Truman Capote – a Popular Author at a Turning Point in His Life
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Table of Contents The Play p. 2 The Playwright p. 3-4 The History p. 5 Big Ideas p. 5-6 La Côte Basque p. 7-8 Solo Plays p. 9 Further Reading p. 10 Especially for p. 11 Students Learning Connections & Standards p. 12 Director Lynette Barkley Producers The John Noffo Kahn & December 2, 2016 – January 1, 2017 Mark Addison Foundation Dramaguide written by Gary Cadwallader Dramaguide The Play Character Truman Capote – a popular author at a turning point in his life The Setting Capote's apartment at 870 United Nations Plaza, New York City, a week before Christmas: 1975 The Story “The truth is, I’m very good news for all those women. Those beautiful, intelligent, privileged, lonely women. They are absolutely crazy about me, and that’s a fact. Why? Because damn it, I like them. I pay attention to them. I listen. I understand their problems. I make them laugh. I tell them how to dress, what makeup to wear, what to read and who to love. When they’re miserable, I tuck them into bed and tell them bedtime stories…What they like best is something horrendous about someone impeccable. (beat) Don’t we all.” Jay Presson Allen, Tru Truman Capote’s “La Côte Basque, 1965,” a chapter from his latest book, Answered Prayers, was recently published in Esquire magazine, and his closest friends are no longer speaking to him. Capote is surprised and astonished at their silence. Alone during the holidays when his social calendar is typically busy, the consequences of his actions become clear and he calms himself with alcohol and drugs, and reminisces about his life, interesting friends, and holidays past. 2 The Author: Jay Presson Allen Truman Capote, Jean Brodie, Sally Bowles, Marnie. Screenwriter, playwright and novelist Jay Presson Allen is best known for writing strong, complex, larger-than-life protagonists. One of the rare, successful female film and television writers in the 1950s and 1960s, her four-decade body of work includes several Hollywood classics. Born Jacqueline Presson in San Angelo, Texas, on March 3, 1922, “Jay” first dreamed of becoming an actress. At 18 she moved to New York, but unable to find work and disenchanted with her career choice, she married and moved to California. Immediately regretting the marriage, she turned to writing as a way of becoming financially independent from her husband (whose name she refused to mention). Her first novel, Spring Riot, was published in 1948, receiving mixed reviews. In 1955 she submitted a play to the office of Broadway producer Robert Whitehead. At first the play was rejected by an office “reader,” but Presson resubmitted it several months later and Whitehead himself read and optioned the script. Though the play was never produced, she met the reader who rejected the script, Lewis Allen, and he became her second husband. The Allens and their new baby girl moved to Connecticut in 1956 where Jay wrote The First Wife, a play centered on a young married couple. The play was never produced, but was adapted and filmed in 1963 as Wives and Lovers starring Janet Leigh, Van Johnson, and Shelley Winters. After achieving financial security writing teleplays for television Allen optioned Muriel Spark's novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, for the stage. The story, about an influential schoolteacher and her impressionable students, was produced in London in 1966 with Vanessa Redgrave in the title role, and then on Broadway in 1968 with Zoe Caldwell (Whitehead’s wife). Alfred Hitchcock read the still unproduced play and offered Allen the screenwriting job on his next film, Marnie. The movie, starring Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery, became one of the top hits of the year. Next, Allen had success on Broadway with an adaptation of the French farce 40 Carats. Directed by Abe Burrows and starring Julie Harris, the story is about a 42-year-old woman who seduces a man twenty years her junior. While the play was running on Broadway, Allen’s film adaption of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was released, starring Maggie Smith in an Oscar-winning performance. 