WHO REALLY IS HOLLY GOLIGHTLY?

Anderson Cooper’s parents Wyatt Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt at Truman Capote’s 28 November 1966, the Monday after Thanksgiving, Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel in NYC

 

 

“Inspired by My Fair Lady’s breathtaking Ascot scene, costumed by Cecil Beaton entirely in black and white, he would restrict his guests’ attire to this most severe of palettes. This decision, he felt, would bring at least visual unity to a convocation of people as different, says former Harper’s Bazaar fashion editor D. D. Ryan, “as chalk and cheese.” Capote explained, ‘I want the party to be united the way you make a painting.’”

 

—Vanity Fair

 

“My book was a conjunction of the general and the particular, like most works of the imagination. I had all my life wanted to do something in the style of legend, which is absolutely the reverse of dramatic treatment. Since I first saw the Puvis de Chavannes frescoes of the life of Saint Geneviève in my student days, I have wished that I could try something a little like that in prose; something without accent, with non of the artificial elements of composition.”

 

—Willa Cather on Death Comes for the Archbishop, 23 November 1927

 

PART I

Holly Golightly’s character in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a free-spirited party girl touched with humanity, natural fire, and intelligence as if a decision at an impressionable and then learned distance has been made that the best way to protect oneself and to also deal with a dangerous capitalistic structure that doesn’t even recognize the soul, is to not offer the soul at all, but instead to delight the soul in the excesses of that very situation where it fails humans, stay just out of reach, but find the happiness of being alive in it, to even glorify in the beauty of being alive, to find the spaces where that soul can exist safely in the beauty, even fragility, of itself, and celebrate it.

 

 

Cecil Beaton and Stephen Tennant, 1927, National Portrait Gallery

 

 

Holly is not modeled after Truman Capote’s dark “version” in his “novella” of a hardened call girl for money: In Truman’s words, to Mr. Arbuckle she says, “"The next time a girl wants a little powder-room change," she called, not teasing at all, "take my advice, darling: don't give her twenty-cents!’” And of the man in her apartment:

She loosened a gray flannel robe off her shoulder, to show me evidence of what happens if a man bites. The robe was all she was wearing. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you. But when the beast got so tiresome I just went out the window. I think he thinks I'm in the bathroom, not that I give a damn what he thinks, the hell with him, he'll get tired, he'll go to sleep [ . . . ]’

But Audrey’s movie did help establish the freedom and autonomy of Sex and the Single Girl (1962) (Helen Gurley Brown’s take that even was made into a movie) that sprung from Holly culturally in the 1960s, freedom to give one’s body to whomever—but instead in the movie Holly is modeled after the uninhibited tabloid English socialites from the 1920s known as the “Bright Young Things.” It was:

A term given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London. They threw flamboyant fancy dress parties, went on elaborate treasure hunts through nighttime London, and some drank heavily or used illicit drugs — all of which was enthusiastically covered by journalists such as Charles Graves and Tom Driberg.

—specifically on Stephen Tennant—it’s “brightest,” and returning to her the literary qualities of her as Willa Cather’s Eden Bower and Thea Kronborg (and her Fred).

 

 

Baba Beaton as 'Heloise' in 'Great Lovers Pageant' by Cecil Beaton, 1927. National Portrait Gallery, London

 

  Holly’s diamonds, tiaras, parties, elegant dress, long cigarettes, and devil-may-care attitude link her to Cecil Beaton and Stephen Tennant’s world. She was free because she decided to be free. Sex was removed from the equation, or at least the evasion of it when necessary in the movie, so that she did indeed completely own herself—even her former literary self in Willa’s pages. Her intelligence was too high, too sensitive, too valuable to be sold, valued instead for the spirit of the thing, which was most like the quality and gorgeous luminousness of the window at Tiffany’s. There she was center of beauty with capitalism instead conformed around her, inspired by her, holding her and her spirit in the highest esteem.

