Some time after 10 p.m. on 28 November 1966 Truman Capote sashayed into the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel in New York to place himself at the epicentre of New York society.
All that autumn New York had speculated about the possible guest list for Capote’s Black and White ball. Capote had nurtured and edited the list as the date drew near, refining a rich blend of Hollywood stars, politicians, designers, tycoons and their wives. The eventual roll-call of 500 was described by the Post as a ‘Who’s Who of the World’: Sinatra and Mia Farrow, Lynda Bird Johnson, Lauren Bacall (of course!), J.K. Galbraith, Joe Meehan, Thornton Wilder, Bill and Babe Paley, and so on.
Truman presided over every detail of the evening like a movie director orchestrating a crowd scene at the palace of Versailles. Everyone would be masked and everyone would wear black and white. Leo Lerman, of Vogue, joked that ‘the guest book reads like an international list for the guillotine’.
As he flitted from table to table gossiping and teasing, Capote was enjoying the twin peaks of social and artistic success. At 42 he had surpassed even his wildest ambitions. He had escaped his troubled childhood in New Orleans and then Monroeville, Alabama, and scaled the highest of high society. His talent as a writer of short stories and novellas had given him the means to branch out into the more sociable worlds of theatre, film and journalism. And his wit and fearless gossip also made him the prize houseguest of tycoons and millionaires the world over. And here they all were, on parade: dancing, carousing and watching.
The party was a statement of his own prominence and achievement. He was aware of the moment’s wider significance. He determined that the beautiful, irrepressible boy-man was gone forever: ‘I liked that boy.
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