New Book Looks at Truman Capote and Ann Woodward

DELIBERATE CRUELTY by Roseanne Montillo takes a fresh look at Truman Capote's viscous and savage attacks on Ann Woodward (who was accused but acquitted of murdering her husband Billy Woodward.

Ann Woodward struggled to live down her infamy, spending much of her time in Europe in self imposed exile from NY and other American society that shunned her like the plague. But in 1975 Truman Capote was set to release a new book rehashing the Billy Woodward murder all over again. When Ann Woodward found out about this she soon took her own life.

Truman Capote was truly a nasty bit of work wasn't he?

OP, intelligent readers will sneer at you with your major spelling error in your first sentence.

This ancient gossip was brought to us by Roseanne Montillo, who claims to bean accomplished research librarian who earned her MFA from Emerson College and has taught creative writing at Emerson and the Tufts Extension School.

I’m under 60 I don’t care

Viscous? Did he throw liquid at her?

[quote] Truman Capote was truly a nasty bit of work wasn't he?

No more than any other DLer.

Did he really actually hate her? Or did he just view the whole thing as a very juicy story that he could gain infamy from? The author seems to push the idea that it was personal.

[quote] The author seems

Roseanne Montillo has produced this little confection for women.

This lovely woman (who happened to be a murderer) was being maligned by that nasty homosexual midget.

R6 Does it have footnotes?

Capote was a writer, a real one and a very good one. Ultimately that was the most important thing about him and what was most valuable to him about himself. He had a speciality in true crime novels and stories although he wrote other things beautifully as well. Ann Woodward deliberately murdered her husband and got away with it. Everyone knew it and went along with it for the sake of the Woodward family. That doesn't make Ann a victim. The way I look at it, it makes her fair game.

The problem with people who bitch and moan about Truman is that none of them were/are as talented as Truman. I'm sure that this book is no different.

I mean she did shoot her husband. How is she a victim?

R9 Yes, but not extensive academic level footnotes.

OK, like Eric Cervini footnotes.

"I mean she did shoot her husband. How is she a victim?"

If you believe society tittle-tattle from the time and since, Ann Woodward killed her husband to prevent being divorced. Society never warmed to Ann Woodward (think Crystal Allen from "The Women"), and doors would have firmly shut once she was no longer "one of us" if only by marriage.

For reasons known only to herself Ann Woodward believed society would rally around her after the shooting and her subsequent acquittal, that didn't happen. Instead she became infamous and what Ann Woodward wanted to prevent (apparently), happened anyway. Society cast her out and the woman was basically shunned.

Women from the other side of fence (lower classes) see Ann Woodward as a victim because of course she didn't murder her husband, and it was mean the way her in-laws and rest of society were treating the woman.

Book and television mini-series (The Two Mrs. Grenvilles) captured things rather well IMHO. Whole sorry mess reverberated through society for years and worse of all took an emotional toll on both Woodward boys. One committed suicide within few years of his father's death, the other hung on until his fifties, but finally succumbed to those demons.

"Both of the couple's children, William "Woody" III and James "Jimmy" Woodward, were asleep at the family home at the time of the shooting. Neither was awakened by the gunshot. Like their mother, gossip and speculation about their father's death followed them for the rest of their lives.[14] Three years after Ann's suicide, Jimmy jumped to his death from a ninth-story window in 1978 at age 31. Woody also took his own life in the same manner, in 1999 at 54 years of age.[21] Woodward, Ann, and their sons are buried in the Woodward family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx

The Two Mrs. Grenvilles - Final Scenes

NYT piece from 1999 on death of William Woodward 3d

Sorry, confused mini-series with real life, James Woodward was a grown man when he died in 1976 by suicide.

I had no idea Joann shot Paul.

Have never understood why Truman Capote wrote "Answered Prayers". Besides skewering Ann Woodward TC took aim at the very people who had been so warm and welcoming to him; did he honestly believe NYC grand dames were going to just laugh it off?

