. Especially when it’s all documented. You should probably watch what you say on here. You hand over ammo and proof.

r477 Remind me again why exactly your imaginary lawyers are involved? I have to ask because, surprisingly, I've not received any kind of legal papers from Lionel Hutz. And, as we all know, the first thing a lawyer tells their client is to absolute keep engaging the other party in communication, that doesn't cause any problems in a lawsuit at all.

So here's another challenge for you to fail. Tell me when this lawsuit is going to begin. Tell me when I'm going to be served. Or even imprisoned, since apparently I am quite the criminal! And then, when that date comes and nothing has actually happened, what will be your excuse?

Bye thread.

Truman’s mother was the surprise casting

Last night someone on Twitter asked Mario Cantone if Tom Hollander's Truman Capote sounded like his post-stroke Bette Davis impression.

Ha! I'm not the only one. I posted this 01/19/2024 here when the trailer dropped.

[quote] Watch again, and listen to "That's what writers do" Hollander is doing Bette Davis NOT Capote.

[QUOTE]I think the governor’s wife was the Harriman babe.

Impossible.

Marie Harriman doesn't make sense. First, she was born in 1903. By the time her husband became governor in 1955, she was LONG past menstrual age.

Mary Rockefeller was born in 1907 and Nelson became governor in 1959. She, also, is disqualified at 52.

Happy is the only woman who fits the bill age-wise. Truman was Babe's friend so his characterizations were in the negative extreme. So unless it's the wife of the governor who preceded Harriman, I'm going with Happy.

[quote]I'm going with Happy

I try my best, but sometimes I just can't get there.

Naomi Watts is superb in this.

I wish to FUCK R477 and R478 would either die or take their hen pecking to its own thread. They're deluging the thread with their weird eldergay sniping. Please, PLEASE make it stop. I just wanna talk and read about a TV show, Is that too much to ask?!?

Ryan Murphy has announced the next chapter of Working title: FEUD: R477 vs R478 MuMu vs Caftan

Wow, kind of got off the rails here!

Topic: Why does it seem all wealthy women have lush hair?

When did Demi get haggard?

Was that really Tom's belly in the bath house?

Truman's giving Babe advice to stay with the buttered side of her bread is something he should have heeded.

I've never cared for Russell Tovey because of his ears. Same reason I can't accept Will Smith in any romantic role.

I'm on Truman's side (with Joanne Carson). The "elite" should be exposed in all their vulgar decadence. It's not just that the "different from you and me" is more money; it's the wretched excess.

Naomi Watts and Diane Lane are fab-u-lous.

I think they'll both be up for the Actress/Limited Series Emmy.

Moral of the story:

The beautiful people are not.

R485 Block the decrepit Babe Paley wannabes

[quote]you don’t don’t belong here babe. You don’t. You don’t fit in with us.

You're hardly the arbiter of who "belongs" on Datalounge. There is NOTHING more tedious than when two of you bitches turn an otherwise interesting thread into your own personal catfight.

NOBODY CARES. Start your own thread if you insist on acting out your boring personal issues.

In other words, "Girls, girls! You're both tedious!"

[quote]Marie Harriman doesn't make sense.

What if Capote made the whole thing up? It's never made much sense anyway. If a woman disliked a man so much she wanted to bleed all over his sheets, she wouldn't fuck him in the first place.

This is the first thing I have seen Russell Tovey in...I think he's a hottie and I like the ears.

[quote]This is the first thing I have seen Russell Tovey in...I think he's a hottie and I like the ears.

Try American Horror Story: NYC

I think Watts and Lane should have switched roles.

I can't believe I'm the first old queen here to complain about Naomi's hideous wig. The hairline on that thing looks like it was done with a black magic marker? And why is it so teased and bouffant, the only hairstyle in that group of ladies that is. It's more appropriate to 1960, not 1975. I can't believe Naomi approved it, especially after seeing all of her co-stars' hairstyles/wigs.

Also, Joe Mantello is very miscast as Dunphy and brings nothing to the role.

R496 Joe is playing it very naturalistic, which hardly suits the material.

This is gay heroin.

Who ended up with Truman Capote’s estate?

Does anyone here know if Harper Lee will be portrayed in this series?

For that matter, I wonder what her take was on the whole La Cote Basque article and Capote’s exile to the West Coast.

I believe it was Jack Dunphy, r499.

R500 Sandy Bullock played her in the excellent Infamous.

R500 their relationship cooled a bit when she got famous with Mockingbird and Tru got jealous

[quote]And why is it so teased and bouffant, the only hairstyle in that group of ladies that is. It's more appropriate to 1960, not 1975.

