![]() (A very well-informed story of his life can be read in Richard Wall’s Folio Weekly article). His dangerous side was offset by his charm and he lived off his wealthy lovers, both men and women, receiving gifts such as a Picasso painting and a Dali decorated suitcase. He was known as a volatile drunk, a moody eccentric, a cocaine and sex addict, who even got arrested in Portugal for practising his favourite vice – sex in the outdoors he claimed that he liked such forceful sex that he actually popped blood vessels while in the act. (Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles, 1999). So, his legend goes that Nazi loving Lord Tredegar took him to China, where he discovered opium he was pictured in Time Magazine with an aristocratic lover hunting lions in Africa in 1938, Fouts notoriously shocked the Bowles by “shooting flaming arrows from his hotel window onto the busy Champs Élysées below”, having spent some time in Tibet, learning archery. ![]() If people didn’t know his background he would make it up.”īits of his life can be recovered from biographies, novels, stories and hearsay with lots of pieces of the puzzle still missing. ![]() ![]() thin as a hieroglyph, he had dark hair, light brown eyes and a cleft chin and ‘was about the most beautiful boy anybody had ever seen,’ said Jimmy Daniels, who sang at a Harlem nightclub Denny frequented.” John B. (…) His extraordinary good looks brought stares wherever he went. His family thought of itself as part of the Southern aristocracy it was upright, conservative and intolerant of all those who did not accept its ossified codes (…) One of those people whose only ambition was to attract other people, Denny was superb at his job, affording it no more thought or effort than a flower gives to enticing the bees that buzz before its fragrant blossoms, or than a tropical fish gives to those who admire its peacock fins from other sides of the aquarium glass: he was a male whore from Jacksonville, Florida. When he was growing up, Jacksonville still considered itself part of the reconstructed South. In an excerpt from Capote: A Biography (2005), Gerald Clarke wrote that, “Unlike many in his profession, Denny chose his career. To highlight the fascination which his seductive character, Truman Capote overstressed that, “had Denham Fouts yielded to Hitler’s advances, there would have been no World War Two.” He was also linked to numerous actors (Jean Marais), international millionaires and even royalty (Paul, the future king of Greece). Williams and the painter Michael Wishart. In the 1930s and ‘40s, he became notorious as America’s luxury gigolo, socialite and muse to literary greats such as Capote, Vidal, Isherwood, Lambert, Brecht, Huxley, T. Hopefully, later today, I can steal a few minutes or hours so I can finish.On the 16 th of December 1948, Louis Denham Fouts died in Rome of a heart attack at the young age of 35 after years of excess – drugs, cigarettes, alcohol and a wild and promiscuous lifestyle. I will be dropping Eli off at school, getting a bikini wax and then getting my hair colored and cut, because later this week we are going to DISNEYLAND! I will finish, because I feel so inspired to write about this crazy man. He needs to finish coloring in his luck green clover NOW! I have been jotting down notes over the weekend and am trying to compose my thoughts.Īlas, my life collides with Capote as Eli screams in the background, demanding I “find him a dark green, not a light green crayon.” I must go. I made Dave repeatedly listen to my lengthy character analysis and then when our friends came over last night, we talked and talked about the movie some more. And after watching this movie, I have so much to say about fame, self-consumption, living in a different era, the true-crime novel. ![]() There are so many layers to this man’s story. I saw Capote on Friday and I can’t stop thinking about this movie. According to Clarke, the photo created an “uproar” and gave Capote “not only the literary, but also the public personality he had always wanted.” Truman claimed that the camera had caught him off guard, but in fact he had posed himself and was responsible for both the picture and the publicity.” Much of the early attention to Capote centered around this photograph, which was widely discussed at the time. “The famous photograph: Harold Halma’s picture on the dustjacket of Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) caused as much comment and controversy as the prose inside. Gerald Clarke, in Capote: A Biography (1988), wrote, Truman CapoteĪ 1947 Harold Halma photograph of Capote was used to promote the book. He began with a well planned photograph and ended a self-promoting-nighttime-talk-show-circuit-going alcoholic. ![]()
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