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Capote for the Holidays A Christmas Memory (and Trilogy), The Thanksgiving Visitor, and One Christmas

How does an openly gay writer in the 1960s, whose fame skyrocketed due to his portrayal of a gruesome crime and its aftermath, become simultaneously associated with holiday tales of emotional resonance and southern nostalgia? It is one of the great paradoxes of Capote’s career, as well as a testament to his expertise with a range of literary and cinematic genres, that television productions of his holiday-themed short stories in the late 1960s—Frank and Eleanor Perry’s A Christmas Memory (and Trilogy) and The Thanksgiving Visitor—softened his public image while allowing him to pay tribute to his southern roots. So successful were these 1960s productions that, in the 1990s, another of Capote’s holiday tales, “One Christmas,” was filmed for the first time, starring Katharine Hepburn in her final screen role, and “A Christmas Memory” was remade starring Patty Duke and Piper Laurie. In this subgenre of cinema Capoteana, the virtues of love, acceptance, and forgiveness are celebrated in southern settings reflective of simpler times and rural pleasures, as they also subtly address the difficulties of a southern upbringing for queer children such as Capote.

Capote readily admitted the autobiographical elements of these holiday stories, in which the protagonist “Buddy” represents himself as a child. With these films’ connection to their author’s past, audiences were asked to see another side of Capote’s unflappable and acerbic personality, centering on the lonely childhood he endured after his parents left him to be raised by cousins. Capote frequently discussed the feelings of isolation, loneliness, and rejection that he experienced during his southern childhood: “But growing up in some place like Monroeville, as it surely must have been in other rural towns, produces, for some particular individuals, a strange loneliness of alienated existence, of social disorientation. For these individuals . . . this loneliness can add to sensibility, and it seems to increase creativity. I know that in a way I have used up some of my loneliness by writing.”1 From this perspective, Capote’s holiday narratives carry traces of the künstlerroman tradition: although they do not portray the artist growing into his vocation, they portray the childhood of an author whom viewers would recognize as one of the premier talents of their time. In this manner, these narratives—both the films and the short stories on which they are based—permit their audiences to consider the ways in which Capote’s childhood influenced his development as an artist and as a man. Exploring the social disorientation of a southern upbringing for a precocious child such as Capote, these films depict the networks of compassion and understanding available within communities otherwise unsympathetic to sissies who refuse to adhere to stereotypes of southern masculinity. In doing so, they touch on timeless concerns of self, community, family, and love, proving the universality of human emotions in scenes from the childhood of a gay adult celebrity—albeit with varying degrees of success.

A Christmas Memory (1966) and Trilogy

Capote’s short story “A Christmas Memory” was first published in Mademoiselle in 1956. The story, warmly received by the public, was subsequently republished in a hardcover gift edition. Capote soon began considering ways to bring the story to the screen, and in a 1960 letter to David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones, he mentioned this interest: “Do you remember my story, the one I made a record of, ‘A Christmas Memory’? I would like very much to make a film of it. . . . It would be entirely visual, with a boy’s voice reading the story and a musical score, by, say, Virgil Thompson [sic]. It is something Jose Quintero could do well (I think). It could be beautiful, if done very simply.”² Quintero produced the theatrical version of Capote’s The Grass Harp at New York’s Circle in the Square Theatre in 1953, and from this experience he understood Capote’s conceptions of his characters and how to stage them. Likewise, Virgil Thomson wrote the incidental music for The Grass Harp, winning Capote’s approval for matching his literary motifs with musical phrasings. Capote’s appeal to Selznick and Jones never bore fruit, but Frank and Eleanor Perry, who enjoyed a critical success with their film David and Lisa (1962), persuaded Capote to grant them the rights to his story and to allow them to dramatize it rather than adhering to his vision of “a boy’s voice reading the story and a musical score.” Over the years from print to film production, the story remained popular with the public, and it was soon being described as a Christmas classic. In the introduction to their 1966 reprint of “A Christmas Memory,” which corresponded with the film’s airing on December 21, 1966, as part of ABC’s Stage 67 series, the editors of Ladies’ Home Journal praised the story as “a classic tale, drawn from a flawless memory, [that] belongs to the tradition of Christmas.”3

The greatest obstacle in filming A Christmas Memory, as director Frank Perry stated, arose in its fundamental lack of a plot. The executives at ABC evaluated “the story [as] ‘slight and sentimental,’ ‘lacking in plot,’ with ‘no suspense,’ and ‘perhaps not quite up to the high dramatic standards we’re projecting for Stage 67’” (T 23). And truly, nothing much happens in the film, if one is looking for the standard narrative arc of exposition, conflict, climax, and resolution. On the contrary, the film strings together memories of Capote’s cousin Sook Faulk, a mentally challenged older woman who was his inseparable companion during childhood. With Geraldine Page and Donnie Melvin in the lead roles, Sook and Buddy undertake numerous activities, such as baking fruitcakes, mailing the cakes to friends, chopping down a Christmas tree, opening presents on Christmas morning, and flying the kites they give to each other. The film winds down with the foretold death of their dog Queenie foreshadowing Sook’s demise, which occurs after Buddy has been sent to military school. These various pastimes do not necessitate a climactic encounter attaining a high emotional pitch, yet with its emphasis on interactions rather than actions, the film achieves a quiet and peaceful tone reflective of memory and nostalgia, one that pays homage to Capote’s southern roots as a simple and idyllic time.

The film lacks any sort of character development as well. Buddy and Sook do not mature or achieve some deeper realization due to the events unfolding around them; instead, Capote as narrator recalls the love that bound them together and their happy times enjoying each other’s company. The “villains” of the piece—characters whom the script refers to simply as First Relative and Second Relative—chide Sook for permitting Buddy to drink whiskey after the successful preparation of their fruitcakes, and they later insist on singing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” to enforce a spiritual meaning to the family’s Christmas festivities. Other than these slight interruptions, First Relative and Second Relative do little to upset the general air of peace and calm that Buddy shares with Sook. Capote’s description of his relatives in his story—“though they have power over us . . . we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them” (T 199)—testifies to the generally tranquil atmosphere of his childhood home, in which he and Sook were allowed to pursue their pastimes without much interference. The only character who might be considered to develop emotionally is the minor figure of Mr. Haha Jones, from whom they purchase whiskey for their fruitcakes. The camera initially shoots him from a low angle to emphasize his height and Sook and Buddy’s fear of his intimidating presence. Haha refuses their money but gives them the needed whiskey anyway. He then kindly requests that they share a fruitcake with him. Here the camera records a shift in his personality by filming him directly, thus equalizing him to his new friends. The camera angles suggest Haha’s transformation, but it is more a change in perception than in personality: Sook and Buddy learn to see him as their benefactor, rather than as the forbidding figure they feared him to be.

