For Truman Capote, a swan was the embodiment of sophisticated glamor in the post-war world. Lovely, elegant, calm. Searching for its symbolism is not a difficult task: for the Celts, it was the soul, the eternal essence. In modern culture, it is often associated with wisdom, balance, grace, and inner beauty, among others. Obviously, beauty is also undeniable, after all, who was the ugly duckling and what did he turn into? The most elegant of birds. Considering the children’s fable, we understand the reason why Truman – a man who always struggled to fit in, to aspire to transformation – called his muses the ultimate symbol of the deceptive nature of first appearances.

Another characteristic of swans that reveals how accurate Capote’s association is, they glide through the water leaving only a ripple behind, they do not dive into the water like other birds. His class makes him stand out and that is why the socialites who embraced the author in their circle are an example of what he was referring to. However, it was the brutal break between the writer and the circle of friends that was a scandal in late 1970s New York, thanks to the book he wrote about them. It is the conflict that will be portrayed in the series Capote vs. the Swans.

I have already mentioned the drama here in general terms: Truman, aiming to surpass his classic In Cold Blood, began working on what would become his last book, Answered Prayers, using the real stories of his friends to criticize the hypocrisy and coldness of American society. However, before the book was published (he never finished it), some episodes were published in Esquire and caused a sensation. Secrets ranging from murder to betrayal and fake marriages made it easy to identify the real character, leading one of the women to kill herself and the others to feel humiliated. Before the term ‘cancellation’ existed, this was what the swans found as an answer, accelerating a self-destructive process for Capote at the end of his own life. Drama in the vein!

So, who were the Swans? What are your stories? These women with style, money, connections, and the good life were Lee Radziwill, Marella Agnelli, Gloria Guinness, C.Z. Guest, Slim Keith, Pamela Harriman, and Babe Paley. All were considered influencers, appearing at parties, yachts, and events recorded in the social columns of the time. Elegant and slender (they were always mentioned on the official list), they usually met in expensive restaurants in Manhattan to be seen and talk about who was being seen. Their private lives contained complicated love affairs, jealousy, and pain. Famous and adored, they trusted Truman with their secrets because he was known and considered good company and lively conversation. None identified the infiltrated enemy.

As Truman often recalled later, he was a journalist and a good reporter who never lost his investigative flair or descriptive wit about a situation or scene. And they were all too fascinating to ignore, especially since with his increasing use of alcohol and drugs he was accelerating his self-destructive process. As always, he was inspired by his friends to write his stories, Breakfast at Tyffany’s being one of the examples. The problem with Answered Prayers is that he didn’t disguise at all who he was talking about. I read the book, it’s a shame because its acidity and narrative power are brilliant as always, but, effectively, it’s gossip told by a brilliant writer.

The series will focus on the swans offended and most directly affected by the work of Truman Capote, who will be played by actor Tom Hollander: Lee Radziwill, C.Z. Guest, Slim Keith, Babe Paley, and Anne Woodward. Considered style icons, with exclusive haute couture looks, they loved to parade their social privilege. Let’s understand each one here.

Slim Keith

Slim Keith plays Diane Lane. Her big problem with Truman Capote is that Slim is the character Lady Ina Coolbirth in the chapter La Cote Basque 1965, which tells all the details and gossip that scandalized the swans. While the author, under the code name P.B. Jones, listens half disgusted and fascinated to the details, just like us, readers, Lady Ina spares no one, from Princess Margaret, mentioned without disguise, as another swan, Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Kennedy‘s sister, also mentioned by name.

It all begins, just like the true story of Ann Woodward, with a dinner for the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson. In the fictional story, Lady Coolbirth is rejected from an event for Wallis and invites Jones to lunch at La Cote Basque, where she shares all the gossip about who is present or absent in the restaurant. Described as “a big, cheerful girl married to an English aristocrat,” it was easy to identify Slim as the source. In fact, Slim Keith was a socialite who hung around

Manhattan and Hollywood, having been married to film director Howard Hawks, then to film and theater producer Leland Hayward, a friend of Lauren Bacall, and at the time married to English banker Sir Kenneth Keith.

Over several glasses of Roederer Cristal champagne, she talks about everyone: Babe Paley and her sister Betsey Whitney; Lee Radziwill and Jacqueline Kennedy, as well as Gloria Vanderbilt and her friend Carol Matthau. If half of the fictional character’s wit applies to Slim, it will be a great performance from Diane Lane.

