‘Swans’ and their secrets Palm Beach author Laurence Leamer’s book inspires FX series
Joanne Carson handed Laurence Leamer an urn filled with one-quarter of Truman Capote’s ashes, then she began pleading aloud, begging Capote to speak to her from the great beyond.
“Oh, Truman, Truman, where do you want to be?” the ex-wife of Johnny Carson exclaimed. “Where should we put you?”
Leamer could hardly believe it. He was in the process of writing his1989 book “King of the Night” about Joanne’s ex-husband. Now, with a scoopful of Capote in his lap and ideas bubbling in his storyteller brain, Leamer found himself playing a supporting role in Truman’s final chapter.
Yet, that bizarre moment was a prelude, not an ending, to the story of the two writers.
On Jan. 31, FX premieres “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” an eight-part series produced by Ryan Murphy and based on Leamer’s 2021 book, “Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era.”
This is no ordinary series, and these were no ordinary women. If you’re too young to know who Babe Paley was, or who C.Z. Guest, Slim Keith or Lee Radziwill were, get ready for an upper-crust catfight filled with gossip, furs and philandering.
You may need three martinis to get through an episode: two to drink and one to throw in someone’s face while shrieking “How dare you?!”
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Capote’s swans were high-style, high-strung fixtures of New York and Palm Beach society and stars of the International Best-Dressed List. They reigned in an era of glamour and social structure that, like the Kennedys’ Camelot, will never come again.
This was a time of facade and image, of perfect presentation. “A swan’s beauty wasn’t just skin-deep — she was clever, cunning even,” Leamer writes. “She knew that while looks could capture a man’s attention, it took intelligence and wiles to keep it.”
While their husbands often treated them like expensive pieces of art, Capote’s swans were listened to and entertained by Capote. “When Truman was at the table,” Leamer writes, “he banished dullness from the earth.”
Capote’s women cajoled him and coddled him, beginning in the 1950s, when his “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” made him a star. They loved him — a dangerous game when playing with the bratty and catty Capote.
They were too rich, too thin — and too trusting. The man they spilled their deepest secrets to paid them back by writing a tell-all about them, "La Côte Basque, 1965," published in Esquire.
Capote didn’t use their real names, but he didn’t have to. Everybody who was anybody knew who he was dishing about — and public dishing simply was not done.
The most devastated: Babe Paley, wife of CBS boss Bill Paley, a man known for what Leamer calls “ravenous infidelity.”
“Babe was the archetype of these aristocratic women of that generation,” Leamer says. “When she walked into a restaurant, she never looked right or left, she knew everybody in the place was looking at her.”
When Capote betrayed her, the swans cut him off, and Capote spiraled.
"A feud is never about hatred,” producer Murphy told Town and Country magazine. “A feud is about pain, always. For the show to work, there had to be a great split that was about heartache as opposed to hatred, and Babe and Truman were at the center of that."
'I write women well'
Leamer has written 18 books, including five New York Times best-sellers. His specialty: the lives of the rich, famous, talented and tormented.
Capote’s women were “iconic figures of that age, but they were very troubled,” he says. So were Rose, Jacqueline and the other subjects of Leamer’s best-selling “The Kennedy Women,” originally published in 1990. Taylor Swift has declared it one of her favorite books — because it shows how the Kennedy women handled the scrutiny of public attention and private pain.
“I write women well,” Leamer says — particularly women who spin in the orbits of powerful men.
He’s currently writing “Warhol’s Muses,” the third of a trilogy of books about geniuses and their coterie. The first was “Capote’s Women.” The second, released last year: “Hitchcock’s Blondes,” which also has been optioned by Murphy for a blockbuster series.
Leamer considers Murphy “the Hitchcock of our time” — a visionary who can squeeze every drop out of a juicy story. “Feud” fans online are calling this season “the original ‘Gossip Girl’ vs. the original ‘Housewives.’”
“And look at these terrific roles for these amazing actresses,” Leamer says. Naomi Watts plays Babe, joined by “swans” Diane Lane as Slim Keith, Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest, Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill and Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson.
Oh, and there’s Demi Moore as tragic socialite Ann Woodward, who shot and killed her millionaire husband, William Woodward Jr., in 1955. It was ruled an accident at the time. But when Capote dredged the scandal back up in a damning short story in 1975, Woodward killed herself by overdosing on seconal.
Leamer was on set in New York as director Gus Van Sant choreographed Moore’s scenes. “They started shooting at noon and went to midnight, and in all that time, they only got four minutes,” he says. “Demi looked fantastic! I couldn’t believe it was Demi.”
The writer knows well the power of the pen. His 2009 best-seller on Palm Beach, “Madness Under the Royal Palms,” got him snubbed in some circles. His 2019 book, “Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump's Presidential Palace,” made President Trump so angry that he banned Leamer from his club for life.
Well, maybe not for life — Leamer and his wife, Vesna, attended the Salvation Army gala there last year.
The egos of the wealthy are often as fragile and tangled as spiderwebs, Leamer knows.
“One of the great things I’ve learned — of life in general, basically after living 30 years in Palm Beach — is don’t be jealous of anybody. There’s nothing that anybody has that really matters. You have enough. Don’t be jealous of these people and their lives.”
From ashes to glitter
Truman Capote would have turned 100 this September — if he had not poisoned his reputation with bitterness and his liver with liquor and drugs. He died at 59 on Aug. 25, 1984, in Joanne Carson’s Bel Air home. Hence, her issue about his ashes — and why Leamer happened to be there when Joanne delivered one-quarter of Capote’s remains to Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles in 1988.
She had given half to Capote’s lover Jack Dunphy, and she kept another quarter in a Japanese box on her mantel. When she died in 2015, her ashes were interred next to Truman’s — and Marilyn Monroe’s — at Westwood Village. The ashes Carson kept in the Japanese box were auctioned off for $45,000.
If Truman could talk from the great beyond, he’d certainly get a chuckle out of that.
But wait, there’s more. Of course, there’s more, more, more.
Ryan Murphy is so excited about “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” that he’s throwing an over-the-top New York premiere on Jan. 23 at the Museum of Modern Art.
And — pause here for a dramatic gasp — he’s recreating Capote’s famous 1966 “Black and White Ball” at The Plaza hotel.
Yes, that’s right: The Plaza hotel is once again the site for a most outrageous night. Laurence and Vesna Leamer will be there in “Hollywood black tie.”
“It could be the greatest premiere since ‘Gone With the Wind’ in 1939,” Leamer says. “That sounds like an exaggeration, but I don’t think it is. They’ll have 500 people, the same number Truman had. Can you imagine? With all those stars there?”
Oh, Truman, Truman, at last we know: That’s where you’d want to be.
How to watch 'Feud: Capote vs the Swans'
The TV series will air on FX on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. starting Jan. 31 and stream on Hulu the next day.
Laurence Leamer lunch event in West Palm Beach
What: Laurence Leamer will speak on “Capote’s Women” and “Hitchcock’s Blondes” at the “Lunch & Learn” program.
When: 11:30 a.m. on March 18
Where: Gimelstob Ballroom at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach.
Price and more information: Tickets are $125 at kravis.org or by calling 561-832-7469.