Truman Capote and Babe Paley: A Tale of Betrayal and Friendship
Truman Capote and socialite Babe Paley once fostered a close friendship that lasted decades. With their relationship at the center of Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, many want to know the story behind how they met and how they fell apart.
The Dynamic Friendship of Babe Paley and Truman Capote
Once upon a time, Babe Paley and Truman Capote were each other’s greatest confidantes. Capote, the novelist who penned classics like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, capitalized on his fame to enter New York City’s elite social circles, where he befriended beautiful and powerful women he called the Swans.
In the book Capote’s Women, which the Feud installment was based on, author Laurence Leamer wrote that the swans were “clever, cunning even,” and “knew that while looks could capture a man’s attention, it took intelligence and wiles to keep it. And keep it [they] would, at all costs.” There were six swans, but Paley was by far Capote’s favorite.
“She was often called the most beautiful woman in the world, and Truman just liked looking at her, admiring her incredible panache,” Leamer penned. Capote and Paley met in the 1950s when Capote’s friends David and Jennifer Selznick brought him along on a trip to Paley’s residence in Jamaica. Paley’s husband, Bill, initially thought that it would be former president Harry Truman who would be coming. “This is Truman Capote,” David said. “The Great American Writer.”
Despite being ingrained in New York’s elite circles, Paley “did not have friends” as it was “too big a risk to trust people.” However, she grew fond of Capote, with Leamer noting that “Truman was the sort of friend a teenager might have.” Capote became her “analyst, her pillow, her sleeping pill at night, her coffee in the morning,” per Melanie Benjamin, who wrote The Swans of Fifth Avenue. He was reportedly the only one whom Paley confided in, especially regarding her deepest secrets, like her husband’s infidelities. But Capote still encouraged her to stay in the marriage and think of “being Mrs. William S. Paley as a job, the best job in the world.”
The Fallout and Betrayal
Unbeknownst to Paley and the rest of the so-called swans, Capote was working on a book titled “Answered Prayers,” in which he divulged their secrets in the guise of fiction. An excerpt of the book, La Côte Basque, 1965 was published in Esquire in 1975, and per Leamer, it was a “string of gossipy vignettes, repeating the kind of ugly stories that were whispered at dinner parties.” In the story, a character named Lady Ina Coolbirth exposes Sidney Dillon, who was based on Paley’s husband, and his affair with a politician’s wife. Upon reading the excerpt, Paley and the rest of the swans cut their ties with Capote. Paley died three years later due to cancer, and Capote was not invited to the funeral.
Who Was Babe Paley?
Born as Barbara Cushing in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 5, 1915, Babe Paley was a popular socialite and magazine editor. She was the daughter of Katharine Stone, and Harvey Cushing, a neurosurgeon and a professor at Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins. She had two older sisters, Mary and Betsey, and together, they were called “The Fabulous Cushing Sisters,” because of their association with powerful men. Mary became the second wife of prominent businessman Vincent Astor of the Astor family, while Betsey married James Roosevelt, the son of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Meanwhile, Babe tied the knot with oil heir Stanley Grafton Mortimer Jr., with whom she shared two children. Their marriage only lasted a little over half a decade, and in 1946, she went on to marry William Paley, who founded the TV network CBS. They only had two children. Babe was also a renowned fashion icon who once worked as an editor for Vogue.
The Legacy of Babe Paley
She was known to have an eclectic sense of style, and was believed to have popularized the trend of wrapping scarves around the handles of handbags. Her wardrobe mostly consisted of pieces from Balenciaga, Valentino, and Givenchy, as well as jewelry from Jean Schlumberger and Fulco di Verdura. Because of her influence in fashion, she was on the International Best Dressed List 14 times, and in 1941, Time named her the second-best-dressed woman in the world. She was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1958. On Vanity Fair’s Capote’s Swan Dive, Babe was described as “the tall, swim elegant society doyenne widely considered to be the most beautiful and chic woman in New York.” Meanwhile, Capote said, “Babe Paley has only one fault — she’s perfect. Other than that, she’s perfect.”
How to Watch Feud: Capote vs. The Swans
The first two episodes of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans debuted on FX on January 31, 2024. Fans can catch it every Wednesday at 10 pm ET. Episodes will be uploaded on Hulu the following day. In the series, Tom Hollander stars as Truman Capote, while Naomi Watts plays Babe Paley.
The cast also includes Diane Lane as Slim Keith, C.Z. Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest, Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill, Demi Moore as Bang-Bang Woodward, Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson, Treat Williams as Bill Paley, Joe Mantello as Jack Dunphy, and Russell Tovey as John O’Shea. Per FX, the series follows Capote and his swans, and how he “ingratiated himself into their lives, befriending them and becoming their confidante, only to ultimately betray them by writing a thinly veiled functionalization of their lives, exposing their most intimate secrets.”