For a film with little plot and character development, A Christmas Memory succeeds by immersing its viewers in a southern landscape of loneliness and love, primarily on the strength of Geraldine Page’s performance. Warmth suffuses her every move, yet she couples what could devolve into a maudlin portrait with an honest appraisal of her character’s mental limitations, and so an occasional off-kilter gleam in her eyes suggests Sook’s difficulties in comprehending the world around her. She is often shy and diffident, yet she assumes a brisk and no-nonsense demeanor while purchasing ingredients from the local grocer. When chastised for the whiskey incident, she becomes confused and must confront the fact that she cannot always trust her judgment: “It’s because I am too old. Old and funny,” she weeps. The vulnerability of Page’s performance makes the scene painful to watch, for she seems aware of her handicaps and yet unaware of how to move beyond them. Buddy corrects her gently, “Not funny. Fun. More fun than anybody,” and his words help her to regain her childlike enthusiasm for their ensuing adventures, such as seeking the perfect Christmas tree. Page’s transformation into Sook Faulk is all the more remarkable in that she was forty-two years old when the film was produced, yet she convincingly played a character approximately twenty years her senior. Furthermore, she accomplished this transformation without any makeup other than an unkempt wig. Frank Perry reported that after the first day of shooting she wept in joy—“It’s because I’m happy, can’t you see? Because I love you and this story and because this is going to be my first good movie!” (T 30)—as she surely recognized the power and simplicity in the character she was portraying and the performance she was achieving.

With its warm emotions and simple yet haunting depiction of intergenerational affection, A Christmas Memory attests to the depth of human connection, and writer Eleanor Perry, tapping into the power of Capote’s tale, suggests, “Both the happiness and the grief that come with such a relationship are universal enough to reach and involve an audience” (T 264). At the same time, an attenuated undercurrent of queerness registers in the film, not in terms of homosexuality or erotic attraction, but due simply to Capote’s presence as narrator. At the outset of the venture, Capote insisted on narrating the film—“not out of vanity,” he stated, “but because it was my story, in every sense, and I wasn’t going to allow any ‘distinguished baritone’ to tell it” (T 17). In truth, one could well criticize the film for Capote’s contributions, for he is not a voice actor, and he does not recite his lines with much tonality or even warmth. Instead, his narration is surprisingly bland, and as numerous friends and critics registered over the years, his voice—memorably described by Norman Mailer as “a cross between an adenoidal prince and a telephone operator”—could by no means be considered mellifluous.4 But because the voice is so obviously Capote’s, it is impossible to forget that the story is indeed his, and so viewers realize that they are watching a queer boy’s childhood. The short story and the film’s imagery and symbolism, particularly when Sook and Buddy wheel their groceries and then their Christmas tree in a baby buggy, accentuate their alienation from normative reproduction: neither Sook in her past nor Buddy in his future will produce children, but the gifts that they carry in their baby buggy testify to their inherent warmth and emotional fecundity as they create for others a perfect holiday. Also, the scene in which they awaken together in bed underscores their alienation from normative sexuality, both in Sook’s present and Buddy’s future. Had Capote allowed a “distinguished baritone” to narrate his tale, its queer edges would have been rendered mostly invisible, but by maintaining his proprietary interest in the venture, the queerness of A Christmas Memory subtly asks its audience to recognize alternate patterns of kinship, reproduction, and love.

FIG. 15 A Christmas Memory (1966): Sook (Geraldine Page) sleeps while Buddy (Donnie Melvin) lies beside her, with their pairing throughout the film tacitly depicting their alienation from all others.

A Christmas Memory was crowned with acclaim and awards. Jack Gould, reviewing for the New York Times, praised Page’s luminous performance, lauding her “haunting mixture of strength and childlike innocence, a blend of eccentric weariness and loneliness fused with flights of convivial mischief,” although he tempered his approval by noting the film was “not entirely successful in sustaining the pathos of the friendship between boy and woman.” Of Capote’s narration, he noted succinctly, “the art of interpretive reading cannot be listed as one of his accomplishments.”5 Geraldine Page won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Dramatic Leading Role, and Capote and Eleanor Perry were likewise awarded Emmys for their adaptation of the story for television. (The film was nominated for Outstanding Dramatic Program but lost to David Susskind’s production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, featuring Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman.) Beyond the public recognition that A Christmas Memory enjoyed, Capote extolled both Page’s performance and the production: “Geraldine Page is just wonderful,”⁶ he proclaimed, and she portrayed the Sook Faulk character “with an uncanny beauty and accuracy” (DB 414). Capote frequently voiced his disdain for actors in his writings, yet he unreservedly admired Page’s talents, if also registering surprise at her personal style: “Miss Page is rather unforgettable, come to consider: a Jekyll and Hyde; Dr. Jekyll on stage, Mr. Hyde off. It is purely a matter of appearance; she has better legs than Dietrich, and as an actress can project an illusion of infinite allure—but in private she insists, Lord knows why, in disguising herself under witchlike wigs and costumes of consummate eccentricity” (DB 414). In a December 1967 interview, Capote celebrated the two years that saw double success in publication and filming: “Two things which I’ve really loved . . . have been A Christmas Memory and this,” referring to In Cold Blood.7 He enthusiastically endorsed A Christmas Memory for capturing his childhood experiences with Sook with quiet eloquence: “I thought that was good and still mine. Almost nothing was changed.”⁸

Following the success of A Christmas Memory (and during the subsequent filming of The Thanksgiving Visitor), Capote and the Perrys collaborated on two more of Capote’s short stories, “Among the Paths to Eden” and “Miriam,” in order to combine them with A Christmas Memory into the feature-length film Trilogy. Although Among the Paths to Eden and Miriam do not portray a holiday setting, their union with A Christmas Memory into Trilogy creates an overarching story line in which the loneliness depicted in each of their plots finds a thematic antidote in Buddy and Sook’s sweet friendship and seasonal sharing.

