Trivia

1. According to Truman Capote, In Cold Blood was inspired by a three-hundred-word article on page 39 of the November 16, 1959, New York Times. Headlined “Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain,” the article described the unexplained murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. Capote, who had been casting about for a nonfiction subject, decided that the Clutter murder would be the topic of his next big writing project.
2. Though Richard Hickock and Perry Smith believed that Herbert Clutter kept $10,000 in a safe at his home on River Valley Farm, Herbert never carried cash. Hickock and Smith left the Clutter home with only about fifty dollars, for which they had murdered four innocent people.
3. Truman Capote dedicated In Cold Blood in part to Harper Lee, who accompanied Capote to Holcomb County, Kansas, in 1959. (Lee had just finished her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.) Lee and Capote’s legendary friendship had its origins in their childhoods—they met as young children in Monroeville, Alabama, where they lived next door to each other.
4. Perry Edward Smith bequeathed everything he owned to Truman Capote.
5. Truman Capote’s research notes for In Cold Blood comprised over 8,000 pages.
6. Capote took no interview notes while researching In Cold Blood, nor did he did tape any of the conversations he had with Holcomb residents, police officers, or the two murderers. According to the author, his preparation for writing the book included memory-training exercises, through which he learned to recall and transcribe conversations with 95 percent accuracy.
7. In Cold Blood has inspired three films since its publication. The first, a straight adaptation of the events described in the novel, was directed by Richard Brooks in 1967 and earned four Academy Award nominations. In 2005, Philip Seymour Hoffman portrayed Truman Capote in Capote, a biographical film following Capote during the writing process In Cold Blood—Capote was also nominated for five Academy Awards; Seymour Hoffman won Best Actor. Another biographical film, Infamous, followed in 2006, with Toby Jones as Truman Capote and Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee.
8. Truman Capote never finished another book after In Cold Blood. Though he continued to publish short stories and nonfiction pieces, his health and his career entered a period of decline following the success of In Cold Blood. After two decades spent battling substance addictions and alcoholism, Capote died of liver disease on August 25, 1984, at the age of 59.
9. In September 2016, an anonymous buyer purchased Truman Capote’s ashes at auction for $43,750. The ashes, which originally belonged to Capote’s friend Joanne Carson, are housed in a wooden Japanese box.
10. In addition to a veritable who’s who of international celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Mia Farrow, Andy Warhol, Elizabeth Taylor, Norman Mailer, Katharine Graham, and Henry Fonda, Truman Capote invited a group of folks he met while in Holcomb, Kansas, to his exclusive Black-and-White Ball held at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on November 28, 1966.