Truman Capote on Jean Harlow

Cafe Society
1

I’ve just finished reading Unanswered Prayers by Truman Capote.

In the chapter entitled Unspoiled Monsters, Capote refers to

A quick search of Google reveals that Richard Finnochio was a very minor actor.

Given that the publication of several chapters of Unanswered Prayers in Esquire magazine seems to have been at least partly responsibly for Hollywood’s shunning of Capote (if the editor of Unanswered Prayers is to be believed, because the truth was so thinly disguised in this work), and given that much of the work does seem to be based on recorded fact, I’m curious about the comment regarding Harlow.

Can Eve or anyone else enlighten me?

2

Given the fact that Capote was 13 when Jean Harlow died, it’s hardly likely that the quote refers to the actress.

Most likely, he’s implying that Finniochio would dress up as Harlow.

3

Now there’s an image.

4

Thanks for that - I couldn’t find any substantial information on Finnochio at all and was totally confused about the connection.

5

The book was called Answered Prayers, not Unanswered Prayers. And it wasn’t Hollywood that shunned Capote after the publication of the first chapter. It was the “jet set” New York society that froze him out. Capote was known as a great listener and a great gossip and apparantly didn’t include anything in the chapter that he didn’t repeat any number of times in private. A couple of Capote’s biographers contend that he honestly had no idea that anyone would be either surprised or upset by his work. “They knew I was a writer, what did they think I was doing all those years?”