A moving yet simple story, Among the Paths to Eden challenged the Perrys in their adaptation, for the plot contains little dramatic action, only the graveside conversation between Ivor Belli (Martin Balsam) and Mary O’Meaghan (Maureen Stapleton), a widower and a woman in search of a husband. As Eleanor Perry reminisced, “Naturally we worried about coming up with a very talky show” (T 175). Mary’s efforts to ensnare Ivor depend on keeping their conversation flowing, and in light of their shared losses—a father and a wife respectively—she emphasizes both his greater suffering and his potential to adapt to new circumstances: “Of course, a wife isn’t the same as a parent, exactly. I mean, a man can have more than one wife without being at all disloyal.” She soon suggestively continues, “They say when a man marries again, it’s a real compliment to the first wife.” Mary notices that beside Ivor’s wife’s grave stands an unmarked tombstone that awaits him, and she remarks that “there’s a place here for you, too,” with the camera catching his reflection in the matching headstone. The setting and Ivor’s reflection in the headstone imbue the film with a subdued atmosphere of mortality, against which Ivor attempts to assert his freedom, both from the memory of his wife and from Mary. In close-up he states, “I like my independence,” a subtle hint that Mary should not pursue him, but she demurely responds, “I firmly believe that a man should be lord and master in his own house.”

As the conversation progresses, it seems that Ivor might indeed be ready to remarry, but if so, the object of his attentions would likely be his secretary Esther. Although he chafed against the restrictions that his wife Rose placed upon him, an affectionate tone enters his voice as he recounts Esther’s ministrations: “Well, Esther keeps a tight rein on me; she’s a little like Rose in that respect. She made me wear this topcoat. Esther says it’s not spring until she says it’s spring.”9 In a heartbreaking moment of candor, Mary asks Ivor, “How does a woman find a husband when she’s not young and pretty?” to which he slowly inhales and replies, “Well, Esther’s not young and pretty.” At this point it is clear that Ivor will pursue Esther, not Mary. In the bittersweet ending, the two acquaintances part ways, but Mary, never daunted, espies another widower trekking across the cemetery, whom she quietly follows.

A tale of startling simplicity filmed with due attention to the quiet passions of these two lonely people, Among the Paths to Eden received critical adulation for its candid portrayal of loneliness. Jack Gould praised the film for its character portraits: “Among the Paths to Eden enjoyed the strength of probing characterization and a subdued ring of truth about troubled individuals in moments of personal crisis,” although he criticized the plot at its most basic level, pointing out “the inevitable doubt that a sensitive woman would use the grief of others to try to resolve her personal problem.”¹⁰ The reviewer for Time likewise valued the film’s successful portraiture: “When she approaches one slightly retiring fellow . . . the dialogue casts its mood so well that it seems perfectly reasonable when she perches on his wife’s tombstone and does her imitation of Helen Morgan singing a blues song. . . . In TV’s ‘black week,’ Paths was the brightest Christmas gift of all.”¹¹ Following the path trailblazed by Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton won an Emmy for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Dramatic Leading Role for Among the Paths to Eden in 1968.

“Miriam,” the third short story filmed for Trilogy, was Capote’s first major literary triumph, winning the 1946 O. Henry Award for Best First-Published Story. It recounts the harrowing tale of Miriam Miller, a woman haunted by a child who may be real or who may represent her own tormented psyche. In his introduction to the volume anthologizing this prizewinning story, Herschel Brickell writes that “it is not possible to overlook so perfect a piece of character creation as is to be found in this story, whose principal figure is a devil-child, never quite explained, but real and terrifying, so that she lingers vividly in the memory like something evil and awful.”12 Much like Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (and Capote’s The Innocents), the power of the tale lies in its ambiguity, as readers enter Mrs. Miller’s consciousness yet are unsure of the reality of her perceptions. In their adaptation, the Perrys succeed in transforming Capote’s tale to the screen, but Eleanor Perry admits that they “departed from, embroidered on, felt the freest with” this adaptation, more than with their other versions of Capote’s works (T 120). By the end of the Perrys’ film, it is clear that Miriam is a phantom of Miss Miller’s imagination, resolving the interpretive crux of Capote’s story but still succeeding in painting a portrait of a woman driven mad by loneliness.

Whereas Capote’s Mrs. Miller is a widow, she is stripped of her deceased husband and given an occupation in the filmed adaptation: Miss Miller (Mildred Natwick) has recently retired from her position as a nanny; however, without any wards to occupy her time, she finds herself wracked by loneliness. The film’s opening sequence is shot at the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park which, given Lewis Carroll’s perverse predilection for young girls, becomes an eerily appropriate setting for the film’s narrative concern with childhood, desire, and latent sexuality. The action commences as Miss Miller picks up a ball that a young girl has lost, singing, “I’ve got your ball! I’ve got your ball! Now what are you going to do, honey-bunch? Maybe if you’re a very good little girl and give your old nanny a kiss, she’ll give the ball back.” Bribing kisses from unknown children, Miss Miller appears a grotesque mixture of innocence and deviance, hoping to inveigle herself into the lives of strangers. The girl screams in reply, “You’re not my nanny,” and runs back to her governess. Miss Miller’s desperate isolation becomes more evident when she attempts to strike up a friendship with the governess, but the woman gently yet persistently resists her overtures. Miss Miller then visits her former ward Nina, who is now awaiting the birth of her child. Despite Nina’s reluctance to allow Miss Miller into her apartment, Miss Miller barges in—“You can spare five minutes for your old nanny, can’t you?”—and endorses herself for the position of the child’s caretaker: “One thing you know about your old nanny, she’s loyal, loyal and devoted.” Miss Miller’s incessant nattering erodes the patience of those around her, and when she tells Nina not to smoke out of concern for her unborn child, Nina lights a cigarette in defiance. As Miss Miller’s loneliness compels her to seek companionship with strangers and former charges, their resistance to her unwelcome friendship undermines her sanity.