Why did Truman Capote take aim at the very people who had been so warm to him?

Why did Oscar Wilde procrastinate at the Grosvenor Hotel allowing for the police to arrest him?

Why did Jesus go to Gethsemane?

God, Truman was a such a gifted writer. His work still reads so fresh. But he was such a twat.

I would have LOVED him.

For the sake of appearances...

They were both little bitches.

William Woodward had a Studillac.

Maybe she shot him because he drove too fast.

In the book it says Ann was a nervous wreck in that car with him, especially when he was drunk, which was a lot.

The Lonergan case is much more up Dl's alley...

The talented Mr. Lonergan...

Further reading re the young Mr Lonergan

A Chair for Wayne Lonergan (1971)

Details Are Unprintable: Wayne Lonergan and the Sensational Cafe Society Murder (2020)

He died relatively young, too: 67...

Ironically despite her violent distaste for her DIL, Ann Woodward owed her (likely) freedom from imprisonment or at least criminal charges largely to efforts of Elsie (Cryder) Woodward.

Soon as word of her son's murder (that's what it was) and by who reached Mrs. Woodward senior she sprung into action in ways powerful WASP families can (or did anyway).

Pulling all sorts of strings from Albany down to the press Elsie Woodward basically saw to it that Ann Woodward was treated quite gently and her story of events was basically swallowed hole and believed. Elsie Woodward did none of this out of any great affection for her DIL, but again in true WASP fashion her main concerns were the Woodward family name, and of course her grandsons. Elise Woodward knew there was quite a lot of dirt in her son's marriage( Bob Woodward had a mistress), all of it would come out if Ann Woodward were put on trial.

Anne Woodward had a nasty violent temper as befitting a woman from the lower classes (you can take a girl off the street, but you can't take the street out of the girl I suppose), but she was well aware of her husband's side piece.

If case had gone to trial and witnesses testified to Ann Woodward's violent temper and so on, then piled onto fact Mrs. Woodward knew her husband was keeping another woman *and* likely was planning a divorce..... Ann Woodward most certainly would have been found guilty of at least manslaughter I believe. It was fate of her grandsons being killed by their mother who would (then) be a convicted felon rotting away somewhere upstate is what Else Woodward sought to prevent.

Ann was obsessed with and styled herself after Joan Crawford. One can imagine her girding herself by imaging “What would Joan do?” in this situation and then acting as if she was her.

[quote]There had been reports of a prowler, and the couple retired to separate bedrooms armed with loaded weapons. Awakened by what she later described as the sound of an intruder, Mrs. Woodward grabbed her gun and fired at a shadow in her doorway. It was her husband. The two boys, asleep elsewhere in the house, did not wake up.

Bitches, Ann Woodward would NEVER have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and I think she really did think she was shooting at an intruder.

Ann Woodward lies scandalously if not appropriately next to her husband at Woodward family plot at Woodlawn cemetery.

With almost 200 "flowers" left on her Find A Grave site, it's fairly obvious many do not believe Ann Woodward was evil and perhaps yes, was a "victim".

R34, was she too dumb to assume the person walking around her house might be her own husband?

She killed him, shot him with a shotgun and claimed it was an intruder. Sure jan

There was a burglar in the neighborhood and years later he said he was on their roof that night trying to Jimmy a window open

How did Jimmy feel about that, r39?

Billy Woodward’s side piece was a man.

Are you certain he wasn’t trying to window a Jimmy open?

"I'd like to say I didn't intend to kill her, but when you have a gun, you always intend if you have to."

You know how people have these little habits that get you down? Like Bernie. Bernie liked to chew gum. No, not chew: pop!

So I came home this one day, and I am really irritated and I'm looking for a little bit of sympathy. And there's Bernie, laying on the couch drinking a beer and chewing. No, not chewing: popping!

So, I said to him, I said, "Bernie, you pop that gum one more time..." And he did. So I took the shotgun off the wall and I fired two warning shots... into his head

Elsie Cryder and her sisters rocking "Gilded Age" fashions....

