Truman Capote: A Literary Life at the Movies

7. Capote for the Holidays: A Christmas Memory (and Trilogy),The Thanksgiving Visitor, and One Christmas

154 Capote for the Holidays  A Christmas Memory (and Trilogy), The Thanksgiving Visitor, and One Christmas 7 7 How does an openly gay writer in the 1960s, whose fame skyrocketed due to his portrayal of a gruesome crime and its aftermath, become simultaneously associated with holiday tales of emotional resonance and southern nostalgia? It is one of the great paradoxes of Capote’s career, as well as a testament to his expertise with a range of literary and cinematic genres, that television productions of his holiday-themed short stories in the late 1960s—Frank and Eleanor Perry’s A Christmas Memory (and Trilogy) and The Thanksgiving Visitor—softened his public image while allowing him to pay tribute to his southern roots. So successful were these 1960s productions that, in the 1990s, another of Capote’s holiday tales, “One Christmas,” was filmed for the first time, starring Katharine Hepburn in her final screen role, and “A Christmas Memory” was remade starring Patty Duke and Piper Laurie. In this subgenre of cinema Capoteana, the virtues of love, acceptance, and forgiveness are celebrated in southern settings reflective of simpler times and rural pleasures, as they also subtly address the difficulties of a southern upbringing for queer children such as Capote. Capote readily admitted the autobiographical elements of these holiday stories, in which the protagonist “Buddy” represents himself as a child. With these films’ connection to their author’s past, audiences were asked to see another side of Capote’s unflappable and acerbic personality, centering on the lonely childhood he CAPOTE FOR THE HOLIDAYS 155 endured after his parents left him to be raised by cousins. Capote frequently discussed the feelings of isolation, loneliness, and rejection that he experienced during his southern childhood: “But growing up in some place like Monroeville, as it surely must have been in other rural towns, produces, for some particular individuals, a strange loneliness of alienated existence, of social disorientation. For these individuals . . . this loneliness can add to sensibility, and it seems to increase creativity. I know that in a way I have used up some of my loneliness by writing.”1 From this perspective, Capote’s holiday narratives carry traces of the künstlerroman tradition: although they do not portray the artist growing into his vocation, they portray the childhood of an author whom viewers would recognize as one of the premier talents of their time. In this manner, these narratives—both the films and the short stories on which they are based—permit their audiences to consider the ways in which Capote’s childhood influenced his development as an artist and as a man. Exploring the social disorientation of a southern upbringing for a precocious child such as Capote, these films depict the networks of compassion and understanding available within communities otherwise unsympathetic to sissies who refuse to adhere to stereotypes of southern masculinity. In doing so, they touch on timeless concerns of self, community, family, and love, proving the universality of human emotions in scenes from the childhood of a gay adult celebrity—albeit with varying degrees of success.  A Christmas Memory (1966) and Trilogy Capote’s short story “A Christmas Memory” was first published in Mademoiselle in 1956. The story, warmly received by the public, was subsequently republished in a hardcover gift edition. Capote soon began considering ways to bring the story to the screen, and in a 1960 letter to David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones, he mentioned this interest: “Do you remember my story, the one I made a record of, ‘A Christmas Memory’? I would like very much to make a film of it. . . . It would be entirely visual, with a boy’s voice reading the story and a musical score, by, say, Virgil Thompson [sic]. It is something Jose Quintero could do well (I think). It could be beautiful, if done very simply.”2 Quintero produced the theatrical version of Capote’s The Grass Harp at New York’s Circle in the Square Theatre in 1953, and from this experience he understood Capote’s conceptions of his characters and how 156 CHAPTER SEVEN to stage them. Likewise, Virgil Thomson wrote the incidental music for The Grass Harp, winning Capote’s approval for matching his literary motifs with musical phrasings. Capote’s appeal to Selznick and Jones never bore fruit, but Frank and Eleanor Perry, who enjoyed a critical success with their film David and Lisa...