If Miss Miller’s request for an unknown child’s kiss hints at her desire to connect emotionally with the young, the film further points to her subterranean sexuality when she receives an obscene phone call. She rebuffs the caller’s proposed rendezvous, but rather than remaining in the safety of her apartment, she proceeds with her plans to attend a movie. At the theater she meets Miriam (Susan Dunfee), the girl who soon becomes her tormentor. At Miriam’s request, Miss Miller buys her a ticket to the show. The connections between the two characters are registered in the name Miriam, which Miss Miller learns they share, and in Miriam’s hair. “You may not believe this, but when I was a child, my hair looked exactly the same,” Miss Miller tells her, but Miriam stares blankly ahead as Miss Miller gazes at her from the side. Miriam disappears from the theater but then appears at Miss Miller’s doorstep later in the evening. After Miriam enters Miss Miller’s apartment, Miss Miller compliments her dress, and Miriam replies, “White is my favorite color. White stands for purity, you know.” Implicitly contrasting her innocence with Miss Miller’s impurity, Miriam demands authenticity in their interactions, rejecting Miss Miller’s polite yet vacuous words. As the scene climaxes, Miriam dashes a vase with imitation flowers to the floor. “I told you, I don’t like imitations,” she coldly intones, implying that Miss Miller is one such imitation for whom she does not care.

Despite Miriam’s antagonism, Miss Miller proceeds in her efforts to win the girl’s affections, buying éclairs to entice her to return. The camera focuses on the éclairs as Miss Miller waits for Miriam’s visit, but time passes and Miriam does not arrive. “Guess she’s not going to come, Tommy,” she tells her parakeet, but she then discovers that Miriam is lurking in her bedroom. “I’ve been waiting for you all evening long,” Miriam says, implying that the bedroom is the proper venue for their reunion. She then demands a gift from Miss Miller and chooses a locket from her jewelry box. Miriam’s rudeness repulses Miss Miller, and the young girl forces a kiss upon her hostess: “But first I’m going to give you a big kiss in exchange for the locket.” Miriam bids her good night and calls her nanny, but Miss Miller weakly replies, “I’m not your nanny.” As Miss Miller pursued a young girl’s affections in the film’s opening scene, she now finds herself the unwelcome recipient of such affection. In their climactic encounter after Miss Miller enlists her neighbors’ assistance in ridding her of Miriam, Miss Miller discovers that the young girl still resides in her apartment and plans to live with her forever. After Miriam smashes pictures of Miss Miller’s various wards on the floor, Miss Miller pushes Miriam out the window, presumably to her death. She retires to her bedroom, but after a few moments of rest, she turns to see that Miriam has returned to her, and the young girl eerily says hello. The audience now knows that Miriam is a figment of Miss Miller’s imagination, one who forces her to see through her own hypocrisies, and the film ends at this moment of her eternal imprisonment in the mental cage she has built for herself. As Eleanor Perry explains of the film’s bleak ending, “Unless Miriam can be made to vanish, Miss Miller is aware that there will be nothing left except her total immersion in schizophrenia” (T 120).

Like A Christmas Memory and Among the Paths to Eden, Miriam show-cases a fine actress’s extraordinary talents. Mildred Natwick’s performance as Miss Miller imbues the character with a dreadful loneliness and despair. The viewer’s sympathy for the character is challenged by her self-important nattering—one would not like Miss Miller if one were to meet her—but one cannot help feeling sorry for her even though she is so unlikable, for the character’s core humanity is never overlooked. Capote enthusiastically expressed his admiration for Natwick’s and Dunfee’s performances: “And just wait until you see Mildred Natwick as Mrs. Miller and Susan Dunfee as the little girl!”13 When Miriam was combined with A Christmas Memory and Among the Paths to Eden into Trilogy, the resulting film was well received. It was accepted for the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the student riots throughout France that year resulted in the festival’s suspension after two days. In the New York Times, Howard Thompson extolled the film’s delicate probing of the human condition: “The cold fact is that Trilogy is all talk and little action. But it quietly says and conveys more about the human heart and spirit than most of today’s free-wheeling blastaways on the screen. Delicately, it towers.”¹⁴ With its narrative trajectory from isolation in Mildred to a woman’s quest for love in a cemetery in Among the Paths to Eden to holiday nostalgia in A Christmas Memory, Trilogy captures the journey of the human spirit in tales of loneliness and lives without love, concluding with a vision of a surprising relationship that comforts otherwise isolated figures.

The Thanksgiving Visitor

In the November 1968 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal, a glossy two-page photograph captures Capote sitting before a dinner table crowded with such traditional Thanksgiving dishes as roast turkey, whipped sweet potatoes, cranberry-orange relish, and pumpkin pie. Captioning this feast, the editors introduced Capote through his culinary and literary talents: “Most readers will recognize Truman Capote presiding over our Thanksgiving feast. What most people won’t recognize, however, is that Mr. Capote created this menu—in his poignant short story, ‘The Thanksgiving Visitor,’ an adaptation of which will be shown this month on television.”15 In this puff piece promoting the upcoming film version, Capote reigns over the dinner table as the gentle sage of holiday love, the fabulist distilling the season’s magic into tales of heartfelt affection. The Thanksgiving Visitor, much like A Christmas Memory, was produced and directed by Frank Perry, with the teleplay written by Eleanor Perry. Geraldine Page and Capote reprised their roles as Sook and the narrator, with Michael Kearney replacing Donnie Melvin as Buddy, and with Hansford Rowe as Buddy’s nemesis, the bully Odd Henderson. The film aired on Thursday, November 28, 1968, on ABC.

Set against a backdrop of rural Depression-era poverty in Alabama, The Thanksgiving Visitor focuses on the unique friendship between Sook and Buddy, with Capote’s retrospection emphasizing his friend’s generosity of spirit as well as her mental limitations. Capote’s reedy voice-over introduces Sook as she tends the plants on the porch—“As she was a child herself, she understood children, and understood me absolutely”—as he also comments on the surprising nature of their friendship: “Perhaps it was strange for a young boy to have as his best friend an aging spinster, but neither of us had an ordinary outlook or background and so it was inevitable in our separate loneliness we should come to share a friendship apart.” The two outsiders unite in their otherness, with Sook’s compassion and kindness creating an oasis of love for Buddy.

