A Christmas Memory - made for TV

 

original draft of opening page

Director David Perry

Author and narrator Truman Capote

Capote as a young child

Capote kissing Geraldine Page at a party

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY – made for TV             A                                                           USA  (51 mi)  1966  d: David Perry

Imagine a morning in late November.  A coming of winter morning more than thirty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town.  A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it.  Just today, the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

Among the better Christmas movies to play on television, where this was an annual holiday event in the late 60’s, right alongside annual screenings of Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), which was a holiday staple before it was snatched up from private domain, or Menotti- Amahl and the Night Visitors, 1955 YouTube (46:13), a film that always used to play on Christmas Eve.  Originally published in Mademoiselle magazine in December 1956, A Christmas Memory (a christmas memory. - now voyager.) remains one of Truman Capote’s most anthologized short stories, one that Capote called his personal favorite and his most perfect work.  Part of a circle of American writers that included Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Terry Southern, James Jones, and many more, Capote’s work reflects America of the late 1940’s and 1950’s, deeply engaged with the social anxieties of the postwar years, as his writing captures the isolation, marginalization, and persecution of those who deviated from or failed to achieve white middle-class ideals and highlights the artificiality of mainstream idealizations about American culture.  After publishing his first novel in 1948 at the age of 24, Other Voices, Other Rooms, he was already being compared to William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Carson McCullers.  Elevating the art of the novella, Capote was as well known for his lifestyle and flamboyant mannerisms as he was for his novels.  With a versatile career as an author, playwright, screenwriter, and actor, his literary style ranged from an early take on Southern Gothic to comedy, while revolutionizing the genre of true crime with In Cold Blood (1967), yet his extensive use of description is nothing short of mesmerizing, informing us of a writing technique that would insure a timelessness in his works, “One, never use slang, it dates your work and you want to always make it classic, two, never take notes, and I forgot the third one, but I have it somewhere in my notes.”  Drawing on his youthful experience in rural Alabama when his mother left him with relatives while she looked for work in New York City, one of the few relatively secure periods in an extremely unstable early childhood, this is an idealized recollection of a remembrance of a happy childhood, not unlike Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales (A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas, free ...), recorded by Thomas in 1952, Dylan Thomas - A Child's Christmas in Wales, A Story YouTube (19:52), while Capote reads his own story in 1959, Truman Capote Reading His "A Christmas Memory" - Original ... YouTube (37:00).  While the story appeared earlier, and was reprinted in The Selected Writings of Truman Capote in 1963, it was this made-for-television release that originally aired on December 21, 1966 on ABC Playhouse, eloquently narrated by Capote himself in that distinctive high-pitched nasal whine, that established the story’s enduring popularity, where perhaps no other piece is as fondly remembered by so many.  The original production was in color, but subsequent broadcasts were in black and white.  This ode to the American South is what Terence Davies achieves in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992).  Set in rural Alabama during the Depression in the 1930’s, this tender and strangely personal story of a seven-year-old boy named Buddy (Donnie Melvin) and his aging cousin’s holiday traditions was made into an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning television movie starring Geraldine Page as his older cousin in her 60’s who is never identified by name, but only as “my friend.” 

