Marilyn (and Truman) in Manhattan

Over at The History Reader today, Marilyn in Manhattan author Elizabeth Winder writes about Marilyn’s friendship with Truman Capote, and how she inspired his 1958 novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. (Marilyn was one of several muses for his heroine, Holly Golightly; more details here.)

“Where Truman shrank from his backwoods pedigree, Marilyn wore hers like a badge. She was rightly proud of overcoming her obstacles- the foster homes, the orphanage, the abuse that began as a child and continued into her starlet years. And when Truman longed to be ‘terribly rich’ Marilyn ‘just wanted to be wonderful.’

She was wonderful, and Truman knew it. Between dancing and lunching and knocking back cocktails, he spent most of that summer glued to his typewriter clanging out a novella. The inspiration—a black frocked girl with a ‘soap and lemon cleanness,’ a curvy mouth, upturned nose and saucer eyes of green-flecked blue. Her tussled hair cut like a boy’s, dyed in ‘ragbag’ shades of light with ‘tawny streaks’ and ‘strands of albino-blond and yellow.’

She scamped around the city in sunglasses and slips, full of nerves and insomnia and a stamped-out past. She drank bourbon to fight off the ‘mean reds,’ she believed in self-improvement, she read horoscopes and Hemingway and William Somerset Maughn. She was Holly Golightly—Truman’s love letter to hope, New York City, and Marilyn Monroe.”