Truman Capote and Lee Radziwill's falling-out

Truman Capote and Lee Radziwill’s falling-out turned a close friendship into a public dispute, with a legal deposition prompting Capote to threaten retaliation on television. The diary follows the rupture from a private phone call to a televised attack and its uneven reception in the press. Its central contrast is between the intimacy Capote had once shared with Lee and the readiness with which he later exposed things she had confided to him.

Friendship Before the Rupture

In June 1979, the diary’s account identifies Lee as someone who had been Capote’s best friend. That history makes his response to her deposition more than a disagreement between acquaintances: the narrator presents it as a reversal within a close relationship. The account gives no detailed history of how the friendship began or what sustained it, but it makes the prior closeness the measure of Capote’s later hostility.

A December 1978 entry places Lee in the same New York social world as the diary’s narrator. At Jackie O.’s Christmas party, she was present as the narrator and Bob arrived; the narrator spoke with Caroline Kennedy, while Lee was leaving. The entry does not describe Lee and Capote together, so it cannot establish the state of their friendship at that point. It does, however, offer a brief earlier glimpse of Lee within the crowded network of parties and acquaintances that forms the setting for the later dispute.

The Deposition and Capote’s Anger

The immediate cause of the break, as the diary records it, was Lee’s deposition against Capote in Gore Vidal’s lawsuit. On June 2, 1979, Capote telephoned the narrator in an angry state. He said he planned to appear on The Stanley Siegel Show the following Tuesday and make Lee answer for her actions in public. His threat rested on his possession of private information she had shared with him over the years: he intended to use those confidences as material for an attack.

The call unsettled the narrator. Capote repeatedly sought agreement, pressing the listener to endorse his view of Lee and his coming retaliation. The narrator did not join in. Instead, the narrator suggested that Lee was in a fragile state and might be at risk of serious self-harm. The diary reports that Capote responded without sympathy. This exchange exposes the emotional stakes more starkly than the lawsuit itself: the narrator’s concern shifts from who was right in the dispute to what Capote’s public assault might do to someone he had once been closest to.

The narrator’s conclusion is that Capote could become vicious toward a person who had been his best friend, and that once he turned against someone, the change was severe. This is the diary’s clearest judgment on the relationship. It does not explain Lee’s reasons for giving the deposition or independently establish the claims Capote later made about her. Instead, it records the narrator’s shock at the speed and intensity of Capote’s hostility.

The Television Attack

On June 5, the narrator watched Capote’s appearance on The Stanley Siegel Show. Capote adopted a Southern persona and recounted embarrassing stories Lee had told him about other people, including disparaging assessments of acquaintances and an account concerning William F. Buckley Jr. The performance converted private conversation into public ammunition. The diary emphasizes both the content’s source—things Lee had confided over time—and Capote’s choice to make them part of a broadcast response to her deposition.

The narrator regarded the appearance as damaging to Capote’s own standing as well as an attack on Lee. In the diary’s view, he made himself look foolish, and the theatrical character he adopted did not soften the underlying breach of trust. Halston, by contrast, said he supported Capote and believed Lee deserved what she had received. His reaction shows that people in their social circle did not share a single view of the quarrel, even as the narrator’s account remains strongly disturbed by Capote’s conduct.

Press Coverage and the Relationship’s Aftermath

On June 6, Capote called again and told the narrator that reports about his television appearance had reached the front pages of newspapers in Washington and California. The narrator’s assessment was more qualified: the New York papers had not given the episode comparable attention. The difference between Capote’s report and the diary’s local observation gives the aftermath an unresolved quality. The attack had traveled beyond the studio, but its prominence depended on where it was being read.

The diary does not record a reconciliation or a later settlement between Capote and Lee in these entries. It captures instead a relationship at the point when private friendship had become legal conflict, televised reprisal, and press material. The movement from deposition to broadcast is also the movement from an act within a lawsuit to the public exposure of confidences. By recording the narrator’s alarm alongside the competing reactions of Halston and the newspapers, the account preserves the rupture as both a personal betrayal and a social spectacle.