Трагическая судьба писателя Трумена Капоте: жизнь в роскошных домах и смерть в Лос-Анджелесе

Truman Capote believed in the power of a scene change. “Rotating with the seasons, I live in four places,” he told House Beautiful 1969. “In the city (New York), by the sea (Long Island), in the mountains (Verbier, Switzerland), and in the desert (Palm Springs).” The luxurious globe-trotting lifestyle he enjoyed was a far cry from his Southern upbringing, spent between Louisiana and Alabama in the 1920s. Capote sought a particular type of culture he felt was nonexistent in his Bible Belt hometowns. “My childhood was spent in parts of the country and among people unprovided with any semblance of a cultural attitude,” he told The Paris Review in 1957. “Which was probably not a bad thing, in the long view. It toughened me rather too soon to swim against the current.” Capote moved to New York in the early 1930s to live with his mother, Lillie Mae Faulk, and her second husband, José García Capote. It was there that he went on to write seminal works, including Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood, and Answered Prayers. He loved working from home and relished solitude, even as a self-described social butterfly. “I spend most of my time out here reading, writing, going for walks with my dog, and talking on the telephone,” he once said of life at home on Long Island. Ahead, take a peek inside Capote’s various abodes—where he indulged his passion for ornate interior design and produced some of his most iconic work. Retreat to Europe For a brief period in the 1950s, Capote left America behind for Europe. In this 1953 photo, he’s pictured in Portofino, Italy, leaning against the wall of his seaside living quarters. According to The New York Times, he traveled through Italy and Spain, stopping in several small coastal towns. Gerald Clarke, the author of the 1988 biography Capote, told NYT that Capote went to Europe because he couldn’t concentrate on writing in New York at the time. “Though he came from a small town in Alabama, he loved New York, loved it so much that he found it hard to write when it was so tempting to go out on the town,” Clarke said. “New York was a kind of addiction. He realized that if he wanted to write—and that’s all he wanted to do—he would have to do it elsewhere.” It’s the Brooklyn way “I live in Brooklyn. By choice,” Capote wrote in his 1959 essay “A House on the Heights.” In 1955, he moved into a bright yellow brick house on 70 Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights, now affectionately known as the Truman Capote House. The 18-room home was owned by his friend, the Broadway stage designer Oliver Smith, who rented out the basement apartment to the writer. According to Clarke’s biography, the basement had a living room, two bedrooms, a parlor, a kitchen, and a door that opened into the backyard. In this 1958 photo, Capote is pictured on the porch of the Brooklyn dwelling. “I love Brooklyn Heights,” he once said, per the biography. “It’s the only place to live in New York.” It was here that he reportedly wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. A spiral staircase Though he lived in the basement apartment, Capote claimed the entire Brooklyn home as his own. He’s pictured here on the giant spiral staircase that was a central fixture in the space. The author once waxed poetic about the unique design detail. “There was a beautiful staircase floating upward in white, swan-simple curves to a skylight of sunny, amber-gold glass,” he wrote in Brooklyn Heights: A Personal Memoir. While that statement feature commanded attention, he was also grateful for the home’s supporting characters: “And the walls! In 1820, when the house was built, men knew how to make walls.” According to Brooklyn Magazine, the home was later sold for $12 million in 2012, making it the “most expensive single-family home sold in Brooklyn” at the time. Escaping the winter Fleeing the harsh New York winter, Capote rented a house at 853 Paseo El Mirador in Palm Springs. He fell in love with the home and subsequently bought it in 1968. The novelist is shown here in the Southern California pad two years after adding it to his real estate portfolio. According to Capote, the dwelling had a high wall enclosing the pool and garden, which gave the writer the privacy he prized—though he also used the Palm Springs home for get-togethers and parties with many famous friends and politicians. “Mrs. Winston Guest was here for a week,” he said in 1969 of his friend, the socialite C.Z. Guest. “Senator Javits. Kay Graham. Christopher Isherwood from Los Angeles. I like my friends because they are beautiful, bright, and amusing. And I think I’m the same.” The beach house In 1962, Capote moved to Sagaponack in the Hamptons, where he’s shown relaxing in this 1971 snap. AD visited Capote at his Hamptons home for the magazine’s January/February 1976 issue. The story reported that the place was hidden behind a slew of foliage, including scrub pine and hydrangea bushes, and that it was a two-story, “weathered-gray” beach home. “I wanted a rustic house,” he told AD. “I really think of it as one big room. Completely winterized, it’s been designed to look unfinished. I call it ‘run-down comfort.’ I like the effect of texture in rooms—the rawness of the wood plus the mirrors that line one end.” Working from home Capote had the six-acre Hamptons home built to his liking. It was done, he said, “by a local carpenter who’s dead now. He did it to my directions. It’s exactly the way I wanted it. I work at this untended look. It’s intentional. You can see how quiet it is here because you can barely see the top of another house. This is a place to be alone.” Capote saw the Hamptons home as an escape from the hustle and bustle of New York City. In this 1972 photo, he posed in his drained pool. “I’m here to work,” he said. “I come here a lot in the autumn and winter, and I see almost no one. I don’t care for the Hamptons in the summer—it’s gotten too crowded. I don’t understand the way some people come out here and run themselves ragged every night. I just don’t think some of these writers are working.” United Nations Plaza Back in the city, Capote lived near the East River at United Nations Plaza. He’s photographed lounging in the dwelling in this 1980 photo, 15 years after he purchased the two-bedroom apartment for $62,000, per Capote. In the April 1969 issue of House Beautiful, the In Cold Blood author wrote about the space, which featured a striking red accent wall. “A corner of my library-dining room, a mostly red affair that is rather like sinking into a hot raspberry tart—a sensation you may not relish, but I quite enjoy,” he wrote. “The lamp is Tiffany’s The Wisteria Tree; others of his admirers may quarrel, but I consider it the gentleman’s masterpiece.” A love of antiquing Capote’s UN Plaza unit was on the 22nd floor. According to Capote, the place was furnished with assistance from interior designer Evie Backer and was decorated with finds “ransacked” from antiques shops on Third Avenue. In House Beautiful, Capote noted that Backer deserved “principal credit” for the apartment’s look. He also discussed his love of antiquing animal-themed objects. “I’m an animal lover, and I like them alive or as objects virtu. The flower-burdened owl is really an Austrian beer stein. I found him on Second Avenue, where I am a constant browser and sometimes buyer.” Capote’s kingdom For the 2024 FX series Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, production designer Mark Ricker recreated Capote’s UN Plaza apartment with various antiques and animal figurines. (The writer once called his pad “My own peaceable kingdom,” so it was appropriate that any TV version of it featured plenty of eye-catching fauna.) “We had Tiffany lamps and embroidered pillows with butterflies on them, and dragons, and paperweights everywhere,” he told AD. “There was a sense that he collected a lot, he traveled a lot, he was an eccentric character. They just all land in a place that works together.” An eye for the fantastical In this 1980 photo, Capote is pictured lounging on his couch. His homes were often decorated ornately, with patterned sofas and various knickknacks spread throughout. “I like to have my own things around me,” he once told AD. “Even when I travel to my other houses in Switzerland and in California, I take things of my own with me.” He added, “I like to collect things, Victorian things, and mix everything together. I enjoy looking for and at all of them. I’m not sure I need them. I’ve got too much, and I haven’t edited myself lately!” He also had a succinct interior design philosophy: “Something that’s not immediately offensive when you walk into a room. Of course it may be, eventually.” Capote died in 1984 while staying at the Los Angeles home of Joanne Carson, the ex-wife of Johnny Carson.