3 The Author: continued Her next project, Bob Fosse’s screen adaptation of Cabaret, became an enormous box-office success. With a directive from the producer Cy Feuer, Allen based her screenplay on Christopher Isherwood's source material, the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin, rather than John Van Druten’s play adaptation, I Am a Camera or Joe Masteroff’s book to the stage musical. Fosse demanded major changes, and Allen clashed with the director. Allen found Fosse “a depressive who drained the script of humor.” She quit the film, but was given full credit for the screenplay. Her work earned her an Academy Award nomination. Other films that Allen wrote include Travels With My Aunt, a 1972 film adaptation of the 1969 Graham Green novel starring Maggie Smith (in which Allen credits Katherine Hepburn with writing a majority of the screenplay), Funny Lady, the 1974 sequel to Funny Girl starring Barbra Streisand and James Caan, a 1980 film adaptation of her own 1969 novel Just Tell Me What You Want starring Alan King and Ali McGraw, a 1981 Sidney Lumet-directed film, Prince of the City, starring Treat Williams, and a 1982 film adaptation of the Ira Levin play, Deathtrap, starring Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine. For television she wrote the successful drama Family, which ran on ABC from 1976 to 1980. Allen was also known as a “script doctor,” and contributed to several screenplays without credit, including Streisand’s A Star is Born in 1976, and The Verdict in 1982 starring Paul Newman. Allen returned to Broadway in 1982 with an adaptation of a French play, A Little Family Business, starring Angela Lansbury and John McMartin. Allen’s final two Broadway adaptations were one- character plays that she also directed, Tru in 1989, and The Big Love (co-written with her daughter Brooke) in 1991, starring Tracey Ullman. Allen retired from writing after The Big Love, though she did direct Tru in Wichita and at American Stage in St. Petersburg, in 2002 for what she’d hoped would be a New York City revival. She died of a stroke on May 1, 2006 in New York City. She was 84. 4 History of the Play Tru by Jay Presson Allen premiered in a workshop production with New York Stage and Film Company at Vassar College in 1989. Directed by the author and starring Robert Morse, it first transferred to American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (performed at the Hasty Pudding Theatre), and then to the Booth Theatre on Broadway, opening on December 14, 1989. It ran for 297 performances, closing on September 1, 1990. Morse won the Tony award for his performance. The play then embarked on a national tour, opening in Los Angeles in January 1991. During the tour’s run at Chicago’s Shubert Theatre it was taped live for PBS’s “American Playhouse.” The program aired in November 1991, earning Morse an Emmy for his performance. The Big Idea: Truman Capote Born Truman Streckfus Persons in New Orleans on September 30, 1924, Truman Capote was a novelist and journalist who became a well-known companion for jet-setting society. While writing a comparatively small number of books, the flamboyant Capote became famous for his society and celebrity friendships, biting wit, and his appearances on television talk shows. Abandoned by both his father and mother at age 4, Truman grew up in Monroeville, Alabama in the home of his mother’s relatives. His childhood was solitary, and he turned to writing to cope with the loneliness. “My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely,” Capote wrote. His only friends were his older spinster cousin, Sook Faulk, and the girl next door, Harper Lee, who later authored “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Recalling his youth, Capote wrote that “I began writing really sort of seriously when I was about eleven. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day and I would write for about three hours. I was obsessed by it.” After divorcing Truman’s father, his mother moved to New York City and married Joseph Capote, a successful, Cuban-born textiles broker. Truman moved to Manhattan in 1933 and, over his absent father’s objections, was adopted in 1935 by his stepfather. From then on he was known as Truman Garcia Capote. 5 Truman Capote: continued While attending Manhattan’s Trinity School, Capote’s mother decided Truman needed “toughening,” and sent him to board at St. Joseph Military Academy. Capote was bullied mercilessly, and after his parents moved to Greenwich, Connecticut he was transferred to Greenwich High School. The family returned to Manhattan, and bored with his classes at the Franklin School (now Dwight School) Capote frequented nightclubs, befriending society teenagers Oona O’Neill and Gloria Vanderbilt. As a senior in 1943 Capote was hired as a copyboy at The New Yorker magazine. Although he made important connections there, the outgoing Capote was disillusioned by the quiet and aloof writers and editors. He was eventually fired in 1944 for angering poet Robert Frost and his superiors at the magazine by allegedly walking out on one of Frost’s readings. Saddened at first for losing the job, he later claimed it accelerated his desire to write. He was published soon afterward. Capote submitted his first short story, “Miriam,” to Mademoiselle magazine editor George Davis, and it was accepted and published in the June 1945 issue.