Dude, 108 year old NY gossip monger Cindy Adams STILL has that hairstyle.

Swanzilla, r219.

Ann Woodward was blonde.

Did Demi refuse to wear a wig?

they wasted a chunk of money to assemble an entire "Murder by Death" cast in full costume, just for one or two drunken lines! (and "Peter Sellers" 'advice to write his lines on a board!

Is it on the GMA interview she gives the impression she would do anything for Ryan?

I've managed to get through this thread, and the first two episodes, two other threads (fledgling) but can't remember what happened between Capote and Woodward. She claims they were friends, one article that said she OD'd on seconal mentioned they were friends at an earlier date, but they got the drug she died on wrong, so I'm not inclined to believe that. Anyone here able to give me any information about them?

Anyone else imagining who they offered those women's roles to first?

[quote] I am addicted to watching the Vanity Far test.

Huh?

I got the real Anne Woodward story mixed up with the Two Mrs Grenville story

R512, They’re the same story.

r513 it's been 37 years since I read the Dominick Dunne book. I remember at the end Anne went on a lot of cruises and seemed unhappy, but I guess in the book she also committed suicide.

I remember in the miniseries the son jumps out a window

R511 see R443

I don't know what Plex is but they have the Power, Privilege and Justice show (Dominick Dunne) 'The Two Mrs. Woodwards'

R515 . . .

“What happened to Ann Woodward's children?

Both of Woodward's sons committed suicide by jumping; James in 1976 and William in 1999.”

The New Yorker

R507 and r508 your posts read as if someone who doesn’t know how to speak proper English typed them up. Learn how to form complete sentences and state who you are referencing in your post by name. Just randomly typing is pretty strange.

Chloë Sevigny looks fantastic. She really has not aged much, which is surprising considering she's been a drinker and chain-smoker for most of her life. She has that lower-register voice that comes with age but is especially pronounced in cigarette smokers; other than that, though, you can't really tell. The genes must be strong.

Hey R520 what if the poster doesn’t have English as a first language? Would that bar them from contributing at all, according to you?

Yet another example of the creeping xenophobia on the DL.

Not to mention saying that posting without addressing a post at a specific person is "strange" is just idiotic. This thread has certainly brought out the hall monitors.

I think the writing is atrocious. If I didn't know anything about these people going in, I'd be lost. Did they even bother to tell us who Calista Flockhart was playing? Or anything about Slim and CZ's backgrounds?

[quote]I got the real Anne Woodward story mixed up with the Two Mrs Grenville story

Claudette Colbert's last performance.

R524 When talking about the BRF, Chloe saying 'atleast Charles grows stuff'. Not enough eye to roll at that, especially bc so many of her lines are smart and delivered well. Some of the writing is just sloppy.

Don't get it twisted.

[quote]Did they even bother to tell us who Calista Flockhart was playing? Or anything about Slim and CZ's backgrounds?

I agree those three characters should have been more fleshed out, but I do expect we'll hear far more about them in coming episodes.

They did explain very briefly when they were introduced that Slim was a beautiful woman from the American West who was married to Howard Hawks and who discovered Lauren Bacall. They also explained that CZ Guest was an accomplished gardener (Capote went into rhapsodies about her marigolds) and outdoorswoman.

BANG BANG!

Yes—although for some reason, they showed marigolds climbing up a wall. Erm, they’re not climbers.

I am now re-reading The Two Mrs. Grenvilles by Dominick Dunne and it still holds up.

R526 “atleast”? No.

Did Capote have a partner or even a lover or active sex life?

I've never paid much attention to Diane Lane--no real reason, though I've been aware of her my whole life--and I think she's doing a wonderful job in this. There's such a play of microexpressions across her face. I don't know how she does it.

Calista Flockhart brings nothing to this, and I completely forgot she was supposed to be portraying Lee Radziwill, despite having read a lot of advance publicity for this show.

The men are all so unattractive, except for Treat Williams and Diego/Carlos.

Molly Ringwald is unrecognizable.

I agree about Naomi's wig. It's very obvious.

What was that "Verdura" that Babe gave Slim (who then gave it to C.Z.)? It's supposed to be jewelry, but it's stiff as a board.

Diane Lane is killing it in this part. She totally inhabits this woman.

Everyone in the show seems to be **acting** or playing dress-up except Diane and Naomi, who actually come off as real people.

[quote] Did Capote have a partner or even a lover or active sex life?

Yes. For much of Capote's adult life he was with the writer Jack Dunphy, who was very different from him--he was a frumpy introvert, and stayed as much away from Capote's high society friends as he could. He and Capote were lifelong friends but their relationship had very serious ups and downs, and for the later years of Capote's life they were mostly not a romantic couple. he was in this week's episodes played by Joe Mantello (which was great casting).