ELSIE C. WOODWARD is also buried at same family plot at Woodlawn. Her soul must be reading Ann Woodward to filth for all eternity.

William Woodward Sr. mansion on East 86th...

Have passed this house so many times but had no idea of its history. How wonderful it must have been when it went up surrounded by other townhouses or mansions.

Elsie Woodward moved out of home to Waldorf Astoria Towers in 1956, by 1959 9 East 86th was sold to a private club (one of a few at this address). Finally in 2014 John Paulson purchased the property for a reported $14.7 million. He then spent many millions more converting house back into a private family home.

It's a great story, although the "art" Capote made of her life was not really art at all but just a trashy mean novella. He was not a nice person in his later decades, and was so obsessed with keeping up his reputation and his standard of living simultaneously that he produced that mean novella (which has almost zero literary merits) to pretend he was finishing his book and because he had little else left to work with. You can't run around doing drugs and going to discos all the time if you want to be a serious writer.

He was a fascinating person, but he was so damaged by his mother he was always his own worst enemy. He took his aggression out on the society women he wished simultaneously to court because of his extraordinary ambivalence towards his own mother, who abandoned him in Alabama when he was a sensitive and needy child so she could be a social climber in NYC. He never got over that.

Ann Woodward pretty much got in his way as a figure for his wrath to settle upon. He thought he was making fun in that story of her because she wasn't in his orbit, but her life was already so ruined by scandal and by her killing her husband that it triggered her suicide.

Apparently there are those who can kill another human being and not be bothered. They will do so again and again without slightest remorse. Ann Woodward wasn't such a person IMHO. Like rest of us she had a conscious and whatever truly did happen that night she regretted it for rest of her life.

Ann Woodward may have believed she could eventually live down what she had done and society would extend an olive branch of a sort. That just wasn't going to happen and as that reality sunk in AW just became more depressed IMHO. Even abroad in Europe society there knew who she was and what AW had done. Slimy and oily gits fucked her and got whatever else they could out of AW, but decent men stayed clear.

Truman Capote dredging entire scandal up all over again was just more than AW could stand IMHO. She may simply have felt there simply wasn't anything left worth bothering to live for, her past simply was never going to go away.

Elsie Cryder was one of the famous "Cryder Triplets" that took Gilded Age society by storm.

Ann looks more than a little mixed…

R2 was she gassy from all the bean accomplishments?

R23 Because it was in their nature to do so.

Is 'The Two Mrs. Grenvilles' by Dominick Dunne a good read?

I read this book, which I found to be rather poorly written. Neither Ann nor her victim/husband come off well. Ann was a selfish manipulatress (and killer of tigers) and her husband was a closet-case, who emotionally and physically abused her. The husband's family were cold fish in that high society, moneyed sort of way. Truman (whom I admire as a writer) seemed shallow and shrill. The only people the reader can feel 100% sympathetic toward are the two unfortunate sons.

The book brings up this nasty queen:

From Daily Beast:

"The real-life Ann Woodward was not quite as scandalous as the Ann Hopkins version, but Woodward had been previously married, had pretended her living father was dead, had carried on at least one affair, and had kept her mother’s own multiple relationships hidden—these were all very divorceable scandals in her era, if not as much today’s. Divorce and losing custody of her two children would have left her with nothing.

As her husband cold-bloodedly told her once he had uncovered her secrets, “it was high time that she returned to Kansas.”

"All the effort of a smart girl to learn how to fold napkins, wear dresses below the knee, to behave and fit into a world far from the desolation of Pittsburg, Kansas, would all have been for nothing."

/quote

"She killed him, shot him with a shotgun and claimed it was an intruder.."

Understandable, yes it's understandable. Comprehensible, comprehensible; not a bit reprehensible, it's so defensible.

She murdered her husband - she FAMOUSLY murdered him - got away with it and lived on to be an unhappy person who ultimately killed herself. Why is anyone even mildly surprised by this? I'm surprised it took her that long to off herself.

