Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (148 page)

Dawn was breaking over Manhattan as Truman bid his last guest goodbye. Katharine Graham and the “big names” had long ago left for various destinations.

Only eight waiters remained to remove the dishes and glasses. One in particular caught Truman’s eye. He looked like a young Richard Harris.

Truman spoke to the young man and learned that he was from Limerick in Ireland.

As he later told Leo Lerman, “You know, I have this thing for Irish men. I asked the waiter if he’d like to earn a hundred dollars by spending time with me in my suite after he got off from work. The sweet boy eagerly accepted.”

“I’d skipped dessert at my ball, since I was too busy telling everyone
adieu
. So my dessert was going to arrive at my suite, all six feet, two inches of him—and god knows how many more inches concealed.”

***

The next day, the party received massive coverage in the media. Truman exaggerated somewhat when he said, “No event got so much newsprint since the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy.”

In
The New York Times
, Enid Nemy wrote: “The list of celebrities rolled off the assembly line like dolls, newly painted and freshly coiffed, packaged in silk, satin, and jewels addressed to Truman Capote, The Plaza Hotel.”

Of course, any such massive event would have its detractors. Gianni Agnelli remarked, “If you want to attend an extravagant ball, get invited to the Beistegui Ball in Venice.”

Peter Hamill sarcastically noted in his column, “There were some Negroes there, too.”

Humorist Russell Baker said, “If Capote ruined a few lives among the un-invited, so much the better. You have to break a few egos to make an omelette.”

Film director Joel Schumacher made an odd comparison, likening the ball to “the barbecue of the Wilkses at the beginning of
Gone With the Wind.”

Years later, Babe Paley would make a wry comment. “The ball was the last real time that Truman would be viewed as the fair-haired darling of the socialset. In the years to come, it would be a downhill journey for him—in fact, he became
persona non grata
in society.”

[She was referring to the rage he catalyzed through publication of the first chapters of his unfinished novel
, Answered Prayers
.]

In 1983, a year before he died, Truman spent his final months not writing his novel, but planning another black-and-white ball as a venue within a decaying palace in, of all places, Asunción, Paraguay.

His dress code focused on costumes inspired by the fashions of the local Spanish colonial aristocracy during the mid-19
^th
century.

Horrified by the idea, his few remaining friends challenged him with, “No one is going to fly to Paraguay for a ball.”

“They’ll come,” Truman said. “Just you wait and see. They’ll come.”

When Gore Vidal heard of this, he sneered at the idea that fashionable jet setters would fly to Asunción. “Capote will end up with all the remaining mass murderers of the dying days of the Third Reich. Some of these unrepentant old Nazis, on their last legs, are hiding out in Paraguay.”

Truman’s dream of a 19
^th
-century Spanish colonial ball in faraway Paraguay, like so many other fervent hopes and visions, was meant to be in dream only.

Chapter Forty-Five

Gore Vidal became the original scriptwriter
for one of the most controversial movies of all time, the 1979 Italo-American erotic epic produced by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and Franco Rossellini. Originally entitled
Gore Vidal’s Caligula
, it became the first hard-core porno film to cast A-list stars, although they didn’t know at the beginning what they were getting into.

Malcolm McDowell, born in 1943 in the industrial city of Leeds, and the star of
A Clockwork Orange [released in 1971 and directed by Stanley Kubrick]
, was an unlikely choice for the role of Caligula, the ruler of the Roman Empire from 37 AD until he was butchered by his guards in 41 AD.

McDowell starred opposite Peter O’Toole as the syphilis-ridden, half-mad Emperor Tiberius. O’Toole looked like he’d been recently dug up after spending twenty years buried in a coffin.

Long before she played the Queen of England
[
The Queen
, directed by Stephen Frear and released in 2006]
, Helen Mirren was cast as the notorious courtesan, Caesonia
[“the most promiscuous woman in Rome”]
, who married Caligula. Mirren appears in most of the movie’s scenes dressed like a drag queen imitating a burlesque dancer.

Maintaining his dignity, John Gielgud played Nerva, a long-suffering friend of Tiberius, as if he were quoting Shakespeare.

His farewell to Tiberius (and to life itself) begins when he slits his wrists and submerges himself in a bath of hot water. Unaware of the sex scenes that Guccione would later insert into the context of the film, Gielgud, after seeing the final cut, announced to the press, “
Caligula
is my first porno movie.”

Originally, Maria Schneider was cast as Drusilla, Caligula’s sister and the love of his life. But when she learned the scope of her scenes, calling for nudity and sex acts, she retreated. That was perceived at the time as an unusual decision for the lesbian actress, since she had had no such inhibitions when stripping down for
Last Tango in Paris
opposite Marlon Brando in 1972. She was replaced in
Caligula
by Teresa Ann Savoy.