by Roseanne Montillo
The book begins with the infamous exchange between Truman Capote and Ann Woodward at a restaurant in Saint Moritz in which Ann dismissed the writer as "a little fag" and he responded by addressing her as "Mrs. Bang Bang". Ann had shot her wealthy husband a few years earlier (accidentally or intentionally depended on who you asked) and as a result was exiled from the elite class that she hoped her advantageous marriage would make her a part of. Ironically (given his dismissive attitude toward Ann) Capote himself would be exiled from the same world years later when he betrayed his high-society swans by exposing secrets they had told him in confidence while thinly veiling them in a story called "Le Cote Basque 1965", published in Esquire Magazine in 1975. In addition to devastating his supposedly beloved swans, the story featured a murderous widow so clearly based on Ann Woodward that it drove her to suicide, while the other swans settled for ostracizing Capote from their ranks.
The book bounces back and forth between the small towns and unstable home lives that both Ann and Truman experienced growing up, and the drive for better lives that brought them both to New York City. Ann and Truman had more in common than he probably wanted to admit. They both grew up disadvantaged, small towners who aspired to big city life. Ann, like Truman's mother, tried desperately to join the elite ranks of old money New York. What Ann, Truman, and his mother attained in that pursuit would eventually lead to their respective downfalls.
Ann Woodward was born into abject poverty in the Midwest and although her mother fought hard to improve their situation, things never seemed to work out the way she hoped. As Ann grew, she became obsessed with the idea of becoming a famous Hollywood actress and in early adulthood that ambition and her beauty led her to New York City, where she modeled, auditioned, and ended up as a showgirl at a popular nightclub. It was the showgirl job where she met a wealthy older man, William Woodward, and apparently became his mistress for a time.
Woodward was the president of a bank and a successful breeder of thoroughbred race horses. However, he was also married with a family, and eventually broke with Ann. In order to keep her close, he suggested that she date his son, William Jr., known as Billy. Woodward had other reasons for encouraging the experienced Ann to get involved with his only son - Billy was showing little interest in women, concerning to his socially prominent family, who wanted him to marry an "appropriate" society girl.
Woodward Senior's plan worked a little too well. Ann not only stimulated Billy's interest in her and her worldliness, but with a newly discovered appetite to rebel against his staid family, he decided to marry the colorful Ann. Neither of his parents approved, but the couple married anyway. It would not be a happy marriage. Over the years, the couple fought (often physically) and as Ann tried to remake herself into an upper class wife, Billy lost interest in her and began having affairs. By the time of the ill-fated night when Ann shot Billy, supposedly mistaking him for a prowler, the couple was on the verge of what promised to be a messy divorce.
Two decades later Ann committed suicide as word of "Le Cote Basque" began to leak. She had never been able or allowed to move beyond the "murder of the century" and although she'd drifted through life since the shooting, the story was apparently the final straw for her.
Very little time is spent on the other swans, although CZ Guest was at the party for the Duchess of Windsor that the Woodwards attended hours before Ann shot Billy, and apparently Capote picked her brain about that night. Guest was one of the few Swans who stuck with Capote after "Le Cote Basque" was published. There's also a minimum of Capote's gossipy bitchiness, which became an annoying part of his personality, at least in Feud. The focus is more on him as a writer. More attention is paid to the background that helped make him who he became, along with his ascension in the literary world than to his sometimes difficult personality. It also details his deterioration after he'd stabbed his swans in the back with his poison pen.
The title of the book is taken from a line written by Capote himself, in his story "The Thanksgiving Visitor": "There is only one unpardonable sin - deliberate cruelty." Too bad Capote didn't take his own advice.
From the book:
As the days counted down before the magazine went on sale, Ann Woodward grew more and more frenzied. She took medications, read the papers, sought out information from the few people who had remained in her life, but overall, she dreaded waking in the morning. One day in late October, she donned her favorite dress, painted her face in a thick layer of base, mascara, and lipstick, ingested a fistful of pills, and climbed into bed. The pills Ann Woodward swallowed were Seconal, the same drug that had killed Truman Capote's mother.