As Sook’s difference from southern society registers in her mental capacities, Buddy’s difference registers in his queerness. He is transparently a sissy intimidated by antagonistic figures around him and solaced by his friendship with Sook. In an early scene depicting a schoolyard fight, the tomboy Jumbo jumps Buddy’s oppressor Odd Henderson from behind, proving that even girls are capable of holding their own against this bully. But Buddy cannot escape his foe, as Capote’s voice-over laments. “Alas, even on weekends, I was the object of Odd’s relentless attentions,” he intones, with his emphasis on “alas” heightening the melodrama. Later Odd steals the dime Buddy needs to attend the movies and taunts him, “Crybaby! Crybaby, you ain’t got the spunk of a field mouse,” then lumbers away. From such encounters, the film appears to be developing into the clichéd story of a wimp who grows in self-confidence and learns to defend himself, but The Thanksgiving Visitor rejects such expectations in favor of Capote’s recalcitrant queerness: this is not the story of a boy who achieves manhood by thrashing his adversary. As Capote writes in the short story, Odd accuses him of being a sissy, and Capote simply agrees: “He was right, I was a sissy of sorts, and the moment he said it, I realized there was nothing I could do to alter his judgment, other than toughen myself to accept and defend the fact” (CS 246). Inuring himself to the insults of others, Buddy nonchalantly accepts his queerness in Capote’s story, and the film similarly depicts him refusing to enact the culturally sanctioned version of southern masculinity that others press upon him.

As Odd represents the exterior enemy from whom Buddy seeks solace with Sook, his Uncle B represents an interior antagonist, one with whom he must share his home and from whom there is less hope of escape. Learning of his nephew’s troubles with Odd, Uncle B advises Buddy to fight: “You’ve got to get in there and tangle with him. You’ve got to bloody his nose and blacken his eyes!” When Buddy follows this misguided advice, the attempted skirmish only annoys Odd, who then tangles cockleburs in Buddy’s hair to humiliate him further. Concerned that Sook’s ministrations are smothering Buddy’s fledgling masculinity, Uncle B attempts to introduce him to men’s household responsibilities, determining that, in preparing for the Thanksgiving feast, “Buddy’s going to kill the turkeys this year.” In Capote’s story, Sook simply reports Uncle B’s concerns to Buddy, but the Perrys stage this encounter in their film, enhancing the dramatic conflict between the man and boy. Sook laughs at the idea, realizing that Buddy is emotionally unfit for such bloody labor, but Uncle B insists that the boy’s masculinity stands in jeopardy: “Housekeeping’s women’s work. It’s about time he learned to do a man’s job.” He then declares directly to Sook, “He’s got to stop hanging off your apron strings.” Buddy tries but cannot decapitate the turkey, again proving his inability to achieve southern manhood.

Surprisingly, this story line is then abandoned, with Uncle B failing to reform Buddy’s effeminized masculinity, and so The Thanksgiving Visitor allows Buddy the freedom to retain his queerness, which reflects the man that the audience knows he will grow up to be. Indeed, in one of the film’s funniest moments, Buddy lies sick in bed and passes the hours by cutting out pictures from movie magazines, including those of John Gilbert and Greta Garbo. Visiting her convalescing friend, Sook thinks Buddy has cut out a racy picture of three women in bathing suits, which would seem to indicate his interest in the opposite sex; however, on the other side of the page is Buster Crabbe in Flash Gordon, which was the true object of his attention. In complementary contrast, Buddy’s aunts apparently contribute to his homosocial fascination with film stars. When he tells them that he is going to see Claudette Colbert in Cleopatra, they react in horror: “Well, that most certainly is not a story for a young boy to see.” Shocked at the prospect of their nephew seeing such a notoriously sexualized figure on-screen, Buddy’s aunts inadvertently encourage his homosocial adulation of male stars like Buster Crabbe.

In his youthful queerness, Buddy does not learn to decapitate turkeys or to thrash Odd, but in an attempt to reconcile the boys, Sook insists that they invite Odd to Thanksgiving dinner. Buddy is mortified but fails to dissuade Sook. With Page exhibiting quiet exasperation in her performance as Sook, she tells Buddy that Odd’s mother is “real happy that you’ve felt enough about Odd to ask him over for Thanksgiving, and she said she’s sure he’ll be just tickled pink to come,” as Buddy pulls the pillow over his head in disbelief. Convincing himself that his enemy would never enter his home, Buddy concentrates on the preparations for Thanksgiving, with Capote’s voice-over detailing the various activities: “Our most delicate task on Thanksgiving Eve was preparing the table,” he states, as he then details each of the guests and their food contributions. A slight hint of heteroerotic attraction emerges in Buddy’s reaction to a female guest: “Suddenly, in one year’s time, Annabel Conklin had turned into an entrancing young lady. Her hair was beautiful, and her features—eyebrows, nose, lips, and smile—tilted in such an original fashion.” As she walks up the porch stairs and kisses Buddy, Capote’s voice-over declares, “She smelled like geraniums after rain. I loved her.” As a family member, albeit a distant one, Annabel appears an inappropriate object of Buddy’s affections.

The plot reaches its climax when, during the holiday feast, Odd steals Sook’s cameo. Buddy, who has been sulking in a closet, witnesses the theft and accuses Odd of the crime at the Thanksgiving dinner table, embarrassing his enemy in front of the other guests. Sook defends Odd by stating that the cameo is not missing, but Odd soon confesses and declares, “You must be a very special lady, Miss Sook, to fib for me like that.” Buddy feels betrayed that Sook sided with Odd and runs out of the house to take refuge in a hay shack, and when Sook goes to comfort him, he accuses her of treachery: “You betrayed our friendship.” In reply Sook voices the narrative’s theme: “I know in my heart that deliberate cruelty is the unpardonable sin. Everything else can be forgiven, but that? Just never.” They break a wishbone, and Sook wins. The film concludes as she wishes for Buddy’s forgiveness for defending Odd. As the credits roll, they walk back to the house.

