Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (85 page)

“I’d love to see that stud in action,” Truman told Madame Fleur.

“You can, but it’ll cost you twenty dollars,” she said. She led him to a dark back room. There was a two-way mirror that opened onto her most elegant boudoir, a room with an elaborately carved four-poster bed.

“Rubi likes to keep the light on, so if you stand here, you’ll be able to see everything.”

Madame Fleur lived up to her promise. “She arranged for Rubi to seduce three of her youngest and prettiest gals,” Truman said. “He put on quite a show—in fact, the best show of my life. The handsome gigolo lived up to his reputation. All the stories about him were true. Three years later, Doris Duke, at a party in the Hamptons, told me that Rubi’s penis was the most magnificent she’d ever seen.”

[Doris Duke (1912—1993) the America heiress, hedonist, art collector, and philanthropist, was the whimsical, imperious, and autocratic daughter of an almost unimaginably wealthy tobacco tycoon. In the lurid aftermath of her death, she left a fortune estimated at 1.3 billion and a carload of outrageous anecdotes and references.]

“I agree with you,” Truman told her.

Duke looked at him. “And how in hell would you know?” Then she brushed aside her question. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

Although Truman didn’t tell Duke, he announced to the world the size of Rubi’s penis. He was quoted in print as saying, “It was six inches in circumference, an eleven-inch octoroon dick.” He then whispered an aside. “A skilled fellator such as myself could even get it to stretch two or three more inches.”

Truman’s whisperings were based on the fact that he later introduced himself to Rubi at Madame Fleur’s. Both of them shared a taxi back to the Hotel Oloffson—the best hotel in Port-au-Prince at the time, a seedy 19
^th
-century gingerbread palace evoking something from a Charles Addams fantasy—where they were staying.

The next morning, a maid found Truman in Rubi’s bed. Truman later said, “If it were late enough at night, Rubi didn’t care what legs were open to him.”

Early in 1954, the influential American-born Broadway producer, Albert Saint-Subber, wanted to mount a Broadway play based on Truman’s short story, “House of Flowers.” After a long confab, Truman agreed. Saint was most persuasive, and he was the “angel with the dough.”

[Previously, Saint-Subber had traveled to Taormina (Sicily) to urge Truman to write a stage adaptation of his
The Grass Harp
, which had been published in 1951, and eventually adapted into a vehicle for Broadway in 1952. It wasn’t until 1995 that
The Grass Harp
appeared as a movie. The cast was more impressive than the drama: Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek; Charles Durning, Roddy McDowall, and Piper Laurie could not rescue it.]

From the beginning of the stage adaptation of
House of Flowers
, Truman imposed a lot of demands. He wanted the distinguished English director, Peter Brook, to helm it; Virgil Thomson to write the incidental music, and Cecil Beaton to design the sets and costumes. Both “Saint”
[as Saint-Subber was nicknamed]
and Truman lobbied hard to convince those Silent Screen
duennas
, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, to appear in the lead roles of Dolly and Verena Talbo.

None of those original visions worked. Robert Lewis replaced Brook as director; the Gish sisters gave way to Mildred Natwick and Ruth Nelson. And even though Brooks Atkinson of
The New York Times
interpreted the final product as both “effortless and beautiful,”
House of Flowers
never generated much business at the box office.

[Whereas Truman was completely inexperienced in creating a Broadway musical, Saint was very experienced, having previously won a Tony for
Kiss Me, Kate
, a musical based on Shakespeare’s
Taming of the Shrew
. It ran on Broadway from 1948 to 1951. Later, he’d produce seven Neil Simon plays, including
Barefoot in the Park
, and in 1973, he’d help launch the theatrical version of
Gigi
by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe.]

During the late spring of 1953, Truman and his lover, Jack Dunphy, planned to travel to Positano on the Italian Riviera where Dunphy would try to complete a novel and where it was understood that Truman would begin work on his stage adaptation of
House of Flowers
.

Prior to their departure for Positano, John Malcolm Brinnin, the poet and critic, attended a party that was conceived as both a celebration of Harold Arlen’s birthday and a
bon voyage
party for Truman and Dunphy. Arlen, the creator of “Over the Rainbow” for Judy Garland, had agreed to write the musical score for
House of Flowers
.

“I remember Truman sitting on the floor, his head resting, using Arlen’s knees as a cushion,” Brinnin recalled. “In the corner was Marlene Dietrich encircled by the arms of Montgomery Clift. They were mutually transfixed and exchanged monosyllables now and then. But for the most part, they simply stood there, staring into one another’s eyes. Dietrich wore a dress that was less like fabric, more like molten silver. Clift’s suit was too big for him.”

