Barbara “Babe” Paley, Nancy “Slim” Keith, Pamela Hayward, Gloria Guinness, Lucy Douglas “CZ” Guest, Marella Agnelli, Lee Radziwiłł – this book is the true story of extraordinary women who were admired around the world, icons of their time. Determined to gain status, wealth or an aristocratic title, they married the “right” men. Beautiful, rich, and often very unhappy, they found a confidante in Truman Capote, who ruthlessly exploited their greatest secrets.
Laurence Leamer “Capote’s Women. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, dark secrets and betrayal in the world of glamor” – excerpt
In the bar of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, there was a huge glass wall from which guests could watch people swimming in the pool. It was definitely a more interesting sight than in most other places of this type and initially people were fascinated by it. One evening they included Truman, who was sitting on a bar stool next to Gloria Guinness, who consistently appears on the best-dressed list, and Eleanor Lambert, the fashion impresario responsible for creating the list.
Gloria would have preferred to sip Dom Pérignon champagne instead of a piña colada, but she gave no sign of it. As the trio watched what was going on in the pool, one of the swimmers urinated into the water. As it turned out after a while, other people were doing exactly the same, and the water in the pool was only suitable for draining. Lambert was so disgusted that she wanted to leave. But Truman and Gloria thought they’d never seen anything funnier, so they sat there contentedly, enjoying the show.
Gloria and Truman came to Miami for the first Heavyweight Championship bout between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston. This took place in February 1964. Boxing was not a sport for beautiful people, but the media advertised it as a war between good and evil. A young title challenger from Louisville using the rope-and-dope technique was about to take on a nasty ex-con from Philadelphia, whom his own family called the Beast King. Gloria was supposed to cover the fight for Harper’s Bazaar.
As Gloria and Truman descended the stairs to their ringside seats at the Miami Beach Convention Center, they looked as if they were dressed up for a christening. Gloria was five foot six and towered over most of the crowd in her high heels. She was dressed in a black suit of raw silk, elegant in its simplicity, buttoned up to the neck, so long that it seemed inhuman. No one would have guessed that Gloria was almost fifty-one. Truman considered her one of his swans, and she was indeed like an exotic bird that had accidentally landed in the ring and was about to take flight.
The photographers who were to capture the fight were so fascinated by Gloria and Truman that for the first few rounds, some of them, instead of concentrating on the drama unfolding within the red velvet ropes, aimed their lenses at the astonishing couple. The final turned out to be one of the most controversial in boxing history – Liston failed to make it to the seventh round. There was much to write home about, but neither Gloria nor Truman bothered to do so, but just had another special evening as two friends.
Gloria’s life was centered around money.
Some people are born to become rich, Truman wrote in one of his notebooks for Answered Prayers. – In short, they are people who are artists of a special kind, and money, in astronomical amounts, is their instrument. They need them like a piano for a pianist and a paintbrush for a painter. Without them, they suffer from creative impotence. With money, they transform the elements of the material world – from food to elegant cars – into fantasies that can be touched and seen. In other words, they know how to spend money. The Duchess of Windsor is such a person. Other so-called real life examples include Harrison Williams’ wife, Paul Mellon’s wife, and Loel Guinness’s wife.
To join the Truman swans, it was not enough to be an elegant, beautiful and rich woman. You had to have a sense of humor, and of all his friends, none was funnier than Gloria – sometimes even a little too funny. Most of the time, the world’s richest were coldly calculating, and considered excessive playfulness dangerous, even subversive. Gloria had never particularly cared about it.
Truman Capote TRUMAN CAPOTE in TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION, 2020, directed by LISA IMMORDINO VREELAND. Copyright Fischio Films. /mat. press
When Jackie Kennedy was still married to Aristotelis Onasis, Gloria and her husband Loel were invited to a ten-day cruise on the Onasis’ gorgeous Christina O. The Guinnesses left their winter residence in Acapulco early in the morning for Cozumel Island, where they boarded the yacht.
The Onasis were perfectionists. Gloria had a similar attitude, but she didn’t flaunt it as much. And that ruined the whole concept. It was enough to tease the shipping magnate a little. As she was standing by the pool sipping a drink with the other guests, she suddenly turned to Onasis and said, “You’ve disappointed me greatly.” Onasis had not often heard such comments. So he focused his attention on her, because he wanted to know what had offended her. “Your ship is missing yogurt,” she explained. And what was Greek without yogurt? Gloria’s innocent joke shook the entire ship. Onasis summoned an assistant and instructed him to arrange for the yogurt to be transported from the United States on one of his Olimpia planes.
The Guinnesses were as comfortable as the Onasis. They had a dizzying collection of properties: two mansions in Acapulco, a large house in Paris, an estate in Normandy, a house in Switzerland, an apartment in New York’s Waldorf Astoria, a large villa in South Palm Beach, plus a yacht and a ten-seater plane that took them from place to place. place. Over the years, Truman has visited nearly all of these locations, but nowhere has he been more frequent than Gemini, the couple’s Florida residence.
The 5,780-square-foot main building stretched across a barrier island from the Atlantic to Lake Worth. The A1A, the North-South highway, ran just above the building. The spacious living room where Guinness guests gathered was literally under the street, which only added to the uniqueness of the property. There, Truman had a small guest house on a nearly four-hundred-foot private beach.
Gloria and Truman could talk half the night, but when it struck 11:30, Loel sent everyone to bed. A couple of friends begged him like children, begging him to let them stay on their feet longer, but the master of the house was unfazed.
When another of Truman’s swans, CZ Guest, heard about the writer’s visit to Palm Beach, she insisted that he stay at her apartment instead of living ten miles away with Gloria and Loel. The logistics weren’t as complicated as CZ claimed the Guinnesses had their own helicopter to transport guests around the area. Nevertheless, CZ just wanted Truman by their side. If he was a rag doll, women would tear him apart, fighting for his company. But he was painfully real. Trying to play King Solomon, he agreed to stay with CZ for a few days before continuing north to the Guinness estate.
To show everyone who’s boss, Gloria decided to throw the party of the season while Truman was staying under her roof. Normally, she preferred intimate dinners of up to twelve people, focused mostly on conversation, but that night she decided to have a pool party and invited absolutely everyone. To Gloria, they were all the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. She adored them, especially the prince, whom she considered “the last spontaneous and bold dandy in the men’s fashion world”. As soon as she gained the favor of the Duke and Duchess, she invited the crème de la crème of Palm Beach. And so, on the day of the party, everyone except Mr and Mrs Guest, who had not been invited, appeared at her place.
Gloria had tables set up around the pool, on which were then placed as many candles as possible to make the ladies look as good as possible in their light. In addition, she prepared two large tables with a variety of food. Guests could eat cold and hot dishes there. There was a giant can of frozen caviar, cold chicken salad, baked ham, imported pâté, French onion soup, scrambled eggs, German sausages, and candied fruit. Moreover, the atmosphere of merriment prevailed throughout the evening. And all thanks to Gloria.
None of Truman’s friends exuded such an aura of mystery and ambiguity as Gloria. Her Mexican origin was as much suppressed as discussed, as were all other aspects of her life. There were rumors that she worked in Mexico as a hostess and traded in bars. Such speculation amused her immensely. Her real story was much more interesting.
The book “Capote’s Women. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, dark secrets and betrayal in the world of glamor” by Laurence Leamer, translated by Natalia Wiśniewska, will be released on March 8, 2023, by Znak Literanova.
Capote’s women mat. press
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