The Thanksgiving Visitor, like A Christmas Memory before it, was greeted with critical acclaim. The reviewer for Time appreciated it as “a rare, lyrical hour for television” and conceded praise to Capote as well: “The narrator is Capote himself—squeaky-voiced, but obviously authentic.”16 Jack Gould’s New York Times review declared the film to be “a perfect sequel to his earlier television success, A Christmas Memory,” and summarized the appeal of both productions: “Their virtue has been the avoidance of mawkish ritual and a recognition that holidays mirror the hopes, kindnesses, troubles, and disappointments of genuine people living with their own problems. Mr. Capote’s televised remembrances have a tenderness of understanding that lingers after the holiday is over.”¹⁷ As she was honored two years earlier, Geraldine Page again won the Emmy for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Dramatic Leading Role.

Despite the artistic success of A Christmas Memory, Trilogy, and The Thanksgiving Visitor, Capote’s collaborations with the Perrys resulted in some lingering ill will. Capote claimed in an interview that he worked with the Perrys—“They’re filming two other short stories, ‘Among the Paths to Eden’ and ‘Miriam,’ so the three together will make a regular film, a triptych. But those were something I worked on, a true collaboration”¹⁸—but Eleanor Perry disputed his assertion. In a letter to the New York Times Magazine, she registered her resentment that Capote claimed equal credit for the screenplay of A Christmas Memory: “I was amused to see, after all this time, the 1967 photograph of Truman Capote with ‘his Emmy’ for A Christmas Memory (New York Times Magazine, July 16th). Truman and I both won Emmys that year for the teleplay except that I wrote it—he merely put his name on it. First billing too! Isn’t that amusing?”19

One Christmas

A mere eleven pages long, Capote’s “One Christmas” is rather short even by short-story standards, and so adapting it into a ninety-minute television movie (with a running time of two hours with commercials) required director Tony Bill and teleplay scenarist Duane Poole to expand numerous plot points from Capote’s tale and to create additional scenes and encounters out of whole cloth. In brief, Capote’s narrative concerns a trip undertaken when he was a child to visit his father in New Orleans, his discomfort with his father and his desire to return home, but also his dawning realization of his love for him upon reuniting with Sook in Alabama. Bill’s One Christmas maintains this structure while interweaving four tales of personal growth: Buddy (T. J. Lowther) learns to accept and love his father; his father (Henry Winkler), referred to in the teleplay simply as Dad, matures from ne’er-do-well to concerned parent; Dad’s wealthy girlfriend Emily (Swoosie Kurtz) learns to stand up for herself; and Emily’s imperious aunt, Cornelia Beaumont (Katharine Hepburn), lets down her façade of patrician aloofness to teach Buddy a lesson about the true meaning of Christmas. A hodgepodge of sentimental story lines, One Christmas drowns under the weight of so many miraculous transformations.

The film’s opening shot captures Buddy sitting on a porch, perched with a pad on his lap and a pencil in his hand, thus establishing his future as a writer (if only to ignore this aspect of his character throughout the ensuing narrative). Julie Harris plays Sook, but unlike in A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor, her part in the story is quite small, limited to these opening scenes in which she helps Buddy prepare for his journey to New Orleans, where, despite his hesitations about the journey and his ignorance of geography, he longs to see snow. Although Capote’s “One Christmas” does not address his father’s distaste for his effeminacy, Bill’s film portrays Buddy/Capote’s queerness, which Dad sees as resulting from Sook’s influence, as a divisive factor between father and son. While driving with Buddy, Dad steals a glance at the boy and says, “First thing we got to do is get you a haircut. You look like a girl. How do you play ball with all that?” To his father’s consternation, Buddy simply replies, “I don’t play ball.” Dad’s concern over his son’s masculinity grows when, spying a package beside Buddy and inquiring its contents, he learns that it is a fruitcake that his son helped to prepare. “You cook?” he says in dismay. In a similar scene, when the two are dining at a restaurant, Dad exasperatedly asks, “You like baseball at least? Football?” Buddy shakes his head no, and his father asks: “What life are you living there in Alabama?” Buddy replies, “I help Sook mostly,” aligning himself with femininity and domesticity, to which his father dismissively replies, “That’s women’s work.” After Dad exploits Buddy to finagle his way into a party hosted by Cornelia Beaumont and Emily, he reads Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” to him for bedtime in an unsuccessful attempt to interest the boy in sports. When Buddy questions whether they should have crashed the Beaumonts’ celebration, Dad tells him, “If no one gets hurt, it’s not a lie. More importantly, you had a new experience. And new experiences grow a boy into a man.” From this unethical perspective, masculinity is a boy’s primary goal, no matter the path taken to achieve it.

As his intrusion into the Beaumonts’ private party demonstrates, Dad is a small-time swindler and lothario, and his story arc involves his maturation into fatherhood and responsibility. When Buddy arrives in New Orleans and first espies Dad, he is throwing craps and drinking from a flask, sure signs of a dissolute life. Later Buddy sees the minor character Dixon Hobbs pummel his father for preying on older women to fund his lavish lifestyle. Dad repeatedly steals newspapers from street vendors, and he “borrows” the money that Sook gave Buddy for his travels, using it to wine and dine Emily as he seeks funds for the plane race that promises to make his fortune. He also plays on her heartstrings by promising that he will use the money to send Buddy to a private school. At this nightclub, Dad wheedles Emily, “You know what that boy needs? A solid family. Father, loving mother.” The reaction shot captures Emily’s romantic agreement, seeing herself in the role of the mother, as she fails to realize that Dad pays their tab with his son’s money.

Emily’s character is torn in so many diverging directions that her narrative arc flounders. Viewers first see her as a lonely old maid, desperate for Dad’s companionship and willing to overlook his shady dealings if she can find love. Also, her aunt Cornelia, who controls the family purse strings, dominates her. When Dad visits Emily at the family residence, Cornelia sharply requests that he not present himself at her home. Emily is frustrated by her aunt’s intervention in her love life, but Cornelia responds imperiously, “It’s my house, and I’ll do as I damn well please.” At some point in her past, however, Emily was not the timid woman seen on-screen, for she tells Dad that she rejected numerous suitors to pursue her education and her love of the arts, a course that, over the years, has not helped her to maintain a sense of independence and identity. As Emily is cocooned by her aunt, Cornelia is likewise isolated from family and affection. Hepburn delivers many of her lines with patrician aplomb, such as when she dismisses Dad—“You may leave, if that is what you were about to suggest”—but the character is so one-dimensional that any story arc indicative of a change of heart undermines the fabric of Hepburn’s performance.