 

 

from Stephen Tennant’s biography Serious Pleasures by Philip Hoare

 

“… the exact limitations of one's taste should be an intense pleasure ... Most people are never sure what they like. Pleasure should be a deep, as well as a light thing. You should name the book of your life 'Serious Pleasures’.”

—Stephen Tennant

 

There is also the telling difference between Truman’s Holly Golightly who is a conglomeration of exact details taken from Willa Cather’s Eden Bower from her “Coming, Aphrodite,” (moving into the apartment next to him, “traveling,” getting to know her from her letters in the hall, the fire escape, practicing her music alone, non-committal, her men friends, shopping in shop windows for things that are not hers yet but will be, etc.); Marian Forrester in “A Lost Lady” (hearing word of where she has disappeared to), Ántonia Shimerda in My Ántonia, (the effect she has on the men who are remembering her), and Thea Kronborg in The Song of the Lark (having an older doctor patron, a lover/husband named Fred, moving to New York City, the effect she has there), etc., details which are then made lesser-than in Truman making the qualities of these female characters into a cursing call girl more like himself. And so indeed, the casting of Audrey Hepburn rids her of the crassness and debasement Truman turned the character on.

 

 

The older female “decorator writing the checks to the “writer.”

 

 

“In the spring of 1926 Stephen, not yet twenty, wrote an extended letter of critical praise to an unknown American author whose books he had discovered and had been avidly reading since the latter part of the previous year. The author was Willa Cather. 'I think A Lost Lady a deeply beautiful book,' Stephen had written to Elizabeth Lowndes on 18 November 1925, 'so well written that it is like a life experience frozen into a day's reading. It is gripping & supremely moving in the fine, hard, remote way that all emotion should be conveyed.’”

 

—from Stephen Tennant’s biography Serious Pleasures by Philip Hoare

 

 

On that simple note of her owning herself—which a narcissist cannot allow (and then will invade sacrosanct spaces as Truman does), the plagiarism that the other artists were aware of while the audiences were not, such as Cecil Beaton and Stephen Tennant—the close, young, gay, aristocratic, literary friend of Willa Cather— in then being modeled on the English socialites of the 1920s for the movie version because of this, “Audrey’s Rightful Version” was a touch-off of a behind-the-scenes war between art and its molester, Truman Capote, who was selling and pimping a whorish character for his own money and fame; a darkened creation from his dark inner self, and with it was the convoluted public perception shrouded in the purposeful ‘enigma’ of uncertainty—which formed that cloud of personally-held ownership and power to hold that vacancy and emptiness in place just for pimped stature, money, and fame. He was posing as literary. And, it was based on a lie: the plagiarism and about a personal relationship with its author, with as many other lies as necessary thrown in. It was a lie that Truman perpetuated long after the novel and the movie and was malignantly purposeful: to obfuscate the identity of both himself as the author and Holly because chaos would shroud the actual, invaluable truth and that most certainly wouldn’t be about him or belong to him. He couldn’t let that happen. He needed to remain as the “author” of her—a proprietary owner, not in a franchise sense, but in a personal characterization he could hold over the desires and aspirations of all the women he knew—the socialites he considered he “owned” as well. The “literary” aspect of the capitalism lent him an added air of not just credibility, but prominence above others, a “tortured writer,” a prestige worthy of admiration and awards, of standing apart, singular. Beyond that, he also needed to own the social scene to make it about himself. Any slight that he didn’t own all of that would send him scurrying to the press, frequently.