The nostalgic mood has prompted some critics to dismiss the story, including playwright Tennessee Williams, who characterized the story as saccharine, overly sentimental, or even repulsive, though Capote himself described it as a catharsis which helped him to deal with his experiences as a child in the South.  It contains darker elements such as loneliness and loss, poverty, social isolation, sorrow, and death, which demonstrate that the innocence of childhood may protect young people from the elements of the human condition, but not remove them from it.  The story is also an example of a common theme in Capote’s writings, a friendship forged among social outcasts, many of which are eccentric women.  A largely autobiographical story, the idiosyncratic woman is based upon Nannie Rumbley “Sook” Faulk, the oldest of four adult cousins who was reclusive and many considered peculiar, perhaps even developmentally disabled, who suffered from the trauma of losing a close friend at an early age, but Capote describes as his best friend, providing a special warmth, as she was able to relate to him in ways others couldn’t, living in a small home with other distant relatives who didn’t approve of them or pay much attention to them.  What’s so incredible about the story is that it documents a relationship that many gay men encountered in their childhood, a loving, eccentric older female relative who takes him under her wing when his family and friends abandon him due to his “otherness.”  As the leaves fall in late November, a woman looks out the window and exclaims, “Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!”  She is speaking, of course, to Buddy, an iteration of the author as a “sensitive boy.”  A surprisingly subversive ideological project at work, Capote’s presentation of male characters forces us to rethink gender roles, as Buddy revises the traditional coming-of-age narrative in which the male protagonist demonstrates their self-worth through masculinity, while Buddy romanticizes the traditionally female sphere of domesticity.  Geraldine Page is a national treasure, an iconic actress and one of the great legends of the American stage, only 42 at the time, yet playing a woman in her 60’s, refusing to wear any trace of make up in a heart-wrenching performance, beautifully described by the narrator, “In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except the funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry.”  From the maker of DAVID AND LISA (1962), which uniquely examines mental illness in a manner that is so distinctively humanist that French director Jean Renoir called it “a turning point in world cinema," this beautifully textured narrative bears a strange resemblance to Jason Robards in Fred Coe’s A THOUSAND CLOWNS (1965) made about the same time, as both fervidly avoid the tedious conventionality of ordinary life by transcending the tyranny of normalcy, where it’s all about the personal touches you bring to your life that make all the difference.  Genuine authenticity is the key, refusing to sell out to convention or bow down to the latest trends, remaining true to yourself, even if that means being shunned by others, where being a uniquely heartfelt version of yourself is what makes this storybook presentation so memorable, as there’s an art to being human.    

Who are our cakes for?  Friends.  Not necessarily neighbor-friends; indeed, the larger share are intended for persons we’ve met maybe once... perhaps not at all.  People who’ve struck our fancy.  Like President Roosevelt.  Like the Reverend and Mrs. J.C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last winter.  Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year.  Or Abner Packer, the driver of the six o’clock bus from Mobile, who exchanges waves with us every day as he passes in a dust-cloud ‘whoosh.’  Or the young Wistons, a California couple whose car one afternoon broke down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on the porch.  Young Mr. Wiston snapped our picture – the only one we’ve ever had taken.  Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest friends?  I think yes.

This film marvels at the now forgotten custom of fruitcake baking and then sending them as holiday gifts through the mail, getting at the source of why it was such a special handmade gift during the Depression when people were too broke to buy conventional gifts, as it reminds us of why we give and what we have to be thankful for.  The visual acuteness and simplicity of style looms large in this film, as there is nothing artificial about this presentation, and nothing diluted either, where the authenticity of emotion and the surety of vision is in every line.  It’s so short, so sincere, and yet so touching, as it manages to balance the sought-after intimacy of the performances with Capote’s spare narration, conveying that youthful excitement where every day is an adventure bringing something new, where having a friend to share it with is all that matters in the world.  Buddy, his cousin, and their dog Queenie have developed a special relationship symbolized by the baking of fruitcakes on a cast-iron stove, foraging the nearby fields for fallen pecans, while scraping together spare change from contests they’ve entered or selling jars of jams, jellies, and preserves they’ve made from berries and flowers they’ve picked, which they use to buy all the necessary ingredients, including a rare bottle of whisky from the local bootlegger, a Native American Indian man named Haha Jones.  Having a few sips leftover, they decide to celebrate, even giving a few spoonfuls to the dog, becoming all warm and fuzzy inside, getting the giggles as they sing and dance around the kitchen, only to be rudely interrupted and scolded for their sinful behavior of setting such a poor example for a minor child by her devoutly pious sisters, who seem to have perpetually built-in frowns on their faces, as they simply never smile.  The small details on display are stunning, as “his friend” is genuinely hurt by their accusations, weeping that night in bed, never wanting to be the cause of anyone’s unhappiness, so Buddy lifts up her spirits by reminding her they have to go cut down a tree the next day.  But it has to be the right size, one tall enough that Buddy can’t reach up and grab the star sitting on top, so they cut out decorations from colored paper and tinfoil and sprinkle the tree with shredded cotton, making it look like snow.  Buddy makes his cousin a kite out of old newspapers, and he suspects she is making him one as well, just as they did last year, as their annual tradition is flying kites together on Christmas day, offering them a sense of joy and liberation, even if only for a brief moment, which seems to place them perfectly in harmony with the surrounding cosmos lurking so far beyond.  While there is a cheeriness about the untainted bond between them, this is also a sad and increasingly poignant tale, as anyone who has lost someone feels what Capote projects, the mixed emotions between that everpresent Christmas cheer and the grief that sits on your heart, becoming an elegiac love letter to Christmas and those lives we have lost.  We learn this was their last Christmas together, as a none-too-pleased Buddy was shipped off to military school the following year “by those who know best,” presumably to make a man of him, which he characterizes as “a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons.”  Told entirely in flashback, “home is where my friend is, and there I never go,” and there she remains, puttering around the kitchen, bringing these memories back to life, where this all happened some time ago, where it’s been years since she passed away, yet she remains alive through the evocative imagery of the story, as Buddy finds himself walking the grounds of his school and looking up at the sky, “As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.”  Suffering from drug and alcohol abuse, habitually in and out of rehabilitation clinics, Capote died at the age of 59 in the home of comedian Johnny Carson’s ex-wife Joanne in Bel Air, who read the final passages of this story at the eulogy, reminding us all of the transcendent power of the written word. 

Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory - Starring Geraldine ...  entire film may be seen on YouTube (48:15)

In Cold Blood

Author Truman Capote

IN COLD BLOOD                A-                   

USA  (134 mi)  1967  ‘Scope  d: Richard Brooks

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.”  Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.

—Truman Capote, first paragraph from the opening chapter, The Last to See Them Alive, from In Cold Blood, 1966

Who so sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. 

—Genesis 9:6 (mis-identified in the film as Genesis 9:12), spoken by the Prosecutor (Will Geer)

It all began with a brief piece in The New York Times, from Holcolmb, Kansas on November 16, 1959:  “A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged… There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone lines had been cut.”  Author Truman Capote happened to take a special interest in the incident, enough for him to travel to Kansas to investigate the case, especially after the killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were arrested six weeks after the murders.  Capote eventually compiled 8000 pages of notes and spent six years working on the book through the trial, conviction, and long appeal process, but after they were executed by hanging in April, 1965, the story was initially released 5 months later in a four-part installment in The New Yorker magazine and was an instant success.  The true crime or “non-fiction” novel was released in January of the following year, considered a landmark work, one of the first of its kind (following by 9 years the publication of Argentinean journalist Rodolfo Walsh’s 1957 book Operación Masacre, an exposé on the military coup and ousting of Argentine President Juan Perón) and perhaps the most successful ever, where despite its claims of authenticity, being a true account of what happened, Capote admittedly took poetic license by adding scenes that never happened while also recreating dialogue.  Capote conducted interviews with both men after they were convicted, developing a particularly close relationship with Perry Smith, where rumors persist they may have developed a sexual bond together, developing a special fascination with the more tender and sensitive side of a brutal killer.  Capote reportedly remarked, “It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house.  And one day he stood up and went out the back door, while I went out the front.” 

One of the more critical voices *against* the book was from fellow Southern author Tom Wolfe in a 1976 essay called Pornoviolence, calling it sadistic and sensational, where he attributes a growing trend in the media to glorify violence as a way of satiating the audience, citing Tobe Hooper’s film THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) and Capote’s book In Cold Blood, arguing that in the absence of mystery, since we already know the outcome, Capote provides gruesome and salacious details, reducing the work to little more than lurid sensationalism.  Certainly violence in American movies rose to new heights with the release of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), told sympathetically from the point of view of the outlaws, adding folksy humor with bullets and death, where despite the gratuitous violence, their murderous tendencies are secondary to the power of their performances which endear them to the public, becoming part of American folklore, much like the extraordinary performances seen throughout THE GODFATHER (1972).  Even James Cagney in White Heat (1949) is as entertaining as they come, and his sheer willpower dominates the picture, which is what endears him to audiences even as they know he’s a loathsome psychotic killer who probably deserves the electric chair.  BONNIE AND CLYDE was a sensation, however, where Time magazine called it the “Movie of the Decade,” nominated for 10 Academy Awards.  Nonetheless, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther’s response was to call it “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick that treats the depredations of that sleazy pair as though they were full of fun and frolic.”  Crowley was asked to retire later that same year, as he was simply out of step with the radically changing expectations of new movie audiences that also adored the minimalist romanticism of The Graduate (1967). 