The story lines of these four unhappy characters converge when Buddy spies Dad and Emily kissing at Dad’s Christmas party. Buddy, distraught because he realizes his parents will never reunite, barrels down the stairs and shouts at her, “Stay away from my daddy! You hear me? You’re an old maid, not half as pretty as my mommy. Just stay away from him.” In the climactic encounter between father and son, with Dad furious at Buddy for ruining his seduction of Emily, Dad punctures both of their fantasies of a better and magical life: “There is no pot of gold for me. There is no snow for you.” He then adds, “And as for your momma . . .” as he picks up a picture of her and smashes it on the floor. Soon after, Dad’s maid Evangeline (Tonea Stewart) gently chastises him. Playing the clichéd role of the African American maid with a heart of gold who helps the white characters access the love surrounding them, she states, “Your problem is, you been living life so low, you wouldn’t know true love now if you had it.” In a gimmicky plot device, Buddy runs away from Dad and is hit by Cornelia’s car; she takes him into her home to nurse him back to health. Although she first retains her tart tongue, telling Buddy, “I never had any children of my own. Frankly, I never cared for them,” she soon metamorphoses into a fount of saccharine wisdom. When Buddy regrets that he has not seen snow, she teaches him the true magic of Christmas and Santa Claus: “Of course there’s a Santa Claus! . . . Everyone is Santa Claus. I am. You are. Your father is.” Sook speaks these words in Capote’s short story, but here they are transferred to the voice of the character whom viewers would see as unlikely to believe them, and so Cornelia’s forced transformation is not earned.

Following Cornelia’s sermon on the universality of Santa Claus, each character embodies the bounty and the magic of the holiday season. Dad learns that, because he bought a substandard engine for the plane he was financing, the pilot almost died in a crash, and this realization completes his metamorphosis into a devoted family man. “I came this close to killing a man,” he says, holding his fingers together. He then embraces Buddy despite the boy’s flawed masculinity: “You’re not the son I expected, but then again I’m not the father you deserve.” The composition of the scene features Emily in the foreground and Dad and Buddy in the background, as Emily has entered their home and overhears the conversation, yet, despite Dad’s apparently sincere marriage proposal, she kisses him goodbye and says, “You have to begin to pay your own way in the world.” Once again the woman she used to be, she carries herself with confidence in her capabilities. Evangeline’s son Toby, appropriating the role in Capote’s story of Buddy’s skeptical cousin Billy Bob who does not believe in Santa Claus, is converted to a believer because Buddy gives him a radio—which had been a gift from Emily—but leaves a tag saying that it is from Santa Claus.

FIG. 16 One Christmas: The forbidding figure of Aunt Cornelia Beaumont (Katharine Hepburn in her final performance) reveals her heart of gold to Buddy (T. J. Lowther).

All that remains is for Buddy to express his love for his father. Dad has earlier asked, “Do you think I could hear the words, ‘I love you, Dad’?” Buddy glumly replied, “The bus will be leaving soon,” and walked away. As the film concludes at the bus station, Dad proves his redemption by repaying Buddy the six dollars he borrowed, including an additional dollar for interest. When Dad plaintively pleads with Buddy, “Can I have a hug?” Buddy gives him one willingly. The bus driver, recalling Buddy and his story of playing an angel in a children’s theatrical performance, declares, “I got the angel riding with me again.” These words cast Buddy as the salvific angel within the film’s themes, yet he has done precious little to achieve the metamorphoses of these various characters, whose maturations unfold mostly without his intervention. Nonetheless, Dad now pays for a newspaper after stealing them previously, and miracle of miracles, it snows in New Orleans, and so Buddy’s wishes come true. The snow appears all the more miraculous in that none of the characters so much as shivered previously, and Buddy was often costumed in short pants.

A Christmas Memory (1997)

Whereas Frank and Eleanor Perry’s adaption of Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” allows the narrative to remain a series of biographical episodes held together by gossamer threads of memory, love, and nostalgia, Glenn Jordan’s 1997 television film A Christmas Memory, with a screenplay by Duane Poole, imposes a stronger plot structure on Capote’s tale. Primarily, the Perrys’ film mentions in voice-over that Buddy is eventually deported to military school as the cause of his separation from Sook, but in Jordan’s film it is treated as a defining trauma, one that rips Buddy (Eric Lloyd) apart from Sook (Patty Duke) but, in dramatic terms, allows her to confront her domineering sister Jennie (Piper Laurie) and defend herself. In fleshing out “A Christmas Memory” into a two-hour television production, Poole’s screenplay incorporates numerous moments from Capote’s other stories, primarily The Grass Harp. The maid, Anna, who appears to be African American and is recognized as such by Buddy’s family, claims instead, “I’m pure Cherokee,” which echoes the protestations of Catherine Creek in The Grass Harp. Also, Buddy and Sook give the hypochondriac Seabone a dropsy cure for Christmas, which connects Sook to Dolly Talbo and her folk medicines; likewise, the role of Jennie, with her stern control of her household and her sharp business sense, appears to be inspired by Dolly’s sister Verena. Buddy’s antagonistic friendship with the tomboy Rachel mirrors Joel’s friendship with Idabel in Other Voices, Other Rooms, as it also draws upon accounts of Capote’s youth with Harper Lee when they were children together in Monroeville, Alabama, particularly in its story line of the two young children learning to write down their shared adventures. In addition to finding inspiration from Capote’s other works, Jordan and Poole extend sequences from the original story in charming ways, particularly Buddy’s fear of Haha Jones. “They’re never going to find our bodies,” Buddy moans when Sook drags him into Haha’s café so that they can purchase the whiskey for the fruitcakes. When Sook and Buddy mail their packages of fruitcakes to friends known and unknown, they comment on various celebrities. This year they are sending a cake to Jean Harlow because, as Buddy says, “she’s so pretty,” but this reminds Sook of their gift the preceding year to Joan Crawford: “Would you believe not so much as a thank-you note?”