Again if it wasn't for Elsie (Cryder) Woodward being so afraid of scandal and protecting the family name, Ann Woodward would have been formerly charged and left to face the music alone.

It was Elsie Woodward that got her DIL off the hook as it were, also same eased things so Ann Woodward was able to access some money from her late husband's estate. Nearly everything had been made over in trusts for the boys, but there was enough to keep Ann Woodward funded while exiled to Europe or whatever.

Ann Woodward's obituary in NYT is almost laughable in how it repeats commonly given fiction.

These people were all rotten.

The husband was an abusive drunk who was getting dick on the sly.

The mother-in-law was a cold and calculating dragon. She paid some guy to say he was 'breaking in' just as the shooting took place. Her son was dead and was focused on saving the family reputation.

As for Ann, she was way in over her head, about to lose everything and committed an act of desperation. To hell with the kids.

All awful, all dead. It's a hell of a story.

and P.S. TC was a bitter, drunken old queen. He had lost his mojo and was spewing venom in all directions.

[quote] Apparently there are those who can kill another human being and not be bothered.

Mind your own business.

Paul Wirths was the poor bastard who was made to suffer for Ann Woodward's misdeed.

Doris Duke had no problem doing this either, but I like her setting of Newport over Long Island, much more classy.

More from Life magazine...

This is a very weird house for an extremely wealth family on the Gold Coast of Long Island. This is the front of the house and the 2 windows to the right were Anne’s bedroom and the 1 window to the left was Billy bedroom. So the front door of their house leads to a hallway that divides the bedrooms, which look out on to the front lawn.

The Cinerama Studio (left corner) is a movie theater that was connected to the house and had been an indoor tennis court for prior residences. There was also a former music room that the cinema had access to that was part of the house. It’s not as weird as the Idaho Coed Murder House, but it’s very strange nonetheless.

R72

There are two sides to such situations; those who committed the crime and those who enabled, aided and or otherwise abetted by giving deference.

Anyone else other than Doris Duke would have swung or fried for killing Eduardo Tirella. But Newport kissed Doris Duke's ass and wouldn't hear word said against her, something still true today as many simply still believe Ms. Duke's narrative.

Ann Woodard and Doris Duke are two of the more famous crimes WASPs got away with, but there are more.

What a poorly written book, cobbled together from other places with nothing new to add to the story. I don’t get a sense the author had any passion for this project and it was a workman like project for them to finish, let alone us to read it. Don’t bother to read this if your interested, you’ll find it elsewhere better written even if it’s on Wikipedia.

Everything about the Woodward murder and Ann's life afterwards has pretty much been covered to death. Tons if things are on internet alone, so what any fresh look was supposed to achieve I don't know.

Well R77 she didn’t prove you wrong, or really even try that hard.

Too many details, both in the book and news reports and reviews are wrong.

Capote’s “Bang Bang” name for her wasn’t coined at a deb party, as above, but in St. Moritz.

To be picked up in the 1942 Studillac mentioned in the book would be an impossibility as the car was based on the 1953 Studebaker coupe powered by a 1953 Cadillac engine.

Woodward overdosed on Seconal, not cyanide.

No one put her purchases in the back seat of her 1955 Thunderbird as Thunderbirds only seated two people then and didn’t have a back seat until the 1958 models came out.

There’s more, but one true fact seems a bit odd: that Ann was voted “The prettiest girl in radio.” Is that a back-handed compliment or what?

"Woodward overdosed on Seconal, not cyanide."

Thank you for clearing that up; always wondered how Mrs. Woodward got her hands on cyanide.

Secobarbital OTOH is another matter; "dolls" were given out like candy back then, no wonder they were the drug of choice for suicides. This and or far too many misjudged dosage and after taking one pill extra went to sleep and never woke again.