Capote had a seirous lvoer starting in 1972 or so in the person of the middle-class Long island banker John O'Shea, who was married to a woman but a sex adict who slept with both womena nd men (he refused to call himself gay or bisexual, though). he was played in this week's episodes by Russell Tovey, whho is a terrific actor but much more physically attractive 9especially in terms of his body) than O'Shea, who was pretty unremarkable. As the episodes showed, O'Shea was very phsyically abusive to Capote and put him in the hospital, although Capote was reputedly vicious in the things he said to O'Shea to goad him and humiliate him.

Capote became friends with O'Shea's wife (who knew about her husband's relationship with him) even while she was separated from O'Shea. He also became quite a mentor to O'Shea's teenage daughter, whom he squired to Studio 54 many times in the late 70s and whom he helped get a modeling contract. She speaks very highly of him. Capote had kind of an amazing ability to make himself likable, especially to women, when he wanted to be, even though so many friends broke with him later in life.

When Capote was young, he was quite attractive even though he was just 5'3", and he slept around a lot. When he got older and fat, he went to bathouses and hired lots of rent boys.

Was Joanna Carson that chirpy or was that just Molly overdoing it? Calista doesn't have much facial expression, don't know if it is because she is supposed to have the upper crust stiff upper lip, or she actually has too stiff of a face. What kind of ass beats up his boyfriend while at Thanksgiving dinner with strangers who are in a higher social scale than him.

[quote]Everyone in the show seems to be **acting** or playing dress-up

So like the Swans themselves, then?

R535 Good rundown. Also, when Truman was young, he had a two-year affair with Newton Arvin.

R33 - I agree about Diane Lane. Her acting has always underwhelmed me. For some reason she is more transparent in interviews. In the Vanity Fair game video she has some funny asides.

Meant R533

I wonder if they portray Lee Radzwill's tv performance as 'Laura' with Farley Granger? Didn't Truman have somthing to do with that, or was it David Susskind? I'm sure we'll get Jackie O. blips in future eps.

R541, Capote adapted the play for television and Susskind produced it for ABC.

It only aired once in 1968 and received huge ratings, but the critics were not kind.

Diane Lane was excellent in the very good HBO movie Cinema Verite where she played Pat Loud from the reality series American Family. I was hoping she’d win the Emmy that year, but she lost to Kate Winslet for Mildred Pierce.

It amazes me that in a cyber world we all inhabit, whether voluntary or not, where anybody can find, say, on youtube the most obscure TV commercial from the 50s, that CBS "Laura" production starring Radziwill is forever lost.

R544, It’s not forever lost. The Paley Center in Los Angeles hosted a public screening several years ago. That location closed in 2020, but their archives were transferred to the Beverly Hills Public Library. I would assume that The Paley Center in NYC also has a video copy of it.

David Susskind was highly embarrassed by the poor critical reception and forbid it to ever be repeated on television. Susskind died in 1987 but his estate could make it available.

Oh.

Thank you, r545.

Miss R463 can tell "the show is a complete misfire" from 2 episodes!

Truman was really repugnant. So much so that I enjoyed seeing him getting beat up. This show doesn’t really seem to be about anything but surface. Even Jessica as a AHS type ghost is disappointing.

The Shocking True Story of Lee Radziwill's Doomed Dreams of Movie Stardom

Anderson Cooper has spoken about how repugnant he found Truman Capote from when he used to visit his mother Gloria.

It was 14 years ago when “Laura” was shown publicly at the now defunct Paley Center in Los Angeles.

You’re going to hell in a Chanel handbag, r447.😎

Diane...

Isn’t Ringwald too old for her role?

R535 So this Jack Dunphy was a pedo?

R444 Because it cost Ari a shitload of drachma to buy up every copy.

[quote] Isn’t Ringwald too old for her role?

She's about ten years too old, but does it matter? No one remembers Joanne Carson. she was not a public figure.

^ R544

[quote]What was that "Verdura" that Babe gave Slim (who then gave it to C.Z.)? It's supposed to be jewelry, but it's stiff as a board.

Speaking of Verdura, r533...

Can you imagine waking up in bed next to Capote.

[quote][R535] So this Jack Dunphy was a pedo?

I know you're trying (and failing) to be funny, but that 1948 photo of Capote you link to (the year he met Dunphy) was taken when he was 24. That was well past the age of consent by any legal standard.

R557, After the divorce from Johnny, she did host a syndicated talk show for a while.

In the book Johnny’s attorney wrote, he revealed that Joanne had an affair with Frank Gifford, which devastated Johnny.