The First Relative and Second Relative of the Perrys’ production register as little more than external annoyances to the joy that Buddy and Sook find together, but in Jordan’s treatment Jennie presents a more intimidating demeanor, ordering her siblings about to carry out her vision for the family. A firm businesswoman, she emphasizes fiscal concerns and profit, which distinguishes her from her tenderhearted siblings Callie (Anita Gillette) and Seabone (Jeffrey DeMunn). At her store, when planning to order new merchandise for the holiday season, she avers, “Everyone wants to look fine for the holidays,” with her words revealing her focus on the financial, rather than the familial, aspect of Christmas. There is no doubt that she loves Buddy and Sook, but her impatience with them triggers their fear of her. When Jennie, discussing the family with Callie, says, “Sook is an exception,” and Callie asks, “To what rule?” Jennie replies, with exasperation simmering in her voice, “To most every rule I can think of. We love her. Well, we have to, because she’s family, but she is our child.” Her concern for Buddy is registered in her fear that he is effeminate: “The boy has been with us for two years now; he hasn’t a single friend his own age. What’s more, he needs to learn a man’s ways.”

Jennie’s concern for Buddy’s masculinity establishes the queer edges to the boy’s character, which are also alluded to in the film’s opening scene when he timidly runs away from Haha’s café. In a similar vein, Sook and Seabone accentuate Buddy’s isolation from his parents, casting him as an orphan in need of maternal care. Sook tells him, “You’re lucky you’re not living up in New York City with your mama,” casting his home with them in Alabama as a refuge from the metropolitan ills of the North. When Seabone drawls, “I swear this boy looks more like his father every day,” Jennie sharply retorts, “Long as that’s all he gets from that man,” indicating her belief that Buddy’s father would only be an unfit influence on the boy. Effeminate and abandoned, Buddy turns to Sook for comfort, only to find that even this relationship triggers Jennie’s suspicions of his queerness.

Whereas the Perrys’ The Thanksgiving Visitor allows Buddy the queer freedom not to stand up to his bully, thereby forgoing a standard plotline of successfully resisting one’s oppressor, Jordan’s A Christmas Memory rehabilitates Buddy from this queer image by concentrating on his developing relationship with the tomboy Rachel (Julia McIlvaine) and their mutual acquiescence to gender normativity. Buddy is initially rude to her, rude enough that Sook tells him, “It wouldn’t hurt you to be a little nicer to that girl.” The two children tussle when they argue over the failings of their respective parents. When Sook intercedes, Rachel states, “He didn’t hurt me. I won,” as she storms off triumphantly. Because Sook insists that Buddy give a fruitcake to Rachel and her family, the two slowly make amends, and Rachel kisses him when he gives her a notebook and pencil for Christmas so that she can write down her stories. Rachel denies that the kiss represents any romantic interest in Buddy—“It didn’t mean nothing at all. Don’t you go talking about this. Wouldn’t want to have to beat you up again”—but when Buddy leaves for military school, she tells him that she has written a story about their night at Haha Jones’s café when they believed they witnessed a murder, only to see the “victim” stagger into church the following morning, suffering from a hangover but not a fatal blow. “I’m going to miss you, Buddy,” she says as they touch hands. Touching lightly on the künstlerroman tradition in its depiction of Buddy as a writer in training, the film plays on Capote’s metatextual identity as a successful author, but ironically so, in that here Buddy’s interest in writing wins him the heteroerotic affections of a tomboy who, it appears, must also be cleansed of her gender transgressions.

As Buddy is rehabilitated from Capote’s queerness, so too does Sook shift as a character in Jordan’s treatment of her story. This version of A Christmas Memory foregrounds Sook’s emotional maturation as she learns to defend herself against Jennie’s imperious orders. At Christmas Eve dinner, Jennie announces that she is sending Buddy to military school because this will be best for his future; although unstated, it also appears that she believes military school will assist Buddy in growing into manhood. Sook, devastated at the prospect of losing her closest companion, cries, “How can shipping him off to strangers be what’s right? Sending him away from everything he knows, everyone he loves? How could that ever be right . . . for anybody?” and runs from the table. To increase the pathos of the separation, the film also depicts Jennie forbidding Sook to say goodbye to Buddy: “This is the way it has to be,” she declares, ostensibly to protect Sook from the distress of the farewell. The conflict is overblown in its emotional registers, for Jennie, whose sternness has hitherto been interlaced with evident concern for her family, transforms momentarily into cruelty so that Sook’s resistance becomes all the more heroic. “No. I won’t have it,” Sook declares, and then adds, “Buddy is my friend, and I’m taking him to the bus. And that’s just how it’s going to be.”

FIG. 17 A Christmas Memory (1997): Buddy (Eric Lloyd) and Sook (Patty Duke) look upward in many frames, with these images capturing their dreams of transcendence.

Triumphant in her skirmish with Jennie, Sook states as she and Buddy lie on the ground flying kites, “Whenever you come back, I’ll be waiting. You’ll always find me here for you.” This image, linking the film to its beginning when Buddy was flying a kite alone, demonstrates the community and love he shares with Sook. When Jennie says goodbye to Buddy, she encourages him in his maturation, as she also acknowledges the depth of her sister’s love for him. “You can’t be a child forever. Your special friend has a way about her I guess I never really appreciated ’til now. Her love for you shines like those Baptist windows she’s always been so fond of.” Buddy hugs her, and a voice-over concludes the film with Buddy as an adult describing Sook determining, as she does every year, that the weather tells her it is time once again to commence her holiday ritual of baking fruitcakes. Avoiding the melancholy ending of Queenie’s and Sook’s deaths that are depicted in Capote’s story and the Perrys’ film, Jordan’s A Christmas Memory overwrites Capote’s memories in creating a nostalgic tale inappropriate to the queer author behind it, substituting a vision of Buddy as reformed into masculinity and of Sook as a source of love and inspiration from whom Capote will never be separated.

Capote once disparaged television in general, declaring, “This thing has no future whatever.”20 But with the Perrys’ films of A Christmas Memory and its sequel A Thanksgiving Visitor, television proved particularly suited to Capote’s holiday short stories, allowing an intimate medium that broadcast directly into viewers’ homes to capture narratives short on action but ample in emotion. Juxtaposed with the 1990s adaptations, which rewrite Capote’s source texts into standard narrative formats of conflict and climax, these films strikingly illustrate the difficulties of adaptation, in which filmmakers must liberate themselves from a text that inspires them, yet somehow distill its essence into a new medium. In this regard the Perrys’ A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor provide a master class, from which the 1990s productions would have benefited.