Holly would own herself. And that is exactly what Audrey knew and why she was doing what she was doing, facing off Truman with the reality of her light in a very dark and empty, ravenous, debased, and abusive system of existence—and doing it in the very structure of the genius movie created that itself evades the hold that was on it. Audrey’s role was pivoting on art, on literature, on the status of that literature, on its actual value to a culture, the inherent quality and value of what matters, whereas Truman was feeding taken content shifted in his brain to his own to any prestigious magazine or journal (like the great writers did) that would hand him attention, money, and glory as he shoved other people’s intellectual property into the voracious machine (like himself)—selling it as his own invention when he was actually just taking on the role of “writer” and then trying to cover the tracks in public displays, longing for his intent of “famous.” Cecil Beaton noted in his journals what a businessman he seemed to be, noting he looked like a tycoon, and wasn’t in the slightest interested in art.

It was known by the writer and producers at the time of the making of the movie, writer Sam Wasson points out in Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, that Truman had plagiarized Breakfast at Tiffany’s quite liberally from Christopher Isherwood whom he would have known through Harper’s Bazaar fiction editor George Davis. Christopher Isherwood was part of the group with Carson McCullers, the female author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, who were connected with George Davis’s “co-operative house in Middagh Street on Brooklyn Heights where people working in the arts could live or stay at reasonable prices.” (Hugo Vicker, Cecil Beaton: A Biography) McCuller’s sister had even helped Truman first get published at Harper’s Bazaar. Truman, then, wasn’t above copying people he knew in his vicinity. George Davis is how biographer Hugo Vicker described how Cecil Beaton came to know Truman in 1948—the pivotal year after Willa’s passing and the growing connection of Edith Lewis and Stephen Tennant. In his own diary Cecile described meeting Truman at “a cocktail party given by an overly-excited celebrity hunter” [. . . ] and that Truman “had recently had a big succès d’estime with his Other Voices, Other Rooms.” (The Strenuous Years: 1948-55 Cecil Beaton's Diaries Book 4). Truman taking from other writers who were known through Davis was also later noted: “Reynolds Price observes that two of Capote's early short stories, "Miriam," along with "A Jug of Silver" reflect his familiarity with fellow contemporary southern writing, specifically that of Carson McCullers. He also notes "Miriam" is imbued with a "perhaps too-easy eeriness." This was the pattern: imitating content and adding his “voice,” then moving it towards publicity—his actual intention, the reputation. And then as usual (and as usual for a narcissist, twisting reality), Truman would drop a story that he had had a personal relationship with whomever he was covertly borrowing identity from to “validate” or smooth over with the public any hint of intellectual property theft. It was gaslighting intended for the public to think instead, “Oh, they were friends, he admired him, they knew each other, it must be okay, or the person would say something,” and then readily overlook any glaring evidence. Publicity was ironically Truman’s salve.

The creators of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s moved ahead anyway knowing the plagiarism because of the cultural value of what they could create and also bring it back to Willa, knowing to whom it actually belonged, and how it would also take on the abusive structure that rids itself of internal value, do it in humor, and in it show what Truman Capote was manipulating, selling art and fame that wasn’t his and posing as celebrity. No one could say anything or Truman would be the victim, persecuted. It’s a true creator’s game with intellect, talent, beauty, and humor. Plagiarizing means that the soul of the artist who created those worlds doesn’t matter and is assumed to not exist. In other words, the soul doesn’t matter and master artists don’t matter. The heart of the literature and the careful nuances of insight and humanity don’t matter. It has to be about the pent-up narcissistic self. It is complete and total disrespect for the artists one is purporting to be, just for admiration, all the resources, and lording over others. It mattered to Audrey. It mattered deeply to her spirit. And it always comes home.

When one looks closer at what the narcissism is attempting to continually block, the detail Truman would never allow, is you, even of Audrey Hepburn. The very nature of the magnificent beauty of Holly transcended Truman, and he was very, very mad about that it wasn’t his and about him instead, his putting his “voice” as the center of the story, making himself the one who ingeniously thought it up and in his ownership of the character that Willa Cather had created. If he could then say it was based on his mother or the women he knew, he’d be imitating how Willa actually wrote (except he was making up lies and twisting reality for his use) and what was publicly known of Willa’s practices in writing—and he could get by with the further imitation, even his flaunting “literary theory.” He turned every lifted text to be about his suppressed abusive self, always centered there. He just twisted it and injected himself. No, no “tell-all memoir” with “truth” was coming unless he could fill it with the continued concealment of lies—instead, everyone was to be caught in the midst of his convolution of a derailing detail train.