Once they reached the Italian Riviera, whereas Dunphy liked to be alone most of the time, Truman loved company. In Portofino, there were plenty of famous names with whom to associate, including the port’s two most famous residents, Rex Harrison, and his wife, Lilli Palmer. Passing through town was a parade of stylish visitors, including John Gielgud and Truman’s friend, Cecil Beaton. A coven of gay couples arrived, including Tennessee and Frank Merlo; Paul Bowles “with some Arab boy;” Noël Coward with Graham Payn; and Hugh (Binkie) Beaumont with John Perry (Gielgud’s ex).

Truman labeled these homosexuals “The Lavender Hill Mob.” With the exception of the snobby Gielgud—who was turned off by “that ghastly little voice, the world’s longest fingernails, and dirty shorts,”—most of them gravitated to Truman.

In letters to friends in the States, Truman had comments about the resort’s gaggle of other illustrious visitors. These included the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (“utter morons”); Henry and Clare Luce (“morons plus”), and Laurence Oliver and Vivien Leigh (“Apparently, Scarlett O’Hara has been released from the madhouse”). A surprise visitor was Greta Garbo, “who looked like Death with a suntan.”

After Garbo’s visit, Truman wrote to one of his best friends, Cecil Beaton, who had returned to New York. Truman fully understood how close Beaton was to Garbo. Nonetheless, he wrote: “Darling Cecil, I’m afraid Greta will never be a satisfactory person because she is so dissatisfied with herself, and dissatisfied people can never be emotionally serious. They simply don’t believe in anything—except their own limitations.” He later revealed that Garbo had spent most of their time together complaining about a pain in her neck.

[Truman encountered Garbo again in February of 1955 in New York and wrote to Beaton: “She was looking extremely well
—
though her hair seemed a peculiar color: a sort of blondish lavender. I think she must have dyed it.”]

Back in Positano that summer of 1953, Truman complained that Noël Coward was trying to steal Jack Dunphy from him.

Eventually bored with Portofino, Truman announced to his friends there that he was leaving for Switzerland to visit Charlie Chaplin and his wife, Oona. She was one of his best friends.

During the Red Scare in America, Chaplin—who had remained a British citizen through the peak of his Hollywood fame—was charged with being a communist. Shortly after that, he flew from semi-retirement in French-speaking Switzerland to London for the premiere of his last American film,
Limelight
(1952). While there, the U.S. State Department told him he would not be allowed to return to the States.

After their visit with the Chaplins, Truman, with Dunphy, flew to Paris, where he found the city “dull and yellow” at that time of year.

In November of 1953, Truman wrote to his scholarly former lover, Newton Arvin, of John Gielgud’s arrest, in October of that year, in London. An under-cover police officer had apprehended Gielgud in a men’s toilet in Chelsea, based on a charge of sexual solicitation of a male.

Truman called it “a dreadful rumpus over gents who interfere with gents. I’m terribly fond of John, and I talked with him on the phone last week. He seemed to be bearing up with a good deal of bravery and style. Still, it was a shocking thing to happen, malicious and stupid.”

At his hotel, Truman was summoned to the phone. “It’s Mr. Sister,” Dunphy said. He and Truman always referred to Reeves McCullers as “Mr. Sister,” because he had confessed to them that he was a homosexual.

On the phone, Reeves seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He told Truman that his wife, Carson McCullers, had flown back to New York, leaving him with no money. Truman invited him for dinner, but he never showed up.

The next morning, he learned that Reeves had committed suicide by overdosing on liquor and barbiturates. Truman was among the handful of guests who attended his funeral in Paris, although he’d requested to be buried in Georgia.

Bad news came in pairs. Shortly after that, Truman received a call from New York, informing him that his mother, Nina Capote, had also committed suicide.

He decided to fly back for his mother’s burial, leaving Dunphy and his dogs in Paris, where it was understood that they’d later catch a ship back to the Port of New York.

On the pier, as Truman told Dunphy goodbye, he lamented, “My youth is gone.”

***

After the failure of
House of Flowers
on Broadway, Truman was not interested in continuing friendships with its cast and crew. However, he did maintain a relationship with its set designer, Oliver Messel.
[In the spring of 1960, Messel’s nephew, Anthony Armstrong-Jones, became the Earl of Snowdon based on his marriage to Princess Margaret.]