In Cold Blood received more notoriety as a book than as a film, hailed as an acclaimed masterpiece prior to release, where the pre-publication earnings totaled something like 2 million dollars, which would suggest Capote was paid approximately $15 per word.  Possessed with a near inhuman power of recall, Capote’s skill always lay in his meticulously thorough detail, put to good use here displaying superb journalistic skills in an exhaustive account of the senseless murder of the entire Clutter family on their farm in Holcomb, Kansas (population 270), where Hickock (Scott Wilson) and Smith (Robert Blake) netted only $40 dollars for their efforts, substantially less than the $10,000 score they were expecting.   What captured the nation’s attention was how such a horribly gruesome crime could take place in America’s heartland with no hint of a comprehensible motive.  What Capote provided along with the criminal exposé was a piece of Americana, a time capsule landscape portrait of rural America, picking up every detail of life in a small community on what may as well be the far edge of the world.  Much like Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, published in 1955, Capote’s highly subjective writing style unleashes his power of observation using flashbacks, fragmented memories, or psychologically traumatic moments to alter the sense of time, accentuating brief moments, slowing down the pace, drawing sympathy from scenes of a character’s childhood while also revealing the vast expanse of an empty landscape that seems to last forever.  At least in part a road movie, as the two men are constantly on the run, there is a neverending stream of motel rooms, endless night highways, wayside drive-ins, and nondescript towns with no names, where perhaps we’ll see a lone railway stop as these aimless drifters pass through without any sense of where they are.  Told out of sequence in a near documentary style, one of the most effective scenes comes on the vibrant streets of Kansas City, watching how easily Hickock blends into the locale using small town charm as he operates his check bouncing scheme collecting a quick buck during the height of the Eisenhower 50’s, where he plays upon the perceived security and good natured kindness of the store clerks and uses that against them, in much the same way as they simply walked into the unlocked door of the Clutter farmhouse. 

Devastatingly low-key, much of it shot on actual site locations, perhaps the best cinematic technique is how the director brilliantly structures the scenes detailing the crime itself, leading us up to the moment without actually showing the murders, then backtracking into the lives of the murderers, making them the focus of the movie, while the book spends more time developing the individual characters of the Clutter family.  Brooks returns later to what the audience doesn’t initially see, where the full graphic effect of the crime is horrifying.  Neighborly trust is something to exploit, much like Nabokov’s young siren, which raises a profoundly interesting moral dilemma, as throughout the film Hickock calls Smith honey or baby or sweetie, all with sexual connotations, suggesting from a jail perspective that Smith may exhibit gay or feminine characteristics.  While Hickock brags of his sexual exploits, Smith recoils in fear, recalling how his mother was beaten savagely by his father for being caught sleeping with another man, suggesting a possible lack of sexual prowess.  It is only when Hickock makes advances on Nancy Clutter (Brenda Currin), a teenage girl, that Smith becomes enraged at his despicable behavior, exerting “I despise people who can’t control themselves,” which kick-starts his aggression against the otherwise helpless Clutter family.  There’s an interesting use of a police psychologist, Paul Stewart as Lee Jensen, who acts as a writer’s voice of conscience throughout, continually questioning the existence of moral reason and striving for psychological clarity even in seemingly senseless cases, “How can a perfectly sane man create an absolutely crazy act?”  By the end, there’s a melancholic cloud of doom that suggests a lack of closure or finality, where despite the riches and prosperity of the nation, all we’re left with is a pervasive sadness and emptiness filled with haunting, lingering thoughts about the senselessness of it all, where there’s no reason to believe capital punishment has any effect whatsoever on the criminal behavior of people hopped up on drugs (linked to 80% of prison inmates, Drugs or Alcohol Linked to 80% of Inmates - New York Times), enraged by jealousy, or driven for whatever motives to carry out completely senseless acts of violence.