[quote]r32 If case had gone to trial and witnesses testified to Ann Woodward's violent temper and so on, then piled onto fact Mrs. Woodward knew her husband was keeping another woman *and* likely was planning a divorce..... Ann Woodward most certainly would have been found guilty of at least manslaughter I believe.

No. Because the prowler the neighborhood was frightened of was apprehended, and confessed to actually being on the Woodwards’ roof when the shooting occurred. The couple really did hear a noise. And it was the husband who urged Ann to keep a gun by the bed in case of a break in. He gave her the weapon.

“The prettiest girl in radio.” Is that a back-handed compliment or what?"

People knew who radio personalities were via print media and elsewhere.

Golden age of radio features such personalities as: Bing Crosby, Abbott and Costello, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Victor Borge, Fanny Brice, Billie Burke, Bob Burns, Judy Canova, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Burns and Allen, Phil Harris, Edgar Bergen, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Jean Shepherd, Red Skelton and Ed Wynn.

Compared to another Lincoln Highway radio actress, Ann Eden certainly was far prettier.

You can see from this photo clearly why Mrs. Elsie Woodward and rest of "pearls and furs" set not only saw Ann Eden as N.Q.O.C.D, but barely one step up from the street.

I find it sad that Ann’s estranged father thought she might have gone to Hollywood and become Eve Arden.

In television film "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles" Ann Arden Grenville gives a formal party (one of her first and an attempt to break into society). One of the Greenville sisters quips of Ann's dress "one doesn't display one's breasts as if they were first prize at a raffle".

See 57:00

Ann Arden had nice big feet.

Ann Magritte is so lascivious in that movie. In every movie. She's so fucking slutty all the time. Not sexy at all. Was she tampered with as a child?

Capote’s chief swans (C.Z. Guest, Babe Paley) all looked down on Ann Woodward, who was in their orbit socially. So he was trying to entertain them on one hand and trash (most of) them on another hand in Answered Prayers.

What is the True Crime writer's responsibility to the people he or she is writing about? To tell the truth, obviously, and to refrain from harming any innocents, and I'm not referring to Ann Woodward here. I have no idea if she was guilty or not, so I'll refrain from comment, but her sons were absolutely innocent.

And they both committed suicide in time, after losing both of their parents horribly at young ages, and knowing that Society and True Crime buffs were still gossiping about their deceased parents after all these years. So I would say, in general terms, that Capote or any true crime writer has a moral obligation to refrain from writing any books that would injure innocent parties, such as the innocent children of crime victims or perpetrators.

Oh god that old story. She was deluding herself if she thought Capote was 'dredging it all back up'. It's all people thought about when her name was mentioned.

"Answered Prayers" was going to be this epic about gossip and the rich and hypocrisy, but it was a trainwreck- like its author. Truman was so bitter that he had to entertain The Swans with gossip for his supper for years (if he had none, he just made shit up) that he wanted revenge.

I guess he got it, but instead of making him millions it eventually made him dead.

If Ann Eden simply had been a nurse, secretary, or any other decent young woman with a respectable background even if from middle or working class society might not have resented her so much.

Ann Eden's background and conduct was simply too unseemly for her ever to be a success at Newport or on Park Avenue.

Pretty weak premise for a book. "Murder of the Century"? Bitch, please.

[quote]Women from the other side of fence (lower classes) see Ann Woodward as a victim

[quote]Anne Woodward had a nasty violent temper as befitting a woman from the lower classes

The sad old coots on DL who put on this kind of WASPy affectation are a blight on any topic they weigh in on.

[quote]had kept her mother’s own multiple relationships hidden—these were all very divorceable scandals in her era

Her mother was dead by 1941, and Ann didn't marry Billy until 1943. Her dead mother's multiple relationships alone would not have been a "divorceable scandal." This article also fails to mention that a lot of people in society had scandals they covered up, and instead makes it seem as though Woodwards and similar families were all quite well behaved, when that's hardly the case.

I don't believe for a second that Billy Woodward's mother paid a man to pretend to be a burglar. The guy who was caught had been a burglar for a long time and was already wanted by police.