Babe Pailey

Babe Paley, played by Naomi Watts, is kind of the protagonist of the swans because she is the only one to generate any feelings of guilt in Truman Capote. Babe was the most elegant (she was no less than 14 times nominated as one of the 10 most), the most loved, and also suffered. Raised in a life of privilege and interesting marriages, her second husband, CBS director Bill Paley (Treat Williams, in his last job before dying in a motorcycle accident), was a notorious womanizer and would have had affairs with so many women who even considered taking their own lives.

In 1974, before the article, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. In the chapter of the book in which she is mentioned, Capote explains that her marriage is a façade and an interest and that Bill had an affair with the wife of a politician – supposedly Nelson Rockefeller‘s second wife, Mary, known as Happy, which includes details eschatological aspects of the night.

Babe was a unity among her friends, with impeccable manners, unfailingly polite and elegant. She was the “unquestionable star” of any party. Capote’s defenders claim that he wanted to expose Bill and hit Babe without foreseeing the consequences. He tried in vain to explain himself to her, and she died without ever speaking to the writer again or forgiving him.

Lee Radziwill

Jackie Kennedy‘s sister is a figure that circulates in several stories, from her own sister to Maria Callas, always a supporting character, something that would irritate her deeply. Linked to Jackie, but socially ambitious (both were lovers of Aristotle Onassis), she will be played by Calista Flockhart and, even mentioned by name and in a not necessarily sympathetic way in the book (Capote talks about his jealousy and competition with his sister), she does not broke up with him.

The ‘other’ Swans

Ann Woodward
Played by Demi Moore, she has the most tragic story mentioned in the chapter La Cote Basque, which is what generated the whole drama. La Cote Basque is the name of the restaurant where they all go and where the story’s narrator hears about the murder of the husband of “Kate McCloud”, the code name given to Ann in Answered Prayers.

Ann, whose past as a “social climber” was most evident in being born poor, working as a ‘dancer’ and marrying a millionaire, was never accepted by the group for this reason. To make matters worse, there was a rumor that she had been her father-in-law’s lover before meeting her husband and her mother-in-law was terrified of her. A widow, she was the protagonist of one of the biggest scandals of the time because she “accidentally” killed her husband when she “confused him with a criminal who broke into the house”. The poorly explained story never convinced anyone, only the court that released it, classifying the crime as “accidental”. Everything had happened 20 years ago, but in the book not only the entire pre-wedding situation but also the death are detailed again, claiming that the crime was premeditated, but that the deceased’s family paid the police to hush it up and thus keep the grandchildren, alienating Ann. This is the summary of summaries, it’s worth going into detail if the series explores the case further.

What makes it worse – for Capote – is that two days before the article was published in Esquire, Ann was found dead in her home, having taken poison. Nobody liked her, but what went down in history is that, somehow, she knew or read the article in advance, deciding to take her own life out of shame. If that wasn’t enough, her two sons would follow suit decades later. The series will clearly poke a very delicate wound, but give Demi Moore a fascinating role.

C.Z. Guest
Chloë Sevigny’s character, Lucy Douglas “C.Z.” Guest was an actress, writer, and designer who was among the best dressed and was often photographed. C.Z was painted by artists such as Diego Rivera, Salvador Dalí, and Andy Warhol, and circulated among the jet-set. In 1947 she married a relative of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Another swan is exposed for its futility in the book.

Gloria Vanderbilt
Journalist Anderson Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt de Cicco Stokowski Lumet Cooper, is cited in the article as being with her childhood friend, Carol Marcus Saroyan Saroyan (she married her husband twice) Matthau and described as a woman in their late thirties, futile and empty. Gloria, in particular, mentioned by name, is described as an empty-headed and vain person, who does not even recognize her first husband when he greets her. This image, Anderson recognized it, it hurt her until the end of her life.

Pamela Churchill Harriman
Interestingly, to show what society is like, Palema married Winston Churchill’s son, but divorced him after he accumulated debts and she accumulated affairs. After Lim split from Leland Hayward, she married him just hours after their divorce became official. She also had an affair with Babe Paley’s husband before their marriage. How about swan?

Gloria Guinness
Gloria was born in Mexico, the daughter of a journalist father and a socialite mother. Rumors placed her as a Nazi spy during the war, married four times before becoming a Guinness (the beer family), she was also married to a von Furstenberg and the son of an Egyptian princess.

She was not a swan, but the friend who helped him
Molly Ringwald will play Truman Capote‘s friend who supported him during the crisis with the Swans and was with him at his death, journalist Billy Carson‘s second wife, Joanne Carson. Joanne cared for the writer until his death, and he is buried next to her, in Westwood Cemetery, in Los Angeles.

The series will awaken much more curiosity about that period in history. For now, this is a basic guide to following the drama.

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