Socialite taught stars southern accent

Model for Holly Golightly

Marguerite Littman, who has died aged 90, was said to have been the model for Holly Golightly, Truman Capote's Southern heroine from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Born in Monroe, La. — and described as “a languorous beauty with magnolia-white skin and big brown eyes” — Littman proved a hit in Hollywood with her exaggerated Southern drawl.

She lived for more than 50 years in London, but described herself as a “zigzag” socialite, who for decades “popped over” with designer clothes for whirlwinds of glittering charity fundraisers. She was consistently on the world's best-dressed list.

In 1986, she founded the Aids Crisis Trust, launching with a gala auction of items donated by friends, attended by everyone from Bianca Jagger to Boy George, who outbid the Duchess of York for an evening hat.

She and Princess Diana also created the famous charity auction of the Princess's wardrobe at Christie's New York in June 1997.

She was born Marguerite Lamkin on May 4, 1930, at Monroe, La,. into one of the city's oldest families. In 1952 she wed Harvard-educated Harry McNab Brown, but the marriage ended melodramatically in 1955.

Littman visited her screenwriter brother in Hollywood when he was under contract to producer Jerry Wald. “Jerry wanted to put me under contract at Columbia,” she recalled. “He sent me to a voice coach to get rid of my accent.”

But at a cocktail party, she met Elia Kazan, who was “open-mouthed” at her “mint-julep-and-plantation voice” and hired her as an accent coach.

In April 1955 she coached Barbara Bel Geddes for Broadway's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She asked for no salary, only expenses, but lived at the St. Regis Hotel and so cost them more than Bel Geddes's salary.

She taught Margaret Leighton for The Sound and Fury, Laurence Harvey for Summer and Smoke, and Elizabeth Taylor for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

For a period, she held literary salons, with Carson McCullers, Gore Vidal, William Faulkner, Christopher Isherwood, Elia Kazan and Tennessee Williams.

In 1959 she married actor Rory Harrity. They divorced in 1963.

In 1965 she married British barrister Mark Littman.

Her husband died in 2015.

Marguerite Littman