 

 

“When you are engaging with a malignant narcissist, acknowledge that you cannot have a gratifying connection with such a person. It will not happen. Drop the expectation of making that person ‘see the light.’ Such a thought is an illusion.” Dr. Les Carter

 

“A narcissist’s inability or unwillingness to self-reflect would become the primary flaw inhibiting them from personal growth.” Dr. Les Carter

 

 

 

How much Audrey knew behind the scenes isn’t readily available in what was written down, as in Cecil Beaton’s journals in the early years which includes writing about Truman, as narcissistic patterns certainly were not understood, as in making quick confidantes and intimacies as he did with Cecil. Audrey Hepburn knew Cecil Beaton by 1954 in being photographed by him at the time of her Academy Award. She was new in Hollywood at that time, and as she told it, she wasn’t yet fully aware of Cecil’s renown. They would come to love each other and speak very kindly of one another over the decades. Cecil and Anita Loos were friends, the writer of the Broadway production of Gigi for which Audrey first came to NYC in 1951, and Cecil then being the stage and costume designer when Gigi was being made into the movie. Cecil had been close friends with Stephen Tennant, but he doesn’t write of him in his journals at this time. And by 1964, ten years later, Cecil and Audrey would be collaborating on My Fair Lady. If Cecil was not aware of the implications of Truman’s behind-closed-doors practices in those years, by 1960 Audrey was, Audrey also being more apt to pick up on it and not be played. But Cecil’s friendship with Truman would play a role in the 1960s of how Truman would try to covertly publicly humiliate and undercut Audrey for taking the role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and for showing what he had done to be seen as a “literary celebrity,” and her continuing that stand into Paris When It Sizzles . . . and further. This would culminate in Truman’s huge publicity push and power play of his Black and White Ball in November 1966 copying Audrey’s huge and hilarious black and white Ascot scene to show who had the celebrity clout. That year would begin with Truman finally publishing In Cold Blood and the millions pouring in, and with that money how he could finally take revenge. Along with the masked ball at the Plaza he would do the snide act of re-issuing his “A Christmas Memory” first published in 1956, now in a “stand-alone hardcover edition” in time for his celebrity from the year and Christmas sales—and the story taken directly from Willa Cather’s Old Mrs. Harris. It was meant as a slap to Audrey, as well, of course, as a book for Christmas with himself on the cover trying to make it all true. He then, of course, moved to more publicity, talking to Gloria Steinem about his personal connection to Willa Cather, among other things, and moving his Christmas story into television production, a full-force feeding the content into the machine.

At the time Audrey stepped onto the set of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1960, she was making a statement of truth and integrity that she was giving herself and her fame to and that could never be withdrawn and that she would never withdraw it of her spirit. She had the most fame of anyone to offer. She had the most beauty and the most stature. She also had the most soul and the most humanity. She was at home in Switzerland with her beloved husband Mel and new baby, but she packed up and headed back to Los Angeles to infuse the art with her integrity and all the light that would come with that. And in that act she would be facing off Truman Capote and she knew it. There is a picture of Truman photographed with Audrey and her husband Mel Ferrer by Richard Avedon of the three of them together in a photo booth after the production of Funny Face in 1957. And so in 1960 Audrey was even going against a “personal relationship” with Truman that he would claim time and again, which he would then cross by making a publicity statement about Audrey and the movie saying that it was miscast in order to publicly undermine what she had done. This is a pattern between them that would continue throughout the 60s. Audrey never wavers. Thus knowing Truman and taking the role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was no easy public task for Audrey, but it was most certainly the right thing to do, and the most lasting. Her portrayal never diminishes or loses its power and brightness. It and she remain luminous, perhaps even growing in it.

 

Mel Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn, and Truman Capote
Richard Avedon American, 1957, The Met Museum

Audrey Hepburn in Paris by Meghan Friedlander and Audrey's son, Luca Dotti (2024)

This artistic showdown dealing with Truman’s known plagiarism began in earnest in 1948. Three years earlier in 1945, while Willa Cather was still in form, Truman had taken from her the basis of his first short story, “Miriam” and gotten it published in Mademoiselle, the ideas lifted from Willa’s character Myra in My Mortal Enemy and the visitations from the younger Nellie Birdseye which begin to upset Myra. This artistic standoff that Audrey would take a stand in would span from the 1940s, this in 1945, and to 1948 at Willa’s passing Truman’s plagiarism of her The Professor’s House for his Other Voices, Other Rooms. Interestingly, then, 1948 is also the year Truman came to know Cecil Beaton—a connection close to Stephen Tennant, the close friend of Willa’s. Truman’s Other Voices, Other Rooms had been published in January, and Cecil Beaton wrote in his journal of meeting him soon after. He invited Truman to visit him in England, and several weeks later Truman did show up at his house. Cecil, however, makes no diary entry of taking Truman to meet Stephen Tennant, as Truman told Cecil’s biographer Hugo Vickers in 1983, the interview in which he intimates not liking Stephen, but Stephen liking him (the usual narcissistic condescension), which then Stephen’s biographer, Philip Hoare, copies down from Hugo Vicker’s interview with Truman, the research on Cecil, and writes as having actually happened—but with Truman as the only source—and this tellingly a year before at Truman’s death, at which point Truman wrote his story down again of having met Willa Cather, a story very similar to Stephen’s in having come to know Willa and being invited to her Park Avenue apartment, of which Edith Lewis, who lived with her, makes no mention except to purposefully write that Stephen “was the only one among the new generation of writers with whom she could talk about writing on an absolutely equal plane, with complete freedom and--though their views were in many ways so different--with complete sympathy and accord” (Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record).

 

Stephen actually had been to their apartment, and what was actually happening in 1947 is a much clearer story. Stephen was known as the “brightest” of the socialites the “Bright Young Things” in 1920s-1930s England, and he being a much more real version of the literary socialites than Truman, now for decades—and he quite frequently through the years from the beginning talked of his friendship and love of Willa. It was in the height of that fame in the 1920s that he and Willa befriended each other: It was 1926—the publication year of My Mortal Enemy, which Truman lifted.

 

March 1926:

 

“Stephen was fascinated by Willa Cather, and the books which described her world. He felt he had to know more. In March, inspired by an article written by Hugh Walpole drawing attention to Cather's work, Stephen sat down and wrote his first fan letter to Willa Cather. 'It was eight pages of very brilliant criticism," Stephen modestly recalled, 'me at my very best, and I sent it to a great friend of my mother's, another famous writer, Anne Douglas Sedgwick. I wrote this long letter and Anne wrote to me and said, ‘I thought your letter so remarkable that through a mutual friend I've sent it to Willa Cather.’”

 

“Within a few days an envelope arrived from America, addressed to Stephen in an unknown blue hand. 'It was my first letter I ever had from Willa Cather! exclaimed Stephen. 'My mother had a houseparty - every guest room was filled - and I was so excited about this I rushed before breakfast - people were hardly awake, hadn't been given their tea or coffee - and I jumped onto them, leapt onto them, jumping up and down shouting ‘I’ve got a letter from Willa Cather!’ And none of them had heard of her or knew anything about her.’”

