Now you would think the way people talk about it that it was one of the great treasures of the American theatre. So I wrote the play and then Harold Arlen and I did the score together-he wrote the music and I did the lyrics. PLAYBILL: What about House of Flowers? Were you pleased with the production of that? CAPOTE: House of Flowers was originally a short story of mine set on island in the West Indies, and i just thought it would make a very good play with music. Pearl Bailey, Dino DiLuca, and Juanita Hall in House of Flowers Z.

He said to me that it is a well-known fact that playwrights never know what their things are about! I don’t know who it is well known to-Robert Lewis, I guess. The director, Robert Lewis (who is somebody I admire) and I had a basic disagreement on the point of view, and he set what was the tone and tempo of the play. PLAYBILL: Did you find your experience with The Grass Harp and House of Flowers disappointing or frustrating? CAPOTE: Well, I liked The Grass Harp, I really did, though I thought it was a little slow and a little heavy hanging. I’m kind of a loner, you know, and once I’ve written something it’s very hard for me to see other people tampering with it!

Why haven’t you written more plays? CAPOTE: Why? Because I don’t like team sports. PLAYBILL: You’ve written for the stage only twice-the musical House of Flowers and the adaptation of your novella The Grass Harp.

Then when I was about 12 years old, I started writing and stopped being interested in tap dancing. In all the shows in school I used to do my routine. As a child, though, my greatest ambition was to be a tap dancer in vaudeville and in the movies-sort of a white Bill Robinson. Capote, did you ever want to be an actor? CAPOTE: No, not really. In this “year of Capote,” Playbill editor Joan Alleman Rubin bearded the lion in his den (a glorious Victorian cave carved out of one of Manhattan’s newest apartment buildings) only to find him a gentle, disarming, and thoroughly likable lamb. (The film rights were snapped up well before publication date.) His charming childhood reminiscence A Christmas Memory has become both a book and a tasteful color television special (December 21 on ABC), and two of his works, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, alias Holly Golightly, and The Grass Harp have been adapted as musicals. His non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood, published last January by Random House, has sold over 325,000 copies and generated more excitement than any book since Gone With the Wind. ĩ66 has been a big year for Truman Capote.

In the months leading up to the start of Broadway previews for Breakfast at Tiffany's -then titled Holly Golightly -Playbill spoke to Truman Capote about it and the also upcoming The Grass Harp musical his work on House of Flowers why he would never write for the theatre again and his post In Cold Blood project: Answered Prayers.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote