Lee Radziwill

Lee Radziwill is presented in Andy Warhol’s diary as both a participant in overlapping social circles and a figure whose relationships become entangled with publicity. She appears at lunches and parties, in a story of romantic rivalry, and eventually at the center of Truman Capote’s anger after she gives a deposition against him. The entries do not offer her own account; instead, they show how other people’s attention, judgments, and public performances shape her presence in the diary.

Social Presence and Access

In March 1977, Lee came to lunch at the office with her son. Warhol noted his growth, then recorded Lee’s account of Ardeshir Zahedi’s repeated gifts of champagne and caviar. Zahedi had sent the presents after she missed a dinner he gave in Washington; her thank-you note prompted another delivery, and another note brought another response. Lee interpreted the continuing exchange as a sign that Zahedi was pursuing her. The episode places her within a world where attendance, correspondence, and expensive gifts could function as visible forms of social attention. It also gives her the role of a narrator of that world: she explains the sequence and its meaning to Warhol rather than appearing merely as a name at a gathering.

Another entry places Lee at a dinner for Rudolf Nureyev, where she was with Larry Freeberg. Warhol noted that Freeberg was planning a Channel 5 dinner with her as well. The detail connects a private social occasion to a prospective television event. Lee’s presence thus registers not only as part of a guest list but as someone around whom further media plans were being organized. Elsewhere, she appears at a Christmas party hosted by Jackie Kennedy Onassis, although Warhol records only that she was leaving as he arrived. The brief observation supplies little about her actions, but it establishes her movement through the same high-profile social settings that recur throughout the diary.

Romance and Social Rivalry

Lee’s relationships also appear through the diary’s attention to romantic competition. At one gathering, Warhol watched Catherine Guinness and Peter Tufo flirt and worried that the situation echoed an earlier episode in which Barbara Allen had taken Peter Beard away from Lee. His comparison frames the present scene through a remembered social pattern: partners and attractions circulate within a tightly connected group, so a new flirtation can recall an earlier perceived loss. The entry does not establish Lee’s reaction to the older incident or provide her perspective on it; the significance lies in how readily Warhol uses her as the reference point for interpreting the scene.

Later that evening, Warhol encountered Lee and Peter Tufo arguing. The argument stopped long enough for Lee to greet him warmly, after which she left with Tufo. Warhol had expected Tufo to remain for Catherine, and his relief that Catherine was safe followed from seeing him depart with Lee instead. The sequence makes Lee part of a shifting social triangle, but it does not explain the argument or claim that she and Tufo had reconciled. Her greeting, the continuation of the dispute, and the departure remain distinct details. Together they show how the diary records social life through abrupt changes of attention: a quarrel, a greeting, a departure, and the narrator’s immediate revision of what he expects to happen.

Image, Friendship, and Editorial Representation

Lee also appears as a subject whose public image could be used by other people. In January 1979, Warhol learned that Bob Colacello and Brigid Berlin were writing text for a photo book and had made him sound as though Lee and Jackie Kennedy Onassis were his close friends. He objected strongly to that representation. The passage does not say how Lee felt about the book or whether she knew how it portrayed her relationship with Warhol. Instead, it reveals Warhol’s discomfort at having a degree of intimacy assigned to him in print. Lee’s name becomes part of a constructed social image, one that turns association into apparent friendship for a publication.

That concern resonates with an earlier entry about a planned television dinner: social connections could be arranged for media presentation as well as lived in private. The diary makes the boundary between those functions visible without resolving it. Lee is simultaneously someone encountered socially and a recognizable name that can lend a book or television event an aura of closeness and status. The evidence supports no claim that she deliberately sought such representation; it shows Warhol objecting to the way his own relationship to her was characterized.

The Rupture with Truman Capote

The most consequential change in Lee’s appearances comes in June 1979, when Truman Capote called Warhol in anger over her deposition against him in the Gore Vidal lawsuit. Warhol found Capote’s reaction frightening and described him as vicious toward someone who had been his best friend. The entry therefore presents the conflict as a break within a formerly close relationship, not simply a disagreement between social acquaintances. Lee’s deposition had become the immediate cause of Capote’s anger, though the diary does not reproduce her testimony or explain her reasons for giving it.

Several days later, Warhol watched Capote appear on The Stanley Siegel Show. Capote adopted a comic Southern persona and publicly recounted embarrassing stories he attributed to Lee, including disparaging observations about people around her and claims concerning her interactions with William F. Buckley Jr. These were Capote’s allegations as relayed by Warhol, not independently verified facts. The performance transformed a private rupture into televised retaliation: the deposition was followed by Capote’s decision to expose stories he said Lee had told him over the years. Warhol judged Capote’s appearance damaging to Capote himself, while also wondering how the attack might affect Lee, whom he described as emotionally vulnerable. That concern was his assessment, not evidence of an actual outcome; the diary records no subsequent response from Lee or confirmation that she harmed herself.

Across these entries, Lee is seen chiefly through other people’s accounts and through the social settings that connect them. She receives and interprets Zahedi’s gifts, becomes a point of comparison in romantic rivalries, is invoked in a photo book’s presentation of Warhol’s friendships, and is publicly attacked after giving testimony. The contrast between an ordinary lunch conversation and Capote’s televised performance gives the diary’s portrait its sharpest turn: the same network that sustains intimacy also supplies the material for exposure when a friendship breaks.