The discoverer of death

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’.