[quote]While she was waiting to testify, police came upon a witness who supported her prowler story - a burglar who reported being in the Woodward mansion at the time of the shooting and hearing the shotgun blasts.

[quote]"His name was Paul Wirths," says Edward Curran, then a Nassau detective and now president of the state retired police officers' association. "He'd been driving us crazy. We knew his M.O., we knew what crimes he was committing, but we just couldn't catch him."

[quote]Wirths was arrested in a Suffolk case. "The police out there turned him over to us," Curran says. "We wanted to talk to him, as well as other burglars, about the Woodward case. We took him to the Woodward house. He told us: I was in the house. I heard the shots.' " Wirths said he immediately fled and took refuge in a barn.

[quote]Police were skeptical at first, but Wirths told them he had broken a tree limb while climbing into a mansion window and had hidden briefly in a closet containing a safe. "We checked and found the broken tree limb, the closet and the safe," Curran says. "You couldn't do much better than that."

Yup, I truly believe Ann was standing her ground. Sad about her two kids tho

Damn you bitches, you all made your callous, sneery comments … before I got the chance to

[quote] Or did he just view the whole thing as a very juicy story that he could gain infamy from?

His biggest commercial success was In Cold Blood; I think he was always looking for similar tales to retell through his own weird lens.

[quote]Pretty weak premise for a book. "Murder of the Century"? Bitch, please.

Preach.

Watched the mini series.

Ann-Margret is kind of old for this role.

Stephen Collins, the molesting pastor from 7th Heaven has thinning hair, but handsome.

Claudette Colbert is no Angela Channing. Not intimidating.

Capote adored his society swans because they were the people his mother would have killed to be friends with. s someone said above, she more or less abandoned him as a child to relatives in Alabama because she wanted to social climb in NYC--she never got anywhere near as high as her son did.

But it's clear he secretly resented the hell out of these women deep down because his mother abandoned him for their type.

he confessed to be stunned when almost all the swans (except CZ Guest and Diana Vreeland) broke with him after "La Cote basque" appeared in Esquire. His rationale was that he had disguised them all with pseudonyms, and though he went after Babe Paley's husband Bill, all he said about Babe herself was that she was perfect and deserved better. He also thought since the worst gossip was about Ann Woodward, the other swans would forgive him. He didn't even care about Woodward herself since she was not usually in his orbit.

To his horror, the swans he cared about most could not forgive him. Babe Paley did not want gossip about her husband's philandering repeated because it made her look like a fool. He put the gossip in the story in the mouth of his other favorite swan, Lady "Slim" Keith, and she could not forgive him for that. And some of his other favorites (like Marella AgnellI) broke with him out of loyalty to the others.

It's not a good story, btw. There's no point to it. It's just two society women at a fancy restaurant repeating a bunch of stories about people in their circle, and that's it. Capote was pretty desperate for money when he wrote it--he wanted to live in high style.

Capote was an exquisite stylist, bu his problem was that he had nothing to write about. He wasn't very interested in other people except to hear scandal about them, so he didn't pay much attention to them the way most writers do.

Always be careful around writers. Never say (or text) anything they can use, sneaky lot.

R94, how do you feel about Kimberly Guilfoyle?

Now how do you feel about Jennifer Siebel?

What's the real difference between the two?

I read a book many years ago written by a friend of one the sons. It was written in a choppy stilted way that made it unpleasant to read. I think the writer chose that style to minimize the drama. The book was pretty sympathetic to Ann. She came across as very insecure in her marriage and anxious in general. Billy seemed to enjoy playing on her insecurities. He did not treat her well at all. To some people who knew her, Ann appeared devastated by what she had done and very depressed.

Overall, reading it I got the impression Ann was more fragile than calculating. Also, in the book, the pictures of Ann showed a women that was fast approaching middle age and looked it. She wasn’t frumpy yet, but she lacked the stylishness she apparently had when she first married Billy. I saw a pic online of Ann from her younger years and she looked so different than the pics in the book. Very chic.

