Tuesday, January 21, 2014

That Truman Capote, Darlings! He Knew The Score, Just Like Me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


                                    Before there was the Raving Queen, there was Truman Capote!  Yes darlings, you could say I am a literary descendant  of him, though I have yet to match his brilliance with the the likes of something such as "Breakfast At Tiffany's," " A Christmas Memory," "In Cold Blood," or my personal favorite, "Handcarved Coffins."

                                      Yesterday, ID reran the "Crime To Remember" episode, "The Killing Of Mr. Woodward," detailing the murder of Long Island heir William Woodward of Oyster Bay, back in 1955. Most of my girls, I expect, would know this story better through the late Dominick Dunne's fictionalization of it, entitled "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles."

                                          I have to hand it to Truman and Elsie Woodward.  They saw Roundheels Ann for what she was--cheap Kansas trash on the easy make!  No wonder Elsie whisked Ann's two boys  off to private school in Switzerland; personally, I think they might have fared better at Choate, but she wanted to get them as far away from Ann as possible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                          Now, in all fairness, I have to say, some of it was not Ann's fault. Being born into trash is just a matter of circumstance. There is nothing wrong with social mobility, darlings, but it is the degree and moderation of how you do it that is so important. And this is something Ann just did not understand.  Had she been content to be a Kansas department store model--which she made it to--she might have been the creme de la creme of her Kansas environs. But Ann not only set her sights too high, she set them in the wrong, geographic direction.

                                            Ann admitted her idol, growing up, was Joan Crawford. Another piece of roundheels Kansas flotsam that made it!  But, Joan, girls, was more adept than Ann.  Instead of setting her sights on New York, where she would have failed as miserably as Ann, she took off the other way--to the West Coast, California, and, particularly, Hollywood--a place where self-made reinvention is a given, and where lack of breeding can easily be overlooked as long as you sign with the right studio, get a manageable contract, and the right house, in the right neighborhood, with a swimming pool.  Look what it did for Joan!
Had Ann gone this route, who knows? She might have achieved something; hell, she might be alive!

                                                But, darlings, in New York, it is all about breeding, connections, who your family is, and who you know.  Plunging into this shark pool, Ann was in way over her head--and Truman and Elsie knew it.  So, they told the truth!   It is sad that Ann killed herself, but, even then, had she migrated to California, she might still have had a chance. After all, she had been a department store model, which was several steps up already, from being a cheap cocktail waitress, like that Alice Crimmins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                   All this makes me want to reread "Answered Prayers."  Hell, I should write my own!  If you think I have here, darlings, you are close, except I have never named names!  But when the time comes, and I do, oh boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                     Plenty of folk will need to have their prayers answered, then!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 comment:

  1. Actually, Joan Crawford lived in KC Missouri for a short time, not Kansas. Totally different animal.

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