 

 

3-5 December 1935, NYC:

 

“On Tuesday, 3 December, Stephen had made his long-anticipated pilgrimage to Willa Cather's flat at 570 Park Avenue, where the novelist lived with her companion Edith Lewis. The apartment was at the rear of the building, and its heavily curtained windows all faced the blank walls of the Colony Club, one of New York's most exclusive gathering-places, next door. But Cather's abode could not have been further in spirit from the high society of the club, or the haute couture of Fifth Avenue. As her flat physically turned its back to that life, so did Cather. (In her last apartment, she had even rented the rooms above hers so as to ensure peace and quiet.) To the public, as to her readership, Cather was 'an ingrown genius', as George Seibel had called her.

 

Stephen could thus feel justifiably honoured to gain an invitation to this inner sanctum. When Cather opened her front door herself: 'In a flash as I saw her eyes I knew this was the writer of My Antonia & A Lost Lady.' They spent an enchanted hour together and Stephen's impressions far exceeded his expectation of what she would be like. Two days later, the telephone in his hotel room rang before breakfast, and her 'strong, truthful, splendid voice’ asked him to tea again that afternoon. Stephen danced for joy around his bedroom.

 

He went out and ordered a bouquet of pink roses to be sent to 570 Park Avenue, and a few hours later presented himself promptly at the door. Known for her love of bright and exotic clothing, Willa received him wearing black satin pyjamas, a brilliant flamingo-pink tunic, and a cream shirt. An imposing, broad figure, with a strong face, she was not an easily forgettable person. Stephen's description of her stayed with him even into his old age; he recalled her 'gentian blue eyes and 'famous Irish red hair', with dark eyelashes, so that she looked made-up though she never had'.

 

Every now and again, Cather would lay her hand on Stephen's arm, to stress a point - and the affection she felt for him. They discussed everything. Willa produced old photographs of herself, and of her travels in New Mexico, where she had set her 1927 novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop. Stephen in turn had brought his photographs of Pamela [his mother], and Cather asked a lot of questions about her. They spoke of the West, and how, for Cather, the film industry had spoilt California. Stephen evinced his high opinion of Greta Garbo, but the stern authoress denied Garbo's intelligence. 'She can't be ... or she wouldn't be a film actress. To waste the best years of one's life on trash like that.'

 

***

 

“Cather's judgements did not cease to be scathing. Allowing only her favoured authors, Flaubert and Turgenev, unalloyed praise, she later told Stephen that she thought the work of his friend, Elizabeth Bowen, 'cold, calculating trick writing’. Elsie Mendl, one of his society hostess friends, and an American, she called 'the most commonplace sort of social climber', and Willa deplored the 'very mediocre set poor Mrs Simpson had round her’. But Stephen himself could do no wrong. Writing from her Maine retreat, Whale Cove Cottage at Grand Manan, she thanked Stephen for his Christmas card: 'Weren't you a smart boy to make your Christmas letter to me arrive on Christmas eve?' Receipt of Leaves from a Missionary's Notebook solicited the cabled acknowledgement: 'Book outrageous but delightful. Splendid drawing' in November 1937, and when she received a copy of The White Wallet from her aristocratic, aesthetic friend, Willa wrote back in encouragement: 'Go right along, my boy, as we say in the South."

 

Such words meant much to Stephen, who held her opinions as the ultimate approbation. For the rest of his life, he would tirelessly exhort friends to read her work and ask publishers to republish it. By such persistence, Stephen sought to repay something of Cather's undoubted faith and belief in him as an artist and a friend.”

 

 

That Truman would say that 1948 was the moment he met Stephen Tennant and visited his home (when Truman arrived at Cecil’s house) would make no sense (and Cecil would have made note of it)—it would place Truman at meeting one of Willa’s closest friends right at the moment Stephen began to write “The Room Beyond: A Forward on Willa Cather” publicly taking on the very title of Truman’s Other Voices, Other Rooms from her work. An act to come to know the “Bright Young Things” and to know Stephen Tennant in England in 1948, after that very year very closely imitating Stephen’s close friend, right upon the copying of My Mortal Enemy, is placing himself into the history that was implicating his crimes and twisting the moment to his own story.