* 30.9.1924, New Orleans, LA † 25.8.1984, Los Angeles, CA

Hij debuteerde in 1948 met Other voices, other rooms, een nachtmerrie achtige reis naar volwassenheid van een homofiele jongen. Een sfeer van droefgeestigheid en verval vindt men ook in vele van zijn verhalen, gebundeld in A tree of night (1949). Zijn In cold blood (1966) is een 'roman' over een misdaad, gepleegd door twee jonge, daarvoor ter dood veroordeelde moordenaars geschreven aan de hand van gerechtelijke stukken en gesprekken met de veroordeelden.

Werken: (o.a.): Local colour (1950; reisschetsen); The grass harp (1951); The muses are heard (1956); Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958, verfilmd); The Thanksgiving visitor (1970) ; The dogs bark (1973; essays); Answered prayers (1976).

LITT .J.W.Aldridge, Af ter the lost generation (1951).

Onder een scène uit ‘ Grass Harp’

Celebrated writer of novellas, short stories, a non-fiction novel, and magazine articles who penned or co-penned screenplays and also had several films based on his original writings. Capote turned himself into one of the major social and literary figures of the 1960s and 70s before his life was overtaken by prescription drug and alcohol abuse.

Perhaps the best known film of a Capote property was BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (1961), starring Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, a free-spirited, fast-living New York bachelor girl whose frivolity masks a secret past. Capote co-wrote with John Huston the screenplay for the offbeat comedy BEAT THE DEVIL (1954) and co-wrote the script for the atmospheric ghost film THE INNOCENTS (1961), based on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.

In the mid-1960s, Capote published the controversial non-fiction novel—a term he coined—In Cold Blood, about the brutal murder of a Kansas family by two drifters. The bestseller was filmed as a crime docudrama under the same title in 1967. Capote later made a hilarious screen acting debut as a wispy, lisping millionaire who invites a group of famous sleuths to his Gothic mansion to solve a murder in Neil Simon's MURDER BY DEATH (1976).

On the small screen, Capote's nostalgic take on his childhood in the rural South during the Depression, A CHRISTMAS MEMORY (1966), was made into an Emmy Award-winning short film starring Geraldine Page, with Capote narrating. He later co-wrote with Wyatt Cooper the harrowing prison drama THE GLASS HOUSE (1972)/TRUMAN CAPOTE'S GLASS HOUSE.

Five years after his death in 1984, Capote's life—his famous bitchy wit, formidable intelligence, literary accomplishments, homosexuality, and desperate emotional lows—was the subject of Jay Presson Allen's play, Tru. A success on Broadway, the play was a Tony-winning, one-man tour de force for Robert Morse which aired on PBS and also played widely internationally, suitably reviving the legend of a difficult, yet gifted man.

Filmography Truman Capote

1953   INDISCRETION OF AN AMERICAN WIFE                                  STAZIONE TERMINI/TERMINAL STATION                   dialogue

1954   BEAT THE DEVIL                                            screenplay

1961   BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S                               story

1961   THE INNOCENTS                                            screenplay

1967   IN COLD BLOOD                                             from novel

1969   TRILOGY                                                      screenplay

1972   CS BLUES                                                     performer

1976   MURDER BY DEATH                                         performer

1993   DARLING CHILD                                              author