I know that common wisdom holds that Capote was "beautiful" as a young man, but he really just looked like a blond David Sedaris with a touch of FAS.

[quote]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?

I've not seen the episode yet, but no. Every few years a politician embarrasses himself by suggesting women should "hold it" if they can't access feminine hygiene products in public places.

I remember Capote showing up in traffic court in NY to fight a DUI wearing shorts and the judge reprimanded him for dressing inappropriately.

R563 He looked like a young David Hyde Pierce, IMO.

Anderson cooper hated Truman capote because he knew he was a gay boy and was terrified of becoming like him.

Thus that’s why he went the other direction for so long of being butch. Andy cohen brings out the gurhl in him though.

When was Anderson Cooper ever butch?

If you find that look arousing ( regardless of age) you're failing to convivence us that you're not a humorless pathetic much like R561

Teaser for next episode.

r564 We cannot hold and release it at will but if you spot the signs that your period is imminent (and you are normally a big bleeder) you can time it, banking on the sex releasing the flood. So the idea that Happy had some malicious intent is not totally off the wall..

[quote]So the idea that Happy had some malicious intent is not totally off the wall..

Since I haven't seen the episode yet, I considered the possibility there's a context I'm missing. But in skimming online discussions of it (at Reddit and elsewhere), I'm mostly seeing women dismiss it as laughable or unrealistic. Which some would argue is a vital component of any Murphy production.

r572 I've never used it as a weapon myself, but I have been in situations where I knew that "the communists would soon be entering the fun house" and that any sex would trigger it (and make a big mess that I did not want to deal with). For context, in the show, Happy calls Bill Paley and insists on an immediate quickie (one for the road or something like that I think she said). After it was all over and amidst the carnage in Babe's bedroom, she hisses at Bill that she was mad at him for ruining her life, making it clear that she planned it all.. I can think of many ways to get back at a man that are more dignified (and less messy) but this situation is not technically impossible. It was likely exaggerated for the show, however, like you said.

r572, sorry for the lecturing tone. I had assumed you were a male before you identified yourself...lol

R572 Not a female merely a bore.

I'm weak. I would have fallen for Frank Gifford, too, especially when he was young.

R566, yes, in some pictures. I chose one that best supported my take.

R573, According to Truman's description, the blood episode was not exaggerated.

And that was the point. Happy R. WANTED, PLANNED an undignified mess for Babe to catch Bill in; that he was shown on his knees, scrubbing like a Portuguese washerwoman, as humiliated in betraying as Babe felt in being betrayed (and with a pre-menopausal woman), was fabulous television!

It is why Happy didn't want the lights on.

But why she wasn't a mess herself upon exiting the bedroom, well, that's unaccounted for.

R567, Anderson is about as butch as my dildo collection.

The duchess was dirty...

A Portuguese washerwoman? Is that a thing?

It is, r581. My favorite version (love the BMB!):

It was not fucking Happy, for the last time, you little queers.

R583, Pamela did not wed Averell Harriman until 1971.

No way was it her.

r562 Joanne Carson seems like a great lady

Most of the rich husbands were fug, maybe it was a different time when looks were judged differently but I don't even think William Woodward was good looking.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, Babe Paley looked like Hedda Lettuce's older, plainer sister.

Yes, but she was tall, thin, and rich, so of course that translated to “great beauty.” Which she wasn’t.

That photo was taken in sunlight, which is harsh and unforgiving.

r443, that's super cute, I like seeing them dish

r587 reminds me of Helen Gurley Brown

A rare shot of Babe Paley in profile.

Never understood why she didn’t have that bump on her nose fixed.

Babe’s bump . . .

Babe by Avedon

She looked like Jane Alexander.

She looks fabulous at R594. Those eyes!

Needing to wear a bridge due the loss of her front teeth and the Streisandish bump on her nose, how could Truman Capote describe Babe as physical perfection?

That bump is hardly Streisandish, Mary R597, and the dentures she wore every day came about from a car accident. She didn't go around without her teeth, honey.

R598, She often removed the bridge at home and the disfiguring bump should have been addressed in her youth, cuntface.

Your cuntiness should have been addrssed in your youth, Cunt R599. The term perfection referred to everything about her, not just her looks. Cunt.

I'm glad this thread is over. It turned shitty because of cunts like R599.

Bye, thread.

Bye.

WAIT! PLEASE! Being so nasty on a a Truman Capote THread is BREAKING my HEART!

When a pretty girl has excellent tastes, exquisite manners, good humor, and a sense of style, she becomes a goddess.

R605, Except when she’s as diseased as R600.