Loved Dunne’s book and was so disappointed by the casting of the series I never bothered to watch it.

IWho was Billy's mistress at the time of his murder?

I mistakenly read that as "Ann Wedgeworth" and thought, "Big deal. Literature's biggest queen met Lana Shields."

Oh, please. Ann Woodward was REALLY fucked up. She killed her husband, for God's sake. That was public knowledge. If Capote wanted to write about it it was his right to do so. He was in no way responsible for her suicide.

[quote] So I would say, in general terms, that Capote or any true crime writer has a moral obligation to refrain from writing any books that would injure innocent parties, such as the innocent children of crime victims or perpetrators.

Gee, Miss Moral Conscience 2023, if you really believe that, then why are you posting [italic]on a gossip site[/italic] yourself?

This is one of my society scandals . What did Truman capote’s mother do in New York? @R103

She killed her husband on the claim that she thought he was an intruder.

You take it from there. If she wasn’t guilty of anything and knew it, she would not have “exiled” herself to Europe. She was a very troubled woman. Capote is not responsible for her suicide. This book is trash.

Savage and vicious sounds better than--

[quote] viscous and savage

I ushed to have thish girlfriend known ash Elshie....she washn't what you'd call a blushing flower.

[quote] If she wasn’t guilty of anything and knew it, she would not have “exiled” herself to Europe.

Charlie, you get more provincial and dumb by the day, I swear.

[quote] What did Truman capote’s mother do in New York? @[R103]

Capote's real name was Truman Persons. His parents divorced when he was two, and his father Arch (who was a salesman) moved to New Orleans and eventually became a gigolo. His mother Lilimae married a wealthy Cuban bookkeeper named Jose Garcia Capote, who adopted young Truman after he had lived in Alabama for several years, and she tried to move into NY society (as a housewife... in those days very few married women had careers). But before she could get very far her husband was convinced of embezzlement, and she and Truman had to move out of their Park Avenue apartment building.

R25 Is that the hard-faced Gene Tierney in her mature years on the left?

[quote]R18 The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

Gowns by Travilla!

[quote]R34 Bitches, Ann Woodward would NEVER have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and I think she really did think she was shooting at an intruder.

Agreed. The prowler the neighborhood was terrified of admitted to being on the roof of the house at the time of the shooting; his footprint was even photographed at the foot of the tree he’d climbed for access.

Husband and wife both entered the dark hallway from separate rooms because they’d heard the same noise. It’s perfectly understandable that Ann thought the prowler had gained access, and fired.

Did people actually sleep in the nude in the 50s, I mean besides sexy people like Marilyn Monroe?

[quote]r53 Ann looks more than a little mixed…

Not particularly.

[quote]R107 Who was Billy's mistress at the time of his murder?

Princess Marina Torlonia - who was incidentally Brooke Shields’ grandmother.

Thank You Op, I remembered there was an Italian Princess involved with Billy Woodward who had a relation to Frank Shields(Brooke's well-connected with society dad).

Frank Shields was "ONE OF THEM"!!

To DL.there is a novel written by Susan Braudy called:" This Crazy Thing Called Love" about Billy and Ann Woodward and the Murder and the cover-up!! by the Woodward grandmother.

[quote]Gowns by Travilla!

Oh, dear. That's Nolan Miller, R118.

The Two Mrs Greenvilles is the only book I read from the author excluding his photo memoir, The Way We Lived Then. I read the novel after seeing it as an entry in the Warhol diaries. Warhol described the novel as boring. I don't think it's boring but I didn't get many of the details and didn't recognize the players.

Warhol Diaries have many details about Truman Capote in his decline. Capote was a train wreck that Warhol couldn't look away from.

[quote] Oh, dear. That's Nolan Miller, [R118] —Dona Drake

We could have bought the dress ! !

[quote]R126 Warhol described the novel as boring.

I’m not sure how many books Andy Warhol actually read in his life.

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