Capote’s ashes took long way to auction
Remains of In Cold Blood author kept in Joanne Carson’s mansion
On Aug. 25, 1984, just shy of his 60th birthday, Truman Capote died in California.
The In Cold Blood author’s death, of liver disease exacerbated by drug abuse, occurred in one of the two rooms he kept in the Bel Air house belonging to TV host Joanne Carson, ex-wife of Johnny Carson.
As the Los Angeles Times described it in 2006, Capote had slowly turned a section of her home into his own after becoming an ex-Manhattan outcast — the first instalment of his unfinished book Answered Prayers, published in Esquire in 1975, was a jet-set expose too thinly disguised as fiction to keep his New York friendships intact.
“He had a writing room in my house — he spent a lot of time here because it was a safe place and nobody could get to him,” Carson told Vanity Fair in 2012.
Capote made such an impression on Carson’s life that she kept intact the writing room, the room in which he died, as a sort of shrine until she began auctioning off his belongings in 2006.
What Carson kept, until her death in 2015, was half of his body. In ashes, at least.
And the writer’s remains that once belonged to Carson can be yours when Capote’s ashes go to auction in September.
From the news release issued last week by Julien’s Auctions: “The ashes of Truman Capote are housed in a memorial Japanese carved wooden box. The ashes were kept by Joanne Carson, who was one of Capote’s closest friends. She often said the ashes brought her great comfort.” The wooden box bears the date of Capote’s cremation, Aug. 28, 1984. The seller estimates when the box goes to auction in late September, the remains will fetch between $4,000 and $6,000.
It is safe to say Carson cherished his remains. Visitors coveted them, too. At a Halloween party Carson in 1988, someone burgled Capote’s urn, along with hundreds of thousand of dollars of jewelry. She said she had entered the writing room to deliver some balloons to the deceased Capote when she noticed the urn was missing.
Less than a week later, according to People, someone mysteriously returned the remains, tucking them amid a loop of garden hose in Carson’s yard. Carson interred the urn in a vault in Los Angeles.
But that half of Capote did not stay put. In 1991, Carson brought out his remains for another party, the Los Angeles Times said. It was to celebrate a play about the writer’s life, Tru. Yet again, someone tried to purloin the ashes. This time, however, the thief was caught in the act, an unnamed source told Page Six.
When Breakfast at Tiffany’s was adapted for the stage in 2013, Carson was asked to take Capote’s remains to the opening night party. She decided it was too risky. Capote remained tucked away since.
Legality aside, some might find the idea of selling human ashes gauche. But auction house owner Darren Julien argued that selling the remains was in keeping in the spirit of Capote’s life.
“Truman Capote loved the element of shock,” Julien said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “He loved publicity. And I’m sure he’s looking down laughing, and saying, ‘That’s something I would have done.’ He was a larger-than-life character.”