Truman Persons was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on September 30, 1924.
In Cold Blood: Capote
Truman Persons was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on September 30, 1924.
He was the son of a teenaged mother and salesman father, but his parents’ relationship was stormy.
Nelle Harper Lee was born seventeen months later in Monroeville, Alabama, on April 28, 1926. Monroeville was a small town 71 miles to the northeast of Mobile.
Her mother was also a housewife and her father was a successful lawyer and journalist.
Truman’s parents divorced in 1928 right before the beginning of the Great Depression and his mother dumped him off with an aunt in Monroeville. He was four years old and he moved in next door to Nelle Harper Lee.
This was the Deep South and this was the beginning of the Great Depression.
They became friends and bonded as they started growing up because they both loved to read. They especially liked Sherlock Holmes and the Rover Boys – both detective series.
Truman and Nelle were atypical children. She was a scrappy tomboy who was quick to fight. He taught himself how to read and write before he started school.
Other children made fun of him because he spoke with a lisp and used a lot of big words. He was a small boy, and sensitive. Although she was two years younger, she defended him wherever the neighborhood bullies picked on him.
They both also shared a common anguish of separation from their mothers. Although his mother visited from time to time, she’d abandoned him. Although her mother lived with the family, she suffered from bipolar disorder and was difficult to deal with. So Nelle kept her distance.
Both had fertile imaginations. Reading together progressed into writing stories together, which they acted out. They wrote the stories on an Underwood typewriter her father bought for them when they were in elementary school. They took turns dictating and typing.
In the mid-1930s, Truman’s mother remarried and moved him to New York City to live permanently with her and her new husband José García Capote. The stepfather adopted him and renamed him Truman García Capote.
Truman and Nelle remained close friends by spending time together during the summers when he returned to stay with his aunt in Monroeville.
He went to school in New York but graduated from Greenwich High School after his parents moved to Connecticut. He showed no interest in college because he found a plum job with The New Yorker magazine back in Manhattan.
He wrote a few articles that were published in the magazine and became popular.
And he published his first book in 1948 – a fictional novel titled Other Voices, Other Rooms. The main character Joel was Truman himself and the tomboy character Idabel was lifelong pal Nelle.
Impressed by her pal’s success in the publishing world, she moved to New York to pursue becoming an author.
A decade passed.
Then near the end of 1959, she finished writing To Kill a Mockingbird and her agent sold it to J.P. Lippincott & Co.
She had advance moneys in her pocket and time on her hands.
In November of that year, Capote read a brief story that appeared in The New York Times. The story was about the brutal murder of a family in a small town in Kansas. That, of course, was the Clutter family.
The story intrigued him. So he pitched the idea for an investigative story to his editors at The New Yorker magazine. They bought it and they assigned him to write a four-part series to be published in the magazine. He knew he needed help, so he pitched the idea to Harper Lee to be his assistant. She agreed, and he hired her.
So in December, she accompanied Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, by train. Her title was “assistant researchist.” And she was a perfect foil for him. While he came across as arrogant and flamboyant to the natives of rural Kansas, her down-home southern approach endeared her to the locals.
They performed their research during the day, then returned to their small hotel at night to compare notes. By the time they finished, they compiled 8,000 pages of notes.
In January of 1960, before they finished the research for In Cold Blood, the publisher released To Kill a Mockingbird and it quickly became a best-seller.
The character Atticus Finch was based on her father, Scout was based on Nelle Harper Lee herself, and Scout’s pal Dill Harris was based on her pal Truman Persons. So each became a character in each other’s first books.
The movie starring Gregory Peck came out two years later in 1962. It was a box office success, but a rift started to develop between them. He was jealous of her success.
Plus the fact their lifestyles clashed like oil and water. She was an introvert who liked to maintain a low profile. He loved making appearances on talk shows, was openly gay, and loved being a regular in the drug culture at Studio 54.
So she returned to Monroeville.
The New Yorker began publishing Truman’s four-part series In Cold Blood on September 25, 1965. The book was published the following year, was a best-seller, and the movie was released the following year. It, too, was successful at the box office.
But any chance of a reconciliation between the two childhood pals went up in smoke. Although he dedicated the book to her – and his lover – he gave her no credit whatsoever for the invaluable help she provided in researching the book.
While she remained in Monroeville, he became a jetsetter between New York, L.A., and many exotic ports of call. And they remained disenfranchised from each other for the rest of their lives.
Truman Capote died in on August 25, 1984, one month she of 60. After In Cold Blood, he produced little.
Nelle Harper Lee died 32 years later in Monroeville on February 19, 2016. She was two months shy of 90. After To Kill a Mockingbird, she produced nothing else.
P.S. – The movie Capote came out in 2005.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman played Capote.
Among his 65 acting credits are Scent of a Woman, Money for Nothing, The Big Lebowski, Along Came Polly, and God’s Pocket. Five of my favorite movies.
Hoffman died on February 2, 2014. He was 46.
Catherine Keener – fresh off of The 40-Year-Old Virgin – played Nelle Harper Lee.
She has 83 acting credits from About Last Night, to Being John Malkovich, to the current TV series Kidding.
I liked the movie Capote.
But that’s it for what turned out being a six-parter on In Cold Blood.
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