Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era

Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era (2021) is a nonfiction book by American journalist and author Laurence Leamer. The book explores the friendships between literary icon Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood) and the most famous women of his day: Babe Paley, Slim Keith, Pamela Hayward, Gloria Guinness, C.Z. Guest, Marella Agnelli, and Lee Radziwill. As Truman navigates these relationships, he begins work on a new novel, Answered Prayers, which will expose the dark secrets of high society’s most prominent figures. The book is nonchronological, weaving these women’s stories with details from Truman’s life, culminating in the scandal surrounding the release of an excerpt from Answered Prayers. Major themes in the novel include Marriage as a Business Arrangement, childhood and Parenting Among the Social Elite in Mid-Century America, and Self-Presentation as an Art Form.

The guide refers to the 2021 Putnam eBook edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of substance use and addiction, sexual and physical abuse, and death by suicide. This guide refers to Truman Capote and the women he calls “the swans” by their first names in keeping with Leamer’s text. 

Summary

In the summer of 1975, 50-year-old author Truman Capote begins writing his new novel, Answered Prayers, a thinly veiled fictionalization of the lives of New York City’s most fabulous women. A friend warns that the women will immediately recognize themselves, but Capote dismisses his concerns.

When Truman meets Babe Paley in the mid-1960s, he’s immediately drawn to her aristocratic beauty. Born Barbara Cushing, she’s raised believing her primary job is to marry a rich man. Her first marriage to Standard Oil heir Stanley Mortimer ends after five years. In 1948, Babe marries Bill Paley, the wealthy founder of the CBS television network. The Paleys become a staple of New York’s elite society, but Bill is a strict, unfaithful husband who sees Babe as a possession to control. Despite knowing the truth about Bill, Truman encourages Babe to stay with him. They remain married until her death of lung cancer in 1978. Truman is not invited to her funeral.

Born Nancy Raye Gross, “Slim” sees marrying a rich man as her key to an exciting life. Her confidence and beauty make her a popular Hollywood socialite, but her first marriage to director Howard Hawks is emotionally unfulfilling. She begins an affair with married Hollywood agent Leland Hayward, whom she eventually marries. Her second marriage is as tumultuous as her first, and both Slim and Hayward have multiple affairs. She is shocked when Hayward divorces her and marries his affair partner, the notorious Pamela Churchill. In 1962, she marries Lord Kenneth Keith; they divorce 10 years later. She dies of lung cancer in 1990.

Pamela Digby is raised on a large English estate but knows she will inherit nothing. As a result, she marries Randolph Churchill, son of Winston Churchill, at a young age. During World War II, she pursues affairs with married diplomats in London, including W. Averell Harriman and Stanley Mortimer. After divorcing Churchill, she aggressively pursues Gianni Agnelli, heir to the Fiat auto fortune. Their five-year affair ends when he marries Marella Agnelli. She marries Leland Hayward after a lengthy affair and remains loyal until his death. Six months later, she marries her recently widowed former lover, W. Averell Harriman. After Harriman’s death in 1986, she is appointed ambassador to France. She dies in Paris in 1997.

Gloria Guinness is born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1912 and moves to Paris at the age of 22 to model. In 1936, she marries a German count and is swept into Nazi ideology and culture. As the war grows more violent, she divorces her husband, then marries the son of an ambassador to leave the country. In 1951, she marries banking heir Loel Guinness and returns to the height of the European social scene. Despite her status as a fashion icon, Gloria is unhappy in her marriage. When she dies suddenly in 1980, her close friends suspect it was a suicide.

C.Z. Guest is raised as a member of Boston’s elite society but grows bored with her old-fashioned community and flaunts her beauty and wealth. C.Z. moves to Mexico City, where she meets and marries steel heir Winston Frederick Churchill Guest. Their combined fortunes allow C.Z. to live an opulent life, and she becomes a fashion icon. As the 1960s progress, however, changing attitudes towards social expectations and fashion challenge her worldview. In the late 60s, her husband’s poor business decisions force the Guests to sell their beloved family estate. In 1976, she publishes a successful book on gardening. She dies of cancer in 2003.

Marella Agnelli is born into an aristocratic but not wealthy Italian family and marries Gianni Agnelli after his sisters conspire to break up his relationship with Pamela Hayward. Despite her understanding of her new husband’s womanizing, narcissistic ways, she tries her best to build a beautiful life by renovating their many homes. However, when he begins an affair with a close friend, Marella becomes consumed by jealousy. In 2000, their only son dies by suicide in Turin. Marella deals with her grief by building a new home in Marrakech. She dies in 2019.

Lee Radziwill, born Caroline Lee Bouvier, is raised in the shadow of her beautiful and charismatic sister Jackie, the future wife of President John F. Kennedy. Lee combats her jealousy of her sister by pursuing a vibrant social life, marrying Polish prince turned real estate tycoon Stanislaw “Stas” Radziwill. When Radziwill proves not to be the prince of her dreams, she begins an affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. In 1963, she introduces her recently widowed sister to Onassis. Jackie and Onassis eventually marry in 1968, leaving Radziwill heartbroken and addicted to alcohol. In 1999, her son Anthony dies of cancer at age 40. She dies 20 years later in 2019.

Leamer interweaves the life stories of the swans with scenes from the life of Truman Capote. Truman is born in 1924 to 17-year-old Lillie Mae Persons and her 25-year-old husband, Arch, who soon leave him to be raised by cousins in Monroeville, Alabama. At age nine, he moves to New York City with his mother and her new husband. Fearing Truman is gay, they send him to military academy, where older students assault him. Truman finishes high school in New York City.

After graduation, Truman begins publishing stories in women’s magazines and sells a novel about Southern life called Other Voices, Other Rooms. In 1949, he meets and falls in love with Jack Dunphy, who becomes his long-term partner. Truman and Dunphy travel widely, living in Tangiers, Algeria, and across Italy. Truman attempts to adapt his work to Broadway with mixed results but finds success writing narrative nonfiction. In 1959, he travels to Kansas with his childhood friend Nelle Harper Lee to report on the vicious murder of the Clutter family. He becomes consumed with the case and obsessed with the accused murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. His turns his work on the case into a novel titled In Cold Blood, which becomes a smash success. Truman enshrines his new celebrity by throwing an elaborate Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel, inviting all of the swans and the most prominent figures of international society.

Marella reads an excerpt of Truman’s novel-in-progress, Answered Prayers, grows sick of his tendency to gossip, and vows to cut him out of her life. Despite the warnings of others, Truman publishes an excerpt from the novel in Esquire magazine. “Le Côte Basque 1965” features embarrassing anecdotes about Babe Paley and Slim Keith; C.Z. Guest is not mentioned, and Lee Radziwill appears positively alongside a grotesque depiction of her sister Jackie. Babe Paley never speaks to Truman again, and Slim rails against him viciously in public, threatening his social status. 

Truman’s star continues to fade as the 1970s progress. He’s heartbroken when Gore Vidal sues him for libel and Lee Radziwill refuses to testify on his behalf. As Truman’s drug and alcohol addiction grows, C.Z. offers to help him into rehab, but he ultimately dies of complications due